The County Echo

THE HISTORY OF FISHGUARD. The following extract from the Cambrian JRegister of 1875 may interest some of your readers < I To no spot of equal extent in the whole county of Pembroke has history or tradi- tion annexed fewer memorable events thai; ro this parish, and consequently fewer nerable relics to excite the attention of the traveller or the antiquary. There is indeed near the town a place called Gastell Bwrach," assisted by tiu? name of which alone a vivid imagination may conjure up something like the resem- blanee of an old British or Danish encampment, which heretofore might have occupied the spot, but the remains of which are too indistinct to tempt enquiry or to flatter with hopes of information. The only inscription that has ever been heard of in the parish is rudely sculptured on a stone pitched on end in the Church yard, which still remains. In 1783, not far from the town, in ploughing a field which had often under- gone that operation, near a lEtrgc stone, but which the share had never before approached so near, was turned up an urn of very mean pottery, filled with Roman copper coins of the lower Empire, and some few silver ones of Galiienus, Tetricus, Posthumus, and others of the thirty tyrants as they were called, of undoubted ntiquity, bold impressions and fine pre- ssrvation; yet the spot they were found in exhibits not the smallest vestige of an ancient camp or Roman station. Of men of note, for literary, mechanical, martial, or commercial abilities few places can have been more unproductive than this. One generation of fishermen, mariners, and petty merchants have suc- ceeded another in an uniform and uninter- esting" series, and the profession of intel- lectual improvement seems here not to have kept pace with that discernable in most other parts of the kingdom. There is one solitary exception to the sterility of genius which has immeinorially marked, this region in the person of St. Dubricius, a man of singular eminence for piety and learning in his day. Mineralogy," this district can furnish but little to excite the attention of the curious, or enhance its consequence. There have been strata here at different times laid open glittering with appearances sufficiently spacious to enable some vagrant miner, in his transit through the country, to find a flattering speculation upon, and by that means artfully insinuate himself into | occasional employ, though not alluring enoU& a to induce a man of common prudence to hazard. much in pursuits so liable to fallacy -and disappointment. A profound mineralogist, one Mr Raspe, in the summer of 1793, pronounced a defi- nite sentence on all such mineral symp- toms, totally unfavourable to the interested schemes of the miner, and the golden hopes of his duped employer. The chief thing that occurred in his investigations were extensive and almost inexhaustible veins of that species of marble called Pudding stone" in the rocks stretching down to the sea, easy of access to be worked and shipped off, specimens of which have since been sent up to London in order to prove its quality and value, and thence aetermine the praticability of attempting such a quarry. There is like- wise noc above a mile from the town of Fishguard a stratum of stone nearly resembling the Portland, but of what depth or extent, and how far capable of being rendered an article of utility or demand, might be worth the enquiry of those whose property it is. There is no part of this island which nature has more liberally furnished with pure and wholesale water, issuing- from innumerable fountains, not kno wn '•o stint their bounty in any season, In 1781 a spring was discovered in the little dingle below the church marked by a strong crocus and found to possess medicinal properties. The inhabitants, to preserve it from pollution, enclosed it within a small building, and it was for some years much resorted to for every disorder—many cures having been performed which were well authenticated. The spring is now much neglected and in consequence of the house which protected it having fallen into decay, subject to be disturbed by other waters, with which the surrounding spots abound, mixing with it, whereby its real inherent virtues whatever they might have been are either entirely done away or at fo&STI mUQ!1 CTEGSUOMTETI, NQ&E the spring at the time of its discovery was dug up a stone about a foot square inscribed with a date and characters: 1*210, "Delivering water (Greek). Nor has heaven been less bountiful to this place in regard to the air than the water, winch is here so remarkably pure and salubrious as to be never liable to stagnate, and by the perpetual ventilation of sea breezes has scarcely ever been visited by an epidemical disorder; ai.d even in the time of the plague is said to have happily escaped the wrath of the destroying angel. When the neighbouring town of Newport was unsafe to approach the market was transferred to Fishguard where none had been held before. [TO BE CONTINUED.]