The farms that made the marsh

The farms that made the marsh

The marsh you're crossing was tidal water two centuries ago — the model farm on it was built whole, to a plan.

South of the town the land flattens into reclaimed marsh, ground that the tide covered until the early nineteenth century. Standing on it is the most finished piece of building in the parish that almost nobody walks out to see. East House Farm carries three separate Grade II listings, its Barn Range (Cadw 81182), Cowhouse Range (81183) and East farm-range (81184), all listed together on 13 June 2003. Cadw calls the group "an exceptionally well-preserved example of a model farmstead" of early-nineteenth-century improvement. It was laid out as a courtyard: the ranges set round three sides, the farmhouse central in the north range, the barn to the west, the cowhouse to the south, and a range of sheds with a wash-house and brew-house to the east. It stands in that finished courtyard form on the Tithe Map of 1842.

The record even names the hand behind it. The farmhouse is dated 1810 and carries an inscription read straight off the stone in the statutory listing: "This house and offices were erected by G. P. Watkins esq." The same formula and the same name turn up at Hurst House on the same marsh, dated 1797. The setting for both is the reclamation itself. A stone-armoured sea wall and quay were thrown up at the east end of Laugharne Marsh between 1800 and 1810 by George Watkins of Broadway, linked to Coygan Quarry by a tramway, with the Broadway farms rebuilt about 1820. The marsh had been used long before that: a Corporation survey of 1595 already named the "dairies" of Hurst House, East House and Brook House, the first record of dwellings on it. But what stands today is the improvers' marsh, reclaimed and walled and colonised with courtyard farms inside a single generation. How the Broadway estate had passed to the Watkins family by 1800 is a question the record here leaves open, and open is where it stays.

Two further farms keep the story honest at its edges, each by refusing an easy join. Out in the township stands Brixton Farm, a group of four Grade II listings of 1988, with a small pleasure in its yard: a cast-iron water pump "by Bamford of Uttoxeter," fluted cap and curving handle, standing beside a stone trough, a Staffordshire maker's name in a Carmarthenshire farmyard. For all its completeness Brixton names no owner, no tenant and no estate in any of its listings. There is no established link to the Watkins family or the Broadway estate, and that firm negative is set down as carefully as anything positive. Then Westmead Farm, in the rural parish, where the tithe apportionment of about 1840 names field number 857 as "The Island," owned by Lady Isabella Hawarden and farmed by Josiah Richards. The name is a tempting false trail. "The Island" here is a farm field, and it is not Island House the mansion. Separately, the old guess that would tie this Westmead back to Sir John Perrot is untraced and unproven, and it is left exactly at that.

The farms of the marsh are the town's built character at its most ambitious, a whole worked landscape planned and dated to the year. At its edges are two farms whose stories the record declines to fill in for us.

The record: (Cluster 5C), Karen Phase-A cleared. East House Farm — three Grade II listings (81182/81183/81184), all 13 Jun 2003, Cadw's "an exceptionally well-preserved example of a model farmstead"; courtyard plan; on the 1842 Tithe Map. Farmhouse dated 1810, inscribed "This house and offices were erected by G. P. Watkins esq.". Same formula/name at Hurst House (Cadw 9676, dated 1797). Sea wall & quay 1800–10 by George Watkins of Broadway, Coygan tramway, Broadway farms rebuilt c.1820. 1595 Corporation survey naming the marsh "dairies" (Hurst/East/Brook). Broadway Powells→Watkins descent (open question, left open). Brixton Farm — four Grade II listings (9678–9681), 21 Nov 1988; Bamford-of-Uttoxeter yard pump & trough; NO owner/tenant/estate, no Watkins/Broadway link negative. Westmead Farm — tithe field 857 "The Island" (owner Lady Isabella Hawarden, occ. Josiah Richards), a field NOT Island House; the Perrot-"Westmead" descent untraced.