Whitchurch, Pembrokeshire
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Other uses". Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Short descriptionScript error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Whitchurch (Template:Langx, lit. "Town of the Cross") is a small village and parish (Script error: No such module "Lang"., lit. "Parish of the Cross") in north-western Pembrokeshire, West Wales.
Description
The settlement of Whitchurch is Script error: No such module "convert". from the coast and Script error: No such module "convert". east of St David's, and includes the parish church (also dedicated to Saint David) and a few houses. The largest settlement in the parish, which covers Script error: No such module "convert".,[1] is Solva, whose own church is dedicated to St Aidan.[2] The parishes of Whitchurch and St Elvis make up the community of Solva.
History
By the churchyard gate is a standing stone called Script error: No such module "Lang"., believed to be the lower part of a large Celtic cross.
Whitchurch was a chapelry in the parish of St David's before becoming a parish in its own right.[3] It is marked on a 1578 parish map held by the British Library.[4] A later, but pre-1850 parish map shows the extensive parish including several smaller settlements, including the village of Solva, in which there were numerous chapels.[5] Much of the land was still unenclosed in the 19th century.[3]
Whitchurch was in the ancient hundred of Dewisland and in the 1830s had a population of 1,028.[2] The population varied from 599 in 1801 to a maximum of 1,252 in 1851, then had fallen to 800 by 1961.[6]
Whitchurch and Solva share a War Memorial, on which the names of 50 parishioners are listed as having lost their lives in two world wars.[7] RAF St Davids was established in 1943, and operated until the 1990s.[8]
There is an unusually large number of listed buildings for such a rural area, many with mediaeval origins, including the Grade II listed parish church, mills, bridges and farm buildings.[3]
Notable people
The farm of Caerforiog, Whitchurch, is claimed as the birthplace of Adam Houghton (or Hoton), a 14th-century Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of St Davids.[2] In 1856, a small building survived at Caerforiog with an ogee-headed doorway, possibly dating from the 14th century.[9]
Caleb Rees (1883–1970), was born at "Esgairordd", in Whitchurch, Pembrokeshire; he was a Welsh school inspector for over forty years and a writer on educational and ecclesiastical topics.[10]
References
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- ↑ W. B. Jones & E. A. Freeman, The history and antiquities of Saint David's (1856), p. 232
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