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Carmarthen
is a busy and thriving Norman market town, situated in the heart of Carmarthenshire
between the Brecon Beacons National Park and the beautiful green fields,
rivers and woodlands to the west of the county. The town is renowned for
the market in the precinct. Here you will find stalls selling produce from
Swansea to Cardigan Bay, cheeses from Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire,
local organic foods, farmhouse salt bacon, sausages, delicious cockles from
the south wales beaches and the renowned laver bread.
Carmarthen is a great place for shopping and can also boast all the big
high street names as well as a good selection of quality local businesses.
There are over 80 pubs in the town and many fine restaurants in which to
try the local produce.
Carmarthen is Wales's oldest town with a history extending back over two
thousand years. Romans had inhabited the area and built their westernmost
fort here in AD 75-77, after that a wider settlement quickly developed.
When the Romans left the town that they called Maridunum it became a centre
of the Welsh community, there is evidence of a Celtic church dedicated to
St. Teulyddog. Some one thousand years later in AD 1094 William fitz Baldwin
and his Norman army arrived in the town and built Rhyd-y-Gors castle. The
castle must have dominated the mediaeval town just as the Roman fort had
dominated the earlier Welsh settlement. The castle has been destroyed several
times in its history and has always been rebuilt. It was subject to a number
of attacks during the 12th century, sacked by Llewellyn the Great, besieged
by Owain Glyndwr in the Welsh Rebellion of the early C15th and beseiged
again during the English civil war.
The Roman town's layout is preserved in the modern street pattern to the
east of St Peter's Church, whereas the evidence of the Norman occupation,
the Castle, is situated on a rocky knoll overlooking the River Tywi. (Towy) |
