Flat Holm
Flat Holm is a Welsh island lying in the Bristol Channel approximately from Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan. It includes the most southerly point of Wales.
The island has a long history of occupation, dating at least from the Bronze Age. Religious uses include visits by disciples of Saint Cadoc in the 5th–6th century AD, and in 1835 it was the site of the foundation of the Bristol Channel Mission, which later became the Mission to Seafarers. A sanatorium for cholera patients was built in 1896 as the isolation hospital for the port of Cardiff. Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless signals over open sea from Flat Holm to Lavernock. Because of frequent shipwrecks, a lighthouse was built on the island, which was replaced by a Trinity House lighthouse in 1737. Because of its strategic position on the approaches to Bristol and Cardiff a series of gun emplacements, known as Flat Holm Battery, were built in the 1860s as part of a line of defences, known as Palmerston Forts. On the outbreak of World War II, the island was rearmed.
It forms part of the City and County of Cardiff and is now managed by Cardiff Council's Flat Holm Project Team and designated as a Local Nature Reserve, Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Protection Area, because of the maritime grassland and rare plants such as rock sea-lavender and wild leek. The island also has significant breeding colonies of lesser black-backed gulls, herring gulls and great black-backed gulls. It is also home to slow worms with larger than usual blue markings.
Geology
During much of the most recent ice ages, from 1.8 million years ago, the sea level in the Severn Estuary was some below the current level and Flat Holm was joined to the Somerset coast as an extremity of the Mendip Hills. Sometime since the start of the Mesolithic period, 15,000 years ago, the ice sheets retreated, and the flat plains surrounding the river estuary flooded; the hilltops of Mendip Hills became the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm.The Carboniferous Limestone of which Flat Holm and neighbouring Steep Holm are composed forms a part of a wider Mesozoic basin extending from the Bristol and Mendip area westwards beneath the mouth of the Severn to South Wales, outcropping to the west at Sully Island and Barry, Wales. Part of the island is designated a Geological Conservation Review Site and is a recognised Site of Special Scientific Interest. The GCR and SSSI interest lies along the south-western shoreline from the north west point to Lighthouse Point where a wave cut portion of the limestone displays large fossil "ripple marks".
During the Ice Age, the island was covered by glacier ice on several occasions. There are abundant erratic pebbles on the beaches, mostly from Pembrokeshire, indicating that the ice that covered the island was that of the Irish Sea Ice Stream, travelling from west to east up the Bristol Channel. There are also larger erratics, including one spectacular pink granite boulder on a rocky foreshore near the farmhouse.
There are argentiferous galena deposits on Flat Holm; the pits and mounds visible on the surface of the island are a result of trial borings. A dispute over lead mining rights in the 1780s ended with John Stuart, Lord Mount Stuart making an official complaint that the lighthouse keeper was using the coals intended for the lighthouse for processing lead. Mining for lead was not profitable, however, and the works were abandoned. Red marl from the Triassic Period fills joints in the Carboniferous Limestone showing evidence of karstic processes during this period. Caves on the western and north-eastern sides of the island were used during the years of smuggling.
History
Bronze Age
The first traces of human habitation of the island are from the late Bronze Age, 900 to 700 BC. A bronze axe head was discovered on the island in 1988, between the island's farmhouse and West Beach.Sub-Roman
In the sub-Roman period of the 5th-6th century AD, it became a retreat for Saint Cadoc, who lived on the island as a hermit for seven years. His friend, Saint Gildas born in the Kingdom of Strathclyde but educated at the College of Theodosius in the Kingdom of Gwent, lived at the same time on nearby Steep Holm, and the two sometimes met up for prayers. Gildas eventually left the island to become Abbot of Glastonbury.In June 1815, a Dr Thomas Turner visited Flat Holm in a small boat and was stranded for a week due to high winds. He discovered two Christian graves located close together in a field northeast of the island's present farmhouse; one grave had been opened and contained a male skeleton. The open grave's headstone was made of purbeck marble and engraved with a Celtic cross, but had since broken in two. A second disturbed grave, also marked with a headstone, was found to the southeast and contained a coffin constructed with iron bolts. Inside the coffin were two skeletons which had been doused in lime, indicating that the occupants had probably died from a contagious disease.
Middle Ages
called the island Bradanreolice. Reolice derives from an Irish word meaning churchyard or graveyard, alluding to the belief that the island had religious significance as a place of burial to people at the time. However, the island's current English name of "Holm" comes from the Old Norse meaning "island in an estuary". Records indicate that a Viking fleet from the south of Brittany led by two earls, Ottir and Hroald, took refuge on the island following their defeat by the Saxons at Watchet.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 1067, Gytha Thorkelsdóttir, mother of Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, stayed on the island before travelling to St Omer in France after the Norman conquest of England. After the invasion, Robert Fitzhamon formed the Shire of Glamorgan in Wales proper, with Cardiff Castle at the centre of his new domain. Flat Holm came within the parish boundary of St Mary's, one of Cardiff's two parish churches, and was kept as a hereditary property of the Norman Lords of Glamorgan.
A survey by archaeologist Howard Thomas in 1979 unearthed a number of medieval potsherds in the vicinity of the farmhouse and found evidence of continuous occupation of the island including middens containing numerous animal bones along with oyster and cockle shells. Fragments of green glazed jugs and flagons from the late 12th to 13th century and shards of pottery from the 14th century were also found on the island. The presence of Pennant sandstone roofing tiles and a fragment of a 14th-century glazed ridge tile indicate the existence of a substantial medieval building, possibly a chapel, demolished when the present farmhouse was constructed. Property records from 1542 show that King Henry VIII granted a lease to farm the island to a gentleman by the name of Edmund Tournor. His family remained on Flat Holm until the end of the 17th century when the lease passed to Joseph Robins.
18th century – smuggling
During the 18th century, the island's location made it an ideal base for smuggling. It has been alleged that an old mine shaft on the north side of the island connects with a series of natural tunnels, and a concealed exit to the sea. Although Flat Holm was in full view of both the Welsh and English coasts, customs authorities were powerless to act as they had no boat to take them to the island. According to tradition, a small cave in the east cliff at Flat Holm was used for the storage of contraband, mainly tea and brandy.19th century – Seafarer's Mission and Marconi
In 1835, clergyman John Ashley from Clevedon voluntarily ministered to the population of the island. Ashley created the Bristol Channel Mission in order to serve seafarers on the 400 sailing vessels which used the Bristol Channel. The mission would later become the Mission to Seafarers, which still provides ministerial services to sailors in over 300 ports.On 13 May 1897, a 22-year-old Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi, assisted by a Cardiff Post Office engineer named George Kemp, transmitted the first wireless signals over open sea from Flat Holm to Lavernock Point near Penarth, Wales. Having failed to interest the Italian government in his project, Marconi had brought his telegraphy system to Britain. Here he met Welshman William Preece who was at that time Chief Engineer of the General Post Office and a major figure in the field. Marconi and Preece erected a high transmitting mast on Flat Holm as well as a receiving mast at Lavernock Point. The first trials on 11 May and 12 failed. On 13 May, the mast at Lavernock was raised to and the signals were received clearly. The message sent by Morse Code was "Are you ready"; the original paper Morse slip, signed by both Marconi and Kemp, is now in the National Museum of Wales.
Shipwrecks
The treacherous conditions for ships around the island led to several shipwrecks. The British passenger vessel Tapley lost seven passengers when she became stranded on Flat Holm in January 1773 on her passage from Cork, Ireland to Bristol.On 23 October 1817, a British sloop, William and Mary, foundered after hitting the three rocky islets known as The Wolves which are not far from near Flat Holm. The ship was en route from Bristol to Waterford and sank within 15 minutes. The ship's mate, John Outridge, and two sailors made off in the only lifeboat. 15 survivors were later rescued, having clung to the ship's rigging, but 54 other passengers were lost. 50 of the bodies were recovered from the ship and were buried on Flat Holm.
In 1938 the steamship Norman Queen ran ashore on Flat Holm but was refloated, and in 1941 the steamship Middlesex was lost.