Llangolman () is a village and
parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...
in the southeastern
Preseli Hills
The Preseli Mountains (, ; or ), also known as the Preseli Hills, or just the Preselis, are a range of hills in western Wales, mostly within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and entirely within the county of Pembrokeshire.
The range ...
in
Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire ( ; ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county in the South West Wales, south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and otherwise by the sea. Haverfordwest is the largest town and ...
, Wales. It is part of the
community
A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...
of
Mynachlog-ddu
Mynachlog-ddu () is a village, parish and Community (Wales), community in the Preseli Hills, Pembrokeshire, Wales. The community includes the parish of Llangolman.
Origin of the name
The Welsh placename means "black monastic grange": before the ...
. There are prehistoric remains nearby and the parish has a history of slate and clay quarrying.
History
Llangolman lies in a historic landscape near the upper part of the valley of the Eastern
Cleddau and its tributaries. The village place name derives from the church dedicated to St. Golman, or in Irish, St Colman. Colman is attributed to
Colmán of Dromore
Saint Colmán of Dromore, also known by the pet form Mocholmóc, was a 6th-century Irish saint.
Life
Colman was a native of Dalriada, born roughly a generation after Patrick's apostolate to Ireland, and was baptized by a bishop, bearing his ...
, a 6th-century saint.
On old maps, one will often see the east-west road from Llangolman to Maenclochog via Llandilo, marked as a Roman road. This is the so-called Via Julia that was proposed by a number of 18th- and 19th-century antiquaries and was based on a 1757 forged document by Charles Bertram called
The Description of Britain
''The Description of Britain'', also known by its Latin name ' ("On the Situation of Britain"), was a literary forgery perpetrated by Charles Bertram on the historians of English history, England. It purported to be a 15th-century manuscript by t ...
. As a result, it is doubtful that the road is actually Roman. Instead, the Via Julia is now considered to be much further south and passes via
Wiston.
Anglican church
Llangolman church stands on high ground just to the south of the main village. The current building is Victorian or early Victorian, with little to show for the original medieval building that once stood on the site. Of historical interest is the recording in the 19th century of a stone gate post about from the churchyard. This stone, known as the Maen-ar-Golman (the stone upon Colman) is about tall with a number of cross markings carved on the stone. The stone appears to have no inscriptions. The local belief is that Colman is buried nearby.
The earliest recorded tombstone in the graveyard is for Stephen Lewis from Llangolman with the date 1778.
[An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire. VII. (Volume 7) County of Pembroke, London His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1925, The Royal Commission On The Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions In Wales and Monmouthshire]
Local chapels

There are two local chapels in the area, Llandeilo and Rhydwilym. Rhydwilym (''English: William's Ford'') is the oldest active
Welsh Baptist
The Baptist Union of Wales (Undeb Bedyddwyr Cymru) is a Baptist denomination Wales. It is affiliated with the Free Church Council, Cytûn (Churches Together in Wales), the European Baptist Federation, and the Baptist World Alliance. The headqua ...
chapel in the world and was founded in 1668. Funds to build the first chapel were provided by the gentleman farmer John Evans of Llwyndwr in 1701. There was a chapel on the site in 1763; a plaque on the front wall indicates that the 1763 chapel was rebuilt in 1841, and further enlarged in 1875.
The current Llandeilo chapel was built in 1882, though earlier chapel structures are recorded in the immediate vicinity. The name Llandeilo comes from the local church dedicated to the 5th-century saint,
Teilo
Saint Teilo ( or '; Wainewright, John. in ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'', Vol. XIV. Robert Appleton Co. (New York), 1912. Accessed 20 July 2013. or '; or '; – 9 February ), also known as Eliud, was a British Christian monk, bisho ...
.
Historical buildings
Two gentry houses from the 18th century include Plas-y-Meibion and Llangolman Farm. There is also the house called
Temple Druid (c. 1795) which was designed by
John Nash, architect to
King George IV
George IV (George Augustus Frederick; 12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 29 January 1820 until his death in 1830. At the time of his accession to the throne, h ...
, and is located roughly halfway between Llangolman and
Maenclochog
Maenclochog () is a village, parish and Community (Wales), community in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales. It is also the name of Maenclochog (electoral ward), an electoral ward comprising a wider area of four surrounding communities. Maenclochog C ...
.
Llangolman Farm has some architectural interest. Although most of the current house probably dates from the 17th/18th century, the rear wing of the house has an older structure that includes
barrel vault
A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...
ing. There are two vaults, one above the other. The lower vault covers the underlying cellar, which has three rooms. The end room in the cellar, and deepest, includes a freshwater well. The first room, entered from an open arched doorway, includes square holes in the vaulted ceiling that allowed butter to be easily dropped into the cellar for storage. Above the cellar vault is a second vaulted ceiling that currently houses the bathroom. The farm was a centre of production, including clay, slate, salted bacon, butter, and a large mill for grinding corn. The earliest recorded date of Llangolman Farm goes back at least to 1638 when the Griffiths were said to reside at the location. In 1721, the High Sheriff of Pembrokeshire, Stephen Lewis lived at Llangolman Farm. There is little doubt that the farm itself is older than the 17th century but how old, is unknown. The presence of vaulting in the back portion of the house suggests the existence of an older structure. A legend known to the locals is that the house is haunted by a young girl who had an affair with a monk. She is said to have drowned herself in the millpond out of guilt and remorse.
Location and terrain
The area surrounding the village is riddled with steep wooded valleys, presumably cut during one or more of the glacial episodes of the
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
. The village itself sits on a plateau where two valleys meet, the Eastern Cleddau and a tributary that originates near the small village of Llandelio. The underlying geology consists of interbedded
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years f ...
shales and sandstones with extensive slate outcrops. Evidence of glaciation is also seen from banks of gravel and sand to the east of the village, which form deep drainage seeps from which discharges excellent spring water.
The springs emerge in boggy land at the base of the gravel banks, where deposits of blue boulder clay, known by the natives as "indiarubber clay",
can also be found. Claypits close to the farmhouses of Llangolman Farm (still visible) and Llyn are evidence that the clay was once extracted on a significant scale. The study by Jehu
mentions that the clay pit at Llyn was down to a depth of 15 to 20 feet, and ladders were required to get in and out. His report goes on to state that the clay is bluish in color and very tough (hence the nickname indiarubber clay). The clay covers the valley bottom from Llyn to Llangolman Farm at a level of over 400 ft.
The valley sides have largely been saved from deforestation due to their steepness, and there is some evidence of old forest along the western side of the Llandelio tributary. Otters have been seen in the rivers. Of historical interest is a surviving and working
hydraulic ram
A hydraulic ram pump, ram pump, or hydram is a cyclic pump, cyclic water pump powered by hydropower. It takes in water at one "hydraulic head" (pressure) and flow rate, and outputs water at a higher hydraulic head and lower flow rate. The device ...
that pumps water to the local farm called Ffynnon Sampson ("Sampson's Well").
Industry
The current landscape around the village is entirely rural; the local economy is mostly based on farming (dairy, cattle and sheep) and tourism (bed and breakfasts and rented cottages). Of more interest and of historical importance is the
slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...
quarrying industry. There is a seam of green slate running roughly east–west along the Taf Valley.
This slate is of volcanic ash origin and of
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years f ...
date. The slate is generally of a greenish-grey or light blue colour. This slate was often used, in addition to roofing, for covering exposed walls to keep out moisture. Until the 1970s, the outer walls of Llangolman Farm were covered in hanging slates.
The slate itself was exploited at least as early as 1860;
the largest quarry was Dandderwen quarry (known as Whitland Abbey Slate quarry after the name of the company which exploited it). There is some suggestion that the Gilfach quarry may have been worked as early as the 16th century. It is also claimed that the slate used on the roof of the Houses of Parliament, when rebuilt in the 1830s, originated from the Gilfach quarry. Much of the slate industry went into decline after the 1890s, and by the 1930s most were closed due to competition from cheaper sources. Gilfach quarry on the eastern side of the
Eastern Cleddau
The River Cleddau () consists of the Eastern and Western Cleddau rivers in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. They unite to form the Daugleddau estuary and the harbour of Milford Haven Waterway.
The name of the combined estuary – the Daugleddau – ...
was still in operation until 1987.
There are many smaller workings dotted amongst the landscape; some of the quarries are in the steep-sided valley that carries the western tributary from Llandeilo that joins the Eastern Cleddau; some are near Llangolman Farm, with one immediately north of the farmhouse.
Tucker and Tucker published a review of many of the quarries in Pembrokeshire including a number around Llangolman Farm. They discuss the quarry to the north of the Farmhouse and add further information in their subsequent review. They state that this quarry (at SN 110262) was quarried by Lily Quarries Slate and Slab Co. Ltd. In their 1979 review, Tucker and Tucker also give more details on the large Gilfach and Dandderwen quarries mentioned above.
Schools
There are no schools in Llangolman village. Children from Llangolman would either go to
Maenclochog
Maenclochog () is a village, parish and Community (Wales), community in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales. It is also the name of Maenclochog (electoral ward), an electoral ward comprising a wider area of four surrounding communities. Maenclochog C ...
about 2.5 miles away or, until 1964 they would walk to the slightly closer school at Nant y Cwm (1.7 miles away). Nant y Cwm closed in 1964 but reopened in 1979 as a
Steiner School.
Archaeological sites
A number of sites at Llangolman are recorded in the 1925 Inventory of Ancient Monuments.
One of the most obvious sites still visible today is the Iron Age enclosure located to the south of the village between the farms Bryn Golman and Pencraig Fawr. The site, locally called the Gear (in the field called Gear Meadow) is an enclosure that has a roughly level interior with measurements c.63m E-W and 66m N-S. The bank down-slope side stands up to 2 m high externally and 0.25 m internally. There appears to be a slight ditch on the northeast side. An entrance may be present that faces west.
A second highly visible site is an enclosure called Castell Blaenllechog, located just to the west of the farm Pengawsai (itself located to the northwest of the village). It is not certain what the enclosure is, but suggestions include a medieval castle site, a medieval homestead or even an older Iron Age defensive site. What is particularly noticeable are the massive ramparts which stand 3.3 m high. Internally the height is less at about 1.5 m. Traces of a ditch 0.3 m to 0.6 m can be found to the west and south.
This enclosure is particularly noticeable on the aerial views from Google Maps.
References
External links
Historical and further sources on GENUKI
{{authority control
Slate industry in Wales
Villages in Pembrokeshire