Last week we visited St David's, a "city" in Pembrokeshire in South West Wales. Its famous for being the UKs smallest city !
Its absolutely tiny with a population of around 1600 people. And having been their, its weird to refer to it as a city, because it feels just like a village !
In days gone by in Britain, settlements were conferred city status if that had a cathedral, and thats why St David's is considered a city. It has an outstanding cathedral (above) - with the cathedral complex dominating the city. I covered the cathedral in another post last week (here).
Otherwise St David's has one main street (with a few others feeding off it), housing and holiday accommodation. It really is tiny, but very quaint and one of those places that you just have to visit. And since having been there I've spoken to quite a few other people who have said they just love visiting it !
They really have put the city status to good use ! Above is a picture of City Hall !
And the street signs also call out the city status ! And the Welsh are quite proud that they have the UK's smallest city.
It was quite touristy, with the cathedral complex in particular bringing in a lot of visitors. Above is the gates into the cathedral complex.
And next to the cathedral is the ruins of the Bishop's Palace - which is well worth a visit. However, I always thought that religious people were generally supposed to follow a life of modest means - but a palace ! And having been round it, it clearly was quite a palatial palace - I think some exploiting of money for their own use must have happened at some point in the past - it does not seem right.
The other thing we noticed a lot of in St David's was crows (rooks) ! Here you can see their nests in the tree tops beside the cemetery. There really was a lot of them around and what a racket they were making !
Well it was great to visit St David's - it really is worth the trip, and calling it a City is a bit if a stretch of the imagination, but it all added to the charm of the visit !