Wiston & Clarbeston Road
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Nowadays a farming village, Wiston was once a busy market town with a Norman church and castle, but it fell into decline following the sacking of the town by the Welsh under Llywellyn ab Iorwerth in 1220.
The impressive remains of the motte and bailey castle stand as the heart of the village.
Clarbeston Road did not exist before the coming of the railway - it was simply a cluster of thatched cottages and a pub on a lonely crossroads north of Wiston. It was only after the railway arrived in the late 1850s that the name Clarbeston Road was concocted as a sign for the station (despite being nowhere near Clarbeston Village) and the village grew rapidly thereafter.
Searchlight batteries: Crop marks and low hedge growth at Beacon Hill Cottage, Clarbeston Road, are the only remaining indications of the former presence of the WWII Upper Haythog Searchlight Battery (SN 008214).
This comprised eight huts, a generator room and three searchlight emplacements. Of the searchlight batteries at Fenton (SM 989177) and Wiston Woods (SN 029219) no traces now remain.
Searchlight battery consisting of two hut bases and platforms, close examination of the photo shows a faint circular cropmark where the searchlight emplacement was.
Locations of Interest
- Wiston Castle
- SN 022181: During the first Civil War (1642-45) the ancient keep at Wiston was said to have housed a Royalist piquet. Armed with cannon, the garrison monitored movement along what was then a main route into Haverfordwest. Back to map
