St.David's, PembrokeshireSt.David's, Pembrokeshire
St.David's ranks as a city through its possession of a cathedral. Otherwise it would be described as a village. It stands in a desolate situation a mile or so from the sea, and many visitors will be impelled to ask how a cathedral came to be built in so inhospitable a neighbourhood. The answer is that the cathedral originated in a monastic church, and that the monastic church was built here owing to the seclusion of the site. The locality is almost bare of foliage, with the exception of the valley of the river Alun, a small stream on the western side of St.David's; but the golden blossom of the gorse, which is very abundant in the parish, relieves the monotony of the scene in spring and summer. The grandeur of the bold coast, the interest attached to the ancient Cathedral, the purity of the air, the bathing, fishing and shooting, make the village-city sufficiently attractive to secure constant occupation of the apartments offered to summer visitors.
The coast from St.David's Head to Jack Sound, i.e. the southernmost tip of St.Bride's Bay, is a splendid field for geologists. In the City Hall are a reading-room and library, and an Information Centre of the National Parks Commission. From near the ancient City Cross the visitor looks down towards a square-embattled edifice, storm-beaten and grey with age, and apparently springing from nowhere. It is the upper portion of the stately central tower of the Cathedral of St.David. The Pebbles, a thoroughfare lined with ancient houses, leads to the gateway of a thirteenth-century tower giving access to the Close, from which a stone staircase, called the Thirty-Nine Articles by reason of the number of steps, descends to the Cathedral.
St.David's is of outstanding interest as correlating the very earliest Christian traditions in Wales with the most recent. The see was founded by St.David in the sixth century in accordance with the prophecy of Merlin. The shrine of St.David was for ages an object of peculiar veneration. Two pilgrimages to it were regarded as equal in merit to one visit to Rome. Among those who visited it as pilgrims were William the Conqueror, Henry II, Edward I and his queen, Eleanor. One of the bishops of St.David's was William Laud, who, as Archbishop of Canterbury, was beheaded in 1645. Another was Henry Chichele, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury - Shakespeare's Archbishop in Henry V. A statue in Bishop Vaughan's chapel recalls the unsuccessful candidature of Giraldus Cambresis.
Next in point of interest to the Cathedral are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace, westward of the Cathedral, on the farther side of the Alun. This is now under the charge of the Ministry of Public Building and Works (admission 6d., standard hours but Sunday from 9.30, May to September). The building was erected by Bishop Gower, about 1340, and was one of the finest edifices of its kind in the kingdom. Some two centuries after its foundation it was virtually destroyed by Bishop Barlow, who stripped off its leaden roof to provide dowries (according to local tradition) for his five daughters, each of whom became the wife of a bishop. He did the same to the episcopal palace at Llawhaden, and so wrought the ruin of that. The most attractive feature of the ruins at St.David's is the parapet, which has a beautiful open arcade under handsome stonework. The Great Hall, or Banqueting Hall, entered through a lofty porch, has a well-preserved rose window.
The finest of the cliff walks in the vicinity of St.David's is on the south coast of the peninsula, from Caerbwdy Bay to Porth Lisky. The start can conveniently be made farther eastward if desired, so as to embrace a small cliff castle just short of Porth-y-rhaw, east of Caerbwdy. The Haverfordwest buses run within a short distance of the coast from Newgale to St.David's.
