The Boathouse & Over Sir John's Hill

Over Sir John's Hill — the view, and the man in it

Mary Curtis, writing in 1880, says this hill got its name from a Tudor knight who built a house on it to watch for pirates.

The hook holds a poem inside it. Over Sir John's Hill, written in 1949, takes the estuary view straight from the door of the writing shed, and the hill it names is the wooded headland across the water. That much is plain fact.

The name is older than the poem by the better part of four centuries — if Curtis is to be believed. She is the one thread the etymology hangs from. Writing in 1880, she records that Sir John Perrot, who held Laugharne Castle, put up a house on the hill so he could watch the pirate barks that worked the Severn sea, and adds in a footnote that the hill "had its name from him." Read that as what it is: a single Victorian source, told as her account, not as settled naming.

What is not in doubt is that Perrot really did have dealings with those pirates. In December 1573 a commission of inquiry under the Great Seal went out to him and two others, to look into everyone who had bargained with the late pirate Robert Hexte or victualled the pirate Thomas Clerke. That commission is firm ground. The knight watching the Severn Sea for smugglers' sails is documented. Whether this particular hill carries his name is Curtis's word alone.

So the walker at the shed may be reading the same slope off the same water as a Tudor commissioner did, three hundred and seventy-six years apart, one watching for pirate sails and the other for a heron working the tide. The convergence is the gift of this stop: Act III and Act V of the town's long story stand on one headland. The claim under it is worth telling, and worth telling honestly.

The record: §2.3 (Gerallt), 3 Sep 2026. "Over Sir John's Hill" written 1949 at the shed; Sir John's Hill a real ridge across the estuary. Curtis (1880): Perrot built a watch-house on the hill against the Severn-Sea pirates; the hill "had its name from him" (single C19 source). December 1573 Great Seal commission of inquiry to Perrot and two others, into those who bargained with the pirate Robert Hexte and victualled Thomas Clerke.