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Some South Pembrokeshire Cottages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
In 1937 the writer described in ANTIQUITY a series of cottages—the dwellings of crofters—in Llanychaer and adjacent parishes of northern Pembrokeshire. These were two-roomed stone structures with a central doorway on one side: the door opened into the living room where the most striking sight was the great open fireplace at the gable end, the chimney structure of which projected into the room. A number of such dwellings has recently been examined in a coastal district of the same county to the south of Milford Haven, in Castle-martin parish. These show variations in the character and plan of the open fireplace, which are of interest, and probably also of cultural significance; they also provide fresh evidence of the hearth-dairy association manifested at Llanychaer.
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- Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1942
References
1 ‘Peasant Crofts in North Pembrokeshire’, 1937, pp. 427-40.
2 The character of this countryside has been well described by a geologist, A. L. Leach, F.G.S., in Archaeologia Cambrensis, 1913, p. 394 ff.
3 Of the houses mentioned, Lake, Castle Lady, Slade and Frainslake are marked and named on the 6-inch Ordnance Survey map, sheet XLII NW.; Cuckoo Rock is marked and named, and Old Trenorgan is marked (700 feet SSE of Southrow) on sheet XLII SE.
4 An identical development can be seen on the opposite side of the Bristol Channel, e.g. at Bossington, on the borders of Exmoor, in houses of comparable date.
5 The following are the measurements, on plan, of the chimney structures described in this section
6 An historical deduction from this fact, suggested in ANTIQUITY 1937, pp. 438-9, is questioned by Dr I. C. Peate, in The Welsh House, pp. 108-11. I hope to discuss the point raised by him elsewhere.
7 Åke Campbell, ‘Notes on the Irish House’, Folk liv. 1937, p. 207.
8 ‘The Welsh House’, Y Cymmrodor, vol. XLVII, plate 81.
9 This summary is based on Innocent, The Development of English Building Con struction, 1916, pp. 265-70 (the chimney and its descent) and fig. 73 (Norman fireplace); Nathaniel Lloyd, A History of the English House, 1931, p. 347, fig. 558 (flue of timber and stone, Lanes.), p. 434, text, and figs. 762 to 765 (early hooded fireplaces); Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Westmorland, 1936, p. LXI and plate 33 (Langdales 4); Åke Campbell, ‘Notes on the Irish House’, Folk liv, 1937, esp. pp. 230-233 and pls. XLI, 2, XLII, 2, and fig. 6.
10 Archaeologia Cambrensis, 1902, pp. 1-24; many illustrations reproduced by I. C. Peate, op. cit.
11 It was highly developed in the 12th century, as the Bishop’s Palace at Hereford (R.C.H.M. Herefordshire, vol. 1, pp. 116-7) and the stone details derived from wooden forms in the church at Kilpeck (Arch. Camb. 1927, pp. 460-3) show.
12 See e.g. cottages at Lucton and Eardisley, R.C.H.M. Herefordshire, vol. III, pls. 27 and 30, and a house at Birley, op. cit. pl. 24.
13 See R.C.H.M. Essex, North-East, opp. p. 177.
14 op. cit. p. 164.
15 Penfro, in which the Castlemartin houses are situated was, as is well known, colonized by Flemings in the reign of Henry I. Flanders, for this and other reasons, seems a likely Continental region. I put this point to my friend Mr A. W. Clapham, President S.A., who remarks, ‘I think that your note about the Flemings may be cogent, but I very much doubt whether any evidence bearing on this subject, apart from possible literary sources, survives in the cockpit of Europe’.