Points of interest
Castle Hill, Tenby, was once home to a 12th Century castle built during the Norman invasion of West Wales. Today there is only a tower and some castle walls remaining.
In the 19th Century, Penally was a busy industrial area with several limestone quarries. The biggest was Blackrock Quarry, located directly behind the kilns and now part of the Kiln Park holiday complex.
In 1722 Mayor Athoe of Tenby and his son murdered George Merchant (his own nephew) and left for dead his brother Tom Merchant after a disagreement in town. The mayor and his son were soon caught and hung in 1723 at Old Kent Road in London.
Today he has become Tenby’s most famous ghost said to haunt these marshes and the Kiln Park area. Craigcefnparc is a village near the town of Clydach. “Craig” probably refers to the several small stone quarries that existed around the village, from which the stone was extracted for building the coal miners’ cottages as the area developed into a large mining valley.
Cefn Parc is the name of an old farm at the top of the village. The word “Cefn” means “at the back of” and “Parc” derives from an early Norman French word for “enclosure”. The name suggests that the farm was, in the Middle Ages, at the very edge of the Manorial Lord’s enclosure. Cwm Clydach RSPB
Nature Reserve is located at the south of the village, near the New Inn. It was established in 1987 after the RSPB found a large number of breeding birds that were not common to the area.
The reserve is a mixed broadleaf woodland with
a variety of bird species present all the year round.
A variety of butterflies are also seen in the valley, notable species include the brimstone and silver-washed fritillary alongside orange-tip and red admiral.
Coal mining: Until 1962 much of Cwm Clydach was a working coalmining valley. The largest colliery, opened in 1863 by Clydach Merthyr Company, was known locally as Nixons and was one of the main employers in the area.
The colliery was a rock top colliery but as it was virtually gas free, the boilers to raise the steam for the haulage engines were underground, as was a blacksmith’s shop, which was rare in a colliery.
Another interesting feature of this mine was that it had a very strong sandstone roof, which meant that large areas of the mine required very little in the way of roof support. The mine stopped producing coal in 1961 but was kept open until 1978 to provide ventilation and pumping for the Graig Merthyr colliery, which was about three miles to the west. Before closure of the National Coal Board it produced an annual output of 115,000 tons of saleable coal.
Evidence of the mines can be seen as you follow the route of the old tramway up the valley, as ruins of some of the old colliery buildings are still visible.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the dissenting non-conformists living west of the river Tawe in the parishes of Llangyfelach and Llangiwg, in what was and still is mainly an upland agricultural area, would have worshipped either at Mynyddbach, Gellionnen or Cwmllynfell chapels.