Cardigan is a bustling little market town today. It was once a major port, though, and warehouses crowded around the bridge, which dates from 1726. Herring was an important product, with vast quantities of salt brought here from Liverpool in order to preserve the fish. Ships also came with seed corn, tallow, and limestone. Leaving the port would be slate from Cilgerran (just upstream), ale from Cardigan, and local salmon and oak. Inns added to the exotic flavour, some being notorious for thieves and cutpurses.
Ships were built here until 1877, and 292 vessels with a total weight of about 10,000 tonnes were registered here in the 1820s. Most of the ships were in shared ownership by local farmers. Many emigrants left here for New Brunswick in Canada or for New York. The railway finally came to Cardigan on the opposite bank of the River Teifi in 1885. Its arrival and the silting up of the river hastened the decline of the port, and the town was forced to seek a new future as a base for fishing and tourism.
The picturesque view across the River Teifi includes St Dogmaels. The remains of the old abbey here, established by the Welsh in the 7th century, are well worth exploring. The abbey was sacked by the Vikings, rebuilt by the Normans in the 12th century, and finally fell into ruin during Tudor times. The parish church contains an old Ogham stone, and the watermill still produces wholemeal flour. St Dogmaels still has a fishing industry based on sea trout, and salmon fishing is now mainly centred on the River Teifi.
On this side of the river is Old Castle Farm, in whose private grounds is the site of Din Geraint, an Iron Age fort. When the Normans, under Roger de Montgomery, swept across Wales in 1093, they erected a small castle here. This simple motte-and-bailey structure was soon dismantled by the Welsh. There was a record of a Din Geraint being built near the estuary of the Teifi by Gilbert Fitz Richard in 1110, when Henry I dispossessed the Welsh Lord Cadwgan of his lands.
The bridge over the Teifi is overlooked by Cardigan Castle, which is of historical interest, especially to lovers of Welsh culture. Whether or not the Din Geraint of 1110 was built here or downstream, there was a castle on this spot in 1136. The Welsh had still not been conquered, so they gathered to deal with the affront of a Norman castle in their midst. The Normans, led by William and Morris, two sons of Gerald de Windsor, led their men out of the castle to fight the Welsh at a place called Crug Mawr. They were defeated, and the English colony around the castle was set on fire. The Normans fled across the bridge back to their castle, but the weight of horses and armoured men broke it, and the river was full of bodies. The castle survived, though, and was not taken by the Welsh until Rhys ap Gruffydd, the Great Lord Rhys, drove the Normans out in 1164.
Beyond Cardigan Castle, the Teifi soon flows into a broad estuary bounded by saltmarsh and dunes. The continual movement of underwater sandbanks made the mouth of the estuary a problem for sailors to negotiate. Waders positively love the mud flats, however, while other birds abound.
Further along the estuary, and less than a quarter of a mile offshore, lies Cardigan Island, a nature reserve belonging to the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. In 1934, a ship being towed to a scrapyard snapped its line in a storm and was wrecked on this tiny island. The four crew scrambled ashore to safety, and true to form, so did the rats. At the time, there was a puffin colony on the island, but by the 1940s the birds had left. Their eggs, which are laid in burrows, had fallen prey to the ferocious appetite of the invading rats. Nowadays, though the rats have been eradicated, puffins have never returned to the island. However, guillemots, razorbills, cormorants, shags, fulmars, and a variety of seagulls all nest on the island instead.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
