Place:Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Haverfordwest (Welsh: Hwlffordd [ˈhuːlfɔrð]) is the county town of Pembrokeshire, Wales, and the most populous urban area in Pembrokeshire with a population of 13,367 in 2001, though its community boundaries made it the second-most populous settlement in the county, with 10,812 people. The 2011 census quoted a population of only 12,042 living within the confines of the parish. This agreed with the total population of all 5 wards (post-1974 divisions) involved: Castle, Prendergast, Portfield, Priory and Garth. Merlin's Bridge is a separate village and community situated to the south.

The town includes the suburbs of Prendergast (a former parish) and Albert Town and the mixed residential and industrial area of Withybush (housing, retail parks, hospital, airport and showground).

The town's strategic position of being at the lowest fordable point of the Western Cleddau (river) led to its importance from the Roman era to the present.

Topography

Haverfordwest is the centre of an important road network hub between Milford Haven, Pembroke Dock, Fishguard and St. David's as a result of its position at the tidal limit of the Western Cleddau. The majority of the town, comprising the old parishes of Haverford St. Mary, Haverford St. Martin and Haverford St. Thomas, lies on the right (west) bank of the river. On the left bank are the suburbs of Prendergast and Cartlett. At this point, a pair of sandstone ridges extending east-west and separated by a deep, narrow valley, are cut through by the Western Cleddau. This leaves two high spurs on the west side of the river. On the northern spur, the castle and its surrounding settlement form the core of St Martin's parish. On the southern spur, the High Street ascends steeply from the river and forms the core of St Mary's parish. From the foot of each spur, ancient bridges--St Martin's Bridge ("the Old Bridge") and St Mary's Bridge ("the New Bridge", built in 1835)--cross the river to Prendergast. St Thomas's parish occupies the south side of the southern spur. From these core areas, the town has spread, mainly along the ridges. In addition to the four ancient parish churches, the remains of an Augustinian priory are visible at the southern edge of the town. Wikipedia has a map of the town which cannot be reproduced.

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Haverfordwest#History.

Research Tips

• A 1900 Ordnance Survey map of the historic county of Pembrokeshire is available on the A Vision of Britain through Time website. This shows all the old parishes within their urban and rural districts. Large farms and estates are also marked. On the Haverfordwest Rural District page there is a sketchmap indicating the civil parishes of Haverfordwest Rural District as of 1935.
• 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.