Pill Fort

This was regarded as so vital that King Charles granted £400 towards the cost of raising men and building the fort. A Captain Steele, described as ‘a great talker who pretended much to be an engineer’, arrived to supervise its construction. A site was chosen on the west bank of Castle Pill, then known as Prix Pill, where a headland reared up at the junction of the pill and the waterway. This steep-sided bluff , known in later centuries as ‘The Gunkle’, may originally have been an Iron Age fortification.

The new defences seem to have consisted of stout earth banks, probably strengthened with timber or even masonry. An archaeological survey of the site carried out in the early 20th century mentions that some stonework was still visible. As the winter wore on, two Royalist ships, the Globe and the Providence, arrived from Bristol carrying guns and ammunition. Two culverins, two demi-culverins, two sacres and two minions were placed within the fort, as well as some of the ordnance from the ships themselves. Scarcely had the fort been completed than it met its first challenge.

On 23rd January 1644, five Parliamentary warships, under the command of Captain Swanley, arrived in the Haven. A few days later three other vessels joined this little fleet. The Globe and the Providence took shelter in Prix Pill, under the protection of the guns in the fort, which over the following week exchanged occasional shots with the Parliamentary fleet. During one of these cannonades, a cannon ball smashed into the empty bed of one of the Parliamentary captains. On 24th January, a conference took place on board Swanley’s fl agship, attended by Major-General Rowland Laugharne and Colonel John Poyer, the leaders of the garrison at Pembroke, during which Swanley promised his help in driving the royalists from the county. As a result, with a mixed force of foot soldiers, sailors and artillery, Laugharne was able to take the enemy strongholds of Stackpole House and Trefloyne House.

The turn of Pill Fort came next. Early on the morning of 23rd February, Laugharne crossed the waterway with a force of 250 foot, half of them seamen, sixty horsemen, a demiculverin, a sacre and five smaller guns.

The Crescent frigate guarded their passage and they probably came ashore in the vicinity of Newton Noyes. A troop of musketeers was placed in the tower of Steynton Church to prevent an attack by the royalist garrison of Haverfordwest, whilst a body of horse scoured the countryside. The larger guns were placed on the high ground on the eastern shore of the pill, a number of local people assisting the troops to drag them into position. A bombardment of the fort began, in which four of the parliamentary ships took part, as well as a gun placed on the south side of the haven opposite the fort. Nightfall put an end to the cannonade. The soldiers were forced to sleep in the fields around their guns, it being a bitterly cold night. Early next morning the main attack commenced. Laugharne’s force made its way around the head of the pill and after attacking and scattering an ambush awaiting them near Steynton, they swiftly occupied the village of Pill and the nearby ruined chapel of St Thomas Beckett. The royalists were now under concentrated fire from several directions. Two of their garrison had been killed and it was not long before an offer of surrender was made.

Laugharne’s men quickly entered the fort, taking prisoner three hundred men and eight officers, one of whom was John Barlow, master of ordnance, a member of the Barlow family of Slebech. Eighteen great guns and six field carriages were captured, as well as the two ships sheltering in the pill. There are few reminders to be seen today of the action at Pill Fort. The overgrown ramparts existed until recently on the Gunkle in the modern Vicary Crescent, but were bulldozed flat in the early 1990s; bungalows were built upon the site. St Thomas’ Chapel was restored in the 1930s and can still be seen behind the houses on the Rath.