Carmarthenshire

Carmarthenshire, a maritime county of South Wales, washed on the S. by Carmarthen Bay, a semicircular inlet of the Bristol Channel, and bounded on the other sides by Pembrok, Cardigan, Brecknock, and Glamorgan shires. The largest of all the Welsh counties, it has a maximum length and breadth of 45½ and 26 miles, and an area of 947 sq. m., of which 70.8 per cent. is under cultivation. The county is mountainous in the north and east, and is characterised by productive though narrow valleys and deep, wooded glens; Carmarthen Van or Beacon (2596 feet) is the highest summit. The coast is marshy; the chief river is the Towy, which has a course of 65 miles, five-sixths in Carmarthenshire. It yields plenty of salmon, trout, eels, and lamprey, and is navigable for the last 9 miles of its course. On this river is the celebrated vale of the Towy, 30 miles long, with an average breadth of 2 miles. Carmarthenshire, north and west of the Towy, comprising three-fourths of the county, consists of Lower Silurian clay-slate and graywacke. In the south-east corner of the county is a band of carboniferous limestone and grit, to which succeeds a small part of the great South Welsh coal-field, chiefly composed of stone-coal and culm. The mineral productions of the county are iron, coal, copper, lead, slates, lime, dark-blue marble. These, with tinned iron, grain, cattle, horses, sheep, and butter, are exported. The climate is mild, but moist; the soil is stiff and poor in the uplands, affording pasturage for small cattle; but the rest of the county is well wooded, and in the south part along the rivers very fertile. Agriculture is rather backward, the chief crops are oats and barley. The principal towns are Carmarthen (the county town), Llanelly, Llandilo-vawr, Llandover, and Newcastle-Emlyn. The chief manufactures are woollens and leather. Pop. (1801) 67,317; (1841) 106,326; (1891) 130,564, largely Welsh-speaking. Carmarthenshire sends one member to parliament for each of its eastern and western divisions. Traversed by the old Roman Jnlian way, the county contains several so-called Drnidical remains, the ruins of Dynevor and Carregcennin castles, and remains of four religious houses. It was the birthplace of the 'Rebecca' Riots (q.v.), directed in 1843-44 against the turnpike-gates.