The parish name is one of the key indicators of the early history of any area in the UK. It often gives a valuable insight into the origins of settlement. Lambston was both an ecclesiastical parish (Often attached the Haroldston West) and a civil parish. As far as I can discover, both designations shared the same boundary. Lambston was a parish in the hundred of Rhos which is shown on the map below.
Source; Wickimedia Commons: The Hundred of Roose as part of ancient Dyfed showing the Lordship of Haverford in green, the Lordship of Walwyn’s Castle in Blue
Lambston – a Flemish parish name?
The current consensus seems to be that Lambston was a new name in the thirteenth century. It recorded that the land was owned or perhaps controlled by a Fleming called Lambertus Echeners. This is rather in the same way that Wiston was owned by Wizo the Fleming. An early tax record has the name (though it is not clear if it is farm or parish name) Villa Lamberti in 1291.
In 1321 it is recorded as Lamberteston or Lamhert’s tun in 1321. (South Pembrokeshire Place Names – P. Valentine Harris.). In fact it has had a very varied set of names. So far I have found 22 different names for the parish in documents and books. Some may be simple mistakes but some appear frequently and were probably used for many years. I wonder of the ‘proper’ name of the parish was something like ‘Lamberteston’. And perhaps it has simply been shortened in that Pembrokeshire way to ‘Lambston’. You can see the same with Herbrandston, which is pronounced Harbeston, and Haverfordwest pronounced Harford.
Another Option
Past historians have had other ideas – George Owen and Edward Laws included Lambston in a list of Pembrokeshire place names derived from the Vikings – attaching the name to Lambi apparently a common Norse name. A search of Norse names seems to suggest that Lambert too has some Norse connections.
LLangwm
Perhaps we will find with further research that there is a clear answer here. In Llangwm another settlement with Flemish connections, the community has recently carried out DNA tests on local residents with Flemish surnames. They have found at least one resident related to their founding Fleming – Godebert. Associated with this work is a really nice summary of the knowledge of the Flemings in Pembrokeshire. This is surprisingly on the St Andrews University website. Well worth a look is you are interested in this huge change in the life of our county.
The parish name in the Pembrokeshire Context
The –ton part of the name is likely to be a variant of –tun meaning a farm or hamlet. Names ending in –ton are very common in south Pembrokeshire. A quick count on the O.S. 1:50,000 map gives 80 named places in Pembrokeshire south of and including Lambston. The highest concentration is around Pembroke. There are another 46 south of the east-west line through St Davids and only 9 to the north of that line. This is no doubt part of the evidence for the ‘Landsker line’ , the boundary between the English-speaking and naming south and the welsh-speaking north. This has fossilised the Norman occupation of 800 years ago in the landscape.
Origin of the village names
Sutton
B G Charles in ‘Pembrokeshire Place Names’ thinks that Sutton is simply a place south of Lambston. Sutton is a very common place name in the UK and contrasts with Lambston which is the only place called Lambston in the country. In fact as far as I can ascertain it is the only place of that name in the world!
Portfield Gate
Portfield Gate seems a much newer name. Dilwyn Miles in ‘A Short History of Haverfordwest’ says that it comes from old English ‘Port’ meaning and town and ‘feld’ meaning unenclosed land. he also mentions a theory that it related to the De la Poer family which had connections with haverfordwest in the eighteenth century. Whatever the origin f the name it related to the Poor Field – the big common land area to the east of Lambston Parish which up until 1840 was recorded as ‘extra parochial’ . The ‘Gate’ would probably have been have been a gate on the road onto the common. The common was enclosed after 1840 and the name seems to have changed around that time as well.
The Name of the Cantref Before the Normans
Before the Flemings and Normans came, no doubt the Welsh residents had another name for the area. It is quite possible that the parish was derived from a welsh cantref (administrative unit). There is some argument about how complete was the clearance of the welsh population from the Rhos Hundred but apart from the Hundred name itself, there seems little trace of Welsh place names in this parish (I am not a welsh-speaker and would be very happy to be corrected on this).
It is possible that the dedication of the church to St Ismael represents a link with the welsh past. St Ismael was a celtic saint.
The welsh names that exist today – e.g. Bryn Heulog and Tafarn Newydd are recent dwellings. It seems surprising and rather sad that there is no record of who lived here before the thirteenth century or of what they called their places. It seems like a complete example of that hateful phrase ‘ethnic cleansing’.
One possible remnant could be the farm called ‘Walesland’. B G Charles the place-name expert for Pembrokeshire has a number of possible origins for the name. But I wonder, could it be the place to which the original inhabitants were driven in the extreme north east of the parish?