The residents of Residents of Kensington Court and De Clare Court independent living schemes were particularly interested in researching the Landsker line, the boundary between English-speaking and Welsh-speaking Pembrokeshire, also known as ‘Little England Beyond Wales’. Despite appearing on no maps it is familiar to everyone living in Pembrokeshire and can be traced in the place names, as Milford Haven, Haverfordwest, Rosemarket and Little Newcastle suddenly give way to Abereiddy, Porthgain, Clynderwen and Melin Tregwynt. Their research revealed that ‘landsker’, an Anglo-Saxon word, meaning to cut or divide, follows the line of the Norman frontier castles. It is an invisible cultural frontier that has persisted, without any formal recognition or legl basis, for more than ten centuries. The boundary (with Welsh to the north and east, and English to the south and west) starts on St Bride’s Bay and follows a serpentine course eastwards until it meets the River Taf just north of Laugharne in Carmarthenshire. While the exact frontier has moved between the Norman invasion of the 1100s, the first scholarly account of the line in 1602, and the modern studies starting in the 1960s, the line remains sharp and stable, with place names, customs, architecture and sense of identity divided along the line.

At Kensington Court, each person ‘adopted’ one of the Norman castles that anchor the line, researching the Norman invasion and planned English and Flemish settlements that created the two sides of the line. At D clare Court, residents looked at the unique Pembrokeshire dialect that emerged from the many migrations and influences of the region, and how each village developed a unique identity and name. The groups came together to discuss their findings and plot the route of the linguistic divide. They visited local museums, castles and the Pembrokeshire Archive. The research of the residents of Kensington Court culminated in this version of an antique map of Pembrokeshire revealing the secret Landsker Line and highlighting its key castles. The De Clare Court residents created a quiz, manifested as an magnetic and interactive board, where viewers are given clues about South Pembrokeshire villages and have to guess which village matches which characteristics. Both displays are an invitation to see South Pembrokeshire in a different light, as a place of contrast and connections, long fought over, celebrated and visited, and as a starting point for conversations about history and language.

Click the thumbnails to view larger images.