'St Patrick’s Chapel, Whitesands, Pembrokeshire: an Early Medieval Cemetery'
St Patrick’s Chapel lies in wind-blown sand at Whitesands Beach in the far west of Pembrokeshire. The severe storms that battered the west coast of Britain in the winter of 2014 damaged the site, revealing burials and other archaeological remains. In May of that year a two-week excavation investigated the most damaged part of the site. This was followed up by a three-week excavation in 2015 and by another three weeks in 2016.
The earliest recognised use of the site dated to AD750-800 and seemed to be domestic and industrial. Wind-blown sand formed over this and with it the first burials appeared. Sand continued to accumulate and as it did so burials were stacked one on top of the other, up to eleven deep. From AD 870-900 long-cist graves first appeared, one with an in situ upright stone cross. The cemetery seems to have gone out of use during the eleventh century or early twelfth century. In the twelfth/thirteenth century a stone built chapel was constructed; this was abandoned by the sixteenth century.