Castlemartin

Castlemartin Firing Range

Castlemartin (Castle-Martin) - From 'A Topographical Dictionary of Wales' (1849)
CASTLEMARTIN (CASTLE-MARTIN), a parish, in the hundred of Castlemartin, union and county of Pembroke, South Wales, 6 miles (W. S. W.) from Pembroke; containing 408 inhabitants. This extensive parish forms a kind of promontory on the sea coast, and is bounded on the north by Freshwater West, which runs into St. George's Channel, on the east by the adjoining parish of Warren, and on the west and south by the Bristol Channel. It includes the small hamlet of Lenny on the western coast, from which a point of land, projecting into the sea, derives its name of Lenny-head. The cliff along the south coast consists of mountain limestone very regularly stratified, and in some places so broken and displaced as to produce a magnificent effect. A few yards from the shore are three stacks rising nearly perpendicularly, which are much frequented during May, June, and July, by the eligug, which deposits its single egg on the bare rock, and covering it with one foot, performs the act of incubation in an erect posture. This bird cannot take wing from land: as soon, therefore, as the young is able to fly, the parent bird throws it into the water, from which it rises with remarkable strength of wing over that element.

The parish is wholly inclosed, and the land is mostly fertile and in a good state of cultivation. The Cors, a tract of land comprising about 300 acres, was brought into cultivation by the late Mr. Mirehouse, of Brownslade, to whom, in 1810, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, adjudged their gold medal for clearing waste moors. The same gentleman surrounded Brownslade with plantations, which, although exposed to the south-west winds, have made considerable progress. His son, the present occupier, spends here as much of his time as his duties of Common-Serjeant of the City of London will allow. The parish abounds with limestone well adapted for masonry: the lime produced from it makes very superior mortar; and fire-bricks of excellent quality are manufactured of clay and gravel, deposited in the hollow of the limestone.

The living is a discharged vicarage, rated in the king's books at £7. 17. 6., and endowed with £400 royal bounty; patron, Earl Cawdor; income, £315. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is an ancient structure, containing between the nave and north aisle four late-Norman arches, and has undergone a thorough repair within the last thirty years: there is a chapel at Flimston, which has long been disused for sacred purposes. The children generally attend the Earl Cawdor's day school in the parish of Warren, only a small dame-school and a Sunday school being kept here. The castle of the Martins, descendants of Martin de Tours, and from whom the parish and hundred are supposed to derive their name, was in a state of ruin prior to the time of Leland, who says, "Towards this extrem part of Pembrokeshire be the vestigia of Martin Castle." The district contains numerous military works, thrown up during the frequent contests that took place between the Danish pirates who infested this part of the coast, which, from its exposed and defenceless situation, was much subject to their attacks, and the native Welsh, who resolutely repelled their aggressions: one of these may be seen on a farm in the parish, called Bully Bar.