Pembroke Dock Totally Explained

Everything about Pembroke Dock totally explained

Pembroke Dock (Welsh: Doc Penfro) is a town in South Pembrokeshire, West Wales, lying north of Pembroke on the River Cleddau. It is the third largest town in Pembrokeshire.

History

Prior to 1814, the site of modern Pembroke Dock and its nearby settlements were mostly farmland and the area was referred to as Paterchurch. The first recorded mention of Paterchurch was in 1289. In the area a medieval tower was built and, like nearby 18th century and 19th century fortifications, it may have served as a lookout post. By the 17th century, additional domestic and farm buildings stood close to the tower and the isolated settlement had its own cemetery, whose last recorded burial is that of a Roger Adams, in 1731. The ruin of the tower now lies within the walls of the Dockyard.
Paterchurch Tower was the center of an estate said to stretch from Pennar Point to Cosheston. This changed hands in 1422 when Ellen de Paterchurch married a John Adams. Prior to the building of the town and before the dockyard was thought of, various sales and exchanges took place between the principal local landowners - the Adams, Owen and Meyrick families. These exchanges left the Meyricks in control of most of the land on which the dockyard and new town were to develop. By 1802 the Paterchurch buildings were mostly ruins.

Naval Dockyards

The town of Pembroke Dock was founded in 1814 when a Naval Dockyard was established. On 10 February 1816 the first two ships launched from the dockyard were HMS Valorous and HMS Ariadne, both 28 gun frigates. In the span of 112 years, 5 Royal Yachts were built along with 263 other Royal Naval vessels.
As the dockyard and its importance grew, the need to defend it was addressed and Pembroke Dock became a military town. Work began in 1844 to build defensible barracks. In 1845 the first occupiers were the Royal Marines of the Portsmouth Division followed though the years by many famous regiments. Between 1849 and 1857 two Martello towers of dressed Portland stone were constructed at the south-western and north-western corner of the Dockyard. Both were garrisoned by Sergeants of Artillery and their families.
The last ship launched from the dockyard was the Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker Oleander on 26 April 1922.

RAF Base

With the closure of the dockyard in 1926, also the year of the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, unemployment was high through the Great Depression until 1931 when No. 210 Squadron RAF arrived equipped with Southampton II's flying boats. For almost 30 years the RAF were based at Pembroke Dock. During 1943, when home to the Sunderland Flying Boats, it was the largest operational base for flying boats in the world.
   Given its importance as an RAF base, it was no surprise that during World War II Pembroke Dock was targeted by the Nazi German Luftwaffe. On Monday 19 August 1940 a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 bomber flew up the Haven waterway and bombed a series of oil tanks sited at Pennar. The oil fuelled fire that followed raged for 18 days and was recorded as the largest UK conflagration since the Great Fire of London.
   Following the war the town enjoyed a degree of prosperity; this, however, changed in 1957 when it was announced that the RAF would be drastically reducing its presence. A few years later the final British Army regiment also left the town.
   The town's prosperity did increase again with the opening of the oil refineries on the Milford waterway and the construction of an oil fired power station, but never to the high levels experienced when the dockyard was fully operational.
   Pembroke Dock also has a link to Hollywood - the full-scale Millennium Falcon built for The Empire Strikes Back was created in one of Pembroke Dock's hangars by Marcon Fabrications in 1979.

Today

Today, much of Pembroke Dock's maritime industry has gone. The town continues to cope with high unemployment, limited public and private investment, and decaying buildings. The town briefly had a resurgence in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the arrival of large superstores such as Tesco and Asda and also the development of the Cleddau Business Park. Much of the green belt land set aside for development of the Cleddau Business Park remains unsold and undeveloped.
   The town was badly affected by the collapse of ITV Digital in 2002, from which their main customer call centre was based.
   The two Martello Towers remain: one is now a local museum, while the other is in private hands and is largely intact. The dockyard wall is substantially complete and has been recently repaired by experts with dressed stone and lime mortar. The two listed hangars built to house the Sunderland flying boats used to guard the Western Approaches, are being rebuilt and have to find new uses. The Dockyard church has been rebuilt using Objective One funding from the EU and has yet to find a new use.
   Pembroke Dock is well-served by the A477 trunk road which runs from St. Clears through Pembroke Dock and over the Daugleddau estuary via the Cleddau Bridge to Haverfordwest. It also has a ferry terminal from which ferries sail twice-daily to Rosslare in Ireland. The service is operated by Irish Ferries.
   The town is served by Pembroke Dock railway station.

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