COUNTY HALL’S GRIM HISTORY
TODAY, it’s a building that towers above the River Towy – one that countless people pass every single day as they go about their lives in Carmarthen town centre.
The chateau-style County Hall, lowering atop Coracle Way like a big symmetrical pile, stands out like no other building in town and is home to Carmarthenshire County Council.
Until 2020 that is. Since March, the majority of staff usually based at the site have been working from home. It is hoped, of course, that 2021 will see a return to some kind of normality, but whatever the future holds for one of Carmarthen’s best-known sites it cannot be more extraordinary than its past.
Almost a thousand years ago there was a castle in Carmarthen. It can be traced back to 1094 but at that stage it was known as Rhyd-y-gors Castle and was situated elsewhere in the town, further down the Towy. But by the early 1100s Carmarthen Castle was built at the spot where its remains now stand in the centre of town.
It was subjected to a number of attacks, with one of the first being carried out by Welsh prince Gruffydd ap Rhys in the 12th Century.
It was then captured and destroyed by Llywelyn the Great in the early 13th Century. After it was recaptured in 1223 extensive rebuilding work was carried out and by 1275 it had a great tower, a gatehouse, and a dungeon.
It was again attacked in the early 1400s, this time by Owain Glyndwr, and by 1456 it was in the hands of Henry Tudor’s father, Edmund Tudor, who died at the castle after contracting the plague.
By the end of the 18th Century the castle had become a prison and its already-fascinating history would have more layers added to it over subsequent years.
The prison was designed by John Nash, a prominent architect who was responsible for many important parts of London.
In 1784 he came to live in Carmarthen and set about designing the town’s jail – known then as Carmarthen Gaol – which was completed in 1792 and further extended in 1869.
While the history of a prison at the site can be traced back to the 16th Century, Nash’s version was intended to improve the conditions in which prisoners were kept and would serve the whole county.
While conditions may have been better in the years that followed 1792 the site still saw more than its fair share of horror.
At that time people could be sentenced to death for more than 200 offences and those who were destined for the noose would leave the jail and head towards one of two locations to face the final curtain – a mile away at Babell Hill in Pensarn, or further out of town in an area of Johnstown known as Royal Oak Common.
However, from 1817, all hangings took place inside the jail site, where public executions continued until 1829, when David Evans became the last person to be publicly executed in Carmarthen in front of as many as 10,000 people, who all packed along Spilman Street and watched as he was hanged.
Evans had murdered his lover, Hannah Davies, while walking near Llanybydder on the evening of Saturday, June 13, 1829.
The following morning, as locals were heading to church, they noticed that the normally tranquil stream which they encountered on their weekly walk was different – it was discoloured and ran red. Nearby they found the body of Hannah Davies in the water.
Three months later, having been incarcerated at Carmarthen Gaol, Evans would hang for the brutal killing.
The crime committed by 26-year-old George Thomas, though, was strikingly similar to that carried out by Evans 64 years earlier. On the evening of November 19, 1893, Thomas ran around the corner of King Street, one of Carmarthen’s most well-known streets, and told a police officer that he had just murdered a teenage girl.
They went to the scene of the crime – a lane in the Pentremeurig area of
Carmarthen – and found the body of Mary Jane Jones, who had been Thomas’s lover for a few weeks until she had tried to cut ties with a man more than 10 years her senior.
Lying next to her bloodsoaked body lay her handkerchief, her hat, a comb,
and a black-handled razor which had been used to cut her throat. On the morning of February 13, 1894, he was hanged inside the jail.
Some 28 years later, in 1922, the prison was closed and criminals housed there were transferred to Swansea Prison.
The former prison, now empty, was bought in 1924 following an offer from the Home Secretary and remained on its perch above the Towy until the
mid-1930s when it was demolished to make way for a new home for the county council.
The imposing building we see before us in Carmarthen today was designed by Percy Thomas, a respected English architect who also designed Swansea Guildhall and the campus of Aberystwyth University, among other works.
But hopes of a quick build were dashed by the breakout of the Second
World War in 1939. The County Hall was finally completed nearly two decades later in 1955 and officially opened on February 1, 1956.
It has been the local authority’s base ever since, becoming the offices of Dyfed Council in 1974 before once again becoming the home of Carmarthenshire Council in 1996 after the implementation of the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994.