Ferryside

Ferryside (Welsh: Glan y Fferi) is a seaside village in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It is situated 8½ miles (14 km) south of Carmarthen, near the mouth of the River Tywi and close to golden sandy beaches.

Originating as a landing-place on the ferry route to Llansteffan (the ferry was used by Giraldus Cambrensis in 1188), it developed further as a fishing village and is now a popular place for retirement. Much of the village developed from the mid-nineteenth century, when in 1852 the village was linked to both Carmarthen and Swansea by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's South Wales Railway.

Along with Laugharne, Ferryside was once at the heart of the cockling industry in Carmarthen Bay. [1] Cocklewomen from Llansaint could collect about 650 tons of cockles a year, and did so until around 1900. The cockle industry now experiences intermittent bursts of activity when the Ferryside cocklebeds are opened to commercial pickers: intensive 'strip-cockling' occurs and several hundred cockle-pickers work the estuary beds with tractors.

In 1993, Ferryside saw what are known locally as 'the cockle wars': fights between rival gangs on the beach, notably between gangs from the Gower Peninsula, Liverpool, the Dee estuary and Glasgow. In addition to gaining the village rare visibility on the front pages of national newspapers, the cockle wars led to a Parliamentary inquiry and calls for the beds to be licensed. The British cockling industry has surprisingly close links to gangland: the Ferryside cockle wars may be seen as a precedent to unsavoury incidents such as the 2004 Morecambe Bay drowning of Chinese immigrant cocklers and turf wars at Newbiggin. Today, though, gangsters-in-wellies are infrequent visitors, and mainly oystercatchers and herons harvest the estuary's famous bivalves. [2]

The village has a railway station which has regular rail connections to London Paddington,Pembrooke Dock, Milford Haven, Carmarthen, Swansea, Cardiff, Crewe and Manchester Picadilly, regular buses between Carmarthen and Llanelli, a post office, a pub which has a beer garden and pool table, a yacht club, a sports and social club (previously the rugby club), a general store, and a hotel and caravan park which has a restaurant, gym and spa. It is also the home of the Ferrycabin a family run restaurant which serves locally caught fish and chips made from potatoes grown on the owners land and beef from their herd of Hereford cattle - well worth a visit if you are in the area. Ferryside is also the home of Tim Bowen Antiques specialist dealers in Welsh oak and country furniture. Until recently (spring 2009) the village also had an old fasioned newsagent store which sold sweets from jars, other confectionery, and did the local newspaper round (delivering several hundred papers every day). However, the opening of the general store coupled with the economic recession made it impossible for the newsagent to stay in business.

Notable ex-residents of the village include the General Sir Thomas Picton (of Iscoed Mansion), a former governor of Trinidad who died at the Battle of Waterloo, Hugh Williams, the 19th century Chartist lawyer who played a prominent role in the Rebecca Riots and the portrait and landscape painter Gordon Stuart (five of whose portraits can be found at the National Portrait Gallery, including those of Kingsley Amis, Dylan Thomas and Huw Wheldon).Lord Edgar Stephens is renovating a house within the village with the view of moving in sometime in 2012.

In 2006, the graveyard and grounds of the parish church, St. Ishmael's, was selected for an innovative project aimed at encouraging biodiversity in churchyards.

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Analogue television switch off

For further information on Digital switchover in the United Kingdom.

On 30 March 2005, Ferryside and Llanstephan became the first areas in the United Kingdom to lose their analogue television signals. Residents of the Carmarthenshire villages - on either side of the River Tywi - voted to switch to digital after taking part in a pilot scheme.

Homes were given digital receivers for each of their televisions. A helpline was set up for residents' teething problems, and one-to-one support was made available to the elderly.

After three months, the households were asked if they wanted to keep the digital services or revert to analogue only. More than 85% of households responded and 98% voted to retain the digital services. Hence at the end of March 2005, the analogue channels, BBC One Wales, ITV1 and S4C, radiating from the Ferryside transmitter, were switched off leaving BBC Two Wales as the only analogue channel remaining. Viewers wanted to keep this channel because it provided certain programmes that the digital equivalent, BBC 2W, did not show.

STISH - Community Magazine

STISH is a monthly magazine by the St Ishmaels community for the villagers of Ferryside and Llansaint, run by volunteers to bring news of local events and articles of local interest. Contact: editor@stish.org.uk or subeditor@stish.org.uk

Ferryside Lifeboat

Ferryside Inshore Rescue is one of more than fifty independent lifeboats stationed around the British Isles that operate independently of the RNLI. They provide the same role as the RNLI and are "declared facilities" within HM Coastguard's search and rescue organisation. As a declared facility Ferryside Lifeboat is launched by HM Coastguard in response to ’999′ calls and distress calls on VHF CH16. At Ferryside, like most lifeboats operating in the Bristol Channel, they have to cope with a large tidal range, the second largest tidal rise and fall in the world makes these waters some of the most hostile in the world. Ferryside lifeboat is available 24 hours a day throughout the year and is staffed entirely by local volunteers. A smaller second lifeboat is also available at any state of the tide for mud and sandbank rescues.

The Ferryside Lifeboat represents a custom that stretches back more than one hundred and seventy years to 1835 when the first lifeboat was stationed in the village, just 11 years after Sir William Henry founded the RNLI in 1824. They currently operate from a lifeboat station on the foreshore of Ferryside constructed in 2010. This was opened by HRH The Duchess of Gloucester on 30 March 2010. The present lifeboat is a 5.85 metre Ribcraft semi-rigid infatable craft with twin 60 hp mariner four stroke engines, giving a top speed of approximately 30 knots. This lifeboat has reached the end of its ten year service life and will be replaced it with a newly constructed 6.4 metre Ribcraft semi rigid inflatable with twin 90 hp engines later this year.

Each year they receive on average around 28 call outs. This number is expected to rise due to the increase in pleasure craft use recently and in coming years.

The lifeboat is a voluntary service and registered charity. They rely wholly on donations received to keep the service going. You can visit the Ferryside Lifeboat website at www.ferryside-lifeboat.co.uk

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