Llanteg's Milestones and Turnpike Road

---County Boundary Stone---

We are lucky to have at the eastern end of our village a Grade II Listed Boundary Stone set into Castle Ely Bridge - this is just outsde our village.


---Milestones---

We also have two Milestones - one opposite Myrtle Villaa which is at the eastern end of the village and one on a disused loop of road close to Oakland's House.


---Milestone Makers---

The Milestones are marked 'MOSS & SONS 1838'.


---Turnpike Road---

They are on what was the old main turnpike road from Carmarthen to Hobb's Point.
Later to become the A477 trunk road into South Pembrokeshire.


---Llanteg Toll Gate---

Llanteg Tollgate was run by 'Billy the Gate', William Oriel - who was the village cobbler, tollgate keeper and vilage schoolmaster all rolled into one.
William's wife was an invalid and he would puh her around the village in a basket invalid chair.
Nothing remains of our village tollgate but it appears to have been situated at the S.W. corner of Llanteg Crossroads to the west of Llanteg Garage.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Llanteg 'Bandy' at the Toll Gate

From 'Llanteg - The Days Before Yesterday'

Llanteg ‘Bandy’
extracted from the Narberth Weekly News, 11th October 1923
At Billy the Gate’s school (in the tollhouse at Llanteg crossroads) we sat on backless forms, had no desks, no blackboard, no maps or pictures, nor any of the now essential equipment of the meanest school in the country; no sanitary provision, no playground except the turnpike roadway, on which we played marbles, cricket, or any other game in season known to us.The method of our game of cricket, or ‘bandy’ as we called it, was very primitive and is worth describing. We selected sides as cricketers do now, and one side bowled and fielded, whilst the others were at the wicket.
Scoring was done by us then as it is now, i.e., after hitting the ball you had to run from wicket to wicket, but we generally had a rule that if you ‘tipped’ the ball you must run (a rule if adopted in modern cricket would make high scores very scarce). Another rule generally adopted by us was that if you hit the ball over the hedge alongside the road you were out, therefore, there were no boundary hits to claim credit for, but much to the contrary, as, of course, you were out if the ball disturbed your ‘wicket’, or if the ball was caught in its flight after you had hit it, or if the ball was returned to the ‘wicket’ before you reached it.
The ‘wicket’ consisted of two stones a little less in height that the diameter of the ball; these were set on the ground 15 to 18 inches apart, and a light twig laid upon them from one to the other. The stones were selected
so that they afforded the least possible resting-place for the twig in order that the least touch by the ball would knock it off. The ‘bat’ was a bent stick, after the shape of a hockey stick, cut out of the hedge, or wherever
one of the necessary shape could be found, and it was known to us as a ‘bandy’. The ball was generally made of rag or yarn wound up as tightly as we could, and perhaps covered with canvas or cloth sewn on as a cover. It was a matter of honour that the ball should be trundled along the ground, not pitched to the wicket, so ‘overhand’ bowling was out of the question; the batsman, on the other hand, was expected to hit the ball with a clear stroke, not with a sweeping motion along the ground - girls only were permitted to do this, for we had to allow the girls to join us in the game owing to lack of sufficient boys in the school.
I wonder if this kind of cricket is ever played, even in the most outlandish corner of the country, nowadays.
Football we never had. Athletics of any and all kinds were entirely unknown to us, and bathing and swimming were tabooed, even had there been opportunities for this, then considered unnecessary, exercise.

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