St David's Head

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St David's Head
Coetan Arthur burial chamber
Carn Llidi from St David's Head

St Davids Head (Welsh: Penmaen Dewi) is a headland facing westward on the coast of Pembrokeshire, within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. This headland is reckoned the southern limit of the Irish Sea, south of which is the Atlantic Ocean, and the southern limit too of Cardigan Bay.

The headland is northwest of the cathedral city of St David's, jutting into the Irish Sea. To the south are Whitesands Bay, Ramsey Sound and St Brides Bay. The headland and its immediate hinterland are owned by the National Trust.

St David's Head is described in Ptolemy's Geographia, a description of the known world written in AD 140; Ptolemy calls it the 'Promontory of the Eight Perils' (Οκταπιταρον Ακρον in the original Greek).

There are magnificent views in all directions. To the north, the wide expanse of the Irish Sea, to the west, the Bishops and Clerks rocks, to the south, Whitesands Bay to Ramsey Sound and Ramsey Island and to the east, the slopes of the large rocky outcrop known as Carn Llidi.[1]

There are a number of ancient monuments showing signs of early occupation, including, an Iron Age cliff fort, prehistoric settlements, a prehistoric defensive wall, signs of various Neolithic field systems and Coetan Arthur (Arthur’s Quoit) burial chamber.[2][3]

The headland can only be reached on foot along the coastal path, the nearest road ending at Whitesands Bay about a mile to the south-east.

In 1793 Sir Richard Cold Hoare said in his "Journal of a Tour of South Wales":[4]

"No place could ever be more suited to retirement, contemplation or Druidical mysteries, surrounded by inaccessible rock and open to a wide expanse of ocean. Nothing seems wanting but the thick impenetrable groves of oaks which have been thought concomitant to places of Druidical worship and which, from the exposed nature of this situation, would never, I think, have existed here even in former days."

The headland is abundant in wildflowers and wildlife and the waters around it provide a rich habitat for fish, grey seals and porpoises. A wide variety of seabirds and peregrine falcons are also to be seen.[5]

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