The rough outbuildings at the rear also bear traces of antiquity; and in an adjacent meadow stands one of those curious old pigeon-houses, which formed a customary adjunct to the mediæval castle or manor-house. The thick stone walls of this pigeon-house are built in a circular form, surmounted by a high conical roof much the worse (except from a picturesque point of view) for several centuries of neglect and hard weather; the interior is pierced with many tiers of pigeon-holes, each with a ledge for the bird to rest upon, while an 'eye' in the crown of the roof served its feathered inmates as a doorway. The original arched entrance has been broken away to form a larger opening, and the whole structure appears to be coëval with the neighbouring castle. This pigeon-house appears in our sketch of Angle Castle.
Invigorated by a crisp sea-breeze that drives the fleecy clouds before it, we put our best foot foremost, and stretch away along a rough cart-lane between banks of prickly furze and stunted hawthorn hedges. These give place, after passing a solitary farmstead, to the open, wind-swept down, aglow with amber-tinted gorse, and carpeted with dry, crisp turf and tussocks of flowering thrift.
Half a mile across this bracing moorland lands us at the old ruined Blockhouse, built, as George Owen informs us, in the days of Henry VIII. 'for to ympeach the entrance into the Haven.' Hence we look out across the open seaway, that forms a worthy approach to the noble estuary of Milford Haven.
From this sea-girt eyrie we command a spacious outlook over land and sea. Standing beside the gray, lichen-clad ruins of the old watch-tower, our gaze wanders across a sparkling expanse of open sea that rolls, in waves of clearest aquamarine and sapphire blue, towards the land-locked shelter of the Haven; and breaks into crests of snowy foam where St. Anne's Head stands out and takes the brunt of old Ocean's fury. The ruddy, sandstone rocks rise in picturesque confusion from the surging breakers, which eddy around a tiny islet accessible only at low tide; whose forefront, planted in the ocean, is barbed with a grim array of jagged ledges and pierced with dark, yawning crevices.
Beyond West Angle Bay the mainland rounds away eastwards, with a fort-crowned islet protecting the inner reaches of the famous estuary.
It is to be hoped that the unrivalled advantages of Milford Haven will ere long be turned to better account. With its noble fairway, untrammelled by shoal or bar, and deep, land-locked reaches where the whole British Navy might safely ride at anchor, Milford Haven has no compeer along our western seaboard. Given a better system of railway communication, and proper facilities in the way of docks and wharves, Milford should, in days to come, stand facile princeps as a seaport for the magnificent vessels engaged in the great and ever-increasing traffic of the Atlantic 'ferry.'
But, meanwhile, time is stealing a march upon us, and the lengthening shadows warn us to depart; so, casting a last glance across the sunlit sea, flecked with white 'mares'-tails' and dotted with brown-sailed trawlers, we retrace our track over the breezy headland. At every step we inhale the healthful smell of wave-washed seaweed, and tread underfoot the flowers that gem the rough, uneven ground—thrift, trefoil, blue sheep's bit and a minute, starlike flower whose name we do not know.
Pushing on through the quiet street of Angle, we diverge up a steep, shady lane in search of Bangeston House; which proves to be nothing more than the gaunt, dismantled walls of a vast group of buildings, apparently of early eighteenth-century date, mantled in ivy and overshadowed by sombre trees. The ruins cover a large extent of ground, and appear to have been regarded by the neighbours as a convenient quarry for building materials. Bangeston was, as its name implies, the ancestral home of the Benegers, a family of much consequence in olden times who possessed broad acres hereabouts, but whose very name has long since become extinct.
Curious tales of the former occupants of Bangeston still linger amongst the cottagers. A certain Lord Lyon, the Garter King-at-Arms of his time, is said to have dwelt here many years ago; and an ancient graybeard whom we meet volunteers the information that, 'It was a gret plaäce in they times, and I've a-heared tell as there was quare doings when Lord Lyon lived in th' ould marnsion. It was him as drove with a coach and horses, one dirty night, and went right over the clift (they do say), down by Freshwater way, and was never seed again.'
Much edified by the yarns of Old Mortality, we now retrace our steps to Eastington Farm; musing meanwhile over these fast-fading fables, and meeting a few belated peasant-folk trudging home through the gray of the gloaming.