When you walk along the Pembrokeshire Coastal path, you expect to find contrasting scenery, abundant flowers, precariously balanced sheep grazing too close to the cliff edge, the odd hill fort and other curious lumps in the ground etc but you don’t expect to come across the whole Time Team archaeological experience. Well for the rest of this final week, at St Patrick’s chapel on Whitesands beach on the Pembrokeshire Coastal path, that is exactly what you can expect!
There are people with spades and trowels, others with paint brushes and yet more with big grids and graph paper recording everything. The only disappointment was that Tony Robinson was not there running around telling everyone that they only had three days to discover what was going on here back whenever.
I’ve always loved archaeology and on many occasions I have pondered how life might have turned out for me if I had followed that profession rather than sail off into the sunset on one of Her Majesty’s warships. So to get close up to a real dig and one on the coastal path just seemed like a day made in heaven.
Legend (and the woman in the hat who was telling us all about it) said that St Patrick fancied settling down in Pembrokeshire and spread the word about Christianity but an angel came down and told him to move on as another bloke (to be St David) was on his way in 30 years’ time, so hop it to Ireland!
The site consists of a small chapel – most likely Norman – and a grave yard around and below it dating back to the 7th – 9th century. The sea storms at the end of 2014 exposed human remains and so the archaeologists moved in to find out what was going on and 25 burials later they will wrap things up at the end of this week. You can see human bones (below and seeming to be sticking out of that blokes bottom!) emerging from the dig site.
And, rather sadly, in both pictures below you can see the emerging remains of small children.
But just look at the setting – one of Pembrokeshire’s best beaches.
Just another example of what is in store for those who walk in these parts.
Love it!