Between the village of Llanon and the sea lies an area of flat land perhaps a kilometre wide, bordered to north and south by minor rivers. On the large scale maps of the area it is labelled Morfa Esgob – which translates roughly as Bishop’s Land. In contrast to the steep, thin-soiled hill pastures inland it is a favoured spot. Well-drained and quick to warm in spring, thanks to the great heat store of Cardigan Bay, the land is now mostly grazed, but both map and landscape hint at a more complex past.
The tithe map of the local parish, recently digitised and interpreted as part of the Cynefin project, captures a snapshot of the land as it was in the 1840s. It reveals Morfa Esgob as a collection of several hundred interlocking “slangs” – narrow strips of farmland – each of a size that could be managed by a single household.
Looked at from the ground, many of these are effectively merged into larger fields fenced with posts and wire, but the low winter sunshine reveals subtle banks – evidence of the old alignments.
With scholarly caution, this field system is often termed “pre-19th century” – the date of the first formal survey. Given that ownership by the church is recorded by the 1300s, however, the strips are almost certainly medieval – and just possibly much older. The turfed footpaths and tracks that give access to the slangs retain their sense of age, hinting at the centuries of daily journeys from homestead to field and back.
There is a still greater timescale at work here. At the seaward edge, erosion is eating back into the slangs, creating a fragile cliff. From the beach below, the profile of water-rounded stones, distinct lenses of clay and a loose matrix of gravel betray the origin of Morfa Esgob as material washed from beneath glacial ice.
Walking back through the neighbouring hamlet of Llansantffraed it struck me that even the ancient white rendered cottages and slate-hung church seemed temporary when judged by the calendar of geology.
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