HLW (D) 9

Taf and Tywi Estuary  

2002  

Outstanding  

Designated  

This littoral area of estuaries, coastal lowlands, sand dunes and intertidal sand bars lies across the north east side of Carmarthen Bay, on the South Wales coast. Behind the long expanses of sand dunes on the north east side of Carmarthen Bay, on the east and west sides of the estuary mouths of the Rivers Taf,Tywi and Gwendraeth, lie large areas of low lying marsh land. The whole area contains diverse evidence of activity from the prehistoric to the recent past and includes the Hugden medieval open field system on the low coastal ridge west of Laugharne. The present coastline is a changing one, owing to continuing sand movement, but sea walls and drains, fronted by tidally inundated morfeydd or salt marshes, safeguard the reclaimed land. Archaeological evidence, the study of relict and active features in the present landscape, and the use of aerial photographs, cartographic and documentary sources, have been successfully combined to reconstruct the evolution of this largely man-made landscape. The geological inheritance of a line of former sea cliffs with a raised beach at their base form the northern boundary of the western, or Laugharne Marsh and the Gwendraeth estuary. Although now quarried away, caves in the limestone of Coygan Bluff on this former coastline have produced Upper Palaeolithic material, and excavation of the hillfort there prior to quarrying yielded a long occupation sequence from the Neolithic to the early medieval. More research is required to establish the position of the coastline in the Roman and medieval periods, but there is no doubt that the castle towns of Kidwelly and Laugharne were much more open to the sea than at present. Many of the finds of prehistoric and medieval date from Laugharne Burrows cannot now be provenanced, but the position of shell middens within both dune systems, which have produced medieval pottery is crucial to the chronology of coastal change and enclosure.They would benefit from modern excavation. The former Witchett Brook divided Laugharne Marsh into East and West Marsh, the latter used as saltmarsh pasture in the Middle Ages before any sea walls were built, and there may also have been medieval settlement on the slightly raised sites of some of the present day farms on East Marsh. Although partly within the present Ministry of Defence range at Pendine, traces of 17th century sea walls survive and the successive enclosures of the early 19th century are well preserved. Access from Coygan quarry to the river at Laugharne was provided by a tramway and small creek, Railsgate Pill, still well-preserved, evidence for the now vanished era of coastal trade which persisted in the small estuary ports until the Second World War. The enclosure of Pembrey Marsh was, like Laugharne, made possible by the development of sheltering seaward sand dunes. Its industrial history and legacy is more complex with a remarkable series of early canals leading to shipping places and quays. These were developed to export the anthracite coal of the South Carmarthenshire coalfield, from the early 18th century onwards. They led across lands enclosed from the sea inland of Pembrey Burrows by the late 17th century, if not earlier. Earthwork traces of cultivation and drainage techniques in both Marshes are evident both from the air and on the ground on farmlands seen by improvers, such as Charles Hassall in the early 19th century, as test beds for modern agricultural techniques. This contrasts with the remarkable survival, in the Hugden belonging to Laugharne Corporation, of a medieval open field system, still communally apportioned and unenclosed, which has been included within the boundaries of this area. Twentieth century changes are more evident on Pembrey Burrows, now covered in a forestry plantation of the 1920s. A variety of industrial uses in the early 20th century culminated in a wartime airfield and a Royal Ordnance Works, one of whose surviving structures is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Sport and leisure activities are, and have been, an important feature of 20th century uses of the area, from the land-speed record attempts by the Campbells, and Parry Thomas in ‘Babs’ in the 1920s along Pendine Sands, to the creation of a Country Park in Pembrey Burrows in the 1980s. Carmarthen Bar was notorious for its shipwrecks, a number of which are prominently visible and accessible at low tide, while others are revealed periodically by the ever-shifting sands. Finally, Laugharne must not be forgotten for its literary associations with the poet Dylan Thomas and his insights of life in a small Welsh community during the mid-20th century.