been found. The removal of the site of the church at Perran Zabulo has been admirably described in more than one recent publication. Mr. Whitaker is of opinion that the overflow of sand reached Glamorganshire somewhat later. This is very probable, for the manorial surveys confirm it. Kenfig Castle was evidently built on the side of the great western road, and Cantleston near the vicinal, or portway, long before the great incursion of sand on the cultivated ground, in the early part of the sixteenth century;-the discovery of the two Roman stones inscribed to Gordian, Diocletian and to Maximian, the latter found in cutting the sand for the harbour at Port Talbot, near the Plattau 'r hen Eglwys ;—the destruction of the two chapels dedicated to St. Thomas at the outlets of the rivers Tawey and Afan, and the dangerous quicksands encountered by Giraldus and his company in fording the river Neath, tend to prove that there must have been still earlier inroads of the sand, less noticed, because more gradual. The local results of these later visitations seem to have been in various ways expensive and annoying. The depositions of witnesses in a "Commission of Perambulation," from the Court of Chancery, 20 Eliza., A.D. 1578, in "a cause between Watkin Lougher, Esq., and Sir William Herbert, relative to the confines and meres of the manor of Cantleston, and the claim of W. Lougher to the Borrowes," (contrariant as they are,) prove at least thus much, the existence of a highway extending eastward of Newton to a great stone, "sometime standing but now lying," near the Brod-ford across the Ogmore, and of a certain well called B'rowes Well, north of the said highway. Moreover the throwing down of "a crosse of especial marke," near the road to Merthyr Mawr, is amply attested. The Lougher witnesses also depose to the occupation of the Borrowes south of the road," by report of their elders time out of mind," by W. Lougher's ancestors, and the payment of two shillings rent for depasturing to his bailiffs, and all agree in the great increase of the sands. John Nicholas, of the age of eighty-eight years, directly deposes to the disputed land being "waste land of the manor of Watkin Lougher;" the fifth witness, John Lougher "never perambulated the waste until within this seven years, and never saw the cross;" the sixth witness never knew rent paid in the time of Watkin Lougher, the elder, but in that of Gwenllian Turberville, his widow. Rees John, of Merthir Mawr, deposes to his having thrown down the mere stone at the New Broad-ford, about fifty-two or fifty-three years before. This mass of evidence as to the Turberville Burrowes as they were called, is met and rebutted by the production of a lease for seventy years, from Sir Mathias Cradock, (ancestor of Sir W. Herbert,) to Jenkin ap Richard Turberville and William Willot, Parson of Newton Nottage, with usual power of re-entry. This explains that from the length of the term, the premises, though parcel of the Cantleston demesne, had been treated by the lessees as their own freehold, a common case. After much litiga 4 The following document was put in by Sir William Herbert to prove the antiquity of his title to the shore in Merthyr Mawr parish. It bears date at Cardiff, 7 Edward III., on the Feast of St. Petronill the Virgin, (May 31, 1333). "ROGER BERKROLLES is sued by the Lord Paramount for taking to his own proper use one boat, anchor and cable, value two marks, cast by the waves on the sea shore at Merthir Mor, which ought to be the Lord's wreck. The said Roger saith, that time out of mind the Lords of Merthyr Mor were wont to have such broken and torn goods as were cast upon said Lordship by misfortune of the sea, not claiming it as a Wrecke but as a certeyn profitt belonging to the foresaid Lordshippe,' like as other Lords there have had the same, and he desireth to be tried by the country. their "Whereupon an enquiry was made by the oaths of John of Avan, John le Fleming, John le Norris, Llywillyn ap Kynorige, Morice Maylock, William of St. Mary Church, John Denys, Nicholas of Cantlo, Roger Grant, John of Avan, John Teler & Philip le Heire, twelve men, who affirmed the right of the said Roger to the said profit, and he shall have the abovenamed goods, as is aforesaid," but not by way of wreck. These premises are exemplified as well under the Chancery Seal as the Seal of the "Exchecker of the Lord of Glamorgan and Morganwk." This document suggests an inquiry as to the ultimate disposal of the Records of the Courts at Cardiff abovementioned, and the legal effects of the recent sweeping statute relative to the Droits of the Admiralty. 66 tion and forcible re-entry, an agreement was made in 1588, as to the fishing, right of wreck, cutting wigmore, or kelp, from the rocks, and other emoluments of this parcell of pasture and sandy ground," and the reversion secured to Sir W. Herbert and dame Mary his wife. Of late years the sands have become more level and stationary over this district towards the ford over the Ogmore, as well as at Newton. Vestiges of former cultivation on the brow of the hill, above Bruse Well, where it springs from the limestone ridge, are now apparent. The windmill nearer Cantleston came to light from under the sand more than thirty years ago; Evan Lewis, tenant of Wick, informed me in 1832, that he had seen the pedestal of a cross in Pant y Groes, and that there was a boundary stone called Carreg y nod, near the ford at Rhyd pen y He likewise pointed out the foundation of a house in Cae Twyn, and of a cottage in Cwm Car, near the old road to Tithegston. It is not impossible that the ancient highway "defaced and covered with sand" in the sixteenth century, may yet become visible, and prove a continuation of the Port Way, or vicinal road, which lay to the south of the Via Julia, and diverged from it not far from Cardiff, probably rejoining it below Kenfig. The width of the highway from Newton to Nottage, and thence along the Heol y West, is certainly remarkable, as proving its early date. cae. WRECKS OF THE SEA. No casualty by "misfortune of the sea," numerous as they must have been in the course of centuries, is recorded from the time of R. Berkrolles and the establishment of his "claim to goods cast on the shore," at Merthyr Mawr, in 1333, until the time of Henry Earl of Pembroke, when Watkin Lougher accounted for a wreck to the auditor at Cardiff. This receipt, in 1588, may have been for part of the ill-fated Spanish Armada, and given when the Locks was leased from Lord Pembroke. It is said that the Dutch vessels were generally northward of their true course, and, from the similarity of soundings, often came up the Bristol instead of the English Channel; and that this error (which the set of the stream would increase) often proved fatal, before lighthouses were maintained on this coast. A flat stone in Newton churchyard commemorates the loss of a young family, three sons of J. S. Jackert, sent for education from Surinam, in the "Planter's Welvard," bound to Amsterdam, and wrecked in the night of the 3rd of June, 1770. This was the loss of a large vessel, and long remembered. Many of the soldiers, lost in one of the transports, sent from Bristol in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which encountered contrary winds, were buried in Cae Newydd, near Porthcawl, and the plough for years spared the turf above them. At Newton Point, and elsewhere, the sand has drifted from the too hastily raised mounds of similar sufferers. Often have the pilots and other inhabitants risked their lives in rescuing their fellowcreatures. In 1806, December 11th, seventeen persons 5 5 The following lines by Mr. W. Weston Young, of Newton Nottage, are copied, with the omission of a stanza or two, from the Cambrian Visitor, 1813: grave. Dash'd by the storm's compelling power His tall bark perish'd here! Like his tall bark, the billows' prey, To save him from his dreary doom, Alone he beat the surfy tide, That raging storm'd the rocky shore, Alone, unheard, for mercy cried, His struggles soon were o'er; The drifting sand his grave supplied, His dirge, the tempest's roar. were taken off pieces of the hull of the "Trelawny," West Indiaman. Between this date and February 8, 1813, when the "Delfim," schooner, from Vianna, in Portugal, to Bristol, was lost on the Black Rocks, seven instances are recorded of crews saved or aided in imminent danger. The late Colonel Knight of Tythegston interested himself much in obtaining the Manby mortar and apparatus, but it was found not suited to the shoal water of the coast. At length the total loss of the "Frolic" steamer, from Tenby to Bristol, with all her passengers, in 1830, led to the building of the two lighthouses near the Nash Point, which afford so useful a warning to vessels. The erection of a refuge beacon on the Tusker Rock, and the laying down buoys near the shords, or passages in the sands, has also given additional security to life and property. Some observations on the Stream of the channel, as distinguished from, and modified by, the tidal wave, seem to be needed, as the effects of a particular set of tide or stream in turbid water soon becomes an efficient cause of change in its own set and direction. Foreign seeds are of late years less frequently picked up on the beach. The pods with a sweetish pulp, and the white seed of the size and look of a pigeon's egg, are now seldom met with; one of the latter seeds retained its powers of vegetation long after I picked it up, and, having been steeped in fresh water, grew luxuriantly in a green-house: its leaf was like that of an acacia. May we not infer from the infrequency of these foreign waifs, the weaker action of the great current crossing the mouth of the channel, and hence a diminished deposit of sand along our shores. An instance of the conversion or cementing of driftsand into stone, by the deposition of carbonate of lime, may be seen, on a small scale, at Yet haply this poor seaman's name, On heaven's approving page may shine, ARCH. CAMB., NEW SERIES, VOL. IV. 21 |