Llanteg Roads

From 'Llanteg Down The Years'.

 

ROADS
The original old road ran through Red Roses as far as Castellheli Mill (now Castle Ely) then turned north and continued up past Crunwere Church.
Sometime during the 1820s it was proposed to resurrect an earlier plan to build a turnpike road ‘to improve communications between St Clears and the county of Pembroke’. Thomas Telford, the foremost civil engineer of his day, was to be responsible for both this road and another, running north from Tenby.

The following extracts are taken from a large bundle of letters in the Records Office, Haverfordwest, pertaining to these two roads:
Draft petition to Parliament referring to the extension of the road from Crunwear to Pembroke Dock. Undated but apparently 1827**
....the making and maintaining of a turnpike road to commence at a rivulet or stream of water in the parish of Crunwear in the county of Pembrokeshire which divides the said county of Pembrokeshire from the county of
Carmarthenshire, near to a mill called Castellheli Mill in the said county of Carmarthenshire, and from thence through the several parishes and hamlets following, that is to say, the said parish of Crunwear, the parish of
Amroth, the parish of St Issells, the parish of Begelly, the hamlet of Williamston, the hamlet of Redbert (sic), the parish of Carew, the parish of Nash, the parish of Cosheston and the parish of St Mary Pembroke, and
to terminate at two several points on places called Pembroke Dock and Hobbspoint on the shores of Milford Haven in the said parish of St Mary Pembroke.
**A letter of 20 December 1827 to Henry Rees, solicitor and registrar practising in Haverfordwest and representing the Turnpike Trustees, speaks of ‘Telford’s new line of road to Hobbs’ point (sic) being contemplated.’

There are a number of letters to Mr Rees dated late January and February 1828, assenting or dissenting to the new road. Only one appears to be from a Crunwear resident, and that was the Rev. Thomas Dalton,
incumbent of the parish church (21 Jan 1828):

‘Sir, in reply to your letter respecting the new line of road passing through my glebe lands - I have only to inform you that it is immaterial to me wheather (sic) it do or do not - but I should wish to give my consent if
it were for the good of the Publick.

I am, sir, your most obedient and able servant...’

The owners of land in Crunwere sold for the creation of the new road carrying mailcoaches between Carmarthen and Hobbspoint, c.1828, were:

Rev. James Dalton, Crunwear (sic: misread for Thomas)

David Saer, Gellihalog

Richard Morgan, Trenewydd

Martha Davies, Mountain Grig

James Lewis, Trenewydd

Benjamin Morris, Llanteg

Hannah MacIntyre, Crunwear
July 1828
Estimate of the proposed new line of road from or near Castellheli Mill (situate in the confines of the county of Carmarthen) to Hobbs Point on the shores of Milford Haven, in the county of Pembroke.
Fencing both sides of the road, 28600 yards @ 8d per yard £953. 6. 8
Cutting and forming (?) 28600 yards @ 1/- per yard £1430. 0. 0
Breaking, carriage and spreading stones, 28600 yards @ 6/- per yard £8580. 0. 0 

Masonry for the whole line, cutting, embanking, etc £2610. 0. 0
Widening and stoneing (sic) the old road from Carew cross-roads to Crafty Corner, 1 3/4 mile £308. 0. 0

 £13881. 6. 8
Extra work for the whole line £1000. 0. 0
Supposed value of land, say 16 miles on 96 acres @ £25 per acre £2400.0.0 £17281. 6. 8

Dated 21 January 1832 is an application by the Trustees to the Exchequer Bill loan office in London to borrow £1,000 to complete the new road; and a detailed letter to Lord Cawdor from one of his land agents,
dated 10 February 1832, keeps him up to date with work still in progress.

There were two inns in Crunwere: the Golden Lion (now the Laurels) and the Royal Oak (now Oaklands). In 1841 Jane Griffiths was publican of the Royal Oak, and Allan Palmer publican of the Golden Lion. 

The tollgate was situated at Llanteg Cross, manned around the middle of last century by a person called Billy the Gate - William Oriel - who also ran a little school at the spot.

The milestones, marking the distance to Hobb’s Point (sic) in the west and Carmarthen in the east, are marked at their foot by the manufacturer, Moss & Sons 1838.

An obituary notice in the Narberth Weekly News of September 24, 1925, reporting the death of Mr John Davies of Greenacre, recalls how “a group of early capitalists made a venture to run a coach service over the
new road, and Mr Davies remembers the mail coach rumbling along, carrying Her Majesty’s mails. A number of parishioners who had been to a prayer meeting one evening waited two hours to see the first coach of
this service. Our worthy friend was amongst that interesting group, who no doubt thought that the passing coach was the last word in speed and efficiency. The horses were changed at Red Roses, and further on at
Begelly, about seven miles distant.”

The following is an excerpt taken from an article by Ben Price in the Narberth Weekly News of 1924, remembering local life some 60 years earlier:

“The South Wales Railway, west of Carmarthen, had not long been opened, and I have a dim recollection of the mail coaches running over the new road past the Roses, and through Lanteague etc., to, probably,
Hobbs’ Point. What I do remember in connection with them was myastonishment at seeing my father’s wonderful cleverness in jumping on to the step of the coach whilst it was going, and my brother’s description of the speed with which the hedges swept past the coach windows when he and mother were inside passengers on their way to and from Carmarthen.“How the traffic passing along that road in those days comes back to me! For, beside the local traffic, there was much belonging to the outer world, a world of which we had but the faintest and vaguest ideas. 

There would be a fair sprinkling of carriages, some of them very smart, some less, too. Occasionally a long procession of substantial caravans conveying the full equipment of a circus, a menagerie, or other show from
town to town, and at another time a shabby caravan or two drawn by miserable looking horses and accompanied by a string of donkeys loaded with the sprawling camping equipment of a company of gipsies, whose women would be pushing their tin or other ware at every house within reach, and whose children would be begging food at every door.

“There would also be a good number of travellers on foot, mostly in singles or in pairs. We used to divide them into three different classes, ‘beggars’, ‘strags’, and ‘Irish’. The first, I think, were considered more or
less honest, and existed mostly on the charity of the people, but when tempted or desperate their honesty could not be relied upon; the second class was a thoroughly bad lot, consisting of men who, in our own opinion, would stick at nothing. We had a wholesome dread of this class, and would avoid them all we could. The ‘Irishmen’ we did not fear, as although they were evidently very poor, we had an instinctive trust in their general honesty and harmlessness; although we did not know then, as most of us know since, that these were people who were endeavouring to escape from the then extreme poverty of Ireland who had managed somehow to be conveyed across the Channel to Milford and who were tramping their way under great hardships towards the prosperous ‘works’ of Glamorganshire.

“Many a time have I and my brothers met some of the men falling under these three classes in lonely parts of the road, and we would be extremely thankful after passing them without molestation; but it is only right to say that I never heard of any act of serious theft or any attempt at molestation or intimidation by these people in those parts, which proves that our fears arose more from our timidity than from any known facts.
How far these conditions obtain today I am not able to say. I would be surprised to know that there are many Irish travellers of this class usingthat road now. The condition of things in Ireland has, since then, undergone 

a very great change.

 “After passing over the bridge crossing the brook dividing the counties of Carmarthen and Pembroke, the road enters a cutting made through a soft crumbling rock, where we used to find some bits of stone with which we could write on our slates without scratching them, and this cutting became known amongst us under the name of ‘Pencilvania’; and just beyond that there was a turn in the road with a number of trees on the
right-hand side. Now it is a curious thing, that whenever I have since read of highwaymen in the old days lying in ambush waiting for the approach of the stage coach, it is invariably at this spot I place them. I always
unconsciously picture them under these trees with the coach bowling along down this lovely and lonely piece of road, and it is at this bend that the coach or whatever else it might be is called upon to stand.

“I often wonder whether everybody has similar favourite spots which come back vividly to the mind, and give the imaginary scene described to them a local and substantial existence...”

In the early 1980s the new A477 road was constructed, following the route of the old road - though in a straighter line - as far as Pen-y-Bont beyond the parish boundary.

Ben Price knew several men who had worked on the construction of the new turnpike road from Llanteg to Stepaside, among them his maternal grandfather and his sons Henry, Tom and Ben, who had built many of the bridges, culverts, walls, toll houses etc.

He remembered William Dalton (son of the former Rector), who had the task of looking after the road to Tavernspite, having a very small quantity of stones at his disposal, but that he used none where the road had
worn down most. He simply hacked away at the projecting portions of rock and used the debris to fill the hollows. This is a process that has been going on for centuries and Mr John Davies of Greenacre, who has known this road intimately for at least 85 years, cannot say that there is any appreciable difference in the depth of the road now from what it was when he was a boy.

In 1927 the Rural District Council stated that the surveyor estimated that the corner of Lanteague cross-roads could be improved at a cost of £24.