Place:South Pembrokeshire District, Dyfed, Wales

Watchers
NameSouth Pembrokeshire District
TypeDistrict municipality
Located inDyfed, Wales     (1974 - 1996)
See alsoPembrokeshire, Waleshistoric county covering the area before 1974
Pembrokeshire (principal area), Walesprincipal area covering the area since 1996
Image:WalesSouthPembroke1974.png :the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

The South Pembrokeshire District (Welsh: De Sir Benfro) was one of six local government districts of Dyfed, Wales from 1974 to 1996.

It was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, from the following parts of the administrative county of Pembrokeshire:

Municipal boroughs, urban districts and rural districts ceased to exist after 1974. The new lowest level of government was allocated the description Community. Communities were based on the old civil parishes with some mergers and reformations.

The map shows the district as defined above. However, in 1981, the communities of Bletherston, Clarbeston, Llandeilo Llwydarth, Llandissilio West, Llangolman, Llan y cefn, Llys y frân, Maenclochog, Mynachlog-ddu, New Moat and Vorlan were transferred to Preseli District.

South Pembrokeshire District was abolished on 1 April 1996, merging with the Preseli District to form a reconstituted Pembrokeshire (principal area), a unitary authority.

Research Tips

  • GENUKI has a page on each of the old counties of Wales and, under these counties, pages for each of the ecclesiastical parishes within the county. Information is gathered under a number of headings and the amount of information varies from parish to parish. Parish descriptions are based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and thus the emphasis is on ecclesiastical parishes. (Civil parishes were not yet established.) The submitter is very firm about his copyright. This should not stop anyone from reading the material.
  • The GENUKI Pembrokeshire pages include, under Description and Travel close to the bottom of the page, a link "parish map" to a map website showing boundaries and settlements before 1850. On the linked page will be maps of several parishes located close to each other.
  • GENUKI also provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area, but there is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date for every county.
  • FreeBMD provides a link to a list of the civil registration districts for each Welsh county from 1837 to 1996. Civil registration districts changed with varying densities of population and improvements in communication. Most counties and unitary authorities now have only one district. The list helps with providing names for the registration districts listed in the FreeBMD index and also as a guide for where to look for census entries.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI and these have been prepared at a later date. The Wiki may look like Wikipedia but the information has been provided for family historians. There are tables of links between the parishes in the historic counties of Wales and their post-1996 counterparts. This is the only genealogical website found that provides this information universally; others are not as thorough.
  • Some words in Welsh come up time and time again and you may want to know what they mean or how to pronounce them. For example,
    "Eglwys" is a church and the prefix "Llan" is a parish.
    "w" and "y" are used as vowels in Welsh.
    "Ll" is pronounced either "cl" or "hl" or somewhere in between. "dd" sounds like "th".
    The single letter "Y" is "the" and "Yn" means "in".
    "uwch" means "above"; "isod" is "below" or "under";
    "gwch" is "great", "ychydig" is "little";
    "cwm" is a "valley".
In both Welsh and English all these words are commonly used in place names in the UK. Place names are often hyphenated, or two words are combined into one. Entering your problem phrase into Google Search, including the term "meaning in Welsh", will lead you to Google's quick translation guide. I'm no authority; these are just things I have picked up while building up this gazetteer for WeRelate.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at South Pembrokeshire. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.