IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Llandilo, CLYNDERWEN, SA66 7XS

Historic house although the present one is not the original. The name is not original either: in the late C18 a mansion was erected here on the site of an existing farm called Bwlch y Clawdd (Pass of the Embankment); the name Temple Druid was taken from the fine cromlech that was dismantled to make way for the new building. Contemporary antiquarian Richard Fenton deplored the utilization of its position for a dungheap and its stones for pigstyes!

This stone stands just within the grounds of Temple Druid mansion, almost opposite the menhir on the other side of the road. It is not officially ancient as not listed in the archaeological record. Nevertheless although its erection may be of modern date it's possible it comes from a demolished burial chamber that existed here up until the end of the C18.

The stone is about 6 feet high and roughly triangular in shape. This is the southeastern face. The lane runs along the other side of the fence seen here.

This is the third house on this site. There was an original farmhouse called Bwlch-y-clawdd that was demolished for the construction of a gentleman's hunting lodge in 1795. The famous architect John Nash was engaged to design it, according to Richard Fenton "on an elegant plan, finished and furnished to accommodate itself to the tastes and habits of its first late modern possessors, accustomed to fashionable life". Nash gave it a grand stone staircase and other splendid features but it passed through a succession of owners before being partially dismantled in 1824 and rebuilt. During WW2 it was taken over by the writer Leo Walmsley who took in evacuees and others in need of refuge (including the novelist Nevil Shute), and wrote about the place, as Druid's Castle, in his book 'Happy Ending'. In the same spirit, the mansion's latest function is as a therapeutic retreat for those who have suffered trauma.

The local historian Richard Fenton, writing in 1811, described the house as "situate in a pleasant dingle, with a gentle fall to a pretty mountain stream full of trout that murmurs by; and if sport and retirement be the object, no situation is better calculated to produce it". It is said that the writer Leo Walmsley created a trout lake when he lived here in the 1940's.

A short way east of Maenclochog and called after the nearby old mansion, itself named for a large cromlech on the site which was destroyed to build the house. A large bore-hole can be seen here on northwestern face of the stone. The positioning seems significant: facing southeast towards the valley down which runs a tributary of the Cleddau Ddu.

Terrace of three cottages that face the road and back on to the vaulted farmyard of Temple Druid mansion behind. The dormer windows here were not a good idea.

Five multicoloured goats. Behind, a huge old tree has fallen in the woods that 200 years ago were part of a well-maintained gentleman's estate.

Wild camping site in Pembrokeshire.