Lavernock : the old fort

When you walk along the Wales Coastal Path between Barry and Penarth, the route takes you past this old fort at Lavernock, now enclosed in a nature reserve, known in Welsh as Trwyn Larog and maintained by The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

The buildings we see today date from the Second World War but this place has been a fort since at least the mid-19th century, when the 1860 Royal Commission recommended the building of a fort to guard against invasion by the French.

During World War II the threat was mostly airborne so this concrete anti-aircraft battery was built, one of a series of defences along the Bristol Channel. The signboard at the site explains:

There were four 3.7” anti-aircraft guns arranged in a clover-leaf pattern with a lighter, 40mm Bofors gun nearby. There were also a command post, a magazine and a workshop. The crews slept in huts which have now vanished. Many similar batteries were built during the war, but few remain.

The site is unusual because two of the gun pits (1 & 2) had steel doors to allow the guns to be lowered to engage shipping. Pits 3 & 4 have earth banks but no concrete walls, and no separate magazine.

The numbered maps (above and left) show the positions of the various gun pits and, as you can see, there is another concrete building (5) at the southern end of the reserve. 

The signboard explains ‘this was a searchlight position for a shore battery, protecting the Bristol Channel from enemy ships. This shore battery now lies under the chalets’ of the St Mary’s Well Bay Caravan Park.

These days this structure often provides protection against bad weather for birders sea-watching and observing the annual bird migrations.

The whole site is now protected as a Scheduled (not so) Ancient Monument – the Ancient Monuments website provides more detailed information – but, sadly, that has not stopped graffiti artists from defacing the concrete with their tags. It is also not unusual in the summer months to encounter scantily clad elderly males lolling about in the sun on the rooftops here – you have been warned!

Lavernock : the Marconi connection

'Are you ready?' The world's first radio transmission over sea took place on 13 May 1897 over the Bristol Channel from the island of Flatholm to Lavernock, a little hamlet not far from where I live in south Wales.

I first discovered this somewhat surprising fact when I read the little plaque on the old stone wall that surrounds the Church of St Lawrence in Lavernock. It reads:

1897      1947

Near this spot

the first radio messages

were exchanged across water

by

Guglielmo Marconi

and

George Kemp

between Lavernock & Flat Holm 11th May,

Lavernock & Brean Down 18th May 1897

Erected by the Rotary Club of Cardiff 1947

The plaque was erected to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this world-changing event, and also helped me understand why the large caravan park that now occupies much of the land at Lavernock Point is called the Marconi Holiday Village.

Not far from the church, as you head east along the coastal path towards Penarth, there is a small stone construction, sitting tower-like right on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the six kilometres to the island of Flat Holm (now usually written as one word, Flatholm) and, like many before me, I rather fancifully thought that this tower was where Marconi had sat to send his miraculous message.

Of course, it was not. I have yet to discover much about that old building, which now has a high fence around it to try to restrict access (there is a well-worn path around the end of the fence!) but I did find one reference to it online, dated January 2013, which mentioned that the interior, though derelict, contained ‘Penstock control panels and pumps, possibly for excess water or sewage’. 

His talent unappreciated in his native Italy, Guglielmo Marconi moved to Britain in 1896 to try to find a more receptive audience and support for his experiments in the use of wireless. His ideas generated interest from the British postal authorities and it was they who witnessed his success, after some initial failures, at Lavernock. 

(This image of Marconi is in the public domain; it is from the Time Life archive and bears the caption ‘Electrical engineer/inventor Guglielmo Marconi as a young man’. The photo was taken in 1896, the year before Marconi relocated to Britain.)

Here’s a report of what actually happened with those wireless experiments, extracted from the Evening Express newspaper, dated 15 May 1897:

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. MARCONI INVENTION TESTED AT LAVERNOCK.

The postal authorities of the country have evidently faith in the possibilities of the Marconi system of telegraphing without wires, and the Italian inventor (M. Marconi) has reason to feel proud of the success of the demonstrations, so far as they have yet been carried out. M Marconi, as was reported the other day, successfully carried out on Salisbury Plain a series of experiments with a couple of balloons attached by wires to the ground. For several days he has been engaged in conducting experiments at Lavernock Point, near Cardiff, in testing the effective working of his system of telegraphing without wires between the mainland and the Flat Holm, and the trials have been witnessed by Mr. Preece, engineer-in-chief of the General Post Office; Mr. Gavey (late of Cardiff), now second engineer in London; Mr. Fardo, Cardiff postmaster, and other officials of the department. For the purposes of the experiments, Mr Williams (of the engineering department, Cardiff) fixed upon Lavernock Point a pole 120 feet high, with a zinc cylinder at the summit, 5ft. 6in. by 4ft., insulated from the Flat Holm and Brean Down. The experiments on Tuesday were not so successful as might have been desired, but on Wednesday and Thursday the results were most satisfactory. On Friday afternoon there was a semi-public demonstration, when the system was explained in miniature, a transmitter facing a receiver at a distance of some twenty yards.

From those humble beginnings at Lavernock, Marconi went on to develop more fully his system for long-distance radio transmissions, he invented the radio, and, in 1909, jointly with Karl Ferdinand Braun, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.

Lavernock: Grave of James Richards

I was admiring all the lovely lichens when the epitaph on the grave of James Richards caught my eye during my recent visit to Lavernock’s Church of St Lawrence:

Sacred
to the memory of
James Richards,
native of the town of Cardigan
who died at Cardiff Docks
on board the S.S. Crindau
Sep. 4th 1885 aged 46.
Be ye also ready for we know not
what moment we may be called to judgment.

I thought perhaps James had met with a shipboard accident but the truth was much more gruesome, as the Welsh newspapers were quick to document.

Here’s one of the more concise reports, from the Denbighshire Free Press 12 September 1885 p.2:

CHOLERA AT CARDIFF.

Lloyd's agent at Cardiff telegraphed: “The Crindau, steamer, of Newport, entered the Bute Dock, Cardiff, and was ordered out again next morning's tide, with one man dead from cholera, and four others sick."
It appears from medical examination that the fatal case of cholera that occurred on board the steamer Crindau, of Newport, from Barcelona, was Asiatic cholera. The following particulars have transpired: Four men were engaged to assist in loading the Crindau with coal for Cadiz. One of them named James Richards, from St. Dogmaels, was observed drinking from a cask of water under the fore bulkhead, which had been filled up at Barcelona. He shortly afterwards complained of griping pains and excessive diarrhoea, to relieve which the chief officer give him some cholera mixture. Richards, however, grew rapidly worse, and soon after nine o'clock was found dead in the latrine.
Dr. Laen and Dr. Paine, the port sanitary authorities, examined the body, and concurred in the opinion that the deceased had died of Asiatic cholera. Captain Pomeroy, the dock master, promptly had the Crindau towed out of dock to the quarantine station at the Flat Holms. The body of Richards was sewed up in a tarpauling [sic], weighted with iron, and sunk off Breaksea Point. Dr. Paine, after having the steamer disinfected, examined the crew and found them all in a good state of health.

We tend to forget these days how frightening diseases like cholera can be, how rapidly they kill and how quickly they can spread, especially in a busy port city like Cardiff then was. Cholera had struck Cardiff several times before, with devastating effect. The first great epidemic was in 1832, then it struck again in 1849 resulting in 396 deaths – that number may not seem large but we need to bear in mind that Cardiff’s population at the time of the 1841 census was only 10,079.

As G Penrhyn Jones noted, in his article ‘Cholera in Wales’ (National Library of Wales journal, vol.X/3, Summer 1958). Cardiff in 1849 was seriously overcrowded, with far too many people squeezed into poorly ventilated slum housing, with no proper drainage systems, and almost all drinking water was drawn from the Glamorganshire Canal or the river, into which filth and raw sewage were also deposited.

Cholera broke out in the city again in 1854, when 225 people died, and the disease struck once more in the summer of 1866, resulting in 76 deaths. No wonder the authorities were quick to act following James Richards’ death.

Unfortunately, his burial at sea was not the end of the story for James, as the South Wales Echo reported on 15 September 1885:

Inspector King, of the Penarth Constabulary, has had reported to him that a corpse has been discovered at Sully, cast up by the rising tide. From the appearance of the body, as described to the inspector, it had been encased in canvass, and wrapped up as if consigned to the deep after death on board ship. No detailed particulars are as yet to hand, but in the mean time there are the gravest suspicions that the corpse is that or the man James Richards, who died of cholera on board the Crindau. Our readers will remember that the corpse was taken to below the Breaksea Point in a ship's boat in tow of a tug, and after being properly weighted was cast overboard.

This further report by the South Wales Echo, on 17 September 1885, explains how James Richards came to be buried at the Church of St Lawrence in Lavernock:

THE SHOCKING DISCOVERY AT SULLY.

The body of a seaman, supposed by some to be the body of the man Richards, who died from cholera on board the Crindau at Cardiff, and was buried in the Bristol Channel on the 5th inst., was, on Wednesday, interred at the churchyard, Lavernock, the service being performed by Rev W. Evans, vicar of Merthyrdovan. The body, still encased in a canvas bag, was enclosed in a coffin, and interred in the usual way. The pilots are of the opinion that from the set of the currents in the Bristol Channel, a body buried at Breaksea would be carried to the Somersetshire side of the channel, and something very unusual would be required to bring a body from Breaksea to the spot where it was found.

The death of James Richards was a tragedy but some good did come from the misfortune of Cardiff’s cholera victims. Penrhyn Jones writes that the epidemics ‘had the consequent virtue of stimulating the public conscience on matters of sanitary reform and the great improvement in the public health in the latter half of the nineteenth century can, in some measure, be attributed to the sobering and salutary lessons of that vicious disease’. Rest in peace, James Richards.

Lavernock: Church of St Lawrence

One day last week I walked along the Wales Coastal Path to Lavernock and discovered the wonderful old Church of St Lawrence. Not surprisingly, it’s a Grade II-listed building which, according to the British Listed Buildings website, may well date from the 12th century when the Black Canons of the Order of St Augustine first established themselves along the shores of the Bristol Channel.

It wasn’t possible to go inside but, apparently, the narrow pointed chancel arch may be medieval, as might the windowless north wall. The rest of the structure was extensively restored in the mid 19th century. There were some interesting headstones dating back to the early 1800s but more on that subject in my next post.

Unfortunately, the church closed in 2008, though the site is now managed by a voluntary Friends group so there are occasional church services and open days. I’m hoping to take advantage of one such day to get a peek inside.