The Little Book of Carmarthenshire E-Book

Dr Russell Grigg

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 256

Beschreibung

Fast-paced and fact-packed, this compendium revels in Carmarthenshire's rich heritage and what makes it special in areas such as culture, landscape, wildlife, food and sport. This whistle-stop tour through the 'Garden of Wales' covers both celebrated characters and murky pasts, taking in the county's breathtaking castles, nature reserves and famous landmarks along the way. From the county gaol and asylum to school strikes and industrial riots, this is a book you won't want to put down.

Leseprobe

First published 2015

This paperback edition published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Dr Russell Grigg, 2015, 2022

The right of Dr Russell Grigg to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 6346 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Carmarthenshire: Did You Know?

2. History

3. Riots and Rebels, Crimes and Punishments

4. Town and Country

5. The People of Carmarthenshire

6. Welsh Language and Culture

7. Landscape and Wildlife

8. Food and Drink

9. Sport

10. Industry and the Environment

Select Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Lesley Rees, Policy Research and Information Officer at Carmarthenshire Council, for answering my queries so promptly. The following have also been very supportive: Lyn John and John Wynne Hopkins of Llanelli Community Heritage, and Kathryn Edwards and staff at Llanelli Reference Library. Tom, Mia, Helen, Grace and Sofie have all shown remarkable patience in listening to my stories and trudging around parts of Carmarthenshire. Many thanks to Ruth Boyes (editor of the original edition), Ele Craker and colleagues at The History Press for their editorial support.

All uncredited images form part of The History Press collection.

INTRODUCTION

There are many very good reasons to live in, and visit, Carmarthenshire. To begin with, the county boasts a landscape to retain the interest of most people – stunning beaches, dramatic coastline, ancient woodlands, meandering rivers, atmospheric valleys, lakes and hills, bustling market towns and peaceful villages.

Carmarthenshire or, to give its Welsh name, Sir Caerfyrddin (usually shortened to Sir Gaer), is a county full of contrasts. The mainly flat coastline runs from just east of Llanelli, beyond Dylan Thomas’ village of Laugharne, to Pendine. The Millennium Coastal Park extends for about 10 miles along the Burry Estuary between Llanelli and Burry Port. It offers excellent views of the Gower Peninsula, the UK’s first designated area of outstanding natural beauty. The Coastal Park includes the National Wetlands Centre for Wales, a championship golf course and the harbours of Burry Port and Pembrey.

In contrast, the north of the county includes the uplands of the Cambrian Mountains, which run through Mid Wales, described by writers in previous centuries as ‘the Green Desert of Wales’. The ancient woodland of Brechfa Forest lies to the north-east of Carmarthen town. Its natural resources have provided a refuge for the Welsh hiding from the Normans, supplied timber for the trenches of the First World War and, in more recent times, proved a popular location for cyclists. To the east of the county lies the Black Mountain, which is in fact a mountain range that straddles the border with Powys. It includes Picws Du (Black Peak), Carmarthenshire’s highest point at around 2,000ft, offering spectacular views of the Brecon Beacons National Park.

John Speed’s 1612 county map, courtesy of Llanelli Library (Brodie Collection)

The county’s main rivers are the Tywi (Towy) and Teifi, seen clearly on one of the earliest maps of the county, produced by John Speed in 1612. The Tywi flows south from the Cambrian Mountains into Carmarthen Bay, where the smaller Taf and Gwendraeth rivers join it. The Teifi flows west to east from the Cambrian Mountains along the county’s northern border.

For centuries, farming has been a major part of Carmarthenshire’s economy. The most fertile farmland is to be found in the Tywi Valley, which runs from the east across Carmarthenshire. This is why settlements began at Llandovery, Llangadog, Llandeilo and Carmarthen.

The journey through the Carmarthenshire countryside on the Heart of Wales railway line (Swansea to Shrewsbury) is simply breathtaking – one of the highlights is to gaze out over the Cynghordy Viaduct, near Llandovery, 102ft above the valley. There are equally spectacular views over the Tywi Estuary when travelling along the coastal line from Swansea to Carmarthen.

Carmarthenshire’s varied landscape is ideal for a wide range of adventurous activities including rambling, cycling, sailing, abseiling, kayaking, white water rafting, horse riding, gorge walking, caving, canoeing and ‘coasteering’ (squeezing into a wetsuit and buoyancy aid, and floating around the coast).

The county’s wildlife is also one of its selling points: from the possibility of glimpsing red squirrels in the upper Tywi Valley, or standing in awe as salmon leap Cenarth Falls, to feeding red kites at Llanddeusant. Carmarthenshire has thirteen nature reserves managed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. These include the 63-acre Castle Woods (Dinefwr) near Llandeilo, home to fallow deer and a wide range of birdlife: greater spotted, lesser spotted and green woodpeckers, nuthatches, redstarts, flycatchers, hawks, tawny owls, and roosting wildfowl such as goosander, teal and tufted duck.

Another attraction is the county’s rich history, including prehistoric stones erected before the Egyptian pyramids, Iron Age hill forts, medieval abbeys at Talley and Whitland, some of Wales’ most dramatic castles, the country’s finest Georgian townhouse and the legacy of the coal mining and tinplate industries that once put towns like Llanelli on the world stage.

Carmarthenshire’s greatest asset, though, is its people. As Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, put it in 1724:

We found the people of this county more civiliz’d and more curteous, than in the more mountainous parts, where the disposition of the inhabitants seems to be rough, like the country: But here as they seem to converse with the rest of the world, by their commerce, so they are more conversible than their neighbours.

It is in their genetic code for Carmarthenshire people to be resilient, talkative and sociable.

1

CARMARTHENSHIRE: DID YOU KNOW?

Carmarthen is the oldest town in Wales. The Romans built a fort in the town as the regional capital in about AD 75 at the westernmost part of their empire. They built another fort at Caerwent, near Chepstow, at the same time to control south-east Wales. Although Caerwent has some of the best-preserved Roman city walls in Europe, it is now a small village. So Carmarthen is the oldest continuously occupied town in Wales.

A view of Carmarthen

A landmark in the history of women’s rights was reached at Whitland in around AD 945. The tenth-century Laws of Hywel Dda were the first in the world to formally declare that a woman was free and not her husband’s property. Divorce was permitted by common consent, and in cases of rape, priority was always given to the woman’s claims.

The oldest book in the Welsh language was printed in Carmarthen in around AD 1200. The Black Book of Carmarthen was named after the colour of its binding and its association with the Black Canons of the Priory of St John the Evangelist. It is thought to be the work of a thirteenth-century Welsh scribe writing at different periods of his life. It is the earliest surviving manuscript written solely in the Welsh language. It covers a mix of poetry, mythology, history, nature and religion, including chants such as:

The first word I will say

When I arise at break of day

‘The Cross of Christ be my array’.

The manuscript has been digitised and is now available online at the National Library of Wales website (www.llgc.org.uk/collections). It is so fragile that a special book cradle had to be used to hold it for photographs to be taken.

A Mayor of Carmarthen killed the last King of England to die on a battlefield in 1485. Sir Rhys ap Thomas was one of the most important men in Tudor Wales. He was Mayor of Carmarthen in 1488–89, one of many privileges he enjoyed following his support in putting Henry Tudor upon the throne of England. But it could have turned out very differently. Rhys had initially sworn loyalty to Richard III, but changed sides for a better offer. Some accounts say that, in the heat of battle at Bosworth Field in 1485, Rhys sought out Richard and struck the fatal blow to the back of the king’s head using a halberd (a long-poled axe). In 2012, Richard III’s skeleton was found under a car park in Leicester. It took two years of legal dispute before the courts decided that the body should be interred in Leicester Cathedral.

The crown handed to Henry Tudor at Bosworth

The earliest recorded black resident in the county was an African named Jack of St Christopher. He had been living as a slave in St Kitts in the West Indies before coming to Carmarthenshire. In 1723, he was baptised as an adult in Pembrey and was ‘owned’ by Lawford Cole who lived in Stradey. There is no record of Jack getting married or having children. He died in 1738 and is burial is recorded in Pembrey.

The first industrial canal in Wales was cut in Carmarthenshire in 1768. Before the coming of the railways in the 1840s, travel by water was quicker and more convenient than by road. Thomas Kymer, a native of Haverfordwest, became Mayor of Kidwelly and was one of the first to exploit the mineral wealth of the Gwendraeth Valley. His 3-mile canal was built between 1766 and 1768. His canal barges carried coal from local pits to the Kidwelly coast for almost thirty years before the dock and river suffered from silting. Facing serious competition from the railways, Kymer’s canal was dredged in 1858. A decade later, the canal itself was transformed into the Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley railway. It connected Burry Port to the pit at Cwmmawr, running through the villages of Trimsaran, Glyn Abbey, Pontyates and Pontyberem. The best place to see the remains of this historic canal is at Kidwelly, beyond the railway station.

Carmarthenshire has the oldest tramroad bridge in Wales and one of the oldest in the world. At Pwll-y-Llygod a tramroad bridge was built in about 1769 to cross the River Gwendraeth Fawr, adjacent to Kymer’s canal. It marked the canal’s terminus and the tramroad carried anthracite coal from the nearby Carway Colliery to the railway.

The sports historian Martin Johnes suggests that the earliest recorded cricket match to have taken place in Wales was in 1783 on Court Henry Down, Dryslwyn. The two sides were made up of local gentry and clergymen.

A Carmarthenshire man invented the ball bearing in 1794. The idea behind ball bearings is very simple – things move better when they slide. Although roller bearings were known in ancient times, the first modern recorded patent on ball bearings was awarded in 1794 to Philip Vaughan, a Carmarthen inventor and ironmaster. His design enabled loads to be carried on axles for light and heavy wheel carriages. Today the humble ball bearing is essential to the working of everything from the motor car to aeroplanes, computers to machine tools, and from DVD players to refrigerators.

Britain’s first drink-driving warning was issued near Llandovery in 1841. In the lead up to Christmas 1835, a stagecoach driver called Edward Jenkins was drunk while driving the Gloucester to Carmarthen mail coach along the Brecon–Llandovery stretch of the A40 trunk road. Three of his passengers hung on to the stagecoach roof as it veered on to the wrong side of the road, where it met an oncoming cart. The coach plunged off the road over a 121ft precipice and into the river below. The year 1841 saw the Royal Mail erect an obelisk to warn of the dangers of driving whilst intoxicated. The warning is still visible on the roadside.

South Wales and Monmouthshire Training College, 1848

The last cavalry charge on British soil was in Carmarthen. In 1843, protesters known as Rebecca rioters (see Chapter 3) marched up Waterloo Terrace in Carmarthen to attack the workhouse, but they were intercepted by the dragoons. There were no fatalities, but sixty protesters were arrested. In 2014, Carmarthenshire’s Regeneration Trust was granted funding to undertake a feasibility study for options on the sustainable use of the gatehouse, the oldest surviving part of the building.

The oldest surviving teacher training college in Wales opened in Carmarthen. The South Wales and Monmouthshire Training College opened its doors to twenty-two male students in 1848 to train them to become teachers in elementary schools. Those admitted were expected to be morally upstanding and physically fit churchmen who had sound literacy skills, including the ability to take notes. In 1931, the governors changed the name to Trinity College to reflect its Church foundation. More recently it has become the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Women were not admitted until 1957 – one of the reasons for the delay was the fear that they might distract the men from their studies. Even talking to female kitchen staff, without permission, on campus in the 1920s incurred a fine.

Llanelli was once the tinplate capital of the world. From the late eighteenth century and for nearly 200 years, tall chimney stacks of steel, copper and tinworks dominated the Loughor Estuary skyline. At one time, half the world’s supply of tinplate came from Llanelli, which was dubbed ‘Tinopolis’ and ‘Sospan’ (as saucepans were one of its major supplies). Incidentally, the Welsh name Llanelli was officially adopted in 1966 to replace the Anglicised version of Llanelly. However, both forms lingered on for some years and the old form is retained in Llanelly House.

During the 1920s, Pendine Sands became world famous for land speed records. The 6 miles of Pendine Sands along Carmarthen Bay witnessed enthralling contests between the world’s two leading speedsters in the 1920s. In 1924, Sir Malcolm Campbell first set the land speed record of 146mph driving his V12 Sunbeam, one of his famous Bluebirds. In 1925 he then exceeded the 150mph barrier, and by 1926 he had reached 174.8mph.

His main rival was John Parry-Thomas, an engineer from Wrexham. In 1927, he took to the sands in a 27,000-litre car he had acquired from his friend Count Zborowski, who had been killed in a Grand Prix. Incidentally, Zborowski’s cars were known as Chitty Bang Bangs after the noise emitted from the exhaust pipes. One of these cars inspired Ian Fleming’s book of the same name and, later, the musical.

On 3 March 1927, Parry-Thomas tried to beat the world land speed record in the car he had renamed ‘Babs’. Sadly he lost control of the car and was killed instantly. Following the inquest into Thomas’ death, ‘Babs’ was buried in the sand dunes. It was excavated and restored in the 1960s and is now on view at the Pendine Museum of Speed. Parry-Thomas was the first driver to be killed in pursuit of the land speed record.

The first canned beer in the United Kingdom was produced at Llanelli in 1935. The Felinfoel brewery was founded around 1835 and, along with Buckley’s brewery, became the first to use beer cans, which were manufactured in the 1930s. Crates of Felinfoel were sent out to the Welsh troops during the Second World War. The invention of the beer can brought ale to the masses and changed the way people drink. Nowadays instead of having to go to the pub for a pint, people can call in at a supermarket or off-licence. But, as the Campaign for Real Ale supporters point out, beer cans have not replaced the taste or joys of drinking draught beer.

During the Second World War, a German super fighter nicknamed the ‘Butcher Bird’ was captured at Pembrey. On 23 June 1942 Armin Faber, an Austrian pilot, was caught up in a dogfight with British Spitfires. Flying a state-of-the-art German Focke-Wulf 190, he mistook the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and landed at RAF Pembrey with very little fuel. He failed to blow up the plane and the RAF gained a valuable asset, sparing the need for a commando raid to capture one in France. The RAF could test and analyse the one German fighter that could outperform the Spitfire.

A Carmarthenshire castle was used in the opening shots of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975. Kidwelly Castle appears in the opening scene of Monty Python’s historical romp as part of the backdrop for King Arthur and Patsy’s retreat.

The National Botanic Garden of Wales, which opened in 2000, has the largest single span glasshouse in the world. The National Botanic Garden was designed by one of the world’s leading architects, Norman Foster, and has an area of 568 acres. The exotic plants (960 species) are drawn from six areas of the world: California, Australia, the Canary Islands, Chile, South Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. The Great Glasshouse has a zone for each so that the plants flourish. Kathryn Gustaffson, the architect of the Diana Memorial in Kensington Park, designed the interior landscape of rocky terraces, sandstone cliffs and gravelled scree slopes. It covers almost 1 acre.

It is claimed that the tombs of George III’s secret relatives were discovered in St Peter’s church, Carmarthen, in 2000. It was always something of a mystery why King George III donated a magnificent pipe organ to St Peter’s. However, the answer may have been uncovered by the discovery of hidden tombs under the floorboards. One is dated 1832 and engraved with the name Charlotte Dalton. Charlotte’s mother, Sarah, married James Dalton, a Carmarthen man, although church records do not say where she was buried in the town. Sarah was one of three children from the secret marriage of the Prince of Wales to a young Quaker girl, Hannah Lightfoot. The marriage in 1759 and the subsequent birth of three children were kept secret so that the Prince of Wales could marry someone within his social circle, Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Another tomb is said to belong to 9-year-old Margaret Prytherch, Charlotte’s niece, who died in 1839. The discoveries have attracted publicity. However, in the absence of DNA analysis, a sceptical Jeremy Paxman, in his book On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry Into Some Strangely Related Families, dismisses the tale as one of romantic fiction.

George III

In May 2014, a giant Dr Who-style jellyfish was found on Ferryside Sands. The giant barrel jellyfish can grow up to 3.5ft wide and can cause serious injury by stinging unsuspecting swimmers. The one washed ashore at Ferryside measured more than 2ft.

In 2014, during the centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth, the only known film footage of him was discovered. Dylan Thomas is Wales’ greatest poet and writer but prior to 2014, it was not known that any film of him existed. Then Jeff Towns, a leading authority on Thomas, announced that he had found a very brief clip of Thomas, who was an extra in the film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, which was finished on Pendine beach in 1951. As Towns said, ‘It couldn’t be better. You couldn’t script it.’

FACTS AND FIGURES

•183,777 people lived in Carmarthenshire in 2011 according to the census of that year.

• In 2020, this had increased to 190,000 according to the Annual Population Survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics.

•2,365sq.km, the land mass of Carmarthenshire, makes it the third largest county in Wales, with 11.5 per cent of the country’s total area.

•40 per cent of the population live in villages and scattered communities.

•70 per cent of the land area is classified as rural.

•£190,294 is the average price of a property in the county, as of July 2021 (according to Zoopla).

• Around a third of households (27,576) live in Poverty within the county.

The following facts are based on the Annual Report for Carmarthenshire County Council, 2019-2020:

•71.5% of eligible people are in employment (UK average is 75.9%)

•26.5% of children are overweight or obese, in line with the Welsh average.

•95% of parents are satisfied with their child’s primary school (89% Welsh average).

•76% of people say they feel safe.

•51.6% of people say they have a sense of community (52.2% Welsh average).

•64.6% of materials are recycled.

•37.4% of the population speak Welsh, although this is based on a sample of 600. The 2011 Census figure was 43.9%.

•113 people were killed or seriously injured on the roads, the 2nd highest in Wales.

•10.7 is the average number of sick days per year, with the main causes being stress, mental health and fatigue.

2

HISTORY

When does the story of Carmarthenshire begin? Much depends upon what you want to know. If you are interested in its origins as a distinct geographical and political entity, then this begins some 500 years ago with Henry VIII’s reforms known as the Acts of Union (1536 and 1542–43). These brought the Welsh and English together under the same legal system and created thirteen counties, of which Carmarthenshire was the largest. We have records for these events – in other words, they are part of recorded history.

But if you are more interested in when the first signs of life appeared in this area, then the answer lies in the ancient rocks of Llangynog. These contain the fossils of ‘jellyfish’, reported to be swimming in a shallow sea surrounding large volcanoes up to 570 million years ago. Geologists think that the small jellyfish were stranded, possibly by a receding tide, and later entombed by sediment. So Carmarthenshire’s birth certificate is its rocks. In the National Botanic Garden there is a Rock of Ages exhibition – boulders on the walk up from the entrance tell the story of Wales over millions of years.

This time span of natural history is difficult to grasp. But imagine a ten-by-ten grid (100 squares) representing the story of Carmarthenshire. You would need to colour in 99.9 of these squares to represent its prehistory – that is, the time before written records existed.

ICE AGE

Much of our 100-square grid would have been covered in ice. But the so-called Ice Age was not a period of continuous ice cover. Rather it was a complex series of cold periods known as ‘glacials’, spanning at least 2 million years. At times it was so cold (as low as -80°C) that the snow did not melt, even in summer. Over time, the ice layers became thicker and thicker until the whole of Britain was buried under a sheet of ice up to 1.5 miles deep covering Snowdon, Wales’ tallest mountain (1,085m). In between these very cold periods there were warmer times (known as ‘interglacial’), similar to today’s temperatures, when the ice would melt and retreat to higher altitudes.

Up until about 5000 BC, Britain was connected to mainland Europe, which enabled animals and humans to move as the climate changed. Mammoths and woolly rhinos, which thrived in the cold, headed for Britain while warmth-loving creatures, such as hippos and elephants, travelled south in search of a warmer climate and food. There was no such thing as Carmarthen Bay; rather, it would have been a dry plain. Our early ancestors were able to walk from what is now Porthcawl to Mumbles Head, from the Gower to Tenby. Further afield, people and animals could cross the dried-out floor of the English Channel and southern North Sea.

Human prehistory is so long that Christian Thomsen, a nineteenth-century Danish museum curator, came up with the idea of dividing the time into three phases when he arranged the museum’s collections for display. He based this on the relative technological challenges the earliest peoples faced in fashioning stone, bronze and iron into weapons and tools. Later, the Stone Age was itself sub-divided to reflect the increasingly sophisticated development of tools (the Greek word for stone is lithos):

• Palaeolithic (Old or Early Stone Age), 2.6 million–10000 BC.

• Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), 10000–5000 BC.

• Neolithic (New Stone Age), 5000–800 BC.

Despite scientific advances, prehistoric dating is a hazy business. The uncertainty is because the landscape was effectively wiped clean by the Ice Age, which disturbed whatever evidence had been left by humans, and carried tools and objects away from where they had been abandoned or dropped.

PALAEOLITHIC BEGINNINGS

If you are interested in Carmarthenshire’s human origins, then the starting points are its ancient caves. We know that Coygan Cave, near Laugharne, was used as a lookout point for reindeer, bison and horses that roamed the plain that became the Bristol Channel. Unfortunately archaeologists have found no human bones in the cave but, based on evidence from stone axes that were discovered, they think it was occupied briefly anytime between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago. The oldest human remains in Wales were found in Pontnewydd Cave, near St Asaph in Denbighshire, and have been dated to 230,000 years ago. Nineteen human teeth were discovered, belonging to five individuals, including the upper jaw of a child aged around 8 years old.

Since the first discovery in 1848 of a strange skull with ape-like features (distinct brow ridges and forward projecting face) in Gibraltar, the early people have been dubbed ‘Neanderthals’ – often mocked in popular culture as ugly, primitive grunters but ironically named after a poet and hymn composer called Joachim Neander, who gave his name to a German valley which inspired his work and where prehistoric human remains were later found. Setting aside the literary associations, the Telegraph (3 November 2010) confirmed that ‘Neanderthals really were sex-obsessed thugs’. This followed scientific analysis of prehistoric bones, which revealed that they were exposed to more testosterone during physical development. From this, scientists concluded that Neanderthals were more likely to have started fights and to have multiple partners.

Unfortunately we have very little evidence for Neanderthals in Carmarthenshire. The three small stone hand axes discovered in Coygan Cave were typical of the weapons used to attack prey. The stone tools available included the multi-purpose axe and sharp knives, as well as scrapers for preparing hides and spears. Animal skins were used for tents, shelters, bedding and clothes. In the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine, the remains of Ice Age homes have been found, where mammoth tusks covered with animal skins were used as support structures. Skeletons excavated around Europe show that many Neanderthals suffered a very high number of broken bones, probably inflicted by animals. Coygan Cave was eventually abandoned and taken over by animals as a den. The Coygan findings are online as part of the impressive People’s Collection of Wales (www.peoplescollection.wales/items/11775). These include a woolly rhinoceros tibia (leg bone) that has been gnawed by a hyena seeking to extract the marrow. We know that an Iron Age hill fort was established at Coygan, but it was abandoned during the Roman period.

Coygan is not the only Carmarthenshire cave where evidence of early human occupation has been discovered. In 1813, the remains of a dozen skeletons were found at Craig Derwyddon caves near Llandybïe. In each case the skulls rested on a ledge 6in higher than the body. In 1907 an archaeologist found the remains of two adults and two children in a cave on the site of Carreg Cennen Castle, but these were not considered prehistoric. Also recovered was a horse’s incisor tooth, which had a hole drilled in one end, possibly for suspension on a necklace. Sadly many of Carmarthenshire’s prehistoric caves, including Coygan, were lost forever following quarrying and mining operations during the nineteenth century.

Carreg Cennen Castle

We do not know why or exactly when the Neanderthals disappeared. At a major conference in 2013, experts argued over whether ‘modern’ humans (homo sapiens) were responsible for a gradual take-over of Neanderthal territories. Another theory blames a devastating volcanic eruption in Naples 39,000 years ago. This produced huge plumes of ash across Europe that blotted out the sun, possibly for years, causing temperatures to plummet.

But Neanderthals are experiencing something of a comeback. A study of fossils and genetic analysis has suggested that Neanderthals and modern humans share many characteristics. Neanderthals made tools, arranged the burial of their loved ones, travelled, explored new areas and worked in teams. To survive as long as they did in the freezer of the Ice Age called for high-level teamwork and problem-solving skills, particularly in hunting and gathering food.

MESOLITHIC MELTDOWN

The time between the end of the last Ice Age and the introduction of farming is known as the Mesolithic period (c. 10000–4400 BC). Humans began to use new types of stone tools in the form of long, thin blades made from flint. These were more versatile than the older tools.

From around 10000 BC, the climate grew warmer, ice sheets melted and sea levels began to rise. This was the point at which Britain became an island. In about 6000 BC, a massive tsunami was created following a landslide on the Norwegian coast and the water swept over the land to form the North Sea. In Carmarthenshire, the retreating glaciers carved out the Tywi Valley. Such climatic change was more sudden than in previous times. Cold and dry conditions were replaced by a milder and more humid climate. Cold-loving animals retreated, which robbed Palaeolithic hunters of their main food supply. So their Mesolithic descendants now faced very different living conditions. The spread of forests opened up new food sources in berries, roots and small game, in addition to fishing.

Very little Mesolithic evidence has been found in Carmarthenshire, other than a few flint blades on the Black Mountain. These may have formed part of arrowheads, knives or harpoons to spear fish. During the excavations for a new school (Ysgol Bro Dinefwr in Llandeilo), which opened in 2013, archaeologists found stone flakes and blades which they think were either lost or discarded during the Mesolithic period.

NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION