Qualla: Mathry

Mathry: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mathry's name means martyr. It sits on a high hill six miles southwest of Fishguard, its parish church squarely in the middle of the village, dedicated to seven holy men whose deaths are remembered nowhere else. In 2006, a Pembrokeshire genealogist worked through the parish baptism records and found a Jemima Nicholas christened in Mathry on 2 March 1755. Haverfordwest Records Office thought it likely this was the Jemima Nicholas, the cobbler who, forty-two years later according to folklore, captured twelve French soldiers single-handed with a pitchfork during the Battle of Fishguard. Her birthplace, if it was here, would mean the woman who became Wales's most famous citizen-soldier was born in this small hilltop village.

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Mathry: The Holy Martyrs

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The village's older spellings include Mathrey and Merthyr, both rendering the Welsh word for martyr into English. The parish church in the centre of the village is dedicated to the Holy Martyrs of Mathry, a group of seven sainted men whose names and stories are now lost. The curr...

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Mathry: A Pembrokeshire Parish

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the early 1800s the parish held about 860 people, scattered across small settlements and farmsteads rather than concentrated in the village itself. Slate quarrying gave work to many of them. Sir John Owen of Orielton, the first baronet of his line, subsidised a school for the ...

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Mathry: The Cobbler's Christening

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What the parish register may quietly hold is the beginning of a folk story. Jemima Nicholas, baptised here on 2 March 1755, would have been forty-two on 22 February 1797 when 1,400 French troops landed at Carreg Gwastad Point eight miles to the northeast. The legend says she walk...

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