0:00:07 > 0:00:12I set out to understand some of the great landscapes of Britain,
0:00:12 > 0:00:19to piece together the history that shaped them. This seems one of the most remote -
0:00:19 > 0:00:22the coast of Pembrokeshire.
0:00:24 > 0:00:30It's magical - a peninsula nowhere further than 20 miles from water.
0:00:30 > 0:00:35But where you'd expect to find seaside towns and fishing villages,
0:00:35 > 0:00:40there are castles, standing stones and, right up to the cliff edge,
0:00:40 > 0:00:44farms that could be in the heart of England.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49I wondered whether the landscape had simply turned its back on its coast,
0:00:49 > 0:00:53or, in some hidden way, the two belong together.
0:01:12 > 0:01:17I've come to Pembrokeshire, the extreme south-west of Wales.
0:01:17 > 0:01:21It's a county of beautiful green farmland...
0:01:21 > 0:01:24but the sea is never far away.
0:01:24 > 0:01:30Spectacular cliffs, little ports, beaches, run all the way round the coast.
0:01:30 > 0:01:37My question is how far farmland and coast are separate worlds with separate histories.
0:01:37 > 0:01:41How far do they belong together as one landscape?
0:01:43 > 0:01:49I took a boat down at Milford Haven, in the south of the county.
0:01:49 > 0:01:52Here, the sea cuts 20 miles inland.
0:01:52 > 0:01:58The Daugleddau - 90ft deep, enough for some of the world's largest ships.
0:01:58 > 0:02:02It's lined with oil pipelines and refineries,
0:02:02 > 0:02:09and with forts dating back to Nelson's time, when an entire enemy fleet could have anchored here.
0:02:09 > 0:02:13But why isn't it lined with great ports and towns?
0:02:13 > 0:02:20It's amazing that one of the world's greatest natural harbours isn't home to one of the world's great cities.
0:02:20 > 0:02:23I asked historian Roger Thomas.
0:02:23 > 0:02:26This is Milford Dock.
0:02:26 > 0:02:30It's a tiny place - I can see gorse just behind the houses!
0:02:30 > 0:02:37It was built as a speculative venture in the late 18th century, and...it grew.
0:02:37 > 0:02:45You've got a designed town - parallel lines on a grid - but it progressed to a point and then petered out.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48To begin with, the main thing was whaling.
0:02:48 > 0:02:55They tried to attract the Irish packets, they tried to attract mail ships, shipbuilding...
0:02:55 > 0:03:01I suppose people hoped it would be a port like Southampton or Liverpool?
0:03:01 > 0:03:08- Presumably. The original designs were much larger, and the docks would have gone further out into the haven.- Yes.
0:03:08 > 0:03:15As we advance, we're coming into the lock, which was large enough to take the largest ships in the world.
0:03:15 > 0:03:22- It's bigger than many of the ones at Liverpool. - It's a splendid site for a harbour.
0:03:22 > 0:03:29- The problem was location. From here, it's a long journey to get anywhere. - It's too remote.
0:03:29 > 0:03:36The isolation that sabotaged Milford's ambitions sank every plan to make this waterway rich.
0:03:36 > 0:03:39All its little ports tell the same story.
0:03:39 > 0:03:47In the 19th century, the Great Western Railway built Neyland to entice great transatlantic liners,
0:03:47 > 0:03:51but nowadays, it doesn't even have a railway station.
0:03:51 > 0:03:58- It's the oil industry that has taken off here recently. - Since the late 1950s,
0:03:58 > 0:04:03and, as with all these things, there's a degree of boom and bust.
0:04:03 > 0:04:11There's only two sites still working, and isolation is the problem. It's a long way from the main point of sale.
0:04:11 > 0:04:17Instead of cities, there is farmland along the banks of the Daugleddau.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21It's been too remote for modern ports to grow.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25Even its oil lines are now falling derelict,
0:04:25 > 0:04:28floating like ghosts in the haze.
0:04:29 > 0:04:33Next morning, I felt I was starting all over again.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38If Pembrokeshire's coast ever shaped this landscape,
0:04:38 > 0:04:43it must have been in ways I would never have predicted.
0:04:43 > 0:04:47I drove north to investigate its smaller harbours.
0:04:51 > 0:04:58It's clear that Pembrokeshire has always been too remote to develop in a big way industrially,
0:04:58 > 0:05:05but around the coast are many little ports - Fishguard, Newport, Solva - and they've got a life of their own,
0:05:05 > 0:05:10and the next question is - has THAT life affected the landscape?
0:05:12 > 0:05:15What were the little harbours doing?
0:05:15 > 0:05:20I couldn't see much evidence of fishing or seaside holiday-making.
0:05:20 > 0:05:26Historian Peter Claughton took me to the cliffs above Porthgain.
0:05:26 > 0:05:32Here, he said, you can see what they were up to, and how it changed this landscape.
0:05:32 > 0:05:39- What were they doing in this part of North Pembrokeshire?- Down there is the spoil from a slate quarry.
0:05:39 > 0:05:47- That's not a natural...?- No, that's waste from a slate quarry that was tipped out there from a tramway.
0:05:47 > 0:05:52- And these bits of buildings?- Towards the sea, you'll see a long incline.
0:05:52 > 0:06:00- These were the mountings for the winding engine that wound the incline.- They pulled rock up here?
0:06:00 > 0:06:07Yes, there's a large granite quarry by the coast and stone was hauled up here onto tramways on the cliff top.
0:06:10 > 0:06:15Granite was trammed to steam-powered crushers on the cliff top there,
0:06:15 > 0:06:22and allowed to fall, through gravity, into hoppers below, for it to be moved into ships.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27That's rather magnificent, isn't it? Was it a natural inlet, originally?
0:06:27 > 0:06:32Yes, but it's been transformed as an industrial harbour.
0:06:33 > 0:06:38- It looks almost like a ruined temple climbing up the cliff here.- Yes.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41What sort of date was this built?
0:06:41 > 0:06:46These were built in the early part of the 20th century.
0:06:46 > 0:06:53- Massive volumes of stone ran out of these chutes into wagons and were moved onto ships.- Just below?- Yeah.
0:06:53 > 0:07:01Quarries like this survived, in a period prior to massive railway use, because of proximity to the sea.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04It comes straight down to the boats here?
0:07:04 > 0:07:12That's right, and you'd have large numbers of sailing barges and steam coasters in the harbour here.
0:07:14 > 0:07:21It wasn't, after all, the great waterway at Milford Haven that had shaped this landscape,
0:07:21 > 0:07:26but these little inlets. They were not fishing, but quarrying ports,
0:07:26 > 0:07:30growing up over the last two centuries.
0:07:30 > 0:07:35And all along the coast, you can see the impact they've had.
0:07:35 > 0:07:40There was quarrying in the cliffs - these are the last phase of working.
0:07:40 > 0:07:45And what about the Welsh slate - was that ever mined around here?
0:07:45 > 0:07:49Economically viable slate quarries had access to the sea.
0:07:51 > 0:07:56- You can see the slate now. - That's packed slate, is it?- Yes.
0:07:56 > 0:08:00Providing you with a sea wall, effectively.
0:08:02 > 0:08:08- Where are we going now?- We're going into what was the slate quarry.
0:08:08 > 0:08:15Slate wasn't shipped out via the beach - it was trammed to Porthgain and shipped out of Porthgain.
0:08:15 > 0:08:19- On a little railway?- Yes, there was a tramway running round.
0:08:23 > 0:08:30- After the quarry closed, they blasted an entrance into the open sea.- A totally artificial harbour?
0:08:30 > 0:08:38- Yes.- Extraordinary!- The colour from the slate gives it its name - the Blue Lagoon.- What an amazing place!
0:08:43 > 0:08:48'But was there quarrying further inland - and further back in time?
0:08:48 > 0:08:53'One industry stretched right across the county and back into history.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56'Peter took me to its very tip, at Newgale.'
0:08:56 > 0:09:01- This was an anthracite colliery. - A colliery here?- Yes.
0:09:01 > 0:09:08We're at the north western extremity of the coal seams which run across South Pembrokeshire.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12This colliery was working from about 1888 to 1905.
0:09:12 > 0:09:19But no colliery in Pembrokeshire was more than a couple of miles from the sea, or navigable water.
0:09:19 > 0:09:24So that made it possible that they had easy transport out?
0:09:24 > 0:09:30It's why it was one of the earliest British coalfields to be exploited.
0:09:30 > 0:09:37- Beaches like Newgale were used as shipping points for coal from the early 15th century.- 15th century?!
0:09:37 > 0:09:39- Yes.- Hah!
0:09:39 > 0:09:42Under the gorse and the bracken,
0:09:42 > 0:09:49this landscape is still etched with pits that once owed their existence to the sea.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51Boats came into its beaches,
0:09:51 > 0:09:57loading from quarries and collieries that shaped the landscape,
0:09:57 > 0:10:04and, miles up the rivers, there are quays built to ship coal, right back into the 15th century.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08Before the railways, a boat was the best way to trade.
0:10:08 > 0:10:15Then, Pembrokeshire was ideally placed between the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea.
0:10:15 > 0:10:20I had discovered my first connection between the landscape and its coast.
0:10:23 > 0:10:27The sea HAS been the key to the Pembrokeshire landscape.
0:10:27 > 0:10:31This used to be an industrial coast that used the sea.
0:10:31 > 0:10:38The sea was the main means of transport, so Pembrokeshire didn't seem as remote as it does today.
0:10:38 > 0:10:44I suspect that if you go far enough back, it didn't seem remote at all,
0:10:44 > 0:10:48and the clue is this great castle at Manorbier.
0:10:48 > 0:10:54There are others. What do these castles mean, and what effect did THEY have on the landscape?
0:10:54 > 0:11:00Manorbier is one of a string of castles in southern Pembrokeshire.
0:11:00 > 0:11:04Many sit like this, right on the coast. Why?
0:11:04 > 0:11:10'They look medieval. Who put them here? I was hoping historian Bill Zajac would know.'
0:11:10 > 0:11:17Manorbier is a product of the Norman Conquest of Pembrokeshire, which begins in the early 1090s.
0:11:17 > 0:11:23- There is a settlement of castles in this region.- It's a Norman castle?
0:11:23 > 0:11:30Yes, and they began to hold down the country by establishing fortifications like this.
0:11:30 > 0:11:33Pembrokeshire Norman castles have a pattern,
0:11:33 > 0:11:38and the sea, which once almost reached Manorbier's walls,
0:11:38 > 0:11:41was the key to the plan.
0:11:42 > 0:11:48The logic of this pattern is all connected with the waterways.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51The Daugleddau estuary here,
0:11:51 > 0:11:54the Bristol Channel, the Irish Sea.
0:11:54 > 0:11:58There is an original centre here at Pembroke,
0:11:58 > 0:12:05another very important castle at Haverfordwest, at the highest navigable point on this arm.
0:12:05 > 0:12:09They're all in direct access to waterways -
0:12:09 > 0:12:12Manorbier, Tenby, Carew.
0:12:12 > 0:12:17One presumes that relieving forces' provisions could be brought in here.
0:12:17 > 0:12:23At Manorbier is a harbour, where boats could draw up to the castle.
0:12:23 > 0:12:31Pembroke was the headquarters, and the great threat, I suppose, was from the hostile north and east?
0:12:31 > 0:12:38The wild Welsh in the north, yes! This is where the castle's defensive and offensive role manifests itself.
0:12:38 > 0:12:45Manorbier fitted in to a whole Norman landscape, a colony based along the shoreline,
0:12:45 > 0:12:49perhaps to secure those seaways to Ireland and the west.
0:12:49 > 0:12:52But what about the Welsh raids?
0:12:52 > 0:12:55Archer Gordon Summers came to figure out
0:12:55 > 0:12:58how the castle's defences worked.
0:12:58 > 0:13:04Surely a serious fortification would be on top of the highest hill?
0:13:04 > 0:13:08You imagine attackers could fire down from the hill tops.
0:13:08 > 0:13:16You may think you could stand on the hill top and pop arrows over the top. That's impossible. It's out of range.
0:13:16 > 0:13:23- What were the capabilities of a bow and arrow? How much ground could you cover here?- 200, 250 yards.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27- 200 yards?!- That range, that sweep is a killing ground.
0:13:27 > 0:13:33Anybody who comes within that area is in range of archers.
0:13:33 > 0:13:41- By the time the attackers are down to the level of the tower, they're within your range?- Shall we see?
0:13:41 > 0:13:46- When they're higher up, with a view over us, they're out of range?- Yes.
0:13:46 > 0:13:52Maximum range, I might be shooting up at this sort of angle here,
0:13:52 > 0:13:57but the killing ground from here is down there, a flatter trajectory.
0:13:57 > 0:14:01So I would be thinking about shooting...
0:14:02 > 0:14:04..down into there.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07Good heavens! Wow.
0:14:08 > 0:14:13So you're suggesting that the positioning of this castle
0:14:13 > 0:14:18- is subtle within the landscape?- Yes. This looks accessible, but it's not.
0:14:18 > 0:14:23We're trying to channel people through a path of our choosing
0:14:23 > 0:14:28that is very easily defensible - it's that direction.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31Straight towards the front gate?
0:14:31 > 0:14:36Yes. There is water, bog, sea in three sides of this castle.
0:14:36 > 0:14:41That's where they'll come, and that's where we've made preparations.
0:14:41 > 0:14:45Manorbier has its own defensive landscape
0:14:45 > 0:14:49within the grand network of Norman occupation.
0:14:49 > 0:14:57But that's not all. These castles were established deliberately to manage the countryside in between.
0:14:57 > 0:15:03This castle is in the middle of a lordship. They are defensive AND offensive.
0:15:03 > 0:15:07The Norman cavalrymen would be able to issue forth
0:15:07 > 0:15:12and really dominate a radius of 10, perhaps 20 miles around the castle.
0:15:12 > 0:15:20So each lord would have a sphere of influence that would influence the landscape around his castle?
0:15:20 > 0:15:25Many people feel that the landscape of Pembrokeshire
0:15:25 > 0:15:30has been very much shaped by the influence of the Norman Conquest.
0:15:30 > 0:15:36It has a much more English feeling than some other parts of Wales.
0:15:36 > 0:15:41Nobody knows how the Norman lords changed the Pembrokeshire landscape,
0:15:41 > 0:15:47but they brought in settlers from the English West Country to farm it,
0:15:47 > 0:15:52and it is a very English-looking landscape, of castles and villages,
0:15:52 > 0:15:58and churches with high towers, like miniature fortifications.
0:15:58 > 0:16:03But if you drive north, beyond the lands once occupied by the Normans,
0:16:03 > 0:16:08the castles, villages, broad fields and church towers disappear.
0:16:09 > 0:16:16By the time you've reached Fishguard on the northern coast, the landscape is subtly different.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20More scattered settlements and fewer villages,
0:16:20 > 0:16:23little churches and fewer towers,
0:16:23 > 0:16:26and then the field pattern is different.
0:16:26 > 0:16:31There are many more of these little irregular-shaped fields.
0:16:31 > 0:16:37But how far does this northern landscape relate to the sea?
0:16:37 > 0:16:43These little fields intrigue me most. Who laid them out, and when?
0:16:43 > 0:16:50There are two ancient types of field boundaries running into each other - one curly, the other dead straight.
0:16:50 > 0:16:55To date them, said archaeologist David Austen, we must separate them.
0:16:55 > 0:17:02It's possible at their edge, on St David's Head. We began with the straight fields.
0:17:02 > 0:17:08We're coming down to this bank, which is the grassy remains of an earthen bank.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11Can you see it, as an earthwork?
0:17:11 > 0:17:14This is the bank I'm talking about.
0:17:14 > 0:17:18Walking along the top of it, like this...
0:17:18 > 0:17:23- It's disappearing over the cliff. - Yes. ..It's absolutely straight.
0:17:23 > 0:17:29This is as far as I'm going to go, as it's chopped away by the cliff.
0:17:29 > 0:17:37Erosion has cut away the bank, and it's a little fragment of a much bigger field system beyond here.
0:17:37 > 0:17:42The rest of that straight field had fallen into the sea,
0:17:42 > 0:17:47but the curved ones were built at a safe distance from the present edge.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51- Even- I- could work out the curved fields must be more recent.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55It suggests this landscape was once organised
0:17:55 > 0:17:58into straight, rectilinear fields,
0:17:58 > 0:18:03and then this pattern must have been overlain with a new one -
0:18:03 > 0:18:06irregular, curvilinear. But when?
0:18:06 > 0:18:10I'd no idea whether it was pre-war or prehistoric!
0:18:15 > 0:18:22'Further along the cliffs, we picked up the straight field boundaries again.'
0:18:22 > 0:18:29- And this then runs on, across down here - we lose it under this gorse. - Yes, across the hillside over there.
0:18:29 > 0:18:36- It hit, originally, a huge head dyke - can you see that?- That great line of stones down there?- Yes.
0:18:36 > 0:18:44It's got a hillfort, ritual monuments. The rectilinear system is related to Iron Age monuments...
0:18:44 > 0:18:52They MAY be Bronze Age but, really, they are the first and second millennia BC, in the depths of time.
0:18:53 > 0:18:58The curvilinear systems are pushed out over the top of those -
0:18:58 > 0:19:02that seems to be quite clear - but there's clearly a gap.
0:19:02 > 0:19:06While the cliff edge is eroding, time has passed.
0:19:06 > 0:19:13The possibilities are - you run a checklist through your mind - that it's 16th- or 17th-century enclosure.
0:19:13 > 0:19:20It appears not to be. It could be medieval, but it's not standard medieval farming.
0:19:20 > 0:19:26The curvilinear system is from the Dark Ages, the age of Welsh kings,
0:19:26 > 0:19:33which lies between the end of the Roman period in 400 AD, up to the 11th century AD - in that period.
0:19:33 > 0:19:37Who could have changed the landscape in the Dark Ages?
0:19:38 > 0:19:43I decided to leave the straight Iron Age fields behind and investigate.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46We went to Nevern.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50Built into the church is a gravestone from the Dark Ages,
0:19:50 > 0:19:54the period when the fields were transformed.
0:19:54 > 0:20:00This script, which is etched into the side of the stone, is ogham script,
0:20:00 > 0:20:06created in south eastern Ireland, around Waterfoot, in the 4th, 5th centuries.
0:20:06 > 0:20:14This relates to an episode we have in the annals, which is people coming over in the 4th and 5th century,
0:20:14 > 0:20:17fighting their way into this area,
0:20:17 > 0:20:24then moving on into Brecon, then down south across the Bristol Channel into Devon and Cornwall as well.
0:20:24 > 0:20:30Everywhere we have this trace, these stones are left behind as an indicator.
0:20:30 > 0:20:36Might there be a link between the Irish who came across and the landscape of little fields?
0:20:36 > 0:20:42Absolutely, but we're making a leap here, and we've got to be cautious,
0:20:42 > 0:20:47but if we're looking for a world in which this field system gets created,
0:20:47 > 0:20:51this is a very obvious candidate indeed.
0:20:51 > 0:20:56North Pembrokeshire's little fields were perhaps created by the Irish,
0:20:56 > 0:21:01who arrived by sea and settled around these western waters.
0:21:01 > 0:21:06Their landscape was the mirror image of the Norman one in the south -
0:21:06 > 0:21:11both peoples drawn here because it was a crossroads of the sea.
0:21:15 > 0:21:21Next day, I picked up the trail of that earlier Iron Age or Bronze Age pattern
0:21:21 > 0:21:26of straight fields and hillforts. Was it also connected with the sea?
0:21:26 > 0:21:33At Castell Henllys, they've not just excavated a piece of this landscape - they've re-created it.
0:21:33 > 0:21:41- I met archaeologist Phil Bennett. - We're going through the outer defences of an Iron Age hillfort.
0:21:41 > 0:21:48The Iron Age, in this area, dates from 600 BC, through to the Roman invasion in the 1st century AD.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53So, we're going through the gateway now, into the fort,
0:21:53 > 0:21:58- where we've reconstructed Iron Age houses.- Wonderful houses!
0:22:02 > 0:22:06So these forts were strung out along the coast?
0:22:06 > 0:22:13Some of them were, but not all of them. There were forts all across the landscape, miles from the coast.
0:22:13 > 0:22:18This is a farmed landscape - settled, divided into fields.
0:22:18 > 0:22:23There was open pasture, and there was grazing out on the moor as well.
0:22:23 > 0:22:28- These were agricultural people? - Yes.- How do you know what they did?
0:22:28 > 0:22:35All we have is the archaeological record. We reconstructed buildings on their original foundations.
0:22:35 > 0:22:41- It's a wonderful space!- Each material here has its own story.
0:22:41 > 0:22:48- The posts are from coppiced woodlands...- They were actually foresters?- Well, woodland managers!
0:22:48 > 0:22:53And you found grains of this type during the digging?
0:22:53 > 0:22:55Yes, charred grain has survived,
0:22:55 > 0:23:00so we've got a bread oven, we bake bread, we grind the grain.
0:23:00 > 0:23:04And there's woven materials of various sorts?
0:23:04 > 0:23:07They were actually weaving cloth -
0:23:07 > 0:23:12raising livestock for the production of wool, and then weaving cloth.
0:23:13 > 0:23:18Wood, corn, wool... It seemed to me that, in Iron Age Pembrokeshire,
0:23:18 > 0:23:24they had everything for a settled life, without going anywhere near the sea.
0:23:26 > 0:23:31All your evidence is, then, that these communities were...
0:23:31 > 0:23:38This was their landscape, they were living here and they weren't really relating to the sea much.
0:23:38 > 0:23:43No, the people who lived here... What you see was their landscape.
0:23:43 > 0:23:48Apparently, Iron Age people, and Bronze Age before them,
0:23:48 > 0:23:52who laid out the straight fields I'd seen,
0:23:52 > 0:23:59hadn't developed the connections across the sea that were later to be the key to this landscape.
0:23:59 > 0:24:02So was this the end of the story?
0:24:04 > 0:24:10Perhaps, then, these Iron Age, Bronze Age people, 3 or 4,000 years ago,
0:24:10 > 0:24:15WERE living here as agriculturalists and turned their back on the sea.
0:24:15 > 0:24:22In most parts of Britain, that's as far back as you can take the landscape, but in Pembrokeshire,
0:24:22 > 0:24:27you find these amazing stones dotted around, often near the coast.
0:24:27 > 0:24:32And the great question is - what ARE they?
0:24:32 > 0:24:37Do they perhaps represent relics of an even earlier community?
0:24:37 > 0:24:40An even earlier landscape?
0:24:40 > 0:24:42And did THAT relate to the sea?
0:24:44 > 0:24:47I asked archaeologist George Nash.
0:24:47 > 0:24:54He took me up the Nevern Valley and explained how the great stones were placed all around its rim,
0:24:54 > 0:24:58by people who had yet to hear about agriculture.
0:24:58 > 0:25:04So, a lot of these monuments date from the middle Neolithic, around 3,500 BC.
0:25:04 > 0:25:10There is an arc of monuments, through the whole of the Nevern Valley.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14That means an arc of communities living here?
0:25:14 > 0:25:22Yes, but also, more importantly, they seem to be defining a sort of territorial line of landscape.
0:25:22 > 0:25:29- All the Neolithic activity seems to be going on within this area.- They were all close to the coast?- Yes.
0:25:29 > 0:25:32All with the coast in view.
0:25:32 > 0:25:36But the one essential to this landscape is Pentre Ifan.
0:25:38 > 0:25:44And here's this astonishing thing! I mean, this is Stonehenge in scale!
0:25:44 > 0:25:48It's Pentre Ifan, a Neolithic chambered tomb.
0:25:48 > 0:25:55Three orthostats, or uprights, supporting a very large capstone, maybe 25 tons in weight.
0:25:55 > 0:25:57- Extraordinary thing!- Yes.
0:25:57 > 0:26:02The capstone lines up with Carningli, this large mountain behind.
0:26:02 > 0:26:06It reflects the lower bit of rocky outcrop.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09It's astonishingly parallel.
0:26:09 > 0:26:14- Did they do that deliberately?- It's the idea of belonging to a landscape.
0:26:14 > 0:26:20To belong, you need to replicate things within it with your monuments.
0:26:23 > 0:26:27Who were these people? Where had they come from?
0:26:27 > 0:26:35You have to go back a long time. We're dealing with, first of all, hunter-gatherers, 5 or 6,000 BC,
0:26:35 > 0:26:40then there's Neolithic architecture coming from Europe around 4,000 BC.
0:26:40 > 0:26:46This Neolithic package includes agriculture and chamber monuments.
0:26:46 > 0:26:53They seem to ignore the agriculture, because they're actually fishing - it's too good to resist.
0:26:53 > 0:27:00So there's a whole range of these communities, down the coast, all relating seawards in this way?
0:27:00 > 0:27:06Yes, from about 4,000 to 2,000 BC, you've got communities along Strumble Head,
0:27:06 > 0:27:12around Fishguard, St David's Head, Solva, Tenby, doing the same thing.
0:27:12 > 0:27:14They're farming the sea.
0:27:15 > 0:27:22These valleys were occupied by Neolithic communities whose life was bounded by mounds and stones,
0:27:22 > 0:27:28marking and mirroring the landscape. At its centre was the sea.
0:27:28 > 0:27:30Pembrokeshire had, after all,
0:27:30 > 0:27:35been a landscape of little fishing communities, 6,000 years ago.
0:27:35 > 0:27:42Before leaving, I went back to Manorbier. What I now saw was no ordinary seaside.
0:27:42 > 0:27:46Instead, I imagined a seaway once busy with boats,
0:27:46 > 0:27:53and a shoreline that, for centuries, was once of the richest cultural crossroads in our islands -
0:27:53 > 0:27:58a coast, not on the edge, but at the centre of things.
0:27:58 > 0:28:04Pembrokeshire's landscape has been profoundly influenced by its coastal position
0:28:04 > 0:28:09on the crossroad of the seaways that's brought cultures from Europe.
0:28:09 > 0:28:14They've built great castles and forts, patterns of little fields,
0:28:14 > 0:28:20and great stone tombs like this one, which may be 4 or 5,000 years old.
0:28:20 > 0:28:26The delicious irony is that now, people come to Pembrokeshire from all over the world,
0:28:26 > 0:28:31to enjoy its coasts and the seas, because it seems so remote.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52Subtitles by Annelie Beaton BBC Scotland 2000
0:28:52 > 0:28:56E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk