St Mary's Church Exhibition

 Began putting together our WW1 display in St Mary's Church. We will be adding to it over the next few weeks ready for St Mary's Remembrance Flower Festival which will take place from July 30th to August 4th.

Museum volunteers visit Haverfordwest Museum

 On a beautiful, hot summer's evening Pembroke Museum volunteers visited Haverfordwest Museum.  We were greeted by Simon Hancock, Hon. Curator, who gave us a short talk about the Museum which was opened in its present building in 1996.  It is situated in the old prison Governor's house in the grounds of the Castle.  

Of particular interest was the room devoted to WW1, as we in the History Society are presently engaged in a project which involves researching the Great War in Pembroke and the setting up an exhibition in St Mary's Church Pembroke.

Our WW1 Project progresses

We are now well immersed in our WW1 project.  Society members are investigating the identities of the soldiers’ names on the Cenotaph and war memorials and we are now beginning to assemble a display in St Mary’s Church.  Our artists Pauline and Sharon have been working with pupils in Year 7, Monkton Priory Community Primary School and Year 8, Pembroke Comprehensive School to create art and a film inspired by trips to the ‘Back to the Front’ Experience at Morfa Bay, Pendine. This is a marvellous resource on our doorstep to really engage children into the realities of trench warfare. 

Volunteers visit the Museum of Scrimpinology

On Monday our Volunteers visited Pat and Jeff James' Museum of Scrimpinology in Llangwm. The Museum is a treasure trove of memorabilia, a real trip down memory lane - an amazing collection of household items, tools, games, everyday objects from the past as well as an old signal box and railway items, a mining section from Hook, school classroom and cinema equipment and even a vintage car. Incredible that so much is fitted into such a small space! Jeff opens his museum for just one week per year so we were fortunate in that we were able to book a visit. Thanks Jeff and Pat for a lovely evening!

Winners of our May Quiz Night

Repeating their success in March’s Quiz, the winning team were Alistair and Kate Broughton, Wendy Lee and Gareth Beamish, pictured here with Quiz Master Rose Blackburn. 

The History Society will take a break during the summer months and return in September when the next Quiz Night will take place on Friday, September 21st at Monkton Church Hall, 7.30pm.

We visit Penally History Group

Enjoyed a great afternoon visiting Penally History Group.  David Glennester gave a fascinating talk on the WW1 Training Trenches in the village hall, then gave us a conducted tour. We were lucky as the weather was lovely and we enjoyed the walk and the view! The Trenches were constructed in 1914 and are now a scheduled ancient monument.  The Group has produced a leaflet 'Penally World War 1 village walk' which is freely available for anyone wishing to find out more.

Simon Hancock (2nd from left) with some members of the P&M Committee

At our meeting of Friday, April 20th, our speaker Simon Hancock gave a fascinating talk on the ‘Pembroke Mint’- a little known aspect of Pembroke’s past. He told us that coinage was introduced by the Anglo Saxons:  the Welsh princes did not mint coins. Continued by the Normans, it was during the reign of Henry I that silver pennies were minted in Pembroke itself.  In the Middle Ages coins were struck by hand – each one individually which meant that no two were identical. This gave opportunities for the criminal practice of clipping coins for the silver – an offence which deserved (in the medieval mind) savage punishment in the form of castration or the cutting off of the right hand.  Clipped coins devalued the coinage and devalued confidence: such an offence against the currency was regarded as equivalent to an offence against the king, treason no less.  In France there are accounts of people being boiled alive for such a crime.  
The first person known to have struck coins in the Pembroke Mint was a man named Gillopatric.  He is mentioned in a set of accounts known as the Pipe Rolls, an invaluable document which records amounts of money paid into the royal treasury and gives real insight into twelfth century life.  It would seem that Gillopatric had transgressed but somehow managed to get off pretty lightly with a hefty fine!