Saundersfoot is a harbour village on a sheltered, south-facing bay, its houses climbing the hill behind the sand. The old tramway tunnels run north along the shore to Coppet Hall and Wiseman's Bridge.
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Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire
A beautiful, quaint guest house in the seaside village of Saundersfoot — a peaceful, comfortable B&B base.
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Tenby, Pembrokeshire
An elegant 18th-century manor house B&B in the picturesque village of St Florence near Tenby — traditional charm with modern comfort.
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Down at the bottom is the working harbour, cut for coal in the eighteen-thirties. It still runs boats out for mackerel and seals through the season, and a small fleet fishes from it the year round.
North of the harbour wall the sand runs on towards Coppet Hall and Monkstone Point. Behind the village the ground climbs quickly into farmland, and the lanes are quiet within a mile of the sea.
Saundersfoot looks like a seaside village that later acquired a harbour. It is the other way round. The harbour came first, in 1829, and it was not built for pleasure boats at all.
An Act of Parliament received royal assent on the 1st of June 1829, and the harbour went up over the following year for one purpose: shipping anthracite. The village sits on the Pembrokeshire Coalfield, and the coal had to get out somehow.
A horse-drawn tramway opened on the 1st of March 1834 to bring it down from the pits at Begelly and Stepaside. It ran to over four miles in the end, and by 1837 the harbour had five jetties working coal, iron ore, pig iron and firebricks. The beach car park at Coppet Hall was once known as Coalpit Hall.
Bonville’s Court, half a mile inland and the largest colliery in the county, worked from 1842 until it closed in 1930 and put three hundred men out of work. Bonville’s Court Colliery, the biggest in the Pembrokeshire coalfield, closed in 1930 with the loss of three hundred jobs, and the tramway that served the harbour closed in 1939.
What the coal left behind is the best short walk in this part of Pembrokeshire. Where the wagons ran, walkers go now, straight through the cliff by way of the old bores. It is level all the way, and easy with a pushchair.
Those same beaches were used for large-scale landing exercises in the summer of 1943, rehearsing what became D-Day. Local tradition has it that Churchill watched from the wall of the Wiseman’s Bridge Inn. Historians have picked holes in that one, so it is fair to call it disputed.
Today the harbour is still the middle of the village, and the sand either side of it is the reason people come. Two of the beaches here fly a Blue Flag, and the boats going out now carry anglers and sea-safari passengers rather than anthracite, which is a fair trade.
Saundersfoot B&Bs open at £95. The village earns its name: a Blue Flag beach, lifeguards through the school holidays, and a harbour a short walk from most of the town. Prefer dinner under the same roof? See the hotels or the cottages, or a wider choice three miles along at Tenby.
Browse all places to stay in Saundersfoot, or Saundersfoot Hotels, Saundersfoot Cottages, or see bed and breakfasts and guest houses across Wales.
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Nearby towns: Newport, Pembrokeshire · Tenby · Fishguard · Haverfordwest · Narberth · St Davids
Nearby areas: Carmarthenshire · Ceredigion
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