Bring the past to life and reimagine the present with a range of perspectives as diverse as the connections between Ireland and Wales across the Irish Sea. Developed by James L. Smith of the Ports, Past and Present Project using project material…

The Royal Military Dockyard Chapel was completed in 1835. It is the only Georgian Military chapel left in the United Kingdom. It was a place for the dockyard workers, the military personnel and their families to gather to worship. By 1926 however,…

This experience is based on a published town trail created as part of the Pembroke Dock Townscape Heritage Initiative and funded by Heritage Lottery, Pembrokeshire County Council, the Welsh Development Agency and the Welsh Assembly (now the Senedd).…

Named after the former landowner Nicholas Hobbs, Hobbs Point was built in the early 1830s to accommodate the mail and packet boats that ran between west Wales and Waterford in Ireland. This service began in 1750 and operated until 1966. The mail and…

David James sat down with Ports, Past and Present to share his passion for sailing and talks about a particularly fine sailing yacht that he restored and sailed for many years. Ahoi!

David James sat down with Ports, Past and Present and shared his memories of moving to Pembroke Dock as a child during the Second World War and the pastimes he enjoyed with friends around the town and down by the river edge.

In the just over 200 years of its existence, Pembroke Dock has had a proud history of building hundrets of ships, large and not so large, motorised and propelled by wind. Although the dockyard has been closed now for several decades, ships still get…

The first scheduled steam packet service between West Wales and Ireland can be traced to back the year 1824. It was in that year that the Post Office replaced its sailing packets on the Milford Haven to Waterford run with steamships. The…

Pembroke Dock (Doc Penfro) and adjacent Milford Haven (Aberdaugleddau) both developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from small village settlements, Paterstown and Hubberstown, on the banks of the Cleddau river. The vast natural harbour…

The gun tower in Front Street, Pembroke Dock, is commonly referred to as the 'Martello tower'. However, when it was built it was known as a Cambridge Gun Tower. Emperor Louis Napoleon III was building a Second Empire of France in the 1840's, and was…