People pay good money to see horror films where villages mysteriously appear out of sand dunes, and skeletons are found sticking out of the cliff side. Why spend all that money, when you get it all for free in Pembrokeshire.
They are just a few of the sights seen by archaeologists excavating Wales’ coastline as Dyfed Archeological Trust examines spots around the nation as part of the Cadw-funded Arfordir project. In St Ishmael, Pembrokeshire, a 16th century village was found buried under sand dunes.
“Sand was being deposited on their land and erosion was occurring,” said James Meek, the trust’s field services head. Over time, because so much sand was building up it became more and more unliveable and people slowly started to move out. They have not left a lot behind so they have obviously not left in a rush. What has happened is that people moved further up, to Llansaint, which is a nearby settlement.”
The buildings may still have been used as fishing huts. But in a couple of hundred years the dunes had built up,” James said. In the 1890s a storm exposed part of the village near Milford Haven. The stone was plundered. Local farmers were using it to get stone so it turned into a quarry,” James said. “Now more and more of these buildings are showing up. We are trying to piece it all together to try and get an idea of how big this settlement was.”At Angle an old church site has been studied. “On the south side of West Angle Bay we know there is the site of a little chapel. It is probably an early medieval foundation from the 8th or 9th century.”
Cliff erosion has led to graves being exposed. Bones have been discovered poking from cliffs. The burial sites are quite hard to get to,” James said. “You have either to lean over the cliffs to reach them, which I do not recommend, or climb up a number of rocks – where there was a skull precariously balanced on the edge of a grave.”
The coastal path runs over the site. “At the moment they are not under threat,” James said. “We don’t want to dig them up if we do not need to. There must be at least a hundred [bodies] there, but I couldn’t really say. But this is not unusual. Chapels were located on cliffs and over bays and probably painted white so they would act as a beacon to sailors.”
At St Brides there is a Norman parish church. At Whitesands, near St David’s, there is an ancient Celtic chapel. “The chapel site is under threat,” James said. “It is a scheduled ancient monument. People use it for walking over or having barbecues.” Also at Whitesands is a site known as the Ram’s Nose.
“This guy noticed these stones sticking out of a sand dune there and alerted us,” James said. “We went out and did an excavation with a group of volunteers. It’s bronze age from about from about 2,300BC to 700BC. It’s a good few thousand years old.” Sea water and erosion meant nothing was left in a grave that was there. “There was nothing surviving. No sign of bones or organic matter.” It was “almost pure sand” where they hoped to find bones.
In Goodwick a shipwreck was discovered by a walker. “The amount of ship wrecks around the coast is amazing” James said. This sloop can only be found when the sea is at its lowest tide and the sand has washed away from it. “By the time our volunteer had started recording it he was ankle deep in water.”
At Abermawr, between Fishguard and St David’s, the remnants of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer were discovered. “It could be that they were there for a couple of days sharpening a few tools and off they went,” James said. “You just see these tiny slices of time.”
All around Wales are the remnants of ancient submerged forests. Near Cardigan is Cantre’r Gwaelod, a legendary sunken kingdom. It is said to have occupied land lying between Ramsey and Bardsey islands, it has been dubbed the Welsh Atlantis. “Now all we have got are these little tree stumps,” James said.
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