Motor Tours in Wales & the Border Counties

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

GOSCAP ROCK, TENBY.

MANORBIER CASTLE, NEAR TENBY.

There is something almost incongruous in the thought of the many sieges that this quiet, sunny town has suffered. From very early days it played an active part in the history of this strange English corner of Wales, and if its walls and gateways are still standing to add to its beauty, this is not for want of use, but because their uses were so constant that they were kept in good order. Of the castle, indeed, little enough remains: a ruined tower, an archway, and a fragment of wall are all that is left on the rock that juts out so picturesquely into the green sea.

But if the shrewd blows of several centuries have left us little of Tenby Castle, it is far otherwise with the splendid walls and towers of Manorbier, which stand close above the sea a few miles further along the same coast. To see Manorbier at its best one should approach it from the road called the Ridgeway, and this route, too, has the advantage of commanding, here and there, some very lovely views of the coast, of Lydstep and Caldey Island. It is well to know that on Sunday no strangers are admitted within the gate of Manorbier.

It stands, as Leland says, betwixt two “hillettes, between the wich the Severn Se gulfith in”—a fine setting for its battlemented walls and towers, the “turrets and bulwarks” of which Giraldus proudly speaks. That most delightful chronicler declares this to be the pleasantest spot in Wales, and then half apologises for his enthusiasm over this “his native soil, his genial territory.” We may forgive him for his love of the place, even if we think he goes a little too far, for this Gerald de Berri the Norman, who oddly enough has been known to all who have come after him as Giraldus the Welshman, was born here at Manorbier; and down there on the shore are the sands where he played as a child, building, we are told, not castles, but always churches and abbeys.

Strange enough this belligerent-looking building seems to have no history. It has, apparently, led an entirely domestic life. We hear of mills and ponds, of parks and dovecots in connection with it, but of siege and bloodshed not a word. The great, grim walls and bastions, however, must have added greatly to the peace and comfort of the Norman barons who lived behind them, and they certainly add very much to our pleasure.

Climbing again to the Ridgeway we turn to the left, with a view to seeing Lamphey, Pembroke, and the Stack Rocks before, following in the footsteps of many a pilgrim, we visit the shrine of St. David.

Lamphey Palace was for several centuries one of the dwellings of the Bishop of St. David’s; and a good deal of it was built by Bishop Gower, whose “mason’s mark,” so to speak, is the arcaded parapet so conspicuous here and at his cathedral city. Bishop Gower seems to have been the benefactor of this see, as Bishop Barlow was its evil genius. It was owing to the latter that Lamphey passed to the Crown, and thence to the house of Devereux; and so it came to pass that in this sequestered corner Robert, Earl of Essex, passed the early years of a life that was destined to be anything but sheltered, and played his childish games with no thought of a capricious queen or of Tower Hill. And with him, no doubt, played his sister Penelope, whom the pen of Sir Philip Sidney has made more familiar to us as “Stella.”

From Lamphey two miles of level road will take us to Pembroke, and to the castle that is perhaps the most impressive in all this land of relics, where the castles are so strangely thick upon the ground. The great walls rise upon a rock whose base is lapped by the waters of Milford Haven; in the centre stands the mighty double keep, and round it is a ring of bastions; on the town side is the entrance-gate, flanked by massive towers. There is something peculiarly imposing about this gateway, whose implacable strength seems all the more uncompromising from its being unsoftened by ivy and very little discoloured by time, though its fine effect is, of course, cruelly marred by the lawn-tennis nets that seem so often to be regarded as pleasing and appropriate additions to mediæval castles. Pembroke, unlike Manorbier, is full of history; there has been no lack of sieges here. Even before the building of this castle there were stirring doings round this rock: fierce attacks and wily stratagems, not unmixed, some say, with romance. There was a “slender fortress” here, built by Arnulph de Montgomery of stakes and turf—a poor defence one would have thought, but apparently sufficient to bear a good deal under the guardianship of that “worthy and discreet” constable, Gerald de Windsor, grandfather of our Giraldus. He showed his discretion on one occasion, when the stakes and turf were besieged by the Welsh, and his garrison was extremely short of food, by cutting up the last few beasts that remained to them, and throwing the pieces to the enemy. In our day this would be described, not as discretion, but as “bluff,” and it was as successful as that quality so often is. It is said by some that it was this same Gerald who built the existing castle, but there seems to be a good deal of uncertainty on the subject; and even more uncertainty as to which castle it was from which Gerald’s wife Nest, who was less discreet, apparently, than her husband, was carried off by a Welsh prince, not without encouragement from the lady. But when one hears that the discreet Gerald escaped on this occasion by creeping down a drain-pipe, one feels that there was some excuse after all for Nest. But these are mere traditions. What is very certain is that one of the stern entrance-towers was the birthplace of Henry VII., who lived here with his mother through the early years of his life, and after his exile in Brittany landed only a few miles away at Dale, where he won the Welsh at once to his cause by unfurling the Red Dragon of Uther. When Leland was here he was shown the room in which Henry was born, and in it “a chymmeney new made with the armes and badges of King Henri the VII.”; but this fireplace must have vanished long ago, for even the local guide-books do not profess to know the room of Henry’s birth.