Nooks and Corners of PembrokeshireTimmins, H. Thornhill (Henry Thornhill)
History
Nooks and Corners of Pembrokeshire
Timmins, H. Thornhill (Henry Thornhill)
Pembrokeshire (Wales) -- Description and travel
Close at hand stands a low, rambling, yellow-washed house, having every
sign of age about it. Many years ago this was the Castle Inn. The
interior shows dark, open-raftered ceilings, where mighty hams and
flitches of bacon ripen the year round; broad-beamed oaken chairs flank
a solid table standing upon the rough, flagged floor; while dogs, cats,
hens and chickens roam sociably everywhere. A carved stone head, peeping
out from amidst the honeysuckle that clambers over the porch, is _said_
to represent Giraldus Cambrensis himself, a statement that must be
accepted with the proverbial 'grain of salt.'
The rough outbuildings at the rear also bear traces of antiquity; and in
an adjacent meadow stands one of those curious old pigeon-houses, which
formed a customary adjunct to the mediæval castle or manor-house. The
thick stone walls of this pigeon-house are built in a circular form,
surmounted by a high conical roof much the worse (except from a
picturesque point of view) for several centuries of neglect and hard
weather; the interior is pierced with many tiers of pigeon-holes, each
with a ledge for the bird to rest upon, while an 'eye' in the crown of
the roof served its feathered inmates as a doorway. The original arched
entrance has been broken away to form a larger opening, and the whole
structure appears to be coëval with the neighbouring castle. This
pigeon-house appears in our sketch of Angle Castle.
Invigorated by a crisp sea-breeze that drives the fleecy clouds before
it, we put our best foot foremost, and stretch away along a rough
cart-lane between banks of prickly furze and stunted hawthorn hedges.
These give place, after passing a solitary farmstead, to the open,
wind-swept down, aglow with amber-tinted gorse, and carpeted with dry,
crisp turf and tussocks of flowering thrift.
Half a mile across this bracing moorland lands us at the old ruined
Blockhouse, built, as George Owen informs us, in the days of Henry VIII.
'for to ympeach the entrance into the Haven.' Hence we look out across
the open seaway, that forms a worthy approach to the noble estuary of
Milford Haven.
From this sea-girt eyrie we command a spacious outlook over land and
sea. Standing beside the gray, lichen-clad ruins of the old
watch-tower, our gaze wanders across a sparkling expanse of open sea
that rolls, in waves of clearest aquamarine and sapphire blue, towards
the land-locked shelter of the Haven; and breaks into crests of snowy
foam where St. Anne's Head stands out and takes the brunt of old Ocean's
fury. The ruddy, sandstone rocks rise in picturesque confusion from the
surging breakers, which eddy around a tiny islet accessible only at low
tide; whose forefront, planted in the ocean, is barbed with a grim array
of jagged ledges and pierced with dark, yawning crevices.
Beyond West Angle Bay the mainland rounds away eastwards, with a
fort-crowned islet protecting the inner reaches of the famous estuary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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