Llangwm Local History Society

About Us

Welcome to the Llangwm Local History Society website.

The Society was formed in 2002 in order to undertake research relating to the history of Llangwm, its place in the local area and how outside national and international events had an influence on it and to preserve this history for future generations.

The objectives of the society are:

In addition to our ongoing activities of engaging with the community by putting on a wide range of regular talks and visits to local sites of historical interest, over the years, LLHS has undertaken a great deal of research about the local community and used this in order to mount numerous exhibitions. Our first major exhibition was Llangwm a Glimpse of the Past which presented a wide range of photos of iconic buildings, weddings, carnivals, school photos, river views and provoked a great deal of interest as people were keen to identify people and re-live cherished memories. This has been shown several times, including at the 2019 Llangwm Literary Festival.

Family history has been a major facet of our activities. This has gained a great deal of interest in recent years, especially as the internet has made researching our families past a great deal easier. Family history research usually involves visits to local cemeteries & graveyards and as a result of this, a mapping exercise was carried out in Pill Parks cemetery. Each headstone inscription was recorded along with the grave location. A really detailed piece of research, this is now available at the Pembrokeshire Archives as well as in the LLHS archive.

We have also been fortunate to have been donated a great deal of material by local historian W Grenville Thomas who had published several very well known books about Llangwm. As a result, with the permission of his daughter, we have published a book of the research that he had undertaken entitled Some Remarkable People of Llangwm and Hook. Such was the interest in the book that we had to undertake a reprint.

With the build-up to the centenary of the start of the First World War, LLHS undertook a major research project to uncover the role of Llangwm during the war. This resulted in a major exhibition in 2014 which documented what Llangwm was like during the war and the role of the 17 Llangwm men who lost their lives, all set against national and international events. In addition to the exhibition, LLHS produced an original opera based on Llangwm entitled WW1: A Village Opera. A local award winning poet and composer were commissioned to write the piece which was performed five times in the autumn of 2014 to much acclaim. As a result of these performances we were able to donate 1,000 pounds to each of The Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes. In 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, a concert version of the opera was performed in St David's Cathedral as part of their international music festival with local soloists and chorus along with the London Sinfonietta. The whole project was nominated for an award under the Remember WW1 2016 scheme and we were fortunate to win our category The Arts and Creativity. A real accolade. For our final production in 2018 we filmed scenes from the opera at locations round Llangwm. This film was shown in conjunction with the musical performance at a local theatre, again to much acclaim. Proceeds of 6,000 pounds were donated to SSAFA.

2019 saw the start of another project, Born of the Cleddau, a film showing showing the history of the River Cleddau. Two local children were filmed on board, asking questions of local historian Graham Stephens with separately filmed contributions from other local experts. The pandemic stopped the project initially but, with the gradual easing of restrictions, filming was completed. Born of the Cleddau is now available to view on our YouTube channel.

This website is a work in progress, so please check back regularly for new and updated content over the next few months.