Laugharne - Carmarthenshire, Wales.
N 51° 46.207 W 004° 27.739
30U E 399100 N 5736482
Laugharne's town hall and clock tower stand at the end of King Street in the centre of this pretty Georgian town. It is still used for meetings of the Laugharne Corporation, the only remaining medieval corporation in the UK.
Waymark Code: WMFBFY
Location: South Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/24/2012
Views: 1
Laugharne Town Hall is a fine 18th century building on the main street of Laugharne. The clock tower dominates the town skyline, The tower is whitewashed to make it waterproof, but the rest of the building is painted with pastel colours.
"Laugharne is one of only two places in Britain to still have an open field system, a system once common in Europe where large fields were farmed in strips by the 76 most senior burgesses. This is governed by Laugharne Corporation, set up by Sir Guy de Brian in 1291and the office of Portreeve is equivalent to a mayor and his chain of office is made up of gold cockleshells reflecting the village's past cockle picking industry. The Portreeve is elected annually and each incumbent adds another solid gold cockleshell to the chain". Great Photos & Text Source: (
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Something else Dylan Thomas said about Laugharne was that there was nowhere else like it in the world.
Other towns may have fine Georgian buildings, a castle, rivers, an estuary or a defining landscape but where else would you find what Laugharne has as one of the oldest self-governing townships in Britain?
No-one is quite sure how far back this goes. We know Laugharne Corporation was given its Charter circa AD 1290, together with its estate, but the township is much older than that. King Henry II stayed here in 1172 (before the present castle was built). Some say Laugharne was given an earlier Charter during the reign of King John (1199-1216).
In Arthurian legend, the wizard Merlin predicted," Kidwelly was, Carmarthen is, and Laugharne shall be the greatest of the three" - and that was back in the 6th Century.
The discovery of Roman remains and Beaker graves and the knowledge that Stone Age man occupied Coygan Cave, suggests Laugharne became a settled community several thousand years before the Welsh language arrived in Wales. Text Source: (
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