Pembroke Dock, United Kingdom

Paterchurch Tower was the centre of an estate said to stretch from Pennar Point to Cosheston. This changed hands in 1422 when Ellen de Paterchurch married a John Adams. Prior to the building of the town and before the dockyard was thought of, various sales and exchanges took place between the principal local landowners – the Adams, Owen and Meyrick families. These exchanges left the Meyricks in control of most of the land on which the dockyard and new town were to develop. By 1802 the Paterchurch buildings were mostly ruins.

During the Second World War Pembroke Dock was targeted by the German Luftwaffe. On Monday 19 August 1940 a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 bomber flew up the haven waterway and bombed a series of oil tanks sited at Pennar. The oil-fuelled fire that followed raged for 18 days and was recorded as the largest UK conflagration since the Great Fire of London. Bombing on the night of 11 and 12 May 1941 resulted in 30 people killed and many injured in the town. Nearly 2,000 houses were damaged.

The origins of naval shipbuilding on Milford Haven were on the north side of the waterway. In November 1757, the Admiralty sent a surveying delegation to the haven, which prepared a report for Parliament recommending, "the construction of a Milford dock yard". Originally privately owned, the Navy took over the shipyard lease in 1796. In 1809, the Admiralty sought to purchase the facility outright and formally establish it as a Royal Navy dockyard, but failed to agree a purchase price.

Instead, the Admiralty agreed purchase of land across the haven, near the town of Pembroke in a district called Pater (village) or Paterchurch, and in 1814 Pembroke Dockyard was established, initially called Pater Dockyard. The site was one of the few in the haven suitable for a dock for constructing decent sized ships, as its shoreline was flat but led quickly into deep harbour. Construction started immediately, with a former frigate driven ashore as a temporary accommodation hulk. Orders were placed for the construction of a 74 gun battleship and four frigates. After the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, the scheme still seemed ill placed in what would be a smaller Royal Navy, but the final plans were given the go ahead on 31 October 1815.

On 10 February 1816, the first two ships were launched from the dockyard – HMS Valorous and Ariadne, both 20-gun post-ships, subsequently converted at Plymouth Dockyard into 26-gun ships. Over the span of 112 years, five royal yachts were built, along with 263 other Royal Navy vessels. The last ship launched from the dockyard was the Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker Oleander on 26 April 1922.

After the First World War, the dockyard was closed by the cash-strapped Admiralty as redundant in 1926. A petition was sent to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, stressing the lack of alternative employment and the economic consequences of closure, but the decision was not overturned.

The Royal Maritime Auxiliary Service (RMAS) maintained a base in Pembroke Dock until disestablishment in 2008, including the MOD Salvage & Marine Team. The Ministry of Defence sold the freehold of the site to the Milford Haven Port Authority (MHPA) in 2007.

The dockyard wall is substantially complete and the dry dock also remains, along with two out of ten building slips. Among several surviving Georgian and Victorian buildings on the site is the Terrace, a row of houses for the dockyard officers. Garrison Chapel at the end of the Terrace has been rebuilt using Objective One funding from the European Union and now serves as the Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre run by Pembroke Dock Heritage Trust.

As the dockyard and its importance grew, the need to defend it was addressed and Pembroke Dock became a military town. Work began in 1844 to build defensible barracks. In 1845 the first occupiers were the Royal Marines of the Portsmouth Division, followed through the years by many famous regiments. Between 1849 and 1857, two Martello towers of dressed Portland stone were constructed at the south-western and north-western corner of the dockyard; both were garrisoned by sergeants of artillery and their families.

In the 1850s a hutted encampment was established nearby on Llanion Hill. In 1904 this was replaced by four brick-built barrack blocks, designed to house a thousand troops. The new Llanion Barracks was 'the first barracks to be constructed with a separate area for cooking and ablutions and was one of the most modern in the country'.