Nolton Haven

Nolton Haven is a hamlet halfway along the coast of St Bride's Bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is included within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. It has just one pub and.....well, that's just about it.

We visited Nolton Haven in October 2019. I was interested in the place because there was such a strong link there from my Grandmother Davies' family line. My mother had told me many times that her family had come from West Wales, near Haverfordwest. Her family had links to Nolton Haven for a period of over 100 years.

Nolton Haven falls within the Landsker region of Wales; an area also known as The Little England beyond Wales. Very little Welsh is spoken in this region. I spent some time during my trip looking in churches and graveyards. I didn't come across one single gravestone inscribed in Welsh. Also the accent of the Norton locals was a strange mix of West country and Welsh. Going back to my childhood, I can clearly remember that my mother and Grandmother Davies had a very negative attitude towards the Welsh language, more or less treating it as a joke. Maybe this attitude came from their Nolton heritage.

St Madoc’s is a medieval church with a fifteenth-century porch. It was much restored in the 1850s.

November 4th 1793. My great great great great grandmother

 Rebekha Esmand married in this church, to John Griffiths, a yeoman.

They were married by Rev Moses Grant.

June 6th, 1790. My great, great, great grandmother was baptised in this font by Rev Moses Grant.

Rev. Moses Grant features a few times in the story of my family. He was a witness to the wreck of The Increase.

He baptised gr gr gr granny Anne.

He also married my gr gr gr gr granny Rebekha.

Rev. Moses Grant used a lot of his money to have a school built on the edge of the church grounds at Nolton. Maybe some of my relatives attended that school?

Rev. Grant's grave is just behind the church.

Rebecca had three other children. One, a boy named Thomas died in infancy and was buried in this churchyard on Christmas morning.

Mining.

So many of my relatives were involved in mining around this area. There is little evidence remaining in the area now, although we did spot this colliery chimney just to the North of Nolton Haven. This would have been the old Trefrane Colliery.

There is another church at Nolton Haven, The United Reform Church. I was invited to take a look at a small museum located in the vestry of the chapel. There are some interesting display boards which the church members allowed me to photograph.

Colliers

Stephen Devereux :- Druidstone. Great great great grandfather.

Alexander Smith :- Nolton Haven. Great great great grandfather.

Druidstone.

Druidstone is the next bay, to the South of Nolton Haven. My great great great grandparents, Stephen and Ann Devereux lived around here around the 1850s. There was a lot of mining going on in the area at the time. Some of the mines had deep shafts going a long way underground. Some were just simple drift mines.

Druidstone is also the place where the sailing ship The Increase ran aground on Old Christmas Day, January 4th, 1791. Also, sailing ship Linen Hall ran aground here on Christmas Day, 1810.

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