My dog, Albus, is lying in the passenger’s seat footwell of my van. I am driving from Narberth to Landshipping, and as usual, I take the A40 to Canniston bridge. It is only once we hit the fast stretch of this road that Albus retreats from the comfort of the seat to the footwell. He is a nervous passenger, afraid of almost everything including the abstract concept of speed. Once in the footwell he shakes and looks up at me with large , imploring, eyes. He does this if I put on a music CD. He knows that music and speed go together .
At Canniston bridge we leave the A 40 heading for Canniston Woods. We do not walk in these woods because they are always busy with walkers, cyclists, people on horseback, and other dog owners. I confess to being a bit of a misanthrope and to Albus being a dog who barks at everything, so I drive on through. It is not the fastest way to Landshipping, but the woods are beautiful. Today they treat us to a Gustav Klimt landscape with yellow flames licking up the limbs of beach trees.
On arrival at Landshipping quayside we are greeted by a crack of blue sky that shows us hope beyond the otherwise unbroken infinity of greys. There is no wind, the estuary is filling, and it precisely mirrors the sky. It is an hour before sunset.
There is a monument here, not grand, a simple block of grey stone. There are brass plaques attached and a V shaped groove cut along the top that points both to to the West and the East, from dawn to sunset. There is a Celtic Cross cut into the front of this memorial. It has sharp, angular edges, with clean lines. It is poignant, it depicts the desire for light. One plaque simply states:
“This memorial is dedicated to those who lost their lives in Pembrokeshire’s worst ever mining disaster. On February the 14th 1844 the incoming tide broke through the roof of the Garden Pits mine and 40 mineworkers were tragically drowned”.
On the main plaque their names and ages are listed, when known. The youngest was nine. In Narberth museum I was given a document, an eyewitness account of the disaster. John was a young teenager, but already a miner, and he wrote the account some 20 years after the event. It took him so long due to the terror and shock of that day.
*
The sun had risen red between black clouds over the winding gear of the Garden Pit that Valentine’s Day, 1844. The air was cold. Jack Frost had been busy painting the small panes of glass in the windows of the miners’ cottages. The weather had been wet for days. and the river was full of run- off water from the Preseli Hills. John, on his arrival at the Garden Pit mine, witnessed a row between the pit’s manager, Hugh Owen, and an old miner, Mr Llewhelin. The old man had no power of speech due to an accident down the pit. He was gesticulating wildly. Finally, he picked up a piece of slate and scratched one word: ‘WATER.’ A furious Mr Owen shouted at him:
‘You either work or you and your sons will never come near here or any other of the pits in the area ever again. Anyone else wants to stay on top? If so, they have those same options as Llewhelin.’
In effect, they were ordered to work underground. Unemployment was not an option. It was either work or the poor house
*
The Dougleddau estuary has always been used to transport goods. From when records began in the late mediaeval period, general cargo, timber, limestone, grain, culm and coal, have all been transported on the river. It provides navigable water, subject to the tides, from Haverfordwest quayside to Milford Haven and Pembroke dock. Throughout the history of Wales, at least up to the advent of the Romans and their roads, it was the easiest way to travel. Forest was ubiquitous. Cart tracks and chariot paths through woodland certainly existed as direct links between sites of human habitation, but they would have been expensive to maintain. On my walks through Pembrokeshire I have come across these links between hill forts, and ancient paths between dirt banks which lead down towards the estuary.
The shores of the waterway are littered with the remains of human activity. Lime kilns fade back into nature’s fabric. Limestone quarries that fed the hunger of those kilns now appear as almost natural phenomena. At West Williamston, downstream on the Carew River, there is a nature reserve centred on one such quarry. Here the woodland is predominantly ash and is currently cordoned off from walkers. It is too dangerous, there is considerable risk from falling branches, as ash dieback ravages the countryside in these years of COVID-19.
Albus needs me, brings me back. He sees me standing a few feet away, staring blankly into a space somewhere between mudbank and sky. He watches the ball thrower wilt in my hand with the bright orange flower of the ball at its tip. That’s what he wants, that and the action of me throwing it.
There is just enough time for him and me to pass round the promontory of the pill to reach the main estuary, before the flow tide blocks our passage. Pill is a Pembrokeshire word for an inlet or bay, set back from the main river. You will not find the word ‘pill’ in the Longman’s Dictionary of the English language, at least not as in the definition above. The Dougleddau, the western and eastern arms of the Cleddau are not really an estuary at all. They were formed by glacial action and are a flooded River Valley. As the ice sheets melted, the sea levels rose and what was once a river system became tidal.
The edges of the river, at this point, consist mostly of low cliff. This is composed of various layers, or strata, of sedimentary and metamorphic rock. At places these have been violently folded to form both syncline and anticline, and it is at these folds that extreme pressure and heat have caused metamorphosis to occur. Occasional seams of coal emerge at the foot of this cliff. These blackened fingers of rock are testament to the flooded workings below. They trouble my mind as I walk past. The dog sniffs at one of them.
Perhaps he senses the memory of that day. Perhaps some part of the spirit and energy of those who died below us, is caught in this place. I often come here at sunset, and once or twice I have felt a presence. Our eyewitness, John, takes up the story:
‘We had just started work after a bite to eat, (I was later to find out that it was almost 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon) when we heard a yell from the distant tunnel which was right under the River. The earth on which we stood seemed to shake. In the distance the noise rumbled louder and louder and seemed to be coming closer. Evans hand grabbed hold of mine. I had little time to think, but grasping his hand tightly, we ran towards the shaft , the noise becoming frighteningly close behind us. Footsteps and shouts filled the narrow tunnels. Suddenly Evan stopped.
‘We’ll be alright here John lad, let’s shelter in this cutting. It’ll soon be over now. ‘We’re quite safe’.
His hand still grasped mine, it seemed safe, Evan thought he knew that it was, but all I could see through my bleary eyes was the frightening face of William Llewhelin looking straight at me like a ghost.
‘You do as you like but I’m going out’.
I gasped as I struggled to free my hand from his.
‘Don’t be a fool.’
I could hear him shout as I ran towards the shaft . I was now being joined by other miners and boys my own age as we ran like people possessed to what we considered safety’.
Thirteen men and boys did manage to return safely to the surface. Other pits sunk along the banks of the river also suffered from water ingress and floods , but never on the same scale and loss of life as seen at the Garden pit disaster.
As we round the promontory, just ahead of the incoming tide, the sun breaks briefly free of its cloud prison. Gold light falls on the yellow mudstone and sandstone cliffs, they become radiant. The sky is now water, and the water is sky, a fusion of senses penetrated by the cries of birds, the honking of Canadian geese flying in formation and the starlings roosting in two tall, but dying, ash trees.