Points of interest
THE village of Pendine is close to the western end of Pendine Sands. The village consists of two parts: the old hilltop settlement around the parish church, and the small harbour settlement on the shore. The latter developed into a small seaside resort from the mid-18th Century onwards when there was a growing interest in sea bathing as a health cure.
The seaside resort is best known for Pendine Sands, where Malcolm Campbell and J G Parry-thomas set the world land speed record five times between 1924 and 1927. Parry-thomas was killed while making a final record-breaking attempt on Pendine Sands in 1927.
The battered slab of concrete at the mouth of Morfa Brychan Valley and a few pyramid-shaped “dragon’s teeth” tank-buster blocks are all that now remain of the secret Second World War training exercise, code named Exercise Jantzen. Troops in landing craft with tanks and all supplies stormed the beach in practise for the Normandy landings.
Peat beds and petrified tree stumps make an appearance at Marros Sands, when low tides reveal a petrified forest there. They tell of a time thousands of years ago when the bay was marshy ground cloaked by a forest of alder and oak.
As with the petrified forest, other ancient objects have been found at Marros, including red deer antlers and the bones and skulls of wild oxen and other extinct species. Flint fragments have also been discovered, for along this shore before the sea rose there was a flint knapping ‘factory’ where Stone Age hunters and artisans fashioned their arrow heads, axe heads and other implements. When the shore was finally engulfed, these tool-makers retreated up the hill where there is a site called Top Castle, a fortified position where the knapping continued.
The rugged and isolated beach at Marros became over the centuries the graveyard of many sailing ships, and there were ‘wreckers’ who lured unwary masters to their doom.
The last wreck was that of the Treviga, a Russian trading schooner bound for Cardiff from Trinidad with a cargo of pitch. It happened in 1923 at Morfa Brychan Beach, just round the eastern extremity of Marros Sands at Ragwen Point, the Master having decided to ride out the storm off Saundersfoot, after refusing an offer by the local pilot to bring him in to Tenby, as he did not wish to pay. He paid all right with the wreckage of his ship, although he, his wife and crew of seven were taken off by the Tenby Lifeboat.