Members of Pembroke’s Hidden Histories group recently paid a visit to Paterchurch Tower in Pembroke Dock - only glimpsed above the dockyard wall for many years, so the group were grateful to the owner for hosting the visit.

Details of the history of the tower were shared, the view from the roof was stunning, and it was interesting to learn how Pater came to be renamed Pembroke Dock.

Once part of Paterchurch Mansion, the tower is all that now remains, along with the medieval kitchen building to the side as can be seen in this excellent black and white photograph dating from around 1860. The original St. Patrick’s Chapel and nearby Seaman’s mission were built around 1160, and it is possible that the area was used as the ‘leaving point’ for the invasion of Ireland by the Geraldines in 1169.

At the end of the 1600s, an inventory describes personal items in the east wing by the tower as including ‘a rocking horse and violin’ and the house kept five horses, 23 cows, 100 sheep and four carts even in these hard times.

By 1824, a lady known as Nanny Herring was living in the kitchen building and selling beer to the workers in the new Royal Dockyard. She was evicted in 1854 when Paterchurch house was demolished in order to extend the dockyard and build the new dockyard wall.

The group’s main aim is to continue to collate information and photographs of the old walled burgage gardens that lie within Pembroke’s town walls, and some fascinating details have come to light, including two drains that are several hundred years old.