Flat Holm is geographically and politically in South Wales, is the property of the Marquess of Bute, and is situated in the parish of St. Mary, Cardiff. Once a year the vicar and curate of St. Mary’s visit the island and hold service in the barracks. Four batteries are situated on the island: the Castle Rock, Farm, Lighthouse and Well batteries. The tall white lighthouse that shows up so prominently from the shore at Weston is situated on Flat Holm, and rises to a height of a hundred and fifty-six feet. A singular phenomenon obscured the light in February 1902, when a shower of sticky whitish-grey mud fell and completely covered the lantern. Scientific men explained this happening as due to a portion of a dust-shower driving from the Sahara, and being converted into mud by the Channel mists. A day’s hard work was necessary before the glass was properly cleaned. A light was first shown here in 1737, when it consisted of a brazier of burning coals; no very effectual beacon on foggy nights. Nor was it greatly improved by the early years of the nineteenth century, for it was then still possible for such disasters as that of the _William and Mary_ to happen. This unfortunate ship was wrecked in 1817, between Flat Holm and Lavernock Point, which marks the extremity of Brean Down; and sixty lives were then lost. The present light, of the occulting variety, has a power of 50,000 candles, and is visible for eighteen miles. The total population of Flat Holm is twenty. Here is an inn. There are two fresh-water springs on the island. There is much charm in the curious islanded and semi-islanded features of the Weston outlook. Boldly rising from sea-level to the left of the long front of the town, are the great hunchbacked masses of Brean Down and Uphill. Uphill stands romantically at the mouth of the Axe, marked from great distances by its abrupt hill rising to a hundred feet above the plain, but looking much loftier. It is made further noticeable by the ruined church that stands prominently on its barren summit. The seaward side is scarred by limestone quarries into the likeness of cliffs, at whose feet the turbid waters of the Axe crawl sluggishly to the sea, between deep, muddy banks. This was the site of a Roman station and port, whence the lead and other minerals mined by those strenuous ancients on the Mendip hills were shipped. From Old Sarum, a distance of fifty-five miles, a Roman road has been traced, going by Charterhouse-on-Mendip, and ending here. Antiquaries give the name of the Roman station as _Ad Axium_, following the lead of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who himself invented the name. Still on the hilltop, near the church, may be traced the earthworks that once enclosed the Roman fort, and many coins of that period have been found here. Down below is a limestone cavern accidentally discovered in 1826, when it was found to contain bones of the hyæna and other animals long extinct in Britain: long centuries before ever the Romans came.