Qualla: Carmarthen

Carmarthen: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is a small piece of blackened wood in a glass case at the Carmarthenshire County Museum at Abergwili. It looks like nothing - a fragment of dead tree. The local prophecy says that as long as Merlin's Oak stood at the corner of Priory and Old Oak Lane in Carmarthen, the town would not fall. When the oak finally died, in the early 19th century, the townspeople did not take any chances. They dug up what was left of it and kept the pieces. The town is still here. Whether that is because of the prophecy, or because Carmarthen has had nearly two thousand years of practice at not falling, is a question the museum lets you decide for yourself.

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Carmarthen: Moridunum

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Romans got here in the second century AD and built a fort called Moridunum on a low hill above the navigable reach of the River Towy. They followed it with a small town and, remarkably, an amphitheatre - one of only seven that survive in Britain, and one of just two in Roman ...

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Carmarthen: Merlin's Fort

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the time Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in the late 12th century, the Welsh had given the town a different name: Caerfyrddin. The standard translation is 'Merlin's fort,' and Geoffrey duly placed Merlin's birth in a cave just outside the walls. Linguists have argued ever since abo...

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Carmarthen: Castle, Priory, Black Death

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Norman castle went up around 1094, built by William fitz Baldwin on the bluff above the river. Llywelyn the Great destroyed it in 1215. The town rebuilt it in 1223, threw a wall around itself, and became one of the first medieval walled towns in Wales. Owain Glyndwr sacked it...

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Carmarthen: The Burning in the Square

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On a March day in 1555, in the marketplace at the centre of town, Bishop Robert Ferrar of St Davids was tied to a stake and burned alive. He was a Protestant during the brief reign of Mary I, and he would not recant. A small plaque set below the later statue of General Nott in wh...

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Carmarthen: Books, Maps, and the Spurrells

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1840, William Spurrell set up a printing press in Carmarthen. Over the next decade he compiled the first comprehensive Welsh-English dictionary, published in 1848, and an English-Welsh companion in 1850. Today's Collins Welsh dictionary is still informally known as the 'Collin...

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Carmarthen: Walking Carmarthen Today

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Stand on Castle Hill, where the gatehouse and motte are still visible behind the early 20th-century County Hall designed by Sir Percy Thomas, and you can see most of the town in a single glance: the long nave of St Peter's church, the largest in the diocese; Clough Williams-Ellis...

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