Two views, same trail. Conditions were perfect, my conditioning was not.

 

The trail down to Pontepetri was literally dark and foggy, but the decision to drop out of the race helped lift some of that fog for me.

 

As much as I would have liked to complete the full course, this just wasn't the day for me to do it.

 

We could not have asked for better weather, a more well-marked course, or more helpful volunteers. Nothing went wrong with gear or nutrition. I just wasn't ready physically.

 

When we dropped at Pontepetri, Runkeeper had recorded 15 miles, which lengthwise is about equivalent to the 24km Gara Corta option.

 

I know to many the idea of a DNF - of failing to finish a race once started - strikes fear in their hearts. To me, the more worthy the adventure, the higher the probability that something will not go as planned.

 

Claudine and I had a truly lovely day, surrounded by beautiful surroundings, worthy challenges, and generous hearts. We explored places new to us, and we participated in an event as American pioneers, the first of our countrymen to cross the starting line of the Montanaro Trail Run.

 

We made memories to cherish.

--Danny Dawson

KIDWELLY was originally the name of the district which included part of the coastlands lying between the estuaries of the Towy and the Loughor. In 1106, after the death of Howell ap Gronw, Henry I granted these lands to his minister, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, who erected a castle at the mouth of the Gwaendraeth Fach. This formed one of a series of Norman strongholds designed to secure their newly won conquests in South Wales and to command the passage of the rivers across which the road to the west passed. A mention of the hall of the Castle in a document of 1115 or earlier shows that the building of Kidwelly must have been practically completed by that year. During the rising which followed the death of Henry I, the Battle of Maes Gwenllian was fought a short distance away from the castle (1136). The account speaks of Maurice de Londres, Lord of Kidwelly, and Geoffrey, Constable of the Bishop, as leaders of the Norman army. Maurice, who is mentioned for the first time in connection with this district, already possessed Ogmore in Glamorgan, where his father William de Londres appears to have been one of the original conquerors. The coupling of the two names suggests that Roger of Salisbury, while retaining possession of the castle, had granted the lordship of the district to Maurice de Londres, who probably acquired the castle also when the bishop died in the following year.

 

The Welsh chronicles record that, in 1190, the Lord Rhys built the castle of Kidwelly. This entry probably reflects a native conquest of the settlement, but the Normans must have recovered it before 1201, when Meredith, son of Rhys, was slain by the garrison of the castle. In 1215 Rhys Grug, another son of the Lord Rhys, captured Kidwelly and burnt the castle. He remained in possession until 1220, when Llywelyn the Great forced him to restore these conquests. The male line of the de Londres had become extinct during these troubles, and Kidwelly had passed to an heiress, Hawise. In 1225 she married Walter de Braose, who died during the campaign of 1233-4. Kidwelly Castle was by that date again in the possession of the Welsh as a result of the rising of 1231, when Llywelyn the Great, previously a supporter of the royal authority, had turned his arms against Henry III. Hawise de Londres, left a widow, was unable to regain possession of Kidwelly which, in 1242, was still held by Rhys's son Meredith. Two years later Hawise married Patrick de Chaworth, who seems to have recovered these lands soon after this date. The Welsh rising of 1257 involved the destruction of the settlement at Kidwelly, but the invaders failed to capture the castle. Patrick was slain during the campaign of the following year, and the wardship of his lands was granted to Hawise during the minority of their son Payn.

 

Payn de Chaworth must have attained his majority about 1270, as in that year he and his younger brother Patrick took the Cross. Hawise survived until 1274, and her death was soon followed by that of her two sons, Payn in 1279 and Patrick four years later. The elder brother died childless, and the younger left only an infant daughter, Matilda, who inherited Kidwelly and Ogmore. In 1291 the marriage of the young heiress was granted to the king's brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, for the use of his second son, Henry, the union being celebrated in 1298.

 

The prominent part taken by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in the civil wars of Edward II's reign led to his execution after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, but the forefeited title and estates were later restored to his younger brother, Henry. The extinction of the male line in 1361 caused a temporary partition of the Lancastrian possessions, but on the death of the elder co-heiress, Matilda, in the following year, the whole inheritance fell to her sister Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, who became Earl and later Duke of Lancaster. On the accession of Henry IV, Kidwelly, together with the other Lancastrian possessions, passed into the hands of the Crown, and was of little importance during the fifteenth century. Henry VII granted the castle to Sir Rhys ap Tudor, whose grandson Rhys ap Griffith forefeited it in 1531. Later it was again alienated and passed to the Earls of Cawdor. The castle had long ceased to be habitable, but certain repairs were carried out during the nineteenth century. In 1927 the owner placed the ruins under the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works (now the Department of the Environment).

 

Since that date extensive works of preservation have been undertaken. In 1930 and 1931 excavations were carried out by Sir Cyril Fox and the writer in order to recover the earlier history of the castle. The results are embodied in the present guide, and the interesting series of relics recovered may be seen in the National Museum of Wales.

 

PERIODS OF CONSTRUCTION

 

THE earliest remains at Kidwelly, dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, are the semi-circular moat surrounding the castle together with the rampart under the outer curtain, the true meaning of which was revealed by the investigations of 1930-1. Of the hall mentioned in the deed of 1115 and the other buildings of the twelfth century no trace remains, though it is possible that an extensive search under the 2ft to 7ft of debris with which the whole interior of the castle was levelled in the early fourteenth century would lead to the recovery of their plan. The only tangible relic of Norman buildings is a small capital belonging to an attached column and probably forming part of a fireplace. This was found walled into the masonry of the hall of c1300, and may be ascribed to a date at the end of the twelfth century. The ramparts and moats surrounding the northern and southern outworks cannot be exactly dated, but analogy with other sites shows that they may well belong to this early period.

The oldest surviving masonry is that of the towers and the curtain enclosing the inner ward. This occupies a rectangular area with a circular tower at each angle. There are two gates, on the south and north sides, each protected by a portcullis. The erection of these defences within the circuit of the original bank and stockade marks the beginning of the refortification of the castle in accordance with the ideas of the late thirteenth century. The awkward way in which the two western towers are brought close to the foot of the earlier bank can only be understood when the pre-existence of this defence is realised, while the simple character of the gates, so different from the elaborate gatehouses of the normal concentric castle, must be similarly explained. The south-east tower was designed for occupation, but the hall and other structures of the earlier castle probably remained in use. Most of the dressed stonework of this period has disappeared, but the few remaining details are of thirteenth-century character, and this taken in conjunction with the plan suggests that the construction of the inner ward was carried out by Payn de Chaworth, c1275.

 

The replacement of the older buildings by a new hall, solar and kitchen and the erection of a chapel, form the next stage in the development of the castle. The different character of the masonry and the unusual position of the best-appointed private apartments in the southeast tower behind the screens of the hall prove that these additions were planned and built after the completion of the inner ward. The mouldings of the doors and windows belonging to this stage are all of late thirteenth- century character, and none need be earlier than 1300. The absence of glass grooves in the trefoiled lancet windows of the hall and chapel is also an early feature. It is perhaps unlikely that an extensive building programme would have been carried out during the minority of Matilda de Chaworth (1283-98), and a date before the death of her father Patrick is earlier than the architectural evidence would justify. The work should therefore in all probability be attributed to c1300, directly after the marriage of Matilda to Henry of Lancaster.

 

The design of the inner ward at Kidwelly presupposes an outer defensive zone, and the replacement of the original stockade with a stone curtain followed the completion of the living-quarters. The main gatehouse, the lesser northern gate, the outer curtain with its four flanking towers, and the mantlet between the north-eastern tower and the chapel, are part of a single design intended to bring Kidwelly into line with other concentric castles of this period. The position of the elaborate gatehouse, which could in case of need act as a separate defensive unit, on the line of the outer instead of the inner curtain is an abnormal feature imposed by the pre-existing layout of the site. The new masonry curtain of the outer ward was higher than the original stockade and necessitated the addition of a further storey to the towers of the inner ward in order that they might still command the outer defences. The details of this reconstruction are all of early fourteenth-century character, and the fortification of the outer ward must have been carried out during the first quarter of that century. On the completion of this work the surplus material from the bank and other rubbish was used to level up the interior of the castle, which it now covers to a depth varying from 2ft to 7ft. The closing of the open gorges of the towers of the outer curtain marks the last stage in the military development of Kidwelly and may also be ascribed to the fourteenth century. The existing gate in the south wall of the town also appears to be of fourteenth-century date, and it might be expected that the erection of these walls would have followed rather than preceded the reconstruction of the castle. But grants of murage in 1282 suggest an earlier date, and the solution of this problem must await further research.

 

There is reason to think that the great gatehouse may have stood unfinished through most of the fourteenth century and that the opening of a quarry `for the work of the new tower', recorded in 1388-9, may mark the beginning of the works needed to complete it. Ten years later, between 1399 and 1401, when the lord of the castle had become king in the person of Henry IV, there is another record of nearly £100 being spent ‘on the new work of the tower over the gates of the castle’, the near completion of which at this time can be inferred from an order of 1402 for it to be roofed in lead. But in the autumn of the following year the castle was besieged by the Welsh rebels, aided by a naval force from France and Brittany, and subsequent documents leave very little doubt that they succeeded in setting fire to the gatehouse and inflicting serious damage to it; so much so that between 1408 and 1422 a further £500-£600 had to be spent on it, and only in the latter year was it finally roofed with lead shipped from Bristol. A superficial indication of the new work may be seen in the patches of thin flat slabs which contrast with the irregularly coursed boulders of the original masonry. To it belong the triple machicolis high up on the outward face, the upper part of, the wall towards the courtyard, all the square-headed windows, the rectangular stair turret at the north-west corner, and the stone vaults inserted at different levels in the flanking towers as a protection against fire.

 

The last significant addition to the castle, probably made towards the end of the fifteenth century, was a large hall placed on the west side of the outer ward. This was connected with a kitchen in the south-west corner of the inner ward by the enlargement of a thirteenth century embrasure so as to form a passage-way. Buildings placed against the outer curtain reflect the increased complexity of life in the Tudor period, but the provision of an entirely new hall and kitchen suggests that the earlier hall was already ruinous.

 

KIDWELLY is one of the Norman foundations strung out along the coastal plain of South Wales. There is no evidence of any occupation before the grant to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, and even if a small Celtic settlement existed, it has been without influence on the subsequent development of the site. Like many other Norman settlements which were then continually threatened by a hostile attack from the mountains, Kidwelly stands at the head of an estuary where the river was still navigable at high tide. This situation ensured a line of communications when the castle was surrounded and the roads cut by a Welsh rising.

 

THE SETTLEMENT

 

The settlement consists of two parts, the castle and the walled town on the west bank, and the priory church with the new town on the other side of the river. The two are joined by a two-arched bridge of fourteenth- or fiftecnth-century date. This carried the great road to West Wales, probably replacing an earlier structure. Modern development has greatly altered the appearance of the new town, the last of the picturesque medieval houses having recently been destroyed (1931). The priory church of St. Mary was founded by Bishop Roger before 1115, and became a cell of the abbey of Sherborne. Such foundations are typical of the Norman settlements in South Wales, the alien monks being introduced as a counterpoise to the patriotic sentiments of the native monasteries which too often served as focuses of anti-Norman feeling. The present building dates from the fourteenth century.

From the bridge the road to the castle leads through the defences of the old town. The walls have mostly disappeared, but the main gateway, apparently of early fourtheenth-century date, still spans the road. The line of the defences can still be traced by the earthen bank which preceded the walls. It encloses about eight acres including the castle which it surrounds on all sides except the east. A transverse ditch running west from the castle moat divides it into two nearly equal halves, of which it is probable that only the southern was walled. The defences consist of an earth bank and ditch except on the east, where the steep scarp above the river formed a natural protection. The date of these ramparts is not certainly known, but as the walling of the southern part is to be connected with grants of murage, c1280, and the erection of the gatehouse during the following century, there is good reason for suggesting that they form part of the original Norman settlement.

 

Although the medieval buildings within the walls have been replaced with modern houses, the line of the existing roads probably follows the original layout. Another feature of exceptional interest is the ruins of the medieval mill which with the contemporary weir and leat can be traced on the low ground between the old town and the river. At a comparatively modern date this was replaced by a more efficient type of mill, which in its turn is now disused.

 

THE CASTLE

 

After passing through the south gate of the town the road crosses the settlement and turning to the right reaches the gatehouse of the castle. The original bridge has been replaced by a causeway, the outer end of which starts from a small knoll. Trial excavations failed to recover the plan of the structure which this represented, and as the castle stood within the walled settlement, it is possible that the builders considered a barbican unnecessary.

The gatehall was closed at each end by a double gate preceded by a portcullis. On entering the outer ward the inner gate is seen in the centre of the south curtain of the inner ward. It is a simple structure, a mere arch through the curtain defended by a gate and a portcullis. The inner ward is rectangular with a circular tower at each angle. The earlier hall and solar lie on the east side, with the kitchen between the former and the gate. Behind the hall is the chapel, contained in a bastion projecting down the steep scarp above the river. A later kitchen occupies the south-west corner of the courtyard. The outer defences form a semi-circle based on the river. The masonry curtain and towers date from the fourteenth century, but they follow the lines of the original rampart which was disclosed by the 1931 excavations, and which can still be traced on the north and west sides. The Tudor hall standing free on the west side and several later buildings have encroached on the already restricted area of the outer ward. On the east, where the outer defences do not surround the inner ward, a small mantlet joins the north-east tower and the chapel.

 

The earlier domestic buildings

 

The thirteenth-century domestic buildings occupy the whole of one side of the inner ward. The hall and the solar together form a long range connecting the two eastern towers which are of slightly earlier date. The principal chambers were on the upper floor, below which were low rooms probably used as storehouses. The latter were lighted by narrow widely splayed windows looking on to the courtyard. The present divisions date from the period when the castle was put to base uses, as does the doorway piercing the east curtain and leading to the mantlet and the chapel. The entrance from the courtyard appears to be original. The upper part of the building is almost entirely destroyed. In the outer wall of the solar two trefoiled lancets and a fireplace with quoins and a hood of dressed Sutton stone are preserved. The splay of another window opening into the courtyard can be traced in the west wall, while a recess in the same side marks the position of the door leading into the hall. At the other end of this wall, where it joined the south curtain, the jamb of the doorway leading to the kitchen is visible. The kitchen is a small room with a large fireplace in the thickness of the south curtain. Outside the walls of the kitchen an irregular block of masonry marks the base of the stairs leading up to the hall. The exact position of the screens cannot be determined. From the passage behind them are doors leading to the chapel and the rooms below it, while further entrances give access to the tower.

The south-east tower

 

The south-east tower consists of five storeys. The lowest, a basement lighted by narrow loops, is reached by a door from the storeroom under the hall. The next stage, which has two narrow windows and a fireplace with quoins and hood of Sutton stone, seems originally to have been intended for residence, though after the hall was erected its position would suggest that it served as a buttery. This is confirmed by the contemporary blocking of the archway leading directly from the entrance passage to the circular staircase by which the upper rooms are reached. Like the ground floor, the next two storeys of this tower are decently appointed and seem to have been the private apartments of the castle. One of the narrow windows on the first floor was widened in Tudor times, the jambs of Sutton stone being replaced with a more perishable sandstone. The highest stage is a fourteenth century addition, the earlier battlements being traceable about eight feet below the existing parapet.

The chapel

 

The chapel is in two stages, the semi-octagonal eastern end rising above massive spurs. The clerestory has an unbroken range of trefoiled lancet windows. They are rebated for shutters, but there is no groove for glass. In the lower stage a double piscina and a wide sedile occupy the angle south of the altar. On this side of the building a small rectangular projection forms a sacristy, of which the groined vault is covered with a cruciform roof of stone. Below the chapel are two further storeys. The upper is reached by stairs descending from the passage behind the screens. It has a fireplace on the north side. The small room under the sacristy probably formed the living-quarters of the priest, for whom a garderobe was contrived in the south wall of the main room. The lowest storey was reached by a stair in the thickness of the north wall. The northern entrance to the room below the chapel is later.

The north-east tower

 

The arrangement of this tower differs little from that already described. From the ground floor a narrow passage leads to the outer face of the east curtain. This was designed to give access to the mantlet, and was formed by an alteration of the passage which had led to the wall walk along the eastern curtain. The addition of the hall and the consequent heightening of the curtain has blocked this passage. Here, as in the other towers, access to the wall walk on the remaining sides is obtained from the first floor. The curtain between the two northern towers is pierced by a small postern, closed by a gate and portcullis, and by two embrasures.

The north-west tower

 

The inner side of this tower is recessed so that on plan it appears heart-shaped instead of circular. In this and the following tower the higher level of the courtyard prevented the provision of a separate entrance to the basement, which must have been reached by a trapdoor. The upper part of this tower is particularly well preserved. Not only can the main battlements be traced, but some of those surrounding the small turret which covers the stairs are still in position.

The south-west tower

 

This tower is distinguished from the others by the flat saucer vaults with which each stage is covered. At some period, probably in the sixteenth century, the bottom of the circular staircase was blocked so that access to the upper rooms could only be obtained from the wall walk. This corner of the inner ward is occupied by the Tudor kitchen, which will be described in connection with the hall of that period. Above the inner gate the south wall walk passes through a small ruined chamber from which the portcullis was worked.

The gatehouse

 

The gatehouse is a building of three storeys. The plan is rectangular with two semi-circular towers flanking the entrance, while an elliptical projection on the eastern side commands the defences above the river. The ground floor is occupied by small vaulted chambers lighted by narrow loops through the outer walls. Below the rooms in the two flanking towers are vaulted cellars similarly lighted and approached by stairs opening out of the gate passage. Originally the upper storey was reached by a circular stair leading out of the front room on the west side of the gate, but this was replaced in the early fifteenth century rebuilding by a more convenient staircase in an added turret at the north-west angle.

The principal chambers were on the first floor. The inner side formed the hall lighted by windows with cusped heads looking into the courtyard. Early in the fifteenth-century these were enlarged and traces of the hood-mould surmounting the new rectangular-headed windows can be seen. Originally this hall could only be reached by the inconvenient stairs already mentioned, but later, probably as part of the general remodelling of the gatehouse, a wide external stairway was added leading up from the outer ward and entering the hall by a doorway inserted behind the screens. To the east of the hall lay the vaulted kitchen with a large fireplace and oven. The towers were occupied by two smaller rooms, while a third filled the space to the west of the hall. From the kitchen a door led to the wall walk along the eastern ramparts, while that to the west was reached from a small lobby opening out of the narrow room beyond the hall. Above the hall and stretching over the vault of the kitchen was the solar, reached originally by a small staircase contrived in the inner wall of the hall. The rest of this storey contained three smaller rooms corresponding to those on the floor below. With the exception of the solar all the rooms on the highest storey are covered with flat stone vaults, but the former, like the hall and the smaller chambers on the first floor, had wooden ceilings. From the hall the circular stairs in the added northwest turret led up to the solar and the roof.

 

The outer curtain

 

The curtain enclosing the outer ward follows the crest of the earlier rampart, on which it is built with very shallow foundations. There is a smaller gatehouse with two flanking towers through which the northern outworks could be reached. The western curtain between the two gates was reinforced by three semi-circular towers, while a fourth covered the north-eastern angle of the defences. There is evidence that the shallow foundations built on the top of an artificial bank were already giving trouble during the Middle Ages, and that the western and north-eastern towers with a portion of the adjacent curtain had collapsed before 1500. The latter was replaced by a thinner wall built slightly behind the line of the fourteenth-century curtain, but the slight wall closing the gorge was considered sufficient to replace the former. Access to the wall walk was through the gatehouses or by stairs leading up from the west side of the outer ward. The northern gatehouse is too far ruined to allow its internal arrangement to be reconstructed, but like the towers it was of three storeys. Of the latter that on the south-west is the best preserved. Originally this must have had a half-timbered inner wall, but during the fourteenth or fifteenth century this was replaced by a stone wall which projects beyond the inner face of the curtain. The ground floor was entered from the outer ward, but the upper floors could be reached from the wall walk. The presence of a fireplace on the first floor shows that the towers were intended for occupation.

The later domestic buildings

 

Changes carried out towards the close of the fifteenth century, probably by Sir Rhys ap Tudor, included the provision of more spacious buildings in the outer ward. On the west side a large hall with a high-pitched roof was erected parallel to the inner curtain. Of this only the two gables and the base of the side walls remain. The kitchen to serve this new hall was placed in the south-west angle of the inner ward, a passage being driven through the curtain by the enlargement of one of the original embrasures. The kitchen, a simple rectangular building, has two large fireplaces occupying the whole of each end of the room.

To the same period belong the buildings standing against the east, north and west curtains of the outer ward. The purpose of the first, a large chamber which is very similar in appearance to the late, hall, cannot be determined. The building to the west of the north gate has a large oven built in the thickness of the side wall and was the bakehouse. The remaining structure by the south-west towers has two long narrow rooms, one of which is provided with a fireplace.

 

The invading Normans took only a few years to conquer England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But Wales held out for two-and-a-half centuries.

 

Kidwelly Castle is a symbol of this enduring conflict. And it was here in 1136 that a warrior princess turned herself into one of Welsh history’s greatest heroines.

 

Gwenllian was authentic Welsh royalty – sister of the northern prince Owain Gwynedd and wife of Gruffudd ap Rhys, lord of Deheubarth. But she definitely didn’t live the life of a pampered princess.

 

Under constant threat from the Normans she was forced to hide away in the deep forests, where she raised four sons. Her husband was busy building an army and plotting lightning raids. But he chose the wrong time to head north for help.

 

In his absence Maurice de Londres, lord of Kidwelly Castle, began to gather forces for a counter-attack. He had to be stopped. So Gwenllian donned her battledress and entered the field herself.

 

She was ‘like some second Queen of the Amazons’, said the admiring historian Gerald of Wales. Some call her the Welsh Boudicca – the only woman to lead a medieval Welsh army into battle.

 

But they were no match for the Normans. She was captured and beheaded for treason. It’s said a spring welled up where she died – still known as Maes Gwenllian, or the Field of Gwenllian.

 

Her death wasn’t in vain. She inspired a popular uprising that swept the Normans out of West Wales. Finally true poetic justice was achieved by her youngest son, Rhys ap Gruffudd, who was just four years old when his mother died.

 

The Lord Rhys, as he was later known, captured Kidwelly Castle in 1159 and was recognised by King Henry II as the undisputed ruler of the region. But his death in 1197 provoked a power struggle. Just four years later the castle was back in Anglo-Norman hands.

 

You can pay tribute to brave and beautiful Princess Gwenllian at her monument near the castle gatehouse. You might even spot the headless ghost that’s reputed to stalk the grounds.

 

Carmarthenshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as the "Garden of Wales" and is also home to the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The county town was founded by the Romans, and the region was part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth in the High Middle Ages. After invasion by the Normans in the 12th and 13th centuries it was subjugated, along with other parts of Wales, by Edward I of England. There was further unrest in the early 15th century, when the Welsh rebelled under Owain Glyndŵr, and during the English Civil War.

 

Carmarthenshire is mainly an agricultural county, apart from the southeastern part which was once heavily industrialised with coal mining, steel-making and tin-plating. In the north of the county, the woollen industry was very important in the 18th century. The economy depends on agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. West Wales was identified in 2014 as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys with the decline in its industrial base, and the low profitability of the livestock sector.

 

Carmarthenshire, as a tourist destination, offers a wide range of outdoor activities. Much of the coast is fairly flat; it includes the Millennium Coastal Park, which extends for ten miles to the west of Llanelli; the National Wetlands Centre; a championship golf course; and the harbours of Burry Port and Pembrey. The sandy beaches at Llansteffan and Pendine are further west. Carmarthenshire has a number of medieval castles, hillforts and standing stones. The Dylan Thomas Boathouse is at Laugharne.

 

Stone tools found in Coygan Cave, near Laugharne indicate the presence of hominins, probably neanderthals, at least 40,000 years ago, though, as in the rest of the British Isles, continuous habitation by modern humans is not known before the end of the Younger Dryas, around 11,500 years BP. Before the Romans arrived in Britain, the land now forming the county of Carmarthenshire was part of the kingdom of the Demetae who gave their name to the county of Dyfed; it contained one of their chief settlements, Moridunum, now known as Carmarthen. The Romans established two forts in South Wales, one at Caerwent to control the southeast of the country, and one at Carmarthen to control the southwest. The fort at Carmarthen dates from around 75 AD, and there is a Roman amphitheatre nearby, so this probably makes Carmarthen the oldest continually occupied town in Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has its early roots in the region formerly known as Ystrad Tywi ("Vale of [the river] Tywi") and part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth during the High Middle Ages, with the court at Dinefwr. After the Normans had subjugated England they tried to subdue Wales. Carmarthenshire was disputed between the Normans and the Welsh lords and many of the castles built around this time, first of wood and then stone, changed hands several times. Following the Conquest of Wales by Edward I, the region was reorganized by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 into Carmarthenshire. Edward I made Carmarthen the capital of this new county, establishing his courts of chancery and his exchequer there, and holding the Court of Great Sessions in Wales in the town.

 

The Normans transformed Carmarthen into an international trading port, the only staple port in Wales. Merchants imported food and French wines and exported wool, pelts, leather, lead and tin. In the late medieval period the county's fortunes varied, as good and bad harvests occurred, increased taxes were levied by England, there were episodes of plague, and recruitment for wars removed the young men. Carmarthen was particularly susceptible to plague as it was brought in by flea-infested rats on board ships from southern France.

 

In 1405, Owain Glyndŵr captured Carmarthen Castle and several other strongholds in the neighbourhood. However, when his support dwindled, the principal men of the county returned their allegiance to King Henry V. During the English Civil War, Parliamentary forces under Colonel Roland Laugharne besieged and captured Carmarthen Castle but later abandoned the cause, and joined the Royalists. In 1648, Carmarthen Castle was recaptured by the Parliamentarians, and Oliver Cromwell ordered it to be slighted.

 

The first industrial canal in Wales was built in 1768 to convey coal from the Gwendraeth Valley to the coast, and the following year, the earliest tramroad bridge was on the tramroad built alongside the canal. During the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) there was increased demand for coal, iron and agricultural goods, and the county prospered. The landscape changed as much woodland was cleared to make way for more food production, and mills, power stations, mines and factories sprang up between Llanelli and Pembrey. Carmarthenshire was at the centre of the Rebecca Riots around 1840, when local farmers and agricultural workers dressed as women and rebelled against higher taxes and tolls.

 

On 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, Carmarthenshire joined Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire in the new county of Dyfed; Carmarthenshire was divided into three districts: Carmarthen, Llanelli and Dinefwr. Twenty-two years later this amalgamation was reversed when, under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, the original county boundaries were reinstated.

 

The county is bounded to the north by Ceredigion, to the east by Powys (historic county Brecknockshire), Neath Port Talbot (historic county Glamorgan) and Swansea (also Glamorgan), to the south by the Bristol Channel and to the west by Pembrokeshire. Much of the county is upland and hilly. The Black Mountain range dominates the east of the county, with the lower foothills of the Cambrian Mountains to the north across the valley of the River Towy. The south coast contains many fishing villages and sandy beaches. The highest point (county top) is the minor summit of Fan Foel, height 781 metres (2,562 ft), which is a subsidiary top of the higher mountain of Fan Brycheiniog, height 802.5 metres (2,633 ft) (the higher summit, as its name suggests, is actually across the border in Brecknockshire/Powys). Carmarthenshire is the largest historic county by area in Wales.

 

The county is drained by several important rivers which flow southwards into the Bristol Channel, especially the River Towy, and its several tributaries, such as the River Cothi. The Towy is the longest river flowing entirely within Wales. Other rivers include the Loughor (which forms the eastern boundary with Glamorgan), the River Gwendraeth and the River Taf. The River Teifi forms much of the border between Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, and there are a number of towns in the Teifi Valley which have communities living on either side of the river and hence in different counties. Carmarthenshire has a long coastline which is deeply cut by the estuaries of the Loughor in the east and the Gwendraeth, Tywi and Taf, which enter the sea on the east side of Carmarthen Bay. The coastline includes notable beaches such as Pendine Sands and Cefn Sidan sands, and large areas of foreshore are uncovered at low tide along the Loughor and Towy estuaries.

 

The principal towns in the county are Ammanford, Burry Port, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, Llanelli, Llandeilo, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandovery, St Clears, and Whitland. The principal industries are agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. Although Llanelli is by far the largest town in the county, the county town remains Carmarthen, mainly due to its central location.

 

Carmarthenshire is predominantly an agricultural county, with only the southeastern area having any significant amount of industry. The best agricultural land is in the broad Tywi Valley, especially its lower reaches. With its fertile land and agricultural produce, Carmarthenshire is known as the "Garden of Wales". The lowest bridge over the river is at Carmarthen, and the Towi Estuary cuts the southwesterly part of the county, including Llansteffan and Laugharne, off from the more urban southeastern region. This area is also bypassed by the main communication routes into Pembrokeshire. A passenger ferry service used to connect Ferryside with Llansteffan until the early part of the twentieth century.

 

Agriculture and forestry are the main sources of income over most of the county of Carmarthenshire. On improved pastures, dairying is important and in the past, the presence of the railway enabled milk to be transported to the urban areas of England. The creamery at Whitland is now closed but milk processing still takes place at Newcastle Emlyn where mozzarella cheese is made. On upland pastures and marginal land, livestock rearing of cattle and sheep is the main agricultural activity. The estuaries of the Loughor and Towy provide pickings for the cockle industry.

 

Llanelli, Ammanford and the upper parts of the Gwendraeth Valley are situated on the South Wales Coalfield. The opencast mining activities in this region have now ceased but the old mining settlements with terraced housing remain, often centred on their nonconformist chapels. Kidwelly had a tin-plating industry in the eighteenth century, with Llanelli following not long after, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, Llanelli was the world-centre of the industry. There is little trace of these industrial activities today. Llanelli and Burry Port served at one time for the export of coal, but trade declined, as it did from the ports of Kidwelly and Carmarthen as their estuaries silted up. Country towns in the more agricultural part of the county still hold regular markets where livestock is traded.

 

In the north of the county, in and around the Teifi Valley, there was a thriving woollen industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here water-power provided the energy to drive the looms and other machinery at the mills. The village of Dre-fach Felindre at one time contained twenty-four mills and was known as the "Huddersfield of Wales". The demand for woollen cloth declined in the twentieth century and so did the industry.

 

In 2014, West Wales was identified as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys. The gross value added economic indicator showed a figure of £14,763 per head in these regions, as compared with a GVA of £22,986 for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The Welsh Assembly Government is aware of this, and helped by government initiatives and local actions, opportunities for farmers to diversify have emerged. These include farm tourism, rural crafts, specialist food shops, farmers' markets and added-value food products.

 

Carmarthenshire County Council produced a fifteen-year plan that highlighted six projects which it hoped would create five thousand new jobs. The sectors involved would be in the "creative industries, tourism, agri-food, advanced manufacturing, energy and environment, and financial and professional services".

 

Carmarthenshire became an administrative county with a county council taking over functions from the Quarter Sessions under the Local Government Act 1888. Under the Local Government Act 1972, the administrative county of Carmarthenshire was abolished on 1 April 1974 and the area of Carmarthenshire became three districts within the new county of Dyfed : Carmarthen, Dinefwr and Llanelli. Under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, Dyfed was abolished on 1 April 1996 and Carmarthenshire was re-established as a county. The three districts united to form a unitary authority which had the same boundaries as the traditional county of Carmarthenshire. In 2003, the Clynderwen community council area was transferred to the administrative county of Pembrokeshire.

 

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Carmarthen and Wrexham were the two most populous towns in Wales. In 1931, the county's population was 171,445 and in 1951, 164,800. At the census in 2011, Carmarthenshire had a population of 183,777. Population levels have thus dipped and then increased again over the course of eighty years. The population density in Carmarthenshire is 0.8 persons per hectare compared to 1.5 per hectare in Wales as a whole.

 

Carmarthenshire was the most populous of the five historic counties of Wales to remain majority Welsh-speaking throughout the 20th century. According to the 1911 Census, 84.9 per cent of the county's population were Welsh-speaking (compared with 43.5 per cent in all of Wales), with 20.5 per cent of Carmarthenshire's overall population being monolingual Welsh-speakers.

 

In 1931, 82.3 per cent could speak Welsh and in 1951, 75.2 per cent. By the 2001 census, 50.3 per cent of people living in Carmarthenshire could speak Welsh, with 39 per cent being able to read and write the language as well.

 

The 2011 census showed a further decline, with 43.9 per cent speaking Welsh, making it a minority language in the county for the first time. However, the 2011 census also showed that 3,000 more people could understand spoken Welsh than in 2001 and that 60% of 5-14-year-olds could speak Welsh (a 5% increase since 2001). A decade later, the 2021 census, showed further decrease, to 39.9% Welsh speakers -- the largest percentage drop in all of Wales.

 

With its strategic location and history, the county is rich in archaeological remains such as forts, earthworks and standing stones. Carn Goch is one of the most impressive Iron Age forts and stands on a hilltop near Llandeilo. The Bronze Age is represented by chambered cairns and standing stones on Mynydd Llangyndeyrn, near Llangyndeyrn. Castles that can be easily accessed include Carreg Cennen, Dinefwr, Kidwelly, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Newcastle Emlyn Castle. There are the ruinous remains of Talley Abbey, and the coastal village of Laugharne is for ever associated with Dylan Thomas. Stately homes in the county include Aberglasney House and Gardens, Golden Grove and Newton House.

 

There are plenty of opportunities in the county for hiking, observing wildlife and admiring the scenery. These include Brechfa Forest, the Pembrey Country Park, the Millennium Coastal Park at Llanelli, the WWT Llanelli Wetlands Centre and the Carmel National Nature Reserve. There are large stretches of golden sands and the Wales Coast Path now provides a continuous walking route around the whole of Wales.

 

The National Botanic Garden of Wales displays plants from Wales and from all around the world, and the Carmarthenshire County Museum, the National Wool Museum, the Parc Howard Museum, the Pendine Museum of Speed and the West Wales Museum of Childhood all provide opportunities to delve into the past. Dylan Thomas Boathouse where the author wrote many of his works can be visited, as can the Roman-worked Dolaucothi Gold Mines.

 

Activities available in the county include rambling, cycling, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, horse riding, caving, abseiling and coasteering.[7] Carmarthen Town A.F.C. plays in the Cymru Premier. They won the Welsh Football League Cup in the 1995–96 season, and since then have won the Welsh Cup once and the Welsh League Cup twice. Llanelli Town A.F.C. play in the Welsh Football League Division Two. The club won the Welsh premier league and Loosemores challenge cup in 2008 and won the Welsh Cup in 2011, but after experiencing financial difficulties, were wound up and reformed under the present title in 2013. Scarlets is the regional professional rugby union team that plays in the Pro14, they play their home matches at their ground, Parc y Scarlets. Honours include winning the 2003/04 and 2016/17 Pro12. Llanelli RFC is a semi-professional rugby union team that play in the Welsh Premier Division, also playing home matches at Parc y Scarlets. Among many honours, they have been WRU Challenge Cup winners on fourteen occasions and frequently taken part in the Heineken Cup. West Wales Raiders, based in Llanelli, represent the county in Rugby league.

 

Some sporting venues utilise disused industrial sites. Ffos Las racecourse was built on the site of an open cast coal mine after mining operations ceased. Opened in 2009, it was the first racecourse built in the United Kingdom for eighty years and has regular race-days. Machynys is a championship golf course opened in 2005 and built as part of the Llanelli Waterside regeneration plan. Pembrey Circuit is a motor racing circuit near Pembrey village, considered the home of Welsh motorsport, providing racing for cars, motorcycles, karts and trucks. It was opened in 1989 on a former airfield, is popular for testing and has hosted many events including the British Touring Car Championship twice. The 2018 Tour of Britain cycling race started at Pembrey on 2 September 2018.

 

Carmarthenshire is served by the main line railway service operated by Transport for Wales Rail which links London Paddington, Cardiff Central and Swansea to southwest Wales. The main hub is Carmarthen railway station where some services from the east terminate. The line continues westwards with several branches which serve Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Fishguard Harbour (for the ferry to Rosslare Europort and connecting trains to Dublin Connolly). The Heart of Wales Line takes a scenic route through mid-Wales and links Llanelli with Craven Arms, from where passengers can travel on the Welsh Marches Line to Shrewsbury.

 

Two heritage railways, the Gwili Railway and the Teifi Valley Railway, use the track of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway that at one time ran from Carmarthen to Newcastle Emlyn, but did not reach Cardigan.

 

The A40, A48, A484 and A485 converge on Carmarthen. The M4 route that links South Wales with London, terminates at junction 49, the Pont Abraham services, to continue northwest as the dual carriageway A48, and to finish with its junction with the A40 in Carmarthen.

 

Llanelli is linked to M4 junction 48 by the A4138. The A40 links Carmarthen to Llandeilo, Llandovery and Brecon to the east, and with St Clears, Whitland and Haverfordwest to the west. The A484 links Llanelli with Carmarthen by a coastal route and continues northwards to Cardigan, and via the A486 and A487 to Aberystwyth, and the A485 links Carmarthen to Lampeter.

 

Bus services run between the main towns within the county and are operated by First Cymru under their "Western Welsh" or "Cymru Clipper" livery. Bus services from Carmarthenshire are also run to Cardiff. A bus service known as "fflecsi Bwcabus" (formerly just "Bwcabus") operates in the north of the county, offering customised transport to rural dwellers.

 

Carmarthenshire has rich, fertile farmland and a productive coast with estuaries providing a range of foods that motivate many home cooks and chefs.

KIDWELLY was originally the name of the district which included part of the coastlands lying between the estuaries of the Towy and the Loughor. In 1106, after the death of Howell ap Gronw, Henry I granted these lands to his minister, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, who erected a castle at the mouth of the Gwaendraeth Fach. This formed one of a series of Norman strongholds designed to secure their newly won conquests in South Wales and to command the passage of the rivers across which the road to the west passed. A mention of the hall of the Castle in a document of 1115 or earlier shows that the building of Kidwelly must have been practically completed by that year. During the rising which followed the death of Henry I, the Battle of Maes Gwenllian was fought a short distance away from the castle (1136). The account speaks of Maurice de Londres, Lord of Kidwelly, and Geoffrey, Constable of the Bishop, as leaders of the Norman army. Maurice, who is mentioned for the first time in connection with this district, already possessed Ogmore in Glamorgan, where his father William de Londres appears to have been one of the original conquerors. The coupling of the two names suggests that Roger of Salisbury, while retaining possession of the castle, had granted the lordship of the district to Maurice de Londres, who probably acquired the castle also when the bishop died in the following year.

 

The Welsh chronicles record that, in 1190, the Lord Rhys built the castle of Kidwelly. This entry probably reflects a native conquest of the settlement, but the Normans must have recovered it before 1201, when Meredith, son of Rhys, was slain by the garrison of the castle. In 1215 Rhys Grug, another son of the Lord Rhys, captured Kidwelly and burnt the castle. He remained in possession until 1220, when Llywelyn the Great forced him to restore these conquests. The male line of the de Londres had become extinct during these troubles, and Kidwelly had passed to an heiress, Hawise. In 1225 she married Walter de Braose, who died during the campaign of 1233-4. Kidwelly Castle was by that date again in the possession of the Welsh as a result of the rising of 1231, when Llywelyn the Great, previously a supporter of the royal authority, had turned his arms against Henry III. Hawise de Londres, left a widow, was unable to regain possession of Kidwelly which, in 1242, was still held by Rhys's son Meredith. Two years later Hawise married Patrick de Chaworth, who seems to have recovered these lands soon after this date. The Welsh rising of 1257 involved the destruction of the settlement at Kidwelly, but the invaders failed to capture the castle. Patrick was slain during the campaign of the following year, and the wardship of his lands was granted to Hawise during the minority of their son Payn.

 

Payn de Chaworth must have attained his majority about 1270, as in that year he and his younger brother Patrick took the Cross. Hawise survived until 1274, and her death was soon followed by that of her two sons, Payn in 1279 and Patrick four years later. The elder brother died childless, and the younger left only an infant daughter, Matilda, who inherited Kidwelly and Ogmore. In 1291 the marriage of the young heiress was granted to the king's brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, for the use of his second son, Henry, the union being celebrated in 1298.

 

The prominent part taken by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in the civil wars of Edward II's reign led to his execution after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, but the forefeited title and estates were later restored to his younger brother, Henry. The extinction of the male line in 1361 caused a temporary partition of the Lancastrian possessions, but on the death of the elder co-heiress, Matilda, in the following year, the whole inheritance fell to her sister Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, who became Earl and later Duke of Lancaster. On the accession of Henry IV, Kidwelly, together with the other Lancastrian possessions, passed into the hands of the Crown, and was of little importance during the fifteenth century. Henry VII granted the castle to Sir Rhys ap Tudor, whose grandson Rhys ap Griffith forefeited it in 1531. Later it was again alienated and passed to the Earls of Cawdor. The castle had long ceased to be habitable, but certain repairs were carried out during the nineteenth century. In 1927 the owner placed the ruins under the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works (now the Department of the Environment).

 

Since that date extensive works of preservation have been undertaken. In 1930 and 1931 excavations were carried out by Sir Cyril Fox and the writer in order to recover the earlier history of the castle. The results are embodied in the present guide, and the interesting series of relics recovered may be seen in the National Museum of Wales.

 

PERIODS OF CONSTRUCTION

 

THE earliest remains at Kidwelly, dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, are the semi-circular moat surrounding the castle together with the rampart under the outer curtain, the true meaning of which was revealed by the investigations of 1930-1. Of the hall mentioned in the deed of 1115 and the other buildings of the twelfth century no trace remains, though it is possible that an extensive search under the 2ft to 7ft of debris with which the whole interior of the castle was levelled in the early fourteenth century would lead to the recovery of their plan. The only tangible relic of Norman buildings is a small capital belonging to an attached column and probably forming part of a fireplace. This was found walled into the masonry of the hall of c1300, and may be ascribed to a date at the end of the twelfth century. The ramparts and moats surrounding the northern and southern outworks cannot be exactly dated, but analogy with other sites shows that they may well belong to this early period.

The oldest surviving masonry is that of the towers and the curtain enclosing the inner ward. This occupies a rectangular area with a circular tower at each angle. There are two gates, on the south and north sides, each protected by a portcullis. The erection of these defences within the circuit of the original bank and stockade marks the beginning of the refortification of the castle in accordance with the ideas of the late thirteenth century. The awkward way in which the two western towers are brought close to the foot of the earlier bank can only be understood when the pre-existence of this defence is realised, while the simple character of the gates, so different from the elaborate gatehouses of the normal concentric castle, must be similarly explained. The south-east tower was designed for occupation, but the hall and other structures of the earlier castle probably remained in use. Most of the dressed stonework of this period has disappeared, but the few remaining details are of thirteenth-century character, and this taken in conjunction with the plan suggests that the construction of the inner ward was carried out by Payn de Chaworth, c1275.

 

The replacement of the older buildings by a new hall, solar and kitchen and the erection of a chapel, form the next stage in the development of the castle. The different character of the masonry and the unusual position of the best-appointed private apartments in the southeast tower behind the screens of the hall prove that these additions were planned and built after the completion of the inner ward. The mouldings of the doors and windows belonging to this stage are all of late thirteenth- century character, and none need be earlier than 1300. The absence of glass grooves in the trefoiled lancet windows of the hall and chapel is also an early feature. It is perhaps unlikely that an extensive building programme would have been carried out during the minority of Matilda de Chaworth (1283-98), and a date before the death of her father Patrick is earlier than the architectural evidence would justify. The work should therefore in all probability be attributed to c1300, directly after the marriage of Matilda to Henry of Lancaster.

 

The design of the inner ward at Kidwelly presupposes an outer defensive zone, and the replacement of the original stockade with a stone curtain followed the completion of the living-quarters. The main gatehouse, the lesser northern gate, the outer curtain with its four flanking towers, and the mantlet between the north-eastern tower and the chapel, are part of a single design intended to bring Kidwelly into line with other concentric castles of this period. The position of the elaborate gatehouse, which could in case of need act as a separate defensive unit, on the line of the outer instead of the inner curtain is an abnormal feature imposed by the pre-existing layout of the site. The new masonry curtain of the outer ward was higher than the original stockade and necessitated the addition of a further storey to the towers of the inner ward in order that they might still command the outer defences. The details of this reconstruction are all of early fourteenth-century character, and the fortification of the outer ward must have been carried out during the first quarter of that century. On the completion of this work the surplus material from the bank and other rubbish was used to level up the interior of the castle, which it now covers to a depth varying from 2ft to 7ft. The closing of the open gorges of the towers of the outer curtain marks the last stage in the military development of Kidwelly and may also be ascribed to the fourteenth century. The existing gate in the south wall of the town also appears to be of fourteenth-century date, and it might be expected that the erection of these walls would have followed rather than preceded the reconstruction of the castle. But grants of murage in 1282 suggest an earlier date, and the solution of this problem must await further research.

 

There is reason to think that the great gatehouse may have stood unfinished through most of the fourteenth century and that the opening of a quarry `for the work of the new tower', recorded in 1388-9, may mark the beginning of the works needed to complete it. Ten years later, between 1399 and 1401, when the lord of the castle had become king in the person of Henry IV, there is another record of nearly £100 being spent ‘on the new work of the tower over the gates of the castle’, the near completion of which at this time can be inferred from an order of 1402 for it to be roofed in lead. But in the autumn of the following year the castle was besieged by the Welsh rebels, aided by a naval force from France and Brittany, and subsequent documents leave very little doubt that they succeeded in setting fire to the gatehouse and inflicting serious damage to it; so much so that between 1408 and 1422 a further £500-£600 had to be spent on it, and only in the latter year was it finally roofed with lead shipped from Bristol. A superficial indication of the new work may be seen in the patches of thin flat slabs which contrast with the irregularly coursed boulders of the original masonry. To it belong the triple machicolis high up on the outward face, the upper part of, the wall towards the courtyard, all the square-headed windows, the rectangular stair turret at the north-west corner, and the stone vaults inserted at different levels in the flanking towers as a protection against fire.

 

The last significant addition to the castle, probably made towards the end of the fifteenth century, was a large hall placed on the west side of the outer ward. This was connected with a kitchen in the south-west corner of the inner ward by the enlargement of a thirteenth century embrasure so as to form a passage-way. Buildings placed against the outer curtain reflect the increased complexity of life in the Tudor period, but the provision of an entirely new hall and kitchen suggests that the earlier hall was already ruinous.

 

KIDWELLY is one of the Norman foundations strung out along the coastal plain of South Wales. There is no evidence of any occupation before the grant to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, and even if a small Celtic settlement existed, it has been without influence on the subsequent development of the site. Like many other Norman settlements which were then continually threatened by a hostile attack from the mountains, Kidwelly stands at the head of an estuary where the river was still navigable at high tide. This situation ensured a line of communications when the castle was surrounded and the roads cut by a Welsh rising.

 

THE SETTLEMENT

 

The settlement consists of two parts, the castle and the walled town on the west bank, and the priory church with the new town on the other side of the river. The two are joined by a two-arched bridge of fourteenth- or fiftecnth-century date. This carried the great road to West Wales, probably replacing an earlier structure. Modern development has greatly altered the appearance of the new town, the last of the picturesque medieval houses having recently been destroyed (1931). The priory church of St. Mary was founded by Bishop Roger before 1115, and became a cell of the abbey of Sherborne. Such foundations are typical of the Norman settlements in South Wales, the alien monks being introduced as a counterpoise to the patriotic sentiments of the native monasteries which too often served as focuses of anti-Norman feeling. The present building dates from the fourteenth century.

From the bridge the road to the castle leads through the defences of the old town. The walls have mostly disappeared, but the main gateway, apparently of early fourtheenth-century date, still spans the road. The line of the defences can still be traced by the earthen bank which preceded the walls. It encloses about eight acres including the castle which it surrounds on all sides except the east. A transverse ditch running west from the castle moat divides it into two nearly equal halves, of which it is probable that only the southern was walled. The defences consist of an earth bank and ditch except on the east, where the steep scarp above the river formed a natural protection. The date of these ramparts is not certainly known, but as the walling of the southern part is to be connected with grants of murage, c1280, and the erection of the gatehouse during the following century, there is good reason for suggesting that they form part of the original Norman settlement.

 

Although the medieval buildings within the walls have been replaced with modern houses, the line of the existing roads probably follows the original layout. Another feature of exceptional interest is the ruins of the medieval mill which with the contemporary weir and leat can be traced on the low ground between the old town and the river. At a comparatively modern date this was replaced by a more efficient type of mill, which in its turn is now disused.

 

THE CASTLE

 

After passing through the south gate of the town the road crosses the settlement and turning to the right reaches the gatehouse of the castle. The original bridge has been replaced by a causeway, the outer end of which starts from a small knoll. Trial excavations failed to recover the plan of the structure which this represented, and as the castle stood within the walled settlement, it is possible that the builders considered a barbican unnecessary.

The gatehall was closed at each end by a double gate preceded by a portcullis. On entering the outer ward the inner gate is seen in the centre of the south curtain of the inner ward. It is a simple structure, a mere arch through the curtain defended by a gate and a portcullis. The inner ward is rectangular with a circular tower at each angle. The earlier hall and solar lie on the east side, with the kitchen between the former and the gate. Behind the hall is the chapel, contained in a bastion projecting down the steep scarp above the river. A later kitchen occupies the south-west corner of the courtyard. The outer defences form a semi-circle based on the river. The masonry curtain and towers date from the fourteenth century, but they follow the lines of the original rampart which was disclosed by the 1931 excavations, and which can still be traced on the north and west sides. The Tudor hall standing free on the west side and several later buildings have encroached on the already restricted area of the outer ward. On the east, where the outer defences do not surround the inner ward, a small mantlet joins the north-east tower and the chapel.

 

The earlier domestic buildings

 

The thirteenth-century domestic buildings occupy the whole of one side of the inner ward. The hall and the solar together form a long range connecting the two eastern towers which are of slightly earlier date. The principal chambers were on the upper floor, below which were low rooms probably used as storehouses. The latter were lighted by narrow widely splayed windows looking on to the courtyard. The present divisions date from the period when the castle was put to base uses, as does the doorway piercing the east curtain and leading to the mantlet and the chapel. The entrance from the courtyard appears to be original. The upper part of the building is almost entirely destroyed. In the outer wall of the solar two trefoiled lancets and a fireplace with quoins and a hood of dressed Sutton stone are preserved. The splay of another window opening into the courtyard can be traced in the west wall, while a recess in the same side marks the position of the door leading into the hall. At the other end of this wall, where it joined the south curtain, the jamb of the doorway leading to the kitchen is visible. The kitchen is a small room with a large fireplace in the thickness of the south curtain. Outside the walls of the kitchen an irregular block of masonry marks the base of the stairs leading up to the hall. The exact position of the screens cannot be determined. From the passage behind them are doors leading to the chapel and the rooms below it, while further entrances give access to the tower.

The south-east tower

 

The south-east tower consists of five storeys. The lowest, a basement lighted by narrow loops, is reached by a door from the storeroom under the hall. The next stage, which has two narrow windows and a fireplace with quoins and hood of Sutton stone, seems originally to have been intended for residence, though after the hall was erected its position would suggest that it served as a buttery. This is confirmed by the contemporary blocking of the archway leading directly from the entrance passage to the circular staircase by which the upper rooms are reached. Like the ground floor, the next two storeys of this tower are decently appointed and seem to have been the private apartments of the castle. One of the narrow windows on the first floor was widened in Tudor times, the jambs of Sutton stone being replaced with a more perishable sandstone. The highest stage is a fourteenth century addition, the earlier battlements being traceable about eight feet below the existing parapet.

The chapel

 

The chapel is in two stages, the semi-octagonal eastern end rising above massive spurs. The clerestory has an unbroken range of trefoiled lancet windows. They are rebated for shutters, but there is no groove for glass. In the lower stage a double piscina and a wide sedile occupy the angle south of the altar. On this side of the building a small rectangular projection forms a sacristy, of which the groined vault is covered with a cruciform roof of stone. Below the chapel are two further storeys. The upper is reached by stairs descending from the passage behind the screens. It has a fireplace on the north side. The small room under the sacristy probably formed the living-quarters of the priest, for whom a garderobe was contrived in the south wall of the main room. The lowest storey was reached by a stair in the thickness of the north wall. The northern entrance to the room below the chapel is later.

The north-east tower

 

The arrangement of this tower differs little from that already described. From the ground floor a narrow passage leads to the outer face of the east curtain. This was designed to give access to the mantlet, and was formed by an alteration of the passage which had led to the wall walk along the eastern curtain. The addition of the hall and the consequent heightening of the curtain has blocked this passage. Here, as in the other towers, access to the wall walk on the remaining sides is obtained from the first floor. The curtain between the two northern towers is pierced by a small postern, closed by a gate and portcullis, and by two embrasures.

The north-west tower

 

The inner side of this tower is recessed so that on plan it appears heart-shaped instead of circular. In this and the following tower the higher level of the courtyard prevented the provision of a separate entrance to the basement, which must have been reached by a trapdoor. The upper part of this tower is particularly well preserved. Not only can the main battlements be traced, but some of those surrounding the small turret which covers the stairs are still in position.

The south-west tower

 

This tower is distinguished from the others by the flat saucer vaults with which each stage is covered. At some period, probably in the sixteenth century, the bottom of the circular staircase was blocked so that access to the upper rooms could only be obtained from the wall walk. This corner of the inner ward is occupied by the Tudor kitchen, which will be described in connection with the hall of that period. Above the inner gate the south wall walk passes through a small ruined chamber from which the portcullis was worked.

The gatehouse

 

The gatehouse is a building of three storeys. The plan is rectangular with two semi-circular towers flanking the entrance, while an elliptical projection on the eastern side commands the defences above the river. The ground floor is occupied by small vaulted chambers lighted by narrow loops through the outer walls. Below the rooms in the two flanking towers are vaulted cellars similarly lighted and approached by stairs opening out of the gate passage. Originally the upper storey was reached by a circular stair leading out of the front room on the west side of the gate, but this was replaced in the early fifteenth century rebuilding by a more convenient staircase in an added turret at the north-west angle.

The principal chambers were on the first floor. The inner side formed the hall lighted by windows with cusped heads looking into the courtyard. Early in the fifteenth-century these were enlarged and traces of the hood-mould surmounting the new rectangular-headed windows can be seen. Originally this hall could only be reached by the inconvenient stairs already mentioned, but later, probably as part of the general remodelling of the gatehouse, a wide external stairway was added leading up from the outer ward and entering the hall by a doorway inserted behind the screens. To the east of the hall lay the vaulted kitchen with a large fireplace and oven. The towers were occupied by two smaller rooms, while a third filled the space to the west of the hall. From the kitchen a door led to the wall walk along the eastern ramparts, while that to the west was reached from a small lobby opening out of the narrow room beyond the hall. Above the hall and stretching over the vault of the kitchen was the solar, reached originally by a small staircase contrived in the inner wall of the hall. The rest of this storey contained three smaller rooms corresponding to those on the floor below. With the exception of the solar all the rooms on the highest storey are covered with flat stone vaults, but the former, like the hall and the smaller chambers on the first floor, had wooden ceilings. From the hall the circular stairs in the added northwest turret led up to the solar and the roof.

 

The outer curtain

 

The curtain enclosing the outer ward follows the crest of the earlier rampart, on which it is built with very shallow foundations. There is a smaller gatehouse with two flanking towers through which the northern outworks could be reached. The western curtain between the two gates was reinforced by three semi-circular towers, while a fourth covered the north-eastern angle of the defences. There is evidence that the shallow foundations built on the top of an artificial bank were already giving trouble during the Middle Ages, and that the western and north-eastern towers with a portion of the adjacent curtain had collapsed before 1500. The latter was replaced by a thinner wall built slightly behind the line of the fourteenth-century curtain, but the slight wall closing the gorge was considered sufficient to replace the former. Access to the wall walk was through the gatehouses or by stairs leading up from the west side of the outer ward. The northern gatehouse is too far ruined to allow its internal arrangement to be reconstructed, but like the towers it was of three storeys. Of the latter that on the south-west is the best preserved. Originally this must have had a half-timbered inner wall, but during the fourteenth or fifteenth century this was replaced by a stone wall which projects beyond the inner face of the curtain. The ground floor was entered from the outer ward, but the upper floors could be reached from the wall walk. The presence of a fireplace on the first floor shows that the towers were intended for occupation.

The later domestic buildings

 

Changes carried out towards the close of the fifteenth century, probably by Sir Rhys ap Tudor, included the provision of more spacious buildings in the outer ward. On the west side a large hall with a high-pitched roof was erected parallel to the inner curtain. Of this only the two gables and the base of the side walls remain. The kitchen to serve this new hall was placed in the south-west angle of the inner ward, a passage being driven through the curtain by the enlargement of one of the original embrasures. The kitchen, a simple rectangular building, has two large fireplaces occupying the whole of each end of the room.

To the same period belong the buildings standing against the east, north and west curtains of the outer ward. The purpose of the first, a large chamber which is very similar in appearance to the late, hall, cannot be determined. The building to the west of the north gate has a large oven built in the thickness of the side wall and was the bakehouse. The remaining structure by the south-west towers has two long narrow rooms, one of which is provided with a fireplace.

 

The invading Normans took only a few years to conquer England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But Wales held out for two-and-a-half centuries.

 

Kidwelly Castle is a symbol of this enduring conflict. And it was here in 1136 that a warrior princess turned herself into one of Welsh history’s greatest heroines.

 

Gwenllian was authentic Welsh royalty – sister of the northern prince Owain Gwynedd and wife of Gruffudd ap Rhys, lord of Deheubarth. But she definitely didn’t live the life of a pampered princess.

 

Under constant threat from the Normans she was forced to hide away in the deep forests, where she raised four sons. Her husband was busy building an army and plotting lightning raids. But he chose the wrong time to head north for help.

 

In his absence Maurice de Londres, lord of Kidwelly Castle, began to gather forces for a counter-attack. He had to be stopped. So Gwenllian donned her battledress and entered the field herself.

 

She was ‘like some second Queen of the Amazons’, said the admiring historian Gerald of Wales. Some call her the Welsh Boudicca – the only woman to lead a medieval Welsh army into battle.

 

But they were no match for the Normans. She was captured and beheaded for treason. It’s said a spring welled up where she died – still known as Maes Gwenllian, or the Field of Gwenllian.

 

Her death wasn’t in vain. She inspired a popular uprising that swept the Normans out of West Wales. Finally true poetic justice was achieved by her youngest son, Rhys ap Gruffudd, who was just four years old when his mother died.

 

The Lord Rhys, as he was later known, captured Kidwelly Castle in 1159 and was recognised by King Henry II as the undisputed ruler of the region. But his death in 1197 provoked a power struggle. Just four years later the castle was back in Anglo-Norman hands.

 

You can pay tribute to brave and beautiful Princess Gwenllian at her monument near the castle gatehouse. You might even spot the headless ghost that’s reputed to stalk the grounds.

 

Carmarthenshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as the "Garden of Wales" and is also home to the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The county town was founded by the Romans, and the region was part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth in the High Middle Ages. After invasion by the Normans in the 12th and 13th centuries it was subjugated, along with other parts of Wales, by Edward I of England. There was further unrest in the early 15th century, when the Welsh rebelled under Owain Glyndŵr, and during the English Civil War.

 

Carmarthenshire is mainly an agricultural county, apart from the southeastern part which was once heavily industrialised with coal mining, steel-making and tin-plating. In the north of the county, the woollen industry was very important in the 18th century. The economy depends on agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. West Wales was identified in 2014 as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys with the decline in its industrial base, and the low profitability of the livestock sector.

 

Carmarthenshire, as a tourist destination, offers a wide range of outdoor activities. Much of the coast is fairly flat; it includes the Millennium Coastal Park, which extends for ten miles to the west of Llanelli; the National Wetlands Centre; a championship golf course; and the harbours of Burry Port and Pembrey. The sandy beaches at Llansteffan and Pendine are further west. Carmarthenshire has a number of medieval castles, hillforts and standing stones. The Dylan Thomas Boathouse is at Laugharne.

 

Stone tools found in Coygan Cave, near Laugharne indicate the presence of hominins, probably neanderthals, at least 40,000 years ago, though, as in the rest of the British Isles, continuous habitation by modern humans is not known before the end of the Younger Dryas, around 11,500 years BP. Before the Romans arrived in Britain, the land now forming the county of Carmarthenshire was part of the kingdom of the Demetae who gave their name to the county of Dyfed; it contained one of their chief settlements, Moridunum, now known as Carmarthen. The Romans established two forts in South Wales, one at Caerwent to control the southeast of the country, and one at Carmarthen to control the southwest. The fort at Carmarthen dates from around 75 AD, and there is a Roman amphitheatre nearby, so this probably makes Carmarthen the oldest continually occupied town in Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has its early roots in the region formerly known as Ystrad Tywi ("Vale of [the river] Tywi") and part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth during the High Middle Ages, with the court at Dinefwr. After the Normans had subjugated England they tried to subdue Wales. Carmarthenshire was disputed between the Normans and the Welsh lords and many of the castles built around this time, first of wood and then stone, changed hands several times. Following the Conquest of Wales by Edward I, the region was reorganized by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 into Carmarthenshire. Edward I made Carmarthen the capital of this new county, establishing his courts of chancery and his exchequer there, and holding the Court of Great Sessions in Wales in the town.

 

The Normans transformed Carmarthen into an international trading port, the only staple port in Wales. Merchants imported food and French wines and exported wool, pelts, leather, lead and tin. In the late medieval period the county's fortunes varied, as good and bad harvests occurred, increased taxes were levied by England, there were episodes of plague, and recruitment for wars removed the young men. Carmarthen was particularly susceptible to plague as it was brought in by flea-infested rats on board ships from southern France.

 

In 1405, Owain Glyndŵr captured Carmarthen Castle and several other strongholds in the neighbourhood. However, when his support dwindled, the principal men of the county returned their allegiance to King Henry V. During the English Civil War, Parliamentary forces under Colonel Roland Laugharne besieged and captured Carmarthen Castle but later abandoned the cause, and joined the Royalists. In 1648, Carmarthen Castle was recaptured by the Parliamentarians, and Oliver Cromwell ordered it to be slighted.

 

The first industrial canal in Wales was built in 1768 to convey coal from the Gwendraeth Valley to the coast, and the following year, the earliest tramroad bridge was on the tramroad built alongside the canal. During the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) there was increased demand for coal, iron and agricultural goods, and the county prospered. The landscape changed as much woodland was cleared to make way for more food production, and mills, power stations, mines and factories sprang up between Llanelli and Pembrey. Carmarthenshire was at the centre of the Rebecca Riots around 1840, when local farmers and agricultural workers dressed as women and rebelled against higher taxes and tolls.

 

On 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, Carmarthenshire joined Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire in the new county of Dyfed; Carmarthenshire was divided into three districts: Carmarthen, Llanelli and Dinefwr. Twenty-two years later this amalgamation was reversed when, under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, the original county boundaries were reinstated.

 

The county is bounded to the north by Ceredigion, to the east by Powys (historic county Brecknockshire), Neath Port Talbot (historic county Glamorgan) and Swansea (also Glamorgan), to the south by the Bristol Channel and to the west by Pembrokeshire. Much of the county is upland and hilly. The Black Mountain range dominates the east of the county, with the lower foothills of the Cambrian Mountains to the north across the valley of the River Towy. The south coast contains many fishing villages and sandy beaches. The highest point (county top) is the minor summit of Fan Foel, height 781 metres (2,562 ft), which is a subsidiary top of the higher mountain of Fan Brycheiniog, height 802.5 metres (2,633 ft) (the higher summit, as its name suggests, is actually across the border in Brecknockshire/Powys). Carmarthenshire is the largest historic county by area in Wales.

 

The county is drained by several important rivers which flow southwards into the Bristol Channel, especially the River Towy, and its several tributaries, such as the River Cothi. The Towy is the longest river flowing entirely within Wales. Other rivers include the Loughor (which forms the eastern boundary with Glamorgan), the River Gwendraeth and the River Taf. The River Teifi forms much of the border between Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, and there are a number of towns in the Teifi Valley which have communities living on either side of the river and hence in different counties. Carmarthenshire has a long coastline which is deeply cut by the estuaries of the Loughor in the east and the Gwendraeth, Tywi and Taf, which enter the sea on the east side of Carmarthen Bay. The coastline includes notable beaches such as Pendine Sands and Cefn Sidan sands, and large areas of foreshore are uncovered at low tide along the Loughor and Towy estuaries.

 

The principal towns in the county are Ammanford, Burry Port, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, Llanelli, Llandeilo, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandovery, St Clears, and Whitland. The principal industries are agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. Although Llanelli is by far the largest town in the county, the county town remains Carmarthen, mainly due to its central location.

 

Carmarthenshire is predominantly an agricultural county, with only the southeastern area having any significant amount of industry. The best agricultural land is in the broad Tywi Valley, especially its lower reaches. With its fertile land and agricultural produce, Carmarthenshire is known as the "Garden of Wales". The lowest bridge over the river is at Carmarthen, and the Towi Estuary cuts the southwesterly part of the county, including Llansteffan and Laugharne, off from the more urban southeastern region. This area is also bypassed by the main communication routes into Pembrokeshire. A passenger ferry service used to connect Ferryside with Llansteffan until the early part of the twentieth century.

 

Agriculture and forestry are the main sources of income over most of the county of Carmarthenshire. On improved pastures, dairying is important and in the past, the presence of the railway enabled milk to be transported to the urban areas of England. The creamery at Whitland is now closed but milk processing still takes place at Newcastle Emlyn where mozzarella cheese is made. On upland pastures and marginal land, livestock rearing of cattle and sheep is the main agricultural activity. The estuaries of the Loughor and Towy provide pickings for the cockle industry.

 

Llanelli, Ammanford and the upper parts of the Gwendraeth Valley are situated on the South Wales Coalfield. The opencast mining activities in this region have now ceased but the old mining settlements with terraced housing remain, often centred on their nonconformist chapels. Kidwelly had a tin-plating industry in the eighteenth century, with Llanelli following not long after, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, Llanelli was the world-centre of the industry. There is little trace of these industrial activities today. Llanelli and Burry Port served at one time for the export of coal, but trade declined, as it did from the ports of Kidwelly and Carmarthen as their estuaries silted up. Country towns in the more agricultural part of the county still hold regular markets where livestock is traded.

 

In the north of the county, in and around the Teifi Valley, there was a thriving woollen industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here water-power provided the energy to drive the looms and other machinery at the mills. The village of Dre-fach Felindre at one time contained twenty-four mills and was known as the "Huddersfield of Wales". The demand for woollen cloth declined in the twentieth century and so did the industry.

 

In 2014, West Wales was identified as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys. The gross value added economic indicator showed a figure of £14,763 per head in these regions, as compared with a GVA of £22,986 for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The Welsh Assembly Government is aware of this, and helped by government initiatives and local actions, opportunities for farmers to diversify have emerged. These include farm tourism, rural crafts, specialist food shops, farmers' markets and added-value food products.

 

Carmarthenshire County Council produced a fifteen-year plan that highlighted six projects which it hoped would create five thousand new jobs. The sectors involved would be in the "creative industries, tourism, agri-food, advanced manufacturing, energy and environment, and financial and professional services".

 

Carmarthenshire became an administrative county with a county council taking over functions from the Quarter Sessions under the Local Government Act 1888. Under the Local Government Act 1972, the administrative county of Carmarthenshire was abolished on 1 April 1974 and the area of Carmarthenshire became three districts within the new county of Dyfed : Carmarthen, Dinefwr and Llanelli. Under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, Dyfed was abolished on 1 April 1996 and Carmarthenshire was re-established as a county. The three districts united to form a unitary authority which had the same boundaries as the traditional county of Carmarthenshire. In 2003, the Clynderwen community council area was transferred to the administrative county of Pembrokeshire.

 

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Carmarthen and Wrexham were the two most populous towns in Wales. In 1931, the county's population was 171,445 and in 1951, 164,800. At the census in 2011, Carmarthenshire had a population of 183,777. Population levels have thus dipped and then increased again over the course of eighty years. The population density in Carmarthenshire is 0.8 persons per hectare compared to 1.5 per hectare in Wales as a whole.

 

Carmarthenshire was the most populous of the five historic counties of Wales to remain majority Welsh-speaking throughout the 20th century. According to the 1911 Census, 84.9 per cent of the county's population were Welsh-speaking (compared with 43.5 per cent in all of Wales), with 20.5 per cent of Carmarthenshire's overall population being monolingual Welsh-speakers.

 

In 1931, 82.3 per cent could speak Welsh and in 1951, 75.2 per cent. By the 2001 census, 50.3 per cent of people living in Carmarthenshire could speak Welsh, with 39 per cent being able to read and write the language as well.

 

The 2011 census showed a further decline, with 43.9 per cent speaking Welsh, making it a minority language in the county for the first time. However, the 2011 census also showed that 3,000 more people could understand spoken Welsh than in 2001 and that 60% of 5-14-year-olds could speak Welsh (a 5% increase since 2001). A decade later, the 2021 census, showed further decrease, to 39.9% Welsh speakers -- the largest percentage drop in all of Wales.

 

With its strategic location and history, the county is rich in archaeological remains such as forts, earthworks and standing stones. Carn Goch is one of the most impressive Iron Age forts and stands on a hilltop near Llandeilo. The Bronze Age is represented by chambered cairns and standing stones on Mynydd Llangyndeyrn, near Llangyndeyrn. Castles that can be easily accessed include Carreg Cennen, Dinefwr, Kidwelly, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Newcastle Emlyn Castle. There are the ruinous remains of Talley Abbey, and the coastal village of Laugharne is for ever associated with Dylan Thomas. Stately homes in the county include Aberglasney House and Gardens, Golden Grove and Newton House.

 

There are plenty of opportunities in the county for hiking, observing wildlife and admiring the scenery. These include Brechfa Forest, the Pembrey Country Park, the Millennium Coastal Park at Llanelli, the WWT Llanelli Wetlands Centre and the Carmel National Nature Reserve. There are large stretches of golden sands and the Wales Coast Path now provides a continuous walking route around the whole of Wales.

 

The National Botanic Garden of Wales displays plants from Wales and from all around the world, and the Carmarthenshire County Museum, the National Wool Museum, the Parc Howard Museum, the Pendine Museum of Speed and the West Wales Museum of Childhood all provide opportunities to delve into the past. Dylan Thomas Boathouse where the author wrote many of his works can be visited, as can the Roman-worked Dolaucothi Gold Mines.

 

Activities available in the county include rambling, cycling, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, horse riding, caving, abseiling and coasteering.[7] Carmarthen Town A.F.C. plays in the Cymru Premier. They won the Welsh Football League Cup in the 1995–96 season, and since then have won the Welsh Cup once and the Welsh League Cup twice. Llanelli Town A.F.C. play in the Welsh Football League Division Two. The club won the Welsh premier league and Loosemores challenge cup in 2008 and won the Welsh Cup in 2011, but after experiencing financial difficulties, were wound up and reformed under the present title in 2013. Scarlets is the regional professional rugby union team that plays in the Pro14, they play their home matches at their ground, Parc y Scarlets. Honours include winning the 2003/04 and 2016/17 Pro12. Llanelli RFC is a semi-professional rugby union team that play in the Welsh Premier Division, also playing home matches at Parc y Scarlets. Among many honours, they have been WRU Challenge Cup winners on fourteen occasions and frequently taken part in the Heineken Cup. West Wales Raiders, based in Llanelli, represent the county in Rugby league.

 

Some sporting venues utilise disused industrial sites. Ffos Las racecourse was built on the site of an open cast coal mine after mining operations ceased. Opened in 2009, it was the first racecourse built in the United Kingdom for eighty years and has regular race-days. Machynys is a championship golf course opened in 2005 and built as part of the Llanelli Waterside regeneration plan. Pembrey Circuit is a motor racing circuit near Pembrey village, considered the home of Welsh motorsport, providing racing for cars, motorcycles, karts and trucks. It was opened in 1989 on a former airfield, is popular for testing and has hosted many events including the British Touring Car Championship twice. The 2018 Tour of Britain cycling race started at Pembrey on 2 September 2018.

 

Carmarthenshire is served by the main line railway service operated by Transport for Wales Rail which links London Paddington, Cardiff Central and Swansea to southwest Wales. The main hub is Carmarthen railway station where some services from the east terminate. The line continues westwards with several branches which serve Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Fishguard Harbour (for the ferry to Rosslare Europort and connecting trains to Dublin Connolly). The Heart of Wales Line takes a scenic route through mid-Wales and links Llanelli with Craven Arms, from where passengers can travel on the Welsh Marches Line to Shrewsbury.

 

Two heritage railways, the Gwili Railway and the Teifi Valley Railway, use the track of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway that at one time ran from Carmarthen to Newcastle Emlyn, but did not reach Cardigan.

 

The A40, A48, A484 and A485 converge on Carmarthen. The M4 route that links South Wales with London, terminates at junction 49, the Pont Abraham services, to continue northwest as the dual carriageway A48, and to finish with its junction with the A40 in Carmarthen.

 

Llanelli is linked to M4 junction 48 by the A4138. The A40 links Carmarthen to Llandeilo, Llandovery and Brecon to the east, and with St Clears, Whitland and Haverfordwest to the west. The A484 links Llanelli with Carmarthen by a coastal route and continues northwards to Cardigan, and via the A486 and A487 to Aberystwyth, and the A485 links Carmarthen to Lampeter.

 

Bus services run between the main towns within the county and are operated by First Cymru under their "Western Welsh" or "Cymru Clipper" livery. Bus services from Carmarthenshire are also run to Cardiff. A bus service known as "fflecsi Bwcabus" (formerly just "Bwcabus") operates in the north of the county, offering customised transport to rural dwellers.

 

Carmarthenshire has rich, fertile farmland and a productive coast with estuaries providing a range of foods that motivate many home cooks and chefs.

a griffon vulture with high probability

‘Scene’ in and around Newark Bus Station 2

on Dennis Basford’srailsroadsrunways.blogspot.co.uk’

 

Friend Peter Rose and I were off to Newark to record the closing days of ‘Marshalls of Sutton on Trent’ operating Service 90 from Newark into Nottingham.

 

See blog posted 16/04/2023.

 

Always being willing to support public transport, we went into Nottingham by train.

 

As we have done before on joint outings, we have combined all the images we have gathered.

 

The credits being joint D.Basford/P.M.Rose.

 

It amazes me that anyone will spend money on re-painting a 20 year old bus that in all probability has only a short service life left.

 

New to ‘Stagecoach United Counties’ No. 34438.

Enjoy my new fine art landscapes & ballet video!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3b1df46oKw

 

Let me know what you think! :)

  

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

 

Working on a couple photography books! 45EPIC GODDESS PHOTOGRAPHY: A classic guide to exalting the archetypal woman. And 45EPIC Fine Art Landscape Photography!

 

Fresh snow! More on my golden ratio musings: facebook.com/goldennumberratio

instagram.com/goldennumberratio

 

Greetings all! I have been busy finishing a few books on photography, while traveling all over--to Zion and the Sierras--shooting fall colors. Please see some here: facebook.com/mcgucken

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Let me know in the comments if you would like a free review copy of one of my photography books! :)

 

Titles include:

The Tao of Epic Landscape Photography: Exalt Fine Art with the Yin-Yang Wisdom of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching!

 

The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Why the Fibonacci Numbers Exalt Beauty and How to Create PHI Compositions in Art, Design, & Photography

facebook.com/goldennumberratio

 

And I am also working on a book on photographing the goddesses! :) More goddesses soon!

 

Best wishes on your epic hero's odyssey!:)

 

instagram.com/45surf

 

I love voyaging forth into nature to contemplate poetry, physics, the golden ratio, and the Tao te Ching! What's your favorite epic poetry reflecting epic landscapes? I recently finished a book titled Epic Poetry for Epic Landscape Photographers:

 

www.facebook.com/Epic-Poetry-for-Epic-Landscape-Photograp...

 

Did you know that John Muir, Thoreau, and Emerson all loved epic poetry and poets including Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and Robert Burns?

 

I recently finished my fourth book on Light Time Dimension Theory, much of which was inspired by an autumn trip to Zion!

 

www.facebook.com/lightimedimensiontheory/

 

Via its simple principle of a fourth expanding dimension, LTD Theory provides a unifying, foundational *physical* model underlying relativity, quantum mechanics, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, and the second law of thermodynamics. The detailed diagrams demonstrate that the great mysteries of quantum mechanical nonlocality, entanglement, and probability naturally arise from the very same principle that fosters relativity alongside light's constant velocity, the equivalence of mass and energy, and time dilation.

 

Follow me on instagram!

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

 

Enjoy my new fine art landscapes & ballet video!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3b1df46oKw

 

Let me know what you think! :)

 

Elliot McGucken Fine Art Landscape and Nature Photography

What you will be reading below is not mine. Its the theory of Doug Copp.

 

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.

 

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries.

 

I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

 

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn't at the time know that the children were told to hide under something.

 

Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the "triangle of life". The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the "triangles" you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.

 

TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

 

1) Most everyone who simply "ducks and covers" WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

 

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

 

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

 

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on The back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

 

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

 

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

 

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different "moment of frequency" (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

  

8) Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

 

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

 

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

 

Spread the word and save someone's life... The Entire world is experiencing natural calamities so be prepared!

 

"We are but angels with one wing, it takes two to fly"

 

In 1996 we made a film, which proved my survival methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul , University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test. We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did "duck and cover," and ten mannequins I used in my"triangle of life" surviv al method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results. The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions , relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover.

 

There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the "triangle of life." This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe , and it was seen in the USA , Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.

 

THE SOURCE

 

WHAT JESUS CHRIST SAYS ABOUT EARTHQUAKES?

 

We see how earthquakes torn into pieces the lives of the people in Haiti, the people in New Zealand and this latest event in Japan. What does all this mean? According to Jesus, this is the sign that we are living in the last days. Get your Bible and read this: Jesus said: “There will be great earthquakes.” (Luke 21:11).

 

Last days of what? Last days of this Satan's World. Soon this signs Jesus foretold will become worse, then this will escalate to what he called the "great tribulation". Read in your Bible at Mat 24:21,22 it says: "For then there will be great tribulation such as has not occurred since the world’s beginning until now, no, nor will occur again. In fact, unless those days were cut short, no flesh would be saved; but on account of the chosen ones those days will be cut short."

 

From the foretold great tribulation, this will climax to Armageddon. Armageddon is not an epic movie but the Bible says its the Great War between God and Satan and his demons and followers, which will led to the prison of Satan and his demons to the abyss. Rev 20:3.

 

Imagine the world without Satan and his demons. A world free from the influence of badness.

 

So when you heard of earthquakes from different parts of the world, remember this is the sign Jesus foretold. For the true follower of Jesus, this is a sign of hope, that soon Jesus will act and clean the earth and soon a real Paradise will come.

 

If you would like to know more about this message of hope and if you like to understand about this Bible prophecy foretold by Jesus Christ, listen to Jehovah's Witnesses and ask them about it the next time they come to your door. Surely you will be relieve to know the truth, as the the truth will set you free. John 8:32.

  

The last weekend of the month, and the first after pay day, which means I could order some socks. And at Tesco I could replenish the wine stocks with a box of 3l of te cheapest red.

 

Being the end of January, it is now getting light when we set off for Tesco, the neon lights of the retail park at Whitfield as daylight grows stronger. Somehow we had used double the fuel as last week, with only an half hour's drive to Stodmarsh last week being the extra driving we did.

 

Tesco has Valentine's cards, presents and also Easter eggs and other stuff celebrating days in the forthcoming months.

 

We had a list of stuff to get, not just beer and wine, and lots of vegetables as we are having Jen, Mike and his new girlfriend over for lunch on Sunday.

 

If I remember to get the chicken out of the freezer, of course.

 

That all done, and somehow, ten quid cheaper than last week even with wine and Belgian beer, we headed home for first breakfast, coffee, then bacon butties and more brews once we had put the shopping away.

 

At ten we went out, only for a warning light to come on as the engine turned over. It seems a bulb in the headlight had gone, but the car knew which one it was. On the way to Lyminge, there is a Halfords, now that the one on Dover closed over the pandemic, so we tootled along the A20, over the top of Shakespeare Down and into town.

 

Jools found the bulb and a nice young lady fitted it for us, getting access from the wheelarch via a small panel. All done in ten minutes for fifteen quid.

 

And road legal again.

 

Back onto the motorway for the one junction before taking the turning for the back road to Hythe, though we headed inland through Etchinghill to Lyminge. And I realised it was years since we had driven this road, as we have been coming to the orchid fields through Barham usually, not from Folkestone.

 

The road climbs and turns round the foot of the downs before levelling out as it approaches Lyminge.

 

We go through the village, past the rows of the parked cars, and the small library in the building of the village railway station once the line from Folkestone to Canterbury closed at the end of the 50s.

 

The village of Lyminge stretches along the main road and around the former station, but the church is situated a short way along Church Street (of course), on a low mound, from under which the largest winterbourne, The Nailbourne, rises. It has been a site of worship since Roman times, maybe even before then.

 

We were here because in 2019, major excavations revealed the remains of the 7th century chapel of Queen Ethelburga. It was uncovered under the path that now leads under the single flying buttress to the porch, and since the dig ended, the path relaid, but with the outline of the chapel clearly showing in different colour tarmac.

 

I photographed the stained glass, as the ongoing plan to revisit churches already done, but with the big lens as I always seem to find something new to do in them. This time the glass through the big glass of the zoom lens.

 

Before leaving we walk down to the Well to revisit the source of the Nailbourne, some twenty feet below the road, the clear and cold waters of the bourne come bubbling out of the ground before meandering across the verdant meadow.

 

Just up the valley is Elham itself, I have photographed it well in the past, but the plan is to redo with windows with the big lens and the fittings too.

 

The church sits to the south of a small square, one of the village pubs is opposite, though is currently closed for renovation. The church was unlocked, and the door ajar, so I went in.

 

The church is ancient, but most of what you notice is from work done in the first decade of the 20th century, giving it the feeling of being "high".

 

Dominating the west end is the organ in its loft, it really is very imposing and wouldn't look out of place in a City church.

 

We set the sat nav for home, and it leads us down to the bottom of the valley and up the other side through Acris. The bed of the Nailbourne was already dry, despite it being just a mile from the source, because the water table isn't high enough, and the water seeps through the chalk bedrock instead.

 

We travel down lanes that got ever narrower, with grass growing between the wheeltracks. The road much less travelled for sure.

 

At Swingfield, we were greeted by the sweep of a hedge made of native dogwood, its new shoots showing starkly red in the sunshine against the clear blue sky. We stop to take shots.

 

We get home in time for a brew and a chocolate bar before the football was going to start. But I had other plans, as I made tagine for our early dinner. Which, we ate before four as it smelled so darned good bubbling away in the oven.

 

Some flavoured couscous to go with it, and a glass of red vin out of the box.

 

Lovely.

 

Scully and I sit on the sofa until half seven in the evening, either listening to the reports of the three o'clock games, or watching the evening kick off.

 

---------------------------------------------------

 

The church stands in the village square removed from the main road. The flint rubble construction and severe restoration of the exterior does not look welcoming, but the interior is most appealing with plenty of light flooding through the clerestory windows. The rectangular piers of both north and south arcades with their pointed arches and boldly carved stops are of late twelfth-century date. Between them hang some eighteenth-century text boards. The character of the church is given in the main by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century work. The high altar has four charmingly painted panels by John Ripley Wilmer in Pre-Raphaelite style, executed in 1907. At the opposite end of the church are the organ loft, font cover and baptistry, all designed by F.C. Eden, who restored the church in the early 1900s. He also designed the west window of the south aisle as part of a larger scheme which was not completed. In the south chancel wall are two windows of great curiosity. One contains a fifteenth-century figure of St Thomas Becket while the other shows figures of David and Saul. This dates from the nineteenth century and was painted by Frank Wodehouse who was the then vicar's brother. The face of David was based on that of Mme Carlotta Patti, the opera singer, while Gladstone and Disraeli can be identified hovering in the background! It is a shame that it has deteriorated badly.

 

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Elham

 

------------------------------------------

 

ELEHAM,

OR, as it is as frequently written, Elham, lies the next parish south-eastward from Stelling. It was written in the time of the Saxons both Uleham and Æiham, in Domesday, Albam. Philipott says, it was antiently written Helham, denoting the situation of it to be a valley among the hills, whilst others suppose, but with little probability, that it took its name from the quantity of eels which the Nailbourn throws out when it begins to run. There are Seven boroughsin it, of Bladbean, Boyke, Canterwood, Lyminge, Eleham, Town, Sibton, and Hurst.

 

Eleham is said to be the largest parish in the eastern parts of this county, extending itself in length from north to south, through the Nailbourn valley, about three miles and an half; and in breadth five miles and a half, that is, from part of Stelling-minnis, within the bounds of it, across the valley to Eleham down and Winteridge, and the southern part of Swinfield-minnis, almost up to Hairn-forstal, in Uphill Folkestone. The village, or town of Eleham, as it is usually called, is situated in the above-mentioned valley, rather on a rise, on the side of the stream. It is both healthy and pleasant, the houses in it being mostly modern and wellbuilt, of brick and fashed. As an instance of the healthiness of this parish, there have been within these few years several inhabitants of it buried here, of the ages of 95, 97, and 99, and one of 105; the age of 40 years being esteemed that of a young person, in this parish. The church, with the vicarage on the side of the church-yard, is situated on the eastern side of it, and the court lodge at a small distance from it. This is now no more than a small mean cottage, thatched, of, I believe, only two rooms on a floor, and unsit for habitation. It appears to be the remains of a much larger edifice, and is built of quarry-stone, with small arched gothic windows and doors, the frames of which are of ashlar stone, and seemingly very antient indeed. It is still accounted a market-town, the market having been obtained to it by prince Edward, afterwards king Edward I. in his father's life-time, anno 35 Henry III. to be held on a Monday weekly, which, though disused for a regular constancy, is held in the market-house here once in five or six years, to keep up the claim to the right of it; besides which there are three markets regularly held, for the buying and selling of cattle, in every year, on Palm, Easter, and Whit Mondays, and one fair on Oct. 20th, by the alteration of the stile, being formerly held on the day of St. Dionis, Oct. 9, for toys and pedlary. The Nailbourn, as has been already mentioned before, in the description of Liminage, runs along this valley northward, entering this parish southward, by the hamlet of Ottinge, and running thence by the town of Eleham, and at half a mile's distance, by the hamlet of North Eleham, where there are several deep ponds, in which are from time to time quantities of eels, and so on to Brompton's Pot and Wingmere, at the northern extremity of this parish. The soil in the valley is mostly an unfertile red earth, mixed with many flints; but the hills on each side of it, which are very frequent and steep, extend to a wild romantic country, with frequent woods and uninclosed downs, where the soil consists mostly of chalk, excepting towards Stelling and Swinfield minnis's, where it partakes of a like quality to that of the valley, tance,by the hamlet of North Eleham, where there only still more poor and barren. At the north-west corner of the parish, on the hill, is Eleham park, being a large wood, belonging to the lord of Eleham manor.

 

Dr. Plot says, he was informed, that there was the custom of borough English prevailing over some copyhold lands in this parish, the general usage of which is, that the youngest son should inherit all the lands and tenements which his father had within the borough, &c. but I cannot find any here subject to it. On the contrary, the custom here is, to give the whole estate to the eldest son, who pays to the younger ones their proportions of it, as valued by the homage of the manor, in money.

 

At the time of taking the survey of Domesday, anno 1080, this place was part of the possessions of the bishop of Baieux, under the general title of whose lands it is thus entered in it:

 

In Honinberg hundred, the bishop of Baieux holds in demesne Alham. It was taxed at six sulins. The arable land is twenty-four carucates. In demesne there are five carucates and forty-one villeins, with eight borderers having eighteen carucates. There is a church, and eight servants, and two mills of six shillings, and twenty eight acres of meadow. Wood for the pannage of one hundred hogs. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, and afterwards, it was worth thirty pounds, now forty, and yet it yields fifty pounds. Ederic held this manor of king Edward.

 

Four years after the bishop was disgraced, and all his possessions were consiscated to the crown, whence this manor seems to have been granted to William de Albineto, or Albini, surnamed Pincerna, who had followed the Conqueror from Normandy in his expedition hither. He was succeeded by his son, of the same name, who was made Earl of Arundel anno 15 king Stephen, and Alida his daughter carried it in marriage to John, earl of Ewe, in Normandy, whose eldest son Henry, earl of Ewe, was slain at the siege of Ptolemais in 1217, leaving Alice his sole daughter and heir, who entitled her husband Ralph D'Issondon to the possession of this manor, as well as to the title of earl of Ewe. She died in the reign of king Henry III. possessed of this manor, with the advowson of the church, and sealed with Barry, a label of six points, as appears by a deed in the Surrenden library; after which it appears to have come into the possession of prince Edward, the king's eldest son, who in the 35th year of it obtained the grant of a market on a Monday, and a fair, at this manor, (fn. 1) and afterwards, in the 41st year of that reign, alienated it to archbishop Boniface, who, left he should still further inflame that enmity which this nation had conceived against him, among other foreigners and aliens, by thus increasing his possessions in it, passed this manor away to Roger de Leyborne, who died possessed of it in the 56th year of that reign, at which time it appears that there was a park here; (fn. 2) and in his name it continued till Juliana de Leyborne, daughter of Thomas, became the sole heir of their possessions, from the greatness of which she was usually called the Infanta of Kent. She was thrice married, yet she had no issue by either of her husbands, all of whom she survived, and died in the 41st year of king Edward III. upon which this manor, among the rest of her estates, escheated to the crown, there being no one who could make claim to them, by direct or even by collateral alliance. (fn. 3) Afterwards it continued in the crown till king Richard II. vested it in feoffees in trust, towards the endowment of St. Stephen's chapel, in his palace of Westminster, which he had in his 22d year, completed and made collegiate, and had the year before granted to the dean and canons this manor, among others, in mortmain. (fn. 4) All which was confirmed by king Henry IV. and VI. and by king Edward IV. in their first years; the latter of whom, in his 9th year, granted to them a fair in this parish yearly, on the Monday after Palm-Sunday, and on the Wednesday following, with all liberties, &c. In which situation it continued till the 1st year of king Edward VI. when this college was, with all its possessions, surrendered into the king's hands, where this manor did not continue long; for the king in his 5th year, granted it to Edward, lord Clinton and Saye, and he reconveyed it to the crown the same year. After which the king demised it, for the term of eighty years, to Sir Edward Wotton, one of his privy council, whose son Thomas Wotton, esq. sold his interest in it to Alexander Hamon, esq. of Acrise, who died in 1613, leaving two daughters his coheirs, the youngest of whom Catherine, married to Sir Robert Lewknor, entitled him to it; he was at his death succeeded by his son Hamon Lewknor, esq. but the reversion in see having been purchased of the crown some few years before the expiration of the above-mentioned term, which ended the last year of king James I.'s reign, to Sir Charles Herbert, master of the revels. He at the latter end of king Charles I.'s reign, alienated it to Mr. John Aelst, merchant, of London; after which, I find by the court rolls, that it was vested in Thomas Alderne, John Fisher, and Roger Jackson, esqrs. who in the year 1681 conveyed it to Sir John Williams, whose daughter and sole heir Penelope carried it in marriage to Thomas Symonds, esq. of Herefordshire, by the heirs of whose only surviving son Thomas Symonds Powell, esq. of Pengethley, in that county, it has been lately sold to Sir Henry Oxenden, bart. who is now entitled to it.

 

A court leet and court baron is held for this manor, which is very extensive. There is much copyhold land held of it. The demesnes of it are tithe-free. There is a yearly rent charge, payable for ever out of it, of 87l. 13s. 1d. to the ironmongers company, in London.

 

Shottlesfield is a manor, situated at the southeast boundary of this parish, the house standing partly in Liminge, at a small distance southward from the street or hamlet of the same name. It was, as early as the reign of king Edward II. the inheritance of a family called le Grubbe, some of whom had afterwards possessions about Yalding and Eythorne. Thomas le Grubbe was possessed of it in the 3d year of that reign, and wrote himself of Shottlesfeld, and from him it continued down by paternal descent to John Grubbe, who in the 2d year of king Richard III. conveyed it by sale to Thomas Brockman, of Liminge, (fn. 5) whose grandson Henry Brockman, in the 1st year of queen Mary, alienated it to George Fogge, esq. of Braborne, and he, in the beginning of queen Elizabeth's reign, sold it to Bing, who, before the end of that reign, passed it away to Mr. John Masters, of Sandwich, from whom it descended to Sir Edward Masters, of Canterbury, who at his decease, soon after the death of Charles I. gave it to his second son, then LL. D. from whose heirs it was alienated to Hetherington, whose last surviving son the Rev. William Hetherington, of North Cray place, died possessed of it unmarried in 1778, and by will devised it, among his other estates, to Thomas Coventry, esq. of London, who lately died possessed of it s. p. and the trustees of his will are now entitled to it.

 

The manor of Bowick, now called Boyke, is situated likewise in the eastern part of this parish, in the borough of its own name, which was in very antient times the residence of the Lads, who in several of their old evidences were written De Lad, by which name there is an antient farm, once reputed a manor, still known, as it has been for many ages before, in the adjoining parish of Acrise, which till the reign of queen Elizabeth, was in the tenure of this family. It is certain that they were resident here at Bowick in the beginning of king Henry VI.'s reign, and in the next of Edward IV. as appears by the registers of their wills in the office at Canterbury, they constantly stiled themselves of Eleham. Thomas Lade, of Bowick, died possessed of it in 1515, as did his descendant Vincent Lade in 1563, anno 6 Elizabeth. Soon after which it passed by purchase into the name of Nethersole, from whence it quickly afterwards was alienated to Aucher, and thence again to Wroth, who at the latter end of king Charles I.'s reign sold it to Elgar; whence, after some intermission, it was sold to Thomas Scott, esq. of Liminge, whose daughter and coheir Elizabeth, married to William Turner, esq. of the Friars, in Canterbury, at length, in her right, became possessed of it; his only surviving daughter and heir Bridget married David Papillon, esq. of Acrise, and entitled him to this manor, and his grandson Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise, is the present owner of it.

 

Mount and Bladbean are two manors, situated on the hills, on the opposite sides of this parish, the former near the eastern, and the latter near the western boundaries of it; the latter being antiently called Bladbean, alias Jacobs-court, a name now quite forgotten. Both these manors appear to have been in the reign of the Conqueror, part of the possessions of Anschitillus de Ros, who is mentioned in Domesday as holding much land in the western part of this county, their principal manor there being that of Horton, near Farningham. One of this family made a grant of it to the Cosentons, of Cosenton, in Aylesford, to hold of their barony of Ros, as of their manor of Horton before-mentioned, by knight's service. In the 7th year of Edward III. Sir Stephen de Cosenton obtained a charter of freewarren for his lands here. He was the son of Sir William de Cosenton, sheriff anno 35 Edward I. and was sometimes written of Cosenton, and sometimes of Mount, in Eleham. At length his descendant dying in the beginning of king Henry VIII.'s reign, without male issue, his three daughters, married to Duke, Wood, and Alexander Hamon, esq. became his coheirs, and shared a large inheritance between them, and upon their division of it, the manor of Bladbean, alias Jacobs-court, was allotted to Wood, and Mount to Alexander Hamon.

 

The manor of Bladbean, alias Jacobs-court, was afterwards alienated by the heirs of Wood to Thomas Stoughton, esq. of St. Martin's, near Canterbury, who by will in 1591 (fn. 6) gave this manor, with its rents and services, to Elizabeth his daughter and coheir, married to Thomas Wilde, esq. of St. Martin's, whose grandson Colonel Dudley Wilde, at his death in 1653, s. p. devised it to his widow, from whom it went by sale to Hills, and Mr. James Hills, in 1683, passed it away to Mr. Daniel Woollet, whose children divided this estate among them; a few years after which John Brice became, by purchase of it at different times, possessed of the whole of it, which he in 1729 conveyed by sale to Mr. Valentine Sayer, of Sandwich, who died possessed of it in 1766, and the heirs of his eldest son Mr. George Sayer, of Sandwich, are now entitled to it.

 

The manor of Mount, now called Mount court, which was allotted as above-mentioned, to Alexander Hamon, continued down to his grandson, of the same name, who died possessed of it in 1613, leaving two daughters his coheirs, the youngest of whom, Catherine, entitled her husband Sir Robert Lewknor, to it, in whose descendants it continued till Robert Lewknor, esq. his grandson, in 1666, alienated it, with other lands in this parish, to Thomas Papillon, esq. of Lubenham, in Leicestershire, whose descendant Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise, is the present proprietor of it.

 

Ladwood is another manor in this parish, lying at the eastern boundary of it, likewise on the hills next to Acrise. It was written in old evidences Ladswood, whence it may with probability be conjectured, that before its being converted into a farm of arable land, and the erecting of a habitation here, it was a wood belonging to the family of Lad, resident at Bowick; but since the latter end of king Edward III.'s reign, it continued uninterrupted in the family of Rolse till the reign of king Charles II. soon after which it was alienated to Williams, in which name it remained till Penelope, daughter of Sir John Williams, carried it in marriage to Thomas Symonds, esq. the heirs of whose only surviving son Thomas Symonds Powell, esq. sold it to David Papillon, esq. whose son Thomas Papillon, esq. now possesses it.

 

The manor of Canterwood, as appears by an old manuscript, seemingly of the time of Henry VIII. was formerly the estate of Thomas de Garwinton, of Welle, lying in the eastern part of the parish, and who lived in the reigns of Edward II. and III. whose greatgrandson William Garwinton, dying s. p. Joane his kinswoman, married to Richard Haut, was, in the 9th year of king Henry IV. found to be his heir, not only in this manor, but much other land in these parts, and their son Richard Haut having an only daughter and heir Margery, she carried this manor in marriage to William Isaak. After which, as appears from the court-rolls, which do not reach very high, that the family of Hales became possessed of it, in which it staid till the end of queen Elizabeth's reign, when it went by sale to Manwood, from which name it was alienated to Sir Robert Lewknor, whose grandson Robert Lewknor, esq. in 1666 sold it, with other lands in this parish already mentioned, to Thomas Papillon, esq. of Lu benham, in Leicestershire, whose descendant Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise, is the present owner of it.

 

Oxroad, now usually called Ostrude, is a manor, situated a little distance eastward from North Eleham. It had antiently owners of the same name; Andrew de Oxroad held it of the countess of Ewe, in the reign of king Edward I. by knight's service, as appears by the book of them in the king's remembrancer's office. In the 20th year of king Edward III. John, son of Simon atte Welle, held it of the earl of Ewe by the like service. After which the Hencles became possessed of it, from the reign of king Henry IV. to that of king Henry VIII. when Isabel, daughter of Tho. Hencle, marrying John Beane, entitled him to it, and in his descendants it continued till king Charles I.'s reign, when it was alienated to Mr. Daniel Shatterden, gent. of this parish, descended from those of Shatterden, in Great Chart, which place they had possessed for many generations. At length, after this manor had continued for some time in his descendants, it was sold to Adams, in which name it remained till the heirs of Randall Adams passed it away by sale to Papillon, in whose family it still continues, being now the property of Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise.

 

Hall, alias Wingmere, is a manor, situated in the valley at the northern boundary of this parish, next to Barham, in which some part of the demesne lands of it lie. It is held of the manor of Eleham, and had most probably once owners of the name of Wigmere, as it was originally spelt, of which name there was a family in East Kent, and in several antient evidences there is mention made of William de Wigmere and others of this name. However this be, the family of Brent appear to have been for several generations possessed of this manor, and continued so till Thomas Brent, of Wilsborough, dying in 1612,s. p. it passed into the family of Dering, of Surrenden; for in king James I.'s reign Edward Dering, gent. of Egerton, eldest son of John, the fourth son of John Dering, esq, of Surren den, who had married Thomas Brent's sister, was become possessed of it; and his only son and heir Thomas Dering, gent. in 1649, alienated it to William Codd, gent. (fn. 7) of Watringbury, who was succeeded in it by his son James Codd, esq. of Watringbury, who died s. p. in 1708, being then sheriff of this county, and being possessed at his death of this manor in fee, in gavelkind; upon which it came to the representatives of his two aunts, Jane, the wife of Boys Ore, and Anne, of Robert Wood, and they, in 1715, by fine levied, entitled Thomas Manley, and Elizabeth, his wife, to the possession of this manor for their lives, and afterwards to them in fee, in separate moieties. He died s. p. in 1716, and by will gave his moiety to John Pollard; on whose death s. p. it came, by the limitation in the above will, to Joshua Monger, whose only daughter and heir Rachael carried it in marriage to her husband Arthur Pryor, and they in 1750 joined in the sale of it to Mr. Richard Halford, gent. of Canterbury. The other moiety of this manor seems to have been devised by Elizabeth Manley above-mentioned, at her death, to her nephew Thomas Kirkby, whose sons Thomas, John, and Manley Kirkby, joined, in the above year, in the conveyance of it to Mr. Richard Halford above-mentioned, who then became possessed of the whole of it. He was third son of Richard Halford, clerk, rector of the adjoining parish of Liminge, descended from the Halfords, of Warwickshire, as appears by his will in the Prerogative-office, Canterbury, by which he devised to his several sons successively in tail, the estate in Warwickshire, which he was entitled to by the will of his kinsman William Halford, gent, of that county. They bear for their arms, Argent, a greybound passant, sable, on a chief of the second, three fleurs de lis, or. He died possessed of it in 1766, leaving by Mary his wife, daughter of Mr. Christopher Creed, of Canterbury, one son Richard Halford, gent. now of Canterbury; and two daughters, Mary married to Mr. John Peirce, surgeon, of Canterbury; and Sarah. In 1794, Mr. Peirce purchased the shares of Mr. Richard and Mrs. Sarah Halford, and he is now the present owner of this manor. He bears for his arms, Azure field, wavy bend, or, two unicorns heads, proper.

 

The manor OF Clavertigh is situated on the hills at the north-west boundary of this parish, next to Liminge, which antiently belonged to the abbey of Bradsole, or St. Radigund, near Dover, and it continued among the possessions of it till the 27th year of king Henry VIII. when by the act then passed, it was suppressed, as not having the clear yearly revenue of two hundred pounds, and was surrendered into the king's hands, who in his 29th year, granted the scite of this priory, with all its lands and possessions, among which this manor was included, with certain exceptions, however, mentioned in it, to archbishop Cranmer, who in the 38th year of that reign, conveyed this manor of Clavertigh, with lands called Monkenlands, late belonging to the same priory in this parish, back again to the king, who that same year granted all those premises to Sir James Hales, one of the justices of the common pleas, to hold in capite, (fn. 8) and he, in the beginning of king Edward VI.'s reign, passed them away to Peter Heyman, esq. one of the gentlemen of that prince's bedchamber who seems to have had a new grant of them from the crown, in the 2d year of that reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Ralph Heyman, esq. of Sellindge, whose descendant Sir Peter Heyman, bart. alienated the manor of Clavetigh to Sir Edward Honywood, of Evington, created a baronet in 1660, in whose descendants this manor has continued down to Sir John Honywood, bart. of Evington, who is the present possessor of it.

 

Charities.

Jonas Warley, D. D. gave by will in 1722, 50l. to be put out on good security, the produce to be given yearly in bread on every Sunday in the year, after divine service, to six poor widows, to each of them a two-penny loaf. The money is now vested in the vicar and churchwardens, and the produce of it being no more than 2l. 5s. per annum, only a three-halfpenny loaf is given to each widow.

 

Land in this parish, of the annual produce of 1l. was given by a person unknown, to be disposed of to the indigent. It is vested in the minister, churchwardens, and overseers.

 

Four small cottages were given to the parish, by a person unknown, and are now inhabited by poor persons. They are vested in the churchwardens and overseers.

 

Sir John Williams, by will in 1725, founded A CHARITY SCHOOL in this parish for six poor boys, legal inhabitants, and born in this parish, to be taught reading, writing, and accounts, to be cloathed once in two years; and one such boy to be bound out apprentice, as often as money sufficient could be raised for that use. The minister, churchwardens, and overseers to be trustees, who have power to nominate others to assist them in the management of it. The master has a house to live in, and the lands given to it are let by the trustees.

 

The poor constantly relieved are about seventy-five, casually fifty-five.

 

Eleham is within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of its own name.

 

The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is large and handsome, consisting of three isles, the middle one having an upper range of windows, and one chancel, having a tower steeple, with a spire shast on it, at the west end, in which are eight bells, a clock, and chimes. Within the altar-rails is a memorial for John Somner, gent. son of the learned William Somner, of Canterbury, obt. 1695; arms, Ermine, a chevron voided. In the chancel a brass plate for Michael Pyx, of Folkestone, mayor and once high bailisf to Yarmouth, obt. 1601. Another for Nicholas Moore, gent. of Bettenham, in Cranbrooke; he died at Wingmer in 1577. In the middle isle a memorial for Captain William Symons, obt. 1674; arms, Parted per pale, and fess, three trefoils slipt. A brass plate for John Hill, dean and vicar of Eleham, obt. 1730. In this church was a lamp burning, called the light of Wyngmer, given before the year 1468, probably by one of the owners of that manor.

 

The church of Eleham was given by archbishop Boniface, lord of the manor of Eleham, and patron of this church appendant to it, at the instance of Walter de Merton, then canon of St. Paul's, and afterwards bishop of Rochester, to the college founded by the latter in 1263, at Maldon, in Surry. (fn. 9) After which the archbishop, in 1268, appropriated this church to the college, whenever it should become vacant by the death or cession of the rector of it, saving a reasonable vicarage of thirty marcs, to be endowed by him in it, to which the warden of the college should present to him and his successors, a fit vicar, as often as it should be vacant, to be nominated to the warden by the archbishop; otherwise the archbishop and his successors should freely from thence dispose of the vicarage for that turn. (fn. 10)

 

¶The year before this, Walter de Merton had begun a house in Oxford, whither some of the scholars were from time to time to resort for the advancement of their studies, to which the whole society of Maldon was, within a few years afterwards, removed, and both societies united at Oxford, under the name of the warden and fellows of Merton college. This portion of thirty marcs, which was a stated salary, and not tithes, &c. to that amount, was continued by a subsequent composition or decree of archbishop Warham, in 1532; but in 1559, the college, of their own accord, agreed to let the vicarial tithes, &c. to Thomas Carden, then vicar, at an easy rent, upon his discharging the college from the before-mentioned portion of thirty marcs: and this lease, with the like condition, has been renewed to every subsequent vicar ever since; and as an addition to their income, the vicars have for some time had another lease, of some wood grounds here, from the college. (fn. 11)

 

The appropriation or parsonage of this church is now held by lease from the warden and fellows, by the Rev. John Kenward Shaw Brooke, of Town-Malling. The archbishop nominates a clerk to the vicarage of it, whom the warden and fellows above-mentioned present to him for institution.

 

This vicarage is valued in the king's books at twenty pounds, (being the original endowment of thirty marcs), and the yearly tenths at two pounds, the clear yearly certified value of it being 59l. 15s. 2d. In 1640 it was valued at one hundred pounds per annum. Communicants six hundred. It is now of about the yearly value of one hundred and fifty pounds.

 

All the lands in this parish pay tithes to the rector or vicar, excepting Parkgate farm, Farthingsole farm, and Eleham-park wood, all belonging to the lord of Eleham manor, which claim a modus in lieu of tithes, of twenty shillings yearly paid to the vicar. The manor farm of Clavertigh, belonging to Sir John Honywood, bart and a parcel of lands called Mount Bottom, belonging to the Rev. Mr. Thomas Tournay, of Dover, claim a like modus in lieu of tithes.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol8/pp95-110

New book! Epic Landscape Photography: The Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography!

 

www.facebook.com/epiclandscapephotography/

 

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

 

Working on a couple photography books! 45EPIC GODDESS PHOTOGRAPHY: A classic guide to exalting the archetypal woman. And 45EPIC Fine Art Landscape Photography!

 

More on my golden ratio musings: facebook.com/goldennumberratio

instagram.com/goldennumberratio

 

Greetings all! I have been busy finishing a few books on photography, while traveling all over--to Zion and the Sierras--shooting fall colors. Please see some here: facebook.com/mcgucken

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Let me know in the comments if you would like a free review copy of one of my photography books! :)

 

Titles include:

The Tao of Epic Landscape Photography: Exalt Fine Art with the Yin-Yang Wisdom of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching!

 

The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Why the Fibonacci Numbers Exalt Beauty and How to Create PHI Compositions in Art, Design, & Photography

facebook.com/goldennumberratio

 

And I am also working on a book on photographing the goddesses! :) More goddesses soon!

 

Best wishes on your epic hero's odyssey!:)

 

instagram.com/45surf

 

I love voyaging forth into nature to contemplate poetry, physics, the golden ratio, and the Tao te Ching! What's your favorite epic poetry reflecting epic landscapes? I recently finished a book titled Epic Poetry for Epic Landscape Photographers:

 

www.facebook.com/Epic-Poetry-for-Epic-Landscape-Photograp...

 

Did you know that John Muir, Thoreau, and Emerson all loved epic poetry and poets including Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and Robert Burns?

 

I recently finished my fourth book on Light Time Dimension Theory, much of which was inspired by an autumn trip to Zion!

 

www.facebook.com/lightimedimensiontheory/

 

Via its simple principle of a fourth expanding dimension, LTD Theory provides a unifying, foundational *physical* model underlying relativity, quantum mechanics, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, and the second law of thermodynamics. The detailed diagrams demonstrate that the great mysteries of quantum mechanical nonlocality, entanglement, and probability naturally arise from the very same principle that fosters relativity alongside light's constant velocity, the equivalence of mass and energy, and time dilation.

 

Follow me on instagram!

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

That hill looks like a probability gaussian distribution... bell curve.

  

Very close to REFORD GARDENS | JARDINS DE METIS

 

Beautiful flowers at Reford Gardens.

 

Visit : www.refordgardens.com/

 

From Wikipedia:

 

Elsie Stephen Meighen - born January 22, 1872, Perth, Ontario - and Robert Wilson Reford - born in 1867, Montreal - got married on June 12, 1894.

 

Elsie Reford was a pioneer of Canadian horticulture, creating one of the largest private gardens in Canada on her estate, Estevan Lodge in eastern Québec. Located in Grand-Métis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, her gardens have been open to the public since 1962 and operate under the name Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.

  

Born January 22, 1872 at Perth, Ontario, Elsie Reford was the eldest of three children born to Robert Meighen and Elsie Stephen. Coming from modest backgrounds themselves, Elsie’s parents ensured that their children received a good education. After being educated in Montreal, she was sent to finishing school in Dresden and Paris, returning to Montreal fluent in both German and French, and ready to take her place in society.

 

She married Robert Wilson Reford on June 12, 1894. She gave birth to two sons, Bruce in 1895 and Eric in 1900. Robert and Elsie Reford were, by many accounts, an ideal couple. In 1902, they built a house on Drummond Street in Montreal. They both loved the outdoors and they spend several weeks a year in a log cabin they built at Lac Caribou, south of Rimouski. In the autumn they hunted for caribou, deer, and ducks. They returned in winter to ski and snowshoe. Elsie Reford also liked to ride. She had learned as a girl and spent many hours riding on the slopes of Mount Royal. And of course, there was salmon-fishing – a sport at which she excelled.

 

In her day, she was known for her civic, social, and political activism. She was engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the Montreal Maternity Hospital and she was also the moving force behind the creation of the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal, the first women club in Canada. She believed it important that the women become involved in debates over the great issues of the day, « something beyond the local gossip of the hour ». Her acquaintance with Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, led to her involvement in organizing, in 1908, Québec City’s tercentennial celebrations. The event was one of many to which she devoted herself in building bridges with French-Canadian community.

 

During the First World War, she joined her two sons in England and did volunteer work at the War Office, translating documents from German into English. After the war, she was active in the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Montreal Council of Social Agencies, and the National Association of Conservative Women.

 

In 1925 at the age of 53 years, Elsie Reford was operated for appendicitis and during her convalescence, her doctor counselled against fishing, fearing that she did not have the strength to return to the river.”Why not take up gardening?” he said, thinking this a more suitable pastime for a convalescent woman of a certain age. That is why she began laying out the gardens and supervising their construction. The gardens would take ten years to build, and would extend over more than twenty acres.

 

Elsie Reford had to overcome many difficulties in bringing her garden to life. First among them were the allergies that sometimes left her bedridden for days on end. The second obstacle was the property itself. Estevan was first and foremost a fishing lodge. The site was chosen because of its proximity to a salmon river and its dramatic views – not for the quality of the soil.

 

To counter-act nature’s deficiencies, she created soil for each of the plants she had selected, bringing peat and sand from nearby farms. This exchange was fortuitous to the local farmers, suffering through the Great Depression. Then, as now, the gardens provided much-needed work to an area with high unemployment. Elsie Reford’s genius as a gardener was born of the knowledge she developed of the needs of plants. Over the course of her long life, she became an expert plantsman. By the end of her life, Elsie Reford was able to counsel other gardeners, writing in the journals of the Royal Horticultural Society and the North American Lily Society. Elsie Reford was not a landscape architect and had no training of any kind as a garden designer. While she collected and appreciated art, she claimed no talents as an artist.

 

Elsie Stephen Reford died at her Drummond Street home on November 8, 1967 in her ninety-sixth year.

 

In 1995, the Reford Gardens ("Jardins de Métis") in Grand-Métis were designated a National Historic Site of Canada, as being an excellent Canadian example of the English-inspired garden.(Wikipedia)

 

Visit : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Reford

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Visit : www.refordgardens.com/

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS

 

Créés par Elsie Reford de 1926 à 1958, ces jardins témoignent de façon remarquable de l’art paysager à l’anglaise. Disposés dans un cadre naturel, un ensemble de jardins exhibent fleurs vivaces, arbres et arbustes. Le jardin des pommetiers, les rocailles et l’Allée royale évoquent l’œuvre de cette dame passionnée d’horticulture. Agrémenté d’un ruisseau et de sentiers sinueux, ce site jouit d’un microclimat favorable à la croissance d’espèces uniques au Canada. Les pavots bleus et les lis, privilégiés par Mme Reford, y fleurissent toujours et contribuent , avec d’autres plantes exotiques et indigènes, à l’harmonie de ces lieux.

 

Created by Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958, these gardens are an inspired example of the English art of the garden. Woven into a natural setting, a series of gardens display perennials, trees and shrubs. A crab-apple orchard, a rock garden, and the Long Walk are also the legacy of this dedicated horticulturist. A microclimate favours the growth of species found nowhere else in Canada, while the stream and winding paths add to the charm. Elsie Reford’s beloved blue poppies and lilies still bloom and contribute, with other exotic and indigenous plants, to the harmony of the site.

 

Commission des lieux et monuments historiques du Canada

Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.

Gouvernement du Canada – Government of Canada

 

© Copyright

This photo and all those in my Photostream are protected by copyright. No one may reproduce, copy, transmit or manipulate them without my written permission.

© 2012 Alan Mackenzie.

 

www.alanmackenziephotography.com

 

If I could have a pound for every time someone mentions a 1963 film, starring Tippi Hedren, I could purchase the rights for that film and have it banned. The newly defined "MacKenzie's Law" states: As the number of starlings increase, the probability that someone will make trite references to Alfred Hitchcock approaches 1.

See my main account for my photography, videos, fractal images and more here: www.flickr.com/photos/josh-rokman/

 

Made with the Bing Image Creator, powered by DALL-E 3.

 

I think that AI image generation is similar in many ways to photography. The camera itself handles all the fine details, but the photographer is in charge of curating the types of images that will be created.

 

Ultimately, it is all about maximizing the probability that something good will be created.

 

This is very similar to AI image generation, in terms of the skills involved and what the human does vs. what the machine does.

 

You can't compare AI image generation to the process of actually making these images from scratch with 3D software or paint/pencils, where the human controls every detail.

 

However, I think the process really is very similar to that of photography, as I made the case for above.

 

- Josh

 

Forming the backbone of Nottinghamshire's coal traffic haulage in the 1970s a pair of class 20s do what they did best - moving coal from Pit to Yard to Power Stations dotted along the Trent Valley. The transition to MGRs however saw their use dwindle and eventually cease altogether effectively killing off Toton Yard and the ritual wagon sorting operations that formed the key part of the work there.

 

In this shot 20047 (still in green livery) pilots 20172 through the site of the original Long Eaton station just south of Toton Yard with a rake of empty MGRs. By this time the signal box in the background essentially controlled the barrier gates only with signal control already ceded to Trent Power Box a mile or so down the line.

 

Taken on the evening of 9th August 1977, in all probability when I was out for the typically rostered Peak 44 on the British Celanese tanks.

94/365

This past couple of weeks, maybe even months, I have been feeling like I am chasing rainbows and running up hills and all those other things people write songs about. And I think Easter has made it worse because I have not really had any human contact other than my family, so not only am I going kind of stir crazy, I am struggling to convince myself that the probability of my success is worth even bothering with the trouble of pursuing the future I want, mainly because I really do not think I am good enough, which is really just the fault of years of an education system that seems to think the best way to encourage the future generations is to put them down and tell them they are not good enough. The funny thing is, I have not been this sure of a career path since the thirteen years I wanted to study medicine. Maybe even then. And I feel like, no matter how many times people tell me that I can do it, I do not think I will ever have the confidence to believe them because people have said that about everything that I have failed at, too, and I feel like there have been more failures, at least on paper, than there have been successes. And I think, deep down, somewhere, I do know that I have the abilities I need to get me where I want to be, I just feel like I do not have the statistics on paper to even let me have a chance.

 

For over a month now I have been going over this cyclical argument of self-confidence, self-worth and my own ability in my head every day. And you want to know what I have realised from it all? You want to know what my conclusion is? Being an adult sucks. That is what I have gained from this. I could write a whole essay about it. And my conclusion would be this. In conclusion, being an adult sucks because being an adult means that you have to deal with this, being an adult means you have to make decisions and think about what is best and whether happiness is more important than job security. And being an adult sucks because all that growing up has done for me is destroyed my confidence and self-worth. I do not think I am any wiser for being older, I do not think I am any braver or kinder or generally better, in fact, I think I am a worse human being than when I was young and naïve and innocent. I want to go back to the days of endless summers.

New book! Epic Landscape Photography: The Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography!

 

www.facebook.com/epiclandscapephotography/

 

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

 

Working on a couple photography books! 45EPIC GODDESS PHOTOGRAPHY: A classic guide to exalting the archetypal woman. And 45EPIC Fine Art Landscape Photography!

 

More on my golden ratio musings: facebook.com/goldennumberratio

instagram.com/goldennumberratio

 

Greetings all! I have been busy finishing a few books on photography, while traveling all over--to Zion and the Sierras--shooting fall colors. Please see some here: facebook.com/mcgucken

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Let me know in the comments if you would like a free review copy of one of my photography books! :)

 

Titles include:

The Tao of Epic Landscape Photography: Exalt Fine Art with the Yin-Yang Wisdom of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching!

 

The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Why the Fibonacci Numbers Exalt Beauty and How to Create PHI Compositions in Art, Design, & Photography

facebook.com/goldennumberratio

 

And I am also working on a book on photographing the goddesses! :) More goddesses soon!

 

Best wishes on your epic hero's odyssey!:)

 

instagram.com/45surf

 

I love voyaging forth into nature to contemplate poetry, physics, the golden ratio, and the Tao te Ching! What's your favorite epic poetry reflecting epic landscapes? I recently finished a book titled Epic Poetry for Epic Landscape Photographers:

 

www.facebook.com/Epic-Poetry-for-Epic-Landscape-Photograp...

 

Did you know that John Muir, Thoreau, and Emerson all loved epic poetry and poets including Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and Robert Burns?

 

I recently finished my fourth book on Light Time Dimension Theory, much of which was inspired by an autumn trip to Zion!

 

www.facebook.com/lightimedimensiontheory/

 

Via its simple principle of a fourth expanding dimension, LTD Theory provides a unifying, foundational *physical* model underlying relativity, quantum mechanics, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, and the second law of thermodynamics. The detailed diagrams demonstrate that the great mysteries of quantum mechanical nonlocality, entanglement, and probability naturally arise from the very same principle that fosters relativity alongside light's constant velocity, the equivalence of mass and energy, and time dilation.

 

Follow me on instagram!

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

This awesome Live Oak was in the defensive bridgehead held by the Confederate Army on the east side of the Big Black River, and in the axis of the Union Attack during the Battle of the Big Black River Bridge. It stands today as a living witness and in all probability hides a few minie balls within it's massive trunk.

♪♫♪ leave that thing alone ♪♫♪

 

Chellah, Rabat, Morocco. There is the probability that the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians inhabited the banks of this river. The Romans took over Chellah in 40 AD and turned it into Sala Colonia. Around 250 AD it came under the control of the Berber rulers. Today it is a complex of the ancient and medieval ruins of Morocco. It contains the ruins of Sala Colonia (referred to as Sala by Ptolemy). Excavations have revealed among others the remains of the Decumanus Maximus, a monumental fountain, and a triumphal arc.

It was abandoned in 1154 and was later used by the Almohad dynasty as a necropolis. Then in the middle of the 14th century the Merinid Sultan, Abu I-Hasan constructed features like a mosque, a Zawiya and a grand main gate. Today Chellah, Morocco is also home to the tomb of Abu I-Hasan.

Chellah, Rabat experienced a massive earthquake in the 18th century and this resulted in the destruction of many structures from the ancient or medieval Morocco. Today Chellah, Rabat, Morocco has been converted to a garden. It has attained a position in the list of the major Morocco tourist attractions.

 

flickeflu.com/photos/25228175@N08

Cemetery of the Church of St Materiana (Tintagel Parish Church)

 

Friedhof der Church of St Materiana (Tintagel Parish Church)

 

Tintagel /tɪnˈtædʒəl/ or Trevena (Cornish: Tre war Venydh meaning village on a mountain) is a civil parish and village situated on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The population of the parish was 1,820 people (2001 census), and the area of the parish is 4,281 acres (17.32 km2). The parish population decreased to 1,727 at the 2011 census. An electoral ward also exists extending inland to Otterham. The population of this ward at the same census was 3,990. The village and nearby Tintagel Castle are associated with the legends surrounding King Arthur. The village has, in recent times, become attractive to day-trippers and tourists, and is one of the most-visited places in Britain. Treknow is the largest of the other settlements in the parish, which include Trethevy, Trebarwith, Tregatta, Trenale and Trewarmett.

 

Toponymists have had difficulty explaining the origin of 'Tintagel': the probability is that it is Norman French, as the Cornish of the 13th century would have lacked the soft 'g' ('i/j' in the earliest forms: see also Tintagel Castle). If it is Cornish then 'Dun' would mean Fort. Oliver Padel proposes 'Dun' '-tagell' meaning narrow place in his book on place names. There is a possible cognate in the Channel Islands named Tente d'Agel, but that still leaves the question subject to doubt

 

The name first occurs in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136, in Latin) as Tintagol, implying pronunciation with a hard [g] sound as in modern English girl. But in Layamon's Brut (MS Cotton Otho C.xi, f. 482), in early Middle English, the name is rendered as Tintaieol. The letter i in this spelling implies a soft consonant like modern English j; the second part of the name would be pronounced approximately as -ageul would be in modern French.

 

An oft-quoted Celtic etymology in the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, accepts the view of Padel (1985) that the name is from Cornish *din meaning fort and *tagell meaning neck, throat, constriction, narrow (Celtic *dūn, "fort" = Irish dún, "fort", cf. Welsh dinas, "city"; *tagell = Welsh tagell, "gill, wattle").

 

The modern-day village of Tintagel was always known as Trevena (Cornish: Tre war Venydh) until the Post Office started using 'Tintagel' as the name in the mid-19th century (until then Tintagel had been restricted to the name of the headland and of the parish). The village also has the 'Old Post Office', which dates from the 14th century. It became a post office during the 19th century, and is now listed Grade I and owned by the National Trust.

 

In Geoffrey's Historia, Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, puts his wife Igraine in Tintagol while he is at war (posuit eam in oppido Tintagol in littore maris: "he put her in the oppidum Tintagol on the shore of the sea"). Merlin disguised Uther Pendragon as Gorlois so that Uther could enter Tintagel and impregnate Igraine while pretending to be Gorlois. Uther and Igraine's child was King Arthur. In the Tristan and Iseult legend some events are also set at Tintagel.

 

In Norman times a small castle was established at Bossiney, probably before the Domesday Survey of 1086; Bossiney and Trevena were established as a borough in 1253 by Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall. In Domesday Book there are certainly two manors in this parish (for a probable third see Trethevy). Bossiney (which included Trevena) was held from the monks of Bodmin by the Earl of Cornwall: there was land for 6 ploughs and 30 acres (120,000 m2) of pasture (before the Conquest it had been held from the monks by Alfwy). The monks of Bodmin held Treknow themselves: there was land for 8 ploughs and 100 acres (400,000 m2) of pasture. Tintagel was one of the 17 Antiqua maneria of the Duchy of Cornwall. The parish feast traditionally celebrated at Tintagel was 19 October, the feast day of St Denys, patron of the chapel at Trevena (the proper date is 9 October but the feast has moved forward due to the calendar reform of 1752). The market hall and the site of the fair were near the chapel.

 

The borough of Bossiney was given the right to send two MPs to Parliament c. 1552 and continued to do so until 1832 when its status as a borough was abolished. The villages of Trevena and Bossiney were until the early 20th century separated by fields along Bossiney Road.

 

The Tithe Commissioners' survey was carried out in 1840–41 and recorded the area of the parish as 4,280 acres (17.3 km2), of which arable and pasture land was 3,200 acres (13 km2). The land owned by the largest landowner, Lord Wharncliffe, amounted to 1,814 acres (7.34 km2), and there was 125 acres (0.51 km2) of glebe land. Precise details of the size and tenure of every piece of land are given. Sidney Madge did research into the history of the parish and compiled a manuscript Records of Tintagel in 1945.

 

On 6 July 1979, Tintagel was briefly subject to national attention when an RAF Hawker Hunter fighter aircraft crashed into the village following an engine malfunction. The unusual incident caused significant damage and consternation, but no deaths.

 

The Church of St Materiana (Tintagel Parish Church) has been Anglican since the English Reformation. It was originally built in Norman times. Writing in 1951, Nikolaus Pevsner was uncertain about the dating and suggests that the Norman work has some Saxon features while the tower may be 13th or 15th century in date. It stands on the cliffs between Trevena and Tintagel Castle and is listed Grade I. The first church on the site was probably in the 6th century, founded as a daughter church of Minster: these are the only churches dedicated to St Materiana though she is usually identified with Madryn, Princess of Gwent. The existing church may be late 11th or early 12th century: the tower is some three centuries later and the most significant change since then was the restoration in 1870 by James Piers St Aubyn. Later changes include moving the organ (twice) and a number of new stained glass windows: many of these portray saints, including St Materiana, St George and St Piran. The font is Norman, rather crudely carved in elvan. There are three modern copies of Old Master paintings, and a Roman milestone (described above under Antiquities). The tower has a peal of six bells, ranging in date from 1735 to 1945. An area of the churchyard was excavated in 1990–91 by the Cornwall Archaeological Unit. The parish war memorial stands at the western end of the churchyard and a modern churchyard cross (c. 1910) near the south entrance.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Tintagel (kornisch Dintagell oder Tre war Venydh) ist eine Ortschaft an einem zerklüfteten Küstenabschnitt der Grafschaft Cornwall im äußersten Südwesten Englands.

 

Die Ortsbezeichnung ist vor allem bekannt durch die in der Nähe am Meer liegende Burgruine Tintagel Castle, die der Chronist Geoffrey of Monmouth 1136 in seiner Historia Regum Britanniae zu König Artus' Residenz erklärt hat. Im Dorf leben etwa 700 Menschen, die Gemeinde hat 1820 Einwohner (Volkszählung 2001). Bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts hieß der Ort Trevena, und Tintagel war die Bezeichnung für das Gemeindegebiet und das Oberland. Die Umbenennung erfolgte durch die Postverwaltung. Erstmals urkundlich erwähnt wurde Tintagel in der Chronik von Monmouth mit der lateinischen Bezeichnung Tintagol.

 

In der Spätantike (ca. 5. bis 7. Jahrhundert) befand sich hier eine größere Siedlung, die von den Archäologen teils als Kloster, teils als Fürstensitz interpretiert worden ist. Auffällig ist, dass sich in den Ruinen große Mengen an aus Ostrom importierter Keramik fanden, was auf recht enge Kontakte zum Mittelmeerraum hinweist. Später wurde der Komplex unter unklaren Umständen aufgegeben.

 

In normannischen Zeiten wurde dann im kleineren, nahgelegenen Dorf Bossiney eine Burg errichtet, was wohl vor der Entstehung des Domesday Books und damit also vor 1086 geschah. Als Bezirke wurden Tintagel und Bossiney im Jahre 1253 unter Richard von Cornwall etabliert.

 

Im Jahr 1927 wurde hier der Orden der Gefährten von den Rittern der Tafelrunde (Order of the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table) von Frederick Thomas Glasscock gegründet, drei Jahre später errichtete er für diesen Orden ein Gebäude mit dem Namen King Arthur's Hall, das heutzutage hauptsächlich als Museum dient.

 

Der Ort selbst präsentiert sich heute als eine Ansammlung von Bungalows und Gasthäusern. Er gehört zu den am häufigsten von Touristen besuchten Zielen in England. Viele der alten Häuser wurden bereits Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts abgerissen, um den Anforderungen des Tourismus gerecht zu werden. Erhalten blieb aus früheren Zeiten nur das Alte Postamt, ein kleines, pittoreskes Herrenhaus aus dem 14. Jahrhundert mit gewelltem Schieferdach. Der National Trust hat das Gebäude restauriert und einen der Räume entsprechend seiner ehemaligen Bestimmung wieder als viktorianische Dorfpost eingerichtet. In der Vielzahl von Souvenirläden im Ortskern weist praktisch alles, was sich käuflich erwerben lässt, auf König Arthur hin. Tintagel selbst kann zwar keine eigene Badebucht vorweisen, doch kaum eine halbe Stunde Fußweg entfernt liegt Trebarwith Strand an dem auch gesurft wird.

 

Eines der bekanntesten Bauwerke, welches dem Tourismus dient, ist das King Arthur's Castle Hotel aus dem Jahre 1899, das heute unter dem Namen Camelot Castle Hotel geführt wird. Im November 2010 brachte der englische Fernsehsender BBC einen 12-minütigen Bericht über die Geschäftspraktiken des Hotels, da vermutet wurde, es sei im Besitz von Scientology.

 

Ein Stück vom Ort entfernt steht die normannische Pfarrkirche St. Materiana. Sie wurde im späten 11. und frühen 12. Jahrhundert erbaut.

 

Die katholische Kirche des Apostels St. Paul (St Paul's Church) wurde 1967 erbaut. Bekanntheit erlangte die Kirche dank ihres dreißigtausend-teiligen Mosaiks, des Schweizer Künstlers Hanspeter Steiner. Zum 40. Jahrestag der Kirche, im Jahre 2008, wurde eine moderne Fassung von Leonardo da Vincis Letztem Abendmahl in der Kirche aufgehängt, welches vom ortsansässigen Künstler Nicholas St John Rosse geschaffen wurde. Zudem besuchen Menschen aus aller Welt die Kirche, da sie im dort ausliegenden Miscarriage & Infant Loss Memorial Book lesen wollen, welches die Namen von Säuglingen bewahrt die durch Fehlgeburt, Totgeburt oder durch andere Ursachen starben.

 

Wichtige Ausgrabungen beginnend mit Ralegh Radford in den 1930er Jahren auf und rund um die Burg aus dem 12. Jahrhundert ergaben, dass in Tintagel ein hochrangiges iroschottisches Kloster (nach Ralegh Radford) oder eine fürstliche Festung und Handelssiedlung aus dem 5. und 6. Jahrhundert (nach späteren Ausgrabungen) lag, also unmittelbar nach dem Rückzug der Römer aus England. Funde von Mittelmeer-Öl und Weingläser zeigen, dass England damals kein isolierter Vorposten war, sondern umfangreichen Handel mit hochwertigen Gütern aus dem Mittelmeerraum betrieb. Die Funde der Ausgrabungen sind im Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro ausgestellt. Im Jahr 1998 entdeckte Ausgrabungen den Artognou Stein, der Tintagel mit der Artus-Sage in Verbindung brachten, obwohl Historiker nicht glauben, dass sich die Inschrift auf König Arthur bezieht. Weitere Ausgrabungen wurden auf dem Friedhof von Tintagel in den frühen 1990er Jahren durchgeführt. Im Jahr 2016 startete eine weitere Grabung im Gebiet des Festungshügels, welche sehr viele Artefakte aus bis einhundert Gebäuden zu Tage förderte.

 

(Wikipedia)

So happy!

 

new post on my blog! :D

  

Thanks for everything, people!

 

******

 

Obrigada por tudo, pessoal!

 

Hey, blog atualizado! :)

 

Blog♥Twitter♥Skoob♥Tumblr♥Cult-Fiction

High probability that this was taken in the "Oriental Gardens" between San Jose Boulevard and the St. Johns River, South of San Marco.

 

© Original Kodachrome slide transparency

Mount Rainier and layers of morning clouds

are numbers.. approximates.. probabilities. And the whole of it's parts...

Commercial Street, Provincetown, Massachusetts

See my albums list for some of my best work: www.flickr.com/photos/200044612@N04/albums/

 

See my main account for my photography, videos, fractal images and more here: www.flickr.com/photos/josh-rokman/

 

Made with Image Creator from Microsoft Designer, formerly known as the Bing Image Creator. Powered by DALL·E 3.

 

I think that AI image generation is similar in many ways to photography. The camera itself handles all the fine details, but the photographer is in charge of curating the types of images that will be created.

 

Ultimately, it is all about maximizing the probability that something good will be created.

 

This is very similar to AI image generation, in terms of the skills involved and what the human does vs. what the machine does.

 

You can't compare AI image generation to the process of actually making these images from scratch with 3D software or paint/pencils, where the human controls every detail.

 

However, I think the process really is very similar to that of photography, as I made the case for above. I think that DALL-E 3 is by far the most powerful AI image generation tool currently available.

 

- Josh

A carpet of ferns now covers what at one time was, in all probability, a logging road.

The probability of 5 EWS liveried 66's together is getting smaller big of more and more being painted in DB livery. 158 leads a convoy from Margam to Eastleigh via Swindon due to the line through Bath closed for engineering work, 22/4/17.

See my main account for my photography, videos, fractal images and more here: www.flickr.com/photos/josh-rokman/

 

Made with the Bing Image Creator, powered by DALL-E 3.

 

I think that AI image generation is similar in many ways to photography. The camera itself handles all the fine details, but the photographer is in charge of curating the types of images that will be created.

 

Ultimately, it is all about maximizing the probability that something good will be created.

 

This is very similar to AI image generation, in terms of the skills involved and what the human does vs. what the machine does.

 

You can't compare AI image generation to the process of actually making these images from scratch with 3D software or paint/pencils, where the human controls every detail.

 

However, I think the process really is very similar to that of photography, as I made the case for above.

 

- Josh

 

According to Jung ... www.schuelers.com/ChaosPsyche/part_2_12.htm

 

As shown in Figure 14, the dream state has a “normal” personal unconscious but not a “normal” consciousness (consciousness is negative). Consciousness here is focused within the personal unconscious, the region UP in our phase space.

 

Jung (1981) says the "dreams have a psychic structure which is unlike that of other contents of consciousness" (p. 237). He divided dreams into five major types or categories: (1) those with a "compensating function" which appear to compensate the waking ego to help maintain psychic balance by bringing up repressed images, (2) those with a "prospective function" which serves as "an anticipatory combination of probabilities" (p. 255), (3) those with a "reductive function" that tend to disintegrate, demolish, destroy, or devalue images, (4) reaction dreams that replay past traumatic experiences, and (5) telepathic dreams that seem almost prophetic in nature and which come under the heading of synchronicities. These five categories form an entire dream spectrum.

 

In dreams we tend to be self conscious even though our sense of identity may differ from that in our waking state. The angle of consciousness for the dream state is shown in Figure 35.

     

In Florida, there are about 569,000 acres of citrus groves and more than 74 million citrus trees. Most citrus is grown in the southern two-thirds of the Florida peninsula, where there is low probability for a freeze. After a series of freezes in the 1980s, citrus growers gradually migrated southward from central and northern regions, although Polk County in the Central part of the state remains the top citrus producing county.

The most commonly-grown varieties of Florida oranges are Navel, Hamlin, Pineapple, Ambersweet and Valencia. The fresh orange season typically runs from October through June.

The most commonly grown varieties of Florida grapefruit are Ruby Red, Flame, Thompson, Marsh and Duncan. The fresh grapefruit season typically runs from September through June.

Shown here is the interference pattern produced by a green 532nm laser beam passing around a wire (0.254mm in diameter) at a distance of about 4.5m from the wall acting as a screen.

 

The interference pattern is created by individual photons interfering with themselves. The interference pattern occurs even when the intensity of the light is so small that only one photon leaves the laser at a time.

 

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_polarization#The_nature_of_p...:

 

"Some time before the discovery of quantum mechanics people realized that the connection between light waves and photons must be of a statistical character. What they did not clearly realize, however, was that the wave function gives information about the probability of one photon being in a particular place and not the probable number of photons in that place. The importance of the distinction can be made clear in the following way. Suppose we have a beam of light consisting of a large number of photons split up into two components of equal intensity. On the assumption that the beam is connected with the probable number of photons in it, we should have half the total number going into each component. If the two components are now made to interfere, we should require a photon in one component to be able to interfere with one in the other. Sometimes these two photons would have to annihilate one another and other times they would have to produce four photons. This would contradict the conservation of energy. The new theory, which connects the wave function with probabilities for one photon gets over the difficulty by making each photon go partly into each of the two components. Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference between two different photons never occurs.

—Paul Dirac, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Fourth Edition, Chapter 1"

 

It's as if the photon "splits" and both partners become entangled (with each other and with the experiment which "measures" the states of the system). Both partners are in a superposition of polarization states. If one were to allow the system to measure the polarization of one partner, the polarization of the other partner would "instantly" become definite, no longer being in a superposition of states. This would result in the destruction of the interference pattern.

 

This apparent communication between the partners would happen "instantly" even if the partners were light years apart.

  

See:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_entanglement

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

and

www.arturekert.org/miscellaneous/quantum-eraser.pdf

  

Theme song:

www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=728500...

 

Hydrogen accounts for about 74 percent of the normal matter in the Universe. This visualization shows the electron clouds of hydrogen through the probability density function when the principal quantum number, N, is between 1 and 4. The probability density illustrates where the electron is most likely to be found if measured, red indicates high probability, blue indicates low probability.

 

Update: 2020/06/22: A 16k version is now available.

 

Update: 2020/07/06: A visualization showing all electron orbitals for N=1 to 6 is also available on Youtube: youtu.be/HyRHT4yOvms

 

Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha is a galactic sector containing Earth, Barnard's Star, and probably other nearby systems. The "Plural" designation may indicate probability problems; after Fenchurch disappeared during a hyperspace jump, it was pointed out to Arthur Dent that the small print advised against hyperspace travel for those born in Plural sectors. This is apparently common knowledge throughout the rest of the galaxy.

Greatful Acknowledgements to the late great Douglas Adams and Wikipedia.

Taken in Leicestershire, I was visiting because a ♂ Common Scoter was seen the day before, I knew it was a longshot has Scoters migrate at night so the probability of it still being there was quite small, but there was a long stay bird that I could spend my time with.

We didn't find the Scoter but the Ring-necked duck was very obliging and the closest that I had seen it.

The light was very variable as you can tell by the differences in the water colour, but a very enjoyable couple of hours.

Statue portrait in form of Omphale. In all probability, this sculpture served as a funerary statue in a mausoleum. The deceased woman wished to be remembered as having been as beautiful as Venus and as strong as Heracles, and had herself portrayed thus in her apotheosis, in her life after death.

The female figure wears only a lion skin, which hangs down her back, its forepaws knotted across her breast, and the upper part of the lion's skull covering her head. She holds a club with her left hand (certainly accurately restored). Both attributes, the lion skin and the club, belong to Heracles. On Zeus' orders, Heracles was forced to serve the Lydian queen Omphale, who had him dress in women's clothing and spin wool while she assumed his lion skin and cudgel. By fusing portrait and symbol, the sculptor transformed the immediacy of the individual into a supra-personal realm. The statue reflects, as well, the conflict in Roman art between the adoption of Classic models and the desire for the heightened significance of realistic portraiture. The Roman sculptor utilized the form of the Greeks, but, at the same time, he gave the Omphale a more specific identity, an added dimension that he required

 

This type of female figure is reminiscent of the Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles, from the 4th century B.C., a work frequently mentioned and highly praised in ancient literature. The head, however, is recognizably a portrait, with its individual hairstyle and features. The coiffure, drilled eyes, and modeling of the cheeks suggest that the Omphale dates to sometime near the close of the second century AD — stylistically, not much later than the Bust of Commodus, in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which also bears the attributes of Heracles.

 

Source: “The Vatican Collections: The Papacy and Art”, Exhibition Catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

Marble statue portrait

Height 182cm

Approx. 200 AD.

Vatican City State, Vatican Museums, Museo Gregoriano Profano

 

Although there is a greater probability of a missed ID with juvie Bluebird species, I enjoy posting pictures of young birds that are rarely shown in the guidebooks. This was a good year for this species. The young abound in the edges of the meadows and are not yet wary of people.... this one closely approached my sitting position.

 

Selected for Explore 2/5/2015.

 

IMG_0632; Western Bluebird

When I see clouds are in the Bay Area, I know that there is a good probability that there will be a beautiful sunset that evening! A couple of days ago, I had observed clouds but didn't plan to go out and take pictures because I was not feeling well. Later that evening, I looked out the window and saw this fiery sunset taking place. It was characteristic of most of the sunsets lately--they have all been a bright pink to a fiery red in color color, instead of the orange and amber colors.

 

I grabbed the camera and took some shots of it from our back porch. After downloading this image, I used Lightroom 4 to bring out the green color in the leaves that are in the foreground (they were in complete shadow)... but I couldn't do much with the trees that are further out. (IMG_6264)

One of South Devon's longest green lanes (this shows about half of it), and quite ancient. Here's an extract from Prof WG Hoskins' "English Landscapes - How to read the man-made scenery of England":

 

'... A double hedgebank with a tangled pathway between - in the depths of Devon. It is followed by parish boundaries for some miles, a sure sign of its antiquity as it must have existed when boundaries were first demarcated. In all probability it was originally part of the boundaries of an early Saxon estate (say 650-700 AD).'

 

I've already added earlier photographs from here and more will eventually follow, so if you're interested please check my "Green Lanes of Devon" album from time to time! I took this in March this year, but forgot I hadn't uploaded it!

 

For a better view please press L and F11.

Today (November 22nd, 2011), marks the 48th anniversary of the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy. There has been debate since the murder regarding the events that took place.

 

Dealey Plaza is bounded on the south, east, and north sides by 100+ foot (30+ m) tall buildings. One of those buildings is the former Texas School Book Depository building, from which, both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, Lee Harvey Oswald fired a rifle that killed President John F. Kennedy. There is also a grassy knoll on the northwest side of the plaza, from which, the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined, based on controversial and disputed acoustic analysis, there was a "high probability" that a second gunman also fired at President Kennedy, but missed

 

The grassy knoll of Dealey Plaza is a small, sloping hill inside the plaza that became famous following the John F. Kennedy assassination. The knoll was above President Kennedy and to his right (west and north) during the assassination on November 22, 1963.

 

The north grassy knoll is bounded by the former Texas School Book Depository building along the Elm Street abutment side street to the northeast, Elm Street and a sidewalk to the south, a parking lot to the north and east and a railroad bridge atop the triple underpass convergence of Commerce, Main and Elm streets to the west.

The wooden fence atop the grassy knoll, and the Triple Underpass with the highway sign, which at the time of the assassination read "Fort Worth Turnpike Keep Right" in the Zapruder Film.

 

Located near the north grassy knoll on November 22, 1963, were several witnesses, three large traffic signposts, four sidewalk lamp posts, the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure including its two enclosed shelters, a tool shed, one 3.3 foot (1 m) high concrete wall connected to each of the pergola shelters, ten tall, wide, low-hanging live oak trees, a 5 foot (1.5 m) tall, wooden, cornered, stockade fenceline approximately 169 feet (53.6 m) long, six street curb sewers openings, their sewer manholes and their interconnecting large pipes and numerous 2 to 6 foot (0.6 to 1.8 m) tall bushes, trees and hedges.

 

Behind the stockade fence was a train control tower in which Lee Bowers was working during the assassination. Bowers testified to the Warren Commission that at the time the motorcade went by on Elm Street, he saw two men in the area of the stockade fence, standing 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 m) apart near the triple underpass, who did not appear to know each other. One or both were still there when the first police officer arrived "immediately" after the shooting.[6] Two years later, in an interview for the documentary film Rush to Judgment, Bowers clarified that the two men were standing between the pergola and the stockade fence, and that no one was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired.[7]

 

On the knoll itself were nine witnesses: groundskeeper Emmett Hudson, and two unidentified men, standing on the stairs of a walk going from Elm Street to a parking lot; an unidentified young couple having lunch on a bench in an alcove along that same walk, who may have left prior to the assassination; Abraham Zapruder and his employee Marilyn Sitzman, standing on a pedestal on the west end of the pergola; and Zapruder employee Beatrice Hester and her husband Charles, standing by and sitting on a bench at the other end of the pergola. Emmett Hudson, Charles Hester, and Marilyn Sitzman, the three witnesses on the grassy knoll who are on record about the direction of shots, all said that the shots came from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository.[8][9][10][11][12][13]

 

Of the 104 earwitness reports published by the Commission and elsewhere, 56 recorded testimony to the effect that they heard shots from the direction of the Depository to the rear of the President, 35 recorded testimony of shots from the direction of the knoll or the triple underpass to the right or front of the President, and five earwitnesses were reported testifying that the shots came from two directions.[14]

 

Persistent Grassy Knoll theories stem also from studies of recorded police-radio transmissions, which recorded sounds from Dealey Plaza in the moments during and after the assassination.

 

Because of persistent debate, answered and unanswered questions, and conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination and the possible related role of the grassy knoll, the term "grassy knoll" has come to also be a modern slang expression indicating suspicion, conspiracy, or a cover-up.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dealey_Plaza

©Jane Brown2014 All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without explicit written permission

 

this is the view from Claire and Earl's flat and the house is Bleak House (originally Fort House) where Charles Dickens spent his summers in the 1850s and 60s. He wrote David Copperfield in the turret study facing out to sea. It was called Bleak House at the beginning of the C20th, but in all probability has little or nothing to do with the book of that name.

 

Peter and I are going to an evening party to celebrate a wedding . . . back soon

    

A little while ago I bought this little fellow, as a way to try and get me to be a bit more deliberate in my photography. I'm still in that happy point where the probability-waveform is yet to collapse - I have three rolls of film out to be developed right now, so currently I really love using this camera, but we'll see what the shots are like as they come back :)

 

On the flip side, I'm constantly impressed at the flexibility of the X100F, which I got for urban scenes and landscapes, but thanks to a really small minimal focal distance I can take close ups like this.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

                    in a dice (83 pictures)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Did you know that the little men in the dices are connected all over the world via a complex network to ensure that the expected value of the probability calculation is met at all times? With small shifts in weight, specific impulses are set to always make the correct number appear.

 

The new suits are here! Super soft and smooth fabric, very shiny and great fit. Especially the hood and gloves are exceptionally well. These are the first pictures. Hope you like it!

  

Stay safe and healthy!

 

-   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -

you really should see the bigger image on flickr!

... and see the whole set at my free website! :-) 

Bookmark the URL to my website: llb1983.bplaced.net

-   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

All rights reserved!

Do not use or repost my pictures without my written permission! 

 

====================================================

                 Comments appreciated!

====================================================

Amazing Stories / Magazin-Reihe

- Dorothy de Courcy and John de Courcy / The Man from Agharti

- A. K. Jarvis / Mystery of the Midgets

- William P. McGivern / The Death of Asteroid 13

- Henry Bott [Charles Recour] / That We May Rise Again

- Irving Gerson / In All Probability

- Berkeley Livingston / The Triumph of the Pig

- Rog Phillips / The Supernal Note

- Henry Bott [Charles Recour] / Amoeba Roid

cover: Arnold Kohn

(cover illustrates "The Man from Agharti")

Editor: Raymond A. Palmer

Ziff-Davis Publishing Company / USA 1948

Reprint: Comic-Club NK 2010

ex libris MTP

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Stories

Reversing the recent trend of crashing sunspot numbers, two new active regions emerged over the weekend: AR2627 and AR2628.(seen in the photo).

 

Forecast:

 

Solar Flares:

C-class flares expected, (probability >=50%)

Geo-Disturbance:

Quiet (A<20 and K<4)

Solar Proton Event:

Quiet

 

Comment from the SIDC (RWC Belgium): In the last 18 hours solar activity decreased and the last C-class flare was C1.8 flare which peaked at 13:26 UT on January 21. The Catania sunspot group 81 (NOAA AR 2628), which was source of the majority of the flaring in the last 48 hours has presently beta-gamma configuration of its photospheric magnetic field and could be the source of the C-class flares, and possibly but not very probably also source of an isolated M-class flare. No Earth directed CMEs were observed during last 24 hours.

 

Note: Photo taken on a Canon EOS 7D + EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM at 300mm + 1.4X extender + B&W filter for the Sun.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  

WEEK 39 – “Stateline Square” Former Super Kmart

 

Yep, it may actually be possible that Bargain Hunt made this place worse when it moved in!! Not dissing the store – but it ain't pretty, by any means. At least Kmart left the tile here when it moved out. That in all probability went bad over the years (oh, by the way: Burlington and garden center tenant Home Décor Liquidators have been here for a long time, but Bargain Hunt only moved in recently), so I don't blame Bargain Hunt for tossing it – just for not doing anything to even cover it up after the fact.

 

(c) 2015 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

Drypool Bridge has been given a makeover, representative of the Venn diagram, used in the fields of set theory, probability, logic, statistics, and computer science. The Venn diagram was introduced by John Venn, 1834-1923, mathematician and philosopher, born Kingston upon Hull, the son of the rector of the parish of Drypool. Venn is commemorated at the University of Hull by the Venn building, constructed in 1928.

 

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drypool_Bridge,_Kingston_...(geograph_5482685).jpg

New book! Epic Landscape Photography: The Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography!

 

www.facebook.com/epiclandscapephotography/

 

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken

 

Working on a couple photography books! 45EPIC GODDESS PHOTOGRAPHY: A classic guide to exalting the archetypal woman. And 45EPIC Fine Art Landscape Photography!

 

More on my golden ratio musings: facebook.com/goldennumberratio

instagram.com/goldennumberratio

 

Greetings all! I have been busy finishing a few books on photography, while traveling all over--to Zion and the Sierras--shooting fall colors. Please see some here: facebook.com/mcgucken

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Let me know in the comments if you would like a free review copy of one of my photography books! :)

 

Titles include:

The Tao of Epic Landscape Photography: Exalt Fine Art with the Yin-Yang Wisdom of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching!

 

The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Why the Fibonacci Numbers Exalt Beauty and How to Create PHI Compositions in Art, Design, & Photography

facebook.com/goldennumberratio

 

And I am also working on a book on photographing the goddesses! :) More goddesses soon!

 

Best wishes on your epic hero's odyssey!:)

 

instagram.com/45surf

 

I love voyaging forth into nature to contemplate poetry, physics, the golden ratio, and the Tao te Ching! What's your favorite epic poetry reflecting epic landscapes? I recently finished a book titled Epic Poetry for Epic Landscape Photographers:

 

www.facebook.com/Epic-Poetry-for-Epic-Landscape-Photograp...

 

Did you know that John Muir, Thoreau, and Emerson all loved epic poetry and poets including Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and Robert Burns?

 

I recently finished my fourth book on Light Time Dimension Theory, much of which was inspired by an autumn trip to Zion!

 

www.facebook.com/lightimedimensiontheory/

 

Via its simple principle of a fourth expanding dimension, LTD Theory provides a unifying, foundational *physical* model underlying relativity, quantum mechanics, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, and the second law of thermodynamics. The detailed diagrams demonstrate that the great mysteries of quantum mechanical nonlocality, entanglement, and probability naturally arise from the very same principle that fosters relativity alongside light's constant velocity, the equivalence of mass and energy, and time dilation.

 

Follow me on instagram!

instagram.com/elliotmcgucken

 

Join my new 45EPIC fine art landscapes page on facebook!

facebook.com/mcgucken