Naturalists and Visitors - Gower - page 13

antiquities and natural history of Wales. Hamon's knowledge was most detailed and certain within the
area where he lived and worked, a radius of some 6 miles (9.7 kilometres) from Bishopston. He made no
claim to first-hand knowledge of West Gower - 'I am not very well acquainted there, therefore I have but
hinted some things' - and because of his honesty he is regarded as an accurate observer.
Hamon set out to describe Gower as he knew it and provides a direct account, almost certainly the
first compilation ofits kind. The report covers, among other things, the natural character ofthe peninsula,
the distribution of the English language, evidence of early settlement, economic geography and natural
features. In covering the last subject he exceeded the questions asked by Lhuyd and provided a list of
plantscommoninGowerinsteadofjusttherarities.His1697listof42plantsisthefirstGowerflora.The
relevant section appears under the heading of 'The Sea Cost', where he states:
The South pt of Gowersland (being Swanzey hundd) being in length from Swanzey to Worms head
about 12 miles … with store of limestones, & limestone cleeves, wherin are many great holes or
caves … here are these sorts of sea hearbes, as scurvie grasse, Sampire & lavar … of Rock herbs,
Cetrack, maiden hair, walrue, & in the pishes of Bishopstown, Pennard, & Oystermouth there is
plenty of juniper & some buckthorn.
Of field herbs (especially in the said 3 pishes) Agrimony, wild carret, mullein, Dandelyon,
Pelamountain, mallows, Burdock, Tutsan, Eybright, Bettony, Elecampane, Foxfingers, yellow and
blue Kay-roses, Rames or Ramsey, Centry, Yarrow, Adders tongue, vervain, St John's wort,
Canker wort, Devilles bit, Ragwort, mugwort, Breakestone-psley, Larks bill, plantane, Pimpnell,
Fumitory, Burnet, Botchwort.
of hearbs in some waterie places, as water cresses, Rosa solis, Lungwort, Liver wort.
A list of these plants together with the likely current scientific and common names is given in Appendix
1.AmongtheplantsforwhichHamonusedcolloquialnamesarethecowslip Primula veris andcultivated
polyanthus, 'yellow and blue Kay-roses', and ramsons Allium ursinum , 'Rames or Ramsey'. 'Larks bill'
is probably larkspur Consolida ajacis , while 'Breakestone-psley' is probably parsley piert Aphanes ar-
vensis.
The Flora of Glamorgan notes that after Lhuyd's visit 'a long night seems to have settled on botan-
ising in the county' and that until the end of the eighteenth century very few other botanists visited the
area. Resident botanists at this period seem to have been nonexistent.
The travels and tours, which were such a feature of life for educated people in the eighteenth century,
did not include Gower, or for the most part even Wales. The government secret agent and author Daniel
Defoe made it to Swansea in 1722, but avoided the peninsula. Only two of the tourists, Henry Wigstead
andHenrySkrine,sonofthecelebratedRichardSkrineofCobhaminSurrey,venturedfromSwanseainto
Gower. Wigstead himself got no further than Caswell Bay, which he noted, was 'the finest sandy beach
I ever saw'. Skrine ventured further, although he found Gower 'in general a rocky and uninteresting dis-
trictexceptwheretheseaviewsenlivenit',anda'bleakpeninsula'.Between1739and1790JohnWesley
visited Oxwich frequently on his preaching tours through Wales (Fig. 7), and recorded that 'Gower is a
large tract of land, bounded by [Glamorgan] on the north-east, the sea on the south-west and rivers on the
other sides. Here all the people talk English and are in general the most plain, loving people in Wales'
(Davies, 1996). After 1800, with the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in Europe inhibiting the
grand European tour, the number of tourists who came to seek wild and romantic scenery in Wales in-
creased and the natural history of Gower began to be recorded more fully.
The most notable resident scholar in Glamorgan during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
tury was Edward Williams (1746-1826). Williams, better known by his bardic name of Iolo Morganwg,
spent most of his life as a stonemason, living in the Vale of Glamorgan, but travelled widely throughout