It's not a garden gnome

[DoctorStrangelove]

It's a live shell.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pembrokesh...113000357.html

He said he'd been told one of the original occupants had found it on a nearby beach while delivering lemonade on a horse and cart, and taken it on a "very bumpy ride" back home to display in the garden.

"I spent so much time with the Morris family, we used to play and knock the missile with sticks," he said. "Other youngsters in the street apparently used to throw hoops over it!"

Just as well it wasn't a butterly bomb then. .

Saying which, I wonder if the shell in my great aunt's house was filled.

The Pembroke one made it onto PM.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001t320

53 minutes in.

[malvolio]

It's a live shell.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pembrokesh...113000357.html



Just as well it wasn't a butterly bomb then. .

Saying which, I wonder if the shell in my great aunt's house was filled.

Nearest thing I've got to a home town. An explosion would cause thousands of pounds worth of improvements...

There were until fairly recently:

* five oil refineries

* a harbour berthing oil tankers going up to over half a million ton deadweight

* a hundred or so mothballed warships a bit further up (the Warrior, now in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, was there for many years acting as a fuelling bunker)

* an MOD depot storing ammunition in what used to be the site for making and filling sea mines (my mother was small enough to be inside the casing packing them with Amatol )

And not all that far from Castlemartin firing range with its "DON'T PICK UP ANYTHING!!!!" warning signs. One thick kid brought a small armour-piercing round to school and threw it at a wall in the playground to see if it would go bang. It did; the hole is still there.

So a small leftover Victorian shell is really not that much of an issue. There may well be several more of the things lying around.

[DoctorStrangelove]

There's tidy then.

Llandarcy refinery was demolished: the tank farm location (no doubt with contributions from the Luftwaffe buried deep) is the location of "Swansea" University's new campus (which is actually in Neath).

The rest of the refinery site is now housing, not sure I'd want to buy one of those, but when you consider that after the Skewen flood some were surprised that there were coal mines under their houses, ignorance is bliss. Dunno what they thought had been going on around here for the last 3 centuries.

Baglan Bay petrochemical plant with its lovely vinyl chloride monomer production is long gone, the "new" gas fired power station lasted nearly 17 years from 2003 to 2017.

The gunpowder works up the valley was blown up some time ago (which is what you do with old gunpowder works apparently).

[malvolio]

There's tidy then.

I don't need the ignorant pseudo-Welsh sayings, thanks...

Llandarcy refinery was demolished: the tank farm location (no doubt with contributions from the Luftwaffe buried deep) is the location of "Swansea" University's new campus (which is actually in Neath).

The rest of the refinery site is now housing, not sure I'd want to buy one of those, but when you consider that after the Skewen flood some were surprised that there were coal mines under their houses, ignorance is bliss. Dunno what they thought had been going on around here for the last 3 centuries.

Not much mining around Milford as far as I know. Happy to be corrected. However, there are several million gallons of LPG stored behind Waterstone at the old Gulf refinery site - more than enough to destroy Milford (and Neyland and Pembroke Dock and assorted villages) if it went up. But not Waterstone itself, apparently. We were told when it was being built that if it did go up the blast would go over Waterstone itself. Not sure I ever believed that idea...

As an aside, Llandarcy/BP was carefully buried in a dip so it didn't stick out and the Regent (now Valero?) one was built to look like a ship when it was lit up. The other three didn't bother with such aesthetic concerns... And as you say, God knows what the soil is like beneath them all; I doubt Pembrokeshire council was over-interested in details like that.

Baglan Bay petrochemical plant with its lovely vinyl chloride monomer production is long gone, the "new" gas fired power station lasted nearly 17 years from 2003 to 2017.

Didn't realise they'd moved it from Port Talbot...

The gunpowder works up the valley was blown up some time ago (which is what you do with old gunpowder works apparently).

Agreed. But irrelevant.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Gosh we are a sensitive little flower.

Here you go: the western coal field. The seams have a steep dip and keep away from Milford.

https://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/coalauthority/home.html

I'm Welsh. The tidy thing comes from Cardiff. Along with half a dark and a Mars bar.

Only used to annoy.

[malvolio]

Gosh we are a sensitive little flower.

Here you go: the western coal field. The seams have a steep dip and keep away from Milford.

https://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/coalauthority/home.html

I'm Welsh. The tidy thing comes from Cardiff. Along with half a dark and a Mars bar.

Only used to annoy.

I'm Welsh, from Pembrokeshire: Waterston to be precise. And the phrase should be "There we are," since we have our own dialect....

But yes, too many Sais trot out the comedy Welsh phrases thinking to be humorous, and it gets a little wearing. You of course, as one of God's chosen, are perfectly entitled to use it !

[vetran]

I'm Welsh, from Pembrokeshire: Waterston to be precise. And the phrase should be "There we are," since we have our own dialect....

But yes, too many Sais trot out the comedy Welsh phrases thinking to be humorous, and it gets a little wearing. You of course, as one of God's chosen, are perfectly entitled to use it !

God apparently wasn't fussy, all those believers were blessed with God's dubious taste. What about his real love - Yorkshiremen?

[malvolio]

God apparently wasn't fussy, all those believers were blessed with God's dubious taste. What about his real love - Yorkshiremen?

We were there first....

Hwyl mawr

[Zigenare]

God apparently wasn't fussy, all those believers were blessed with God's dubious taste. What about his real love - Yorkshiremen?

He always was a fan of the underdog - We Lancastrians don't need His help.

[Zigenare]

We were there first....

Hwyl mawr

Children of a lesser God, went the way of the druids - driven into the sea.