Welsh Journals

Gelliswick and its Families By MAJOR FRANCIS JONES, C.V.O., T.D., F.S.A. Wales Herald of Arms Extraordinary IN the southern part of the Pembrokeshire hundred of Rhos, on the coast above the waters of Milford Haven, lies the small parish of Hubberston once containing some 1377 acres of good agricultural land which, owing to its proximity to the sea, became noted for early growth of root-crops, a situation that continues in those areas of the parish still devoted to farming pursuits. As this essay concerns times when the parishioners conducted their traditional occupations, I shall confine my prefatory remarks to a description of the landscape as it was in former days, and afterwards draw attention to modern developments that have transformed it so radically that it would hardly be recognised by a revenant parishioner were he, by some magic, to be brought back to perambulate its acres today. On its eastern side Hubberston marched with the large parish of Steynton, separated by a pill, as tidal inlets are called locally, from Hakin so far inland as the ruins of the medieval priory of Pill, where the boundary swerves north-westwards to meet the confines of Herbrandston which borders Hubberston on the western side. The parish is divided roughly in two by a stream flowing southwards from the Neeston district to enter the sea at the attractive cove called Gelliswick Bay. On high ground to the east of this stream is the locality known as Hakin, sometimes as Hubberston-Hakin, sometimes as Old Milford, where within a small hamlet stood the parish church. The living is a rectory and until the Dissolution formed part of the possessions of the priory whose ruins continue to remind us of its former existence. On this high ground an observatory was built early in the nineteenth century, and a fortification, part of the defences of the strategically important Milford Haven favoured with deep anchorages, ship-building concerns, and Royal Dockyard. From the small harbour of Hubberston-Hakin at the entrance to the pill, commodities such as corn, coal, and limestone were exported, and ship-building too formed part of its activities. With the development of the town of Milford and its associated fishing industry, Hakin became a suburb, and so many new houses were built on it that they have completely swamped the hamlet and now sprawl over most of the headland. In 1894 the civil parish of Hakin was created, later to be incorporated in the Urban District of Milford with which it is indissolubly connected economically, and by now has become a busy environ of shops, houses, tarmac and concrete. As we slip down the hill beyond Hakin towards the beach of Gelliswick, we enter a wholly different world, remnant of an arcadia of long ago. Gazing inland we feast our eyes on a narrow glen, a tangle of thicket, foliage, and fern, embracing, nay, almost concealing the brisk freshet coursing through it, a sylvan delight protected at the upper end by a golf-course ensuring that the scene will not be sacrificed to brick and mortar. The land rises steeply from the valley floor, and on a westward slope of green meadows and rambling hedgerows we can see the roof and chimneys of the tall house of Gelliswick, a veritable grenadier in stone, set in a copse, about the distance of a well-hit six from the shore. Had we arrived a