The town of Milford was founded in 1793, after Sir
William Hamilton obtained an
act of Parliament, the
Hubberston and Pill, Pembroke, Docks and Piers Act 1790 (
30 Geo. 3. c. 55), to establish the port at Milford, and takes its name from the
natural harbour of Milford Haven, which was used for several hundred years as a staging point on sea journeys to Ireland and as a shelter by Vikings. It was known as a safe port and is mentioned in
Shakespeare's
Cymbeline as "blessed Milford".
Henry II's Invasion of Ireland in 1171,
John's continued subjugation of the Irish in 1185 and 1210 and
Oliver Cromwell's 1649
invasion of Ireland; while forces which have disembarked at the point include
Jean II de Rieux's 1405 reinforcement of the
Glyndŵr Rising and
Henry VII's 1485 landing at the waterway before marching on England. By the late 18th century the two local creeks were being used to load and unload goods, and surrounding settlements were established, including the medieval chapel, and Summer Hill Farm, the only man-made structures on the future site of Milford. His nephew, the Hon.
Charles Francis Greville, invited seven
Quaker families from
Nantucket and
Martha's Vineyard to settle in the new town and develop a whaling fleet. They began by building a shipyard, and leased it to a Messrs. Harry and Joseph Jacob. In December 1796, in an unusual arrangement, the Admiralty (Navy operations) directed the Navy Board (administration and supplies) to contract Jacobs shipyard to build a frigate and later a 74-gun ship-of-the-line. However, due to a combined lack of local standing oak, access to supplies of timber from the Baltic, and local skills in volume, the Jacob operation soon went bankrupt. In 1800, following the bankruptcy of the Jacobs & Sons, the Navy Board's overseer, Jean-Louis Barralier, was persuaded to lease the site for the Navy Board and develop a dockyard for building warships. Seven royal vessels were eventually launched from the dockyard, including
HMS Surprise and
HMS Milford. The town was built on a grid pattern, thought to have been to the design of Jean-Louis Barrallier, who remained in charge of shipbuilding there for the Navy Board. Between 1801 and 1803, the town and waterway were protected by temporary batteries at Hakin Point and south of St Katherine's Church, in response to the perceived threat following the
Fishguard Invasion. A church was consecrated in October 1808 and dedicated to St
Catherine of Alexandria in the underdeveloped eastern side of the town, it remained a chapel of ease until 1891 when Milford became a parish, until that time competing with St Peter and St Cewydd in
Steynton. and in 1800 the short lived
Milford and Pembrokeshire Bank was established by Thomas Phillips, operating from a branch in the town. It collapsed in 1810. On 11 October 1809, a naval commission recommended purchase of the Milford Haven facility and formal establishment of a Royal Navy dockyard. This was, according to the report, due to the fact that Millford built-ships had proved to be cheaper due to the cheap cost of supplies and abundant labour supply. though, when
Robert Fulke Greville inherited the estate in 1824, a commercial dock was started which became the home of a successful fishing industry. By 1849, the district of
Hakin was described as a considerable centre of boat building, and by 1906, Milford had become the sixth largest fishing port in the UK, and its population rose. The
Pembrokeshire Herald claimed in 1912 that "the fish trade is Milford's sole industry... the population of the town has doubled by means of it". Between 1875 and 1886, was a permanent fixture at Milford Docks, remaining there for lengthy repairs. Her arrival into the docks was heralded as an example of the size of ship that the town could expect to attract. In the
First World War, the Haven was an assembly point for convoys to Gibraltar, and a base, under the command of R.N.R. Captain (and retired Admiral)
Charles Holcombe Dare, to counter the activity of German U-boats off the coast of Pembrokeshire. Despite its strategic importance as the home of a large fish market, a mines depot, a
flax factory, and housing numerous military personnel, Milford escaped serious damage by German bombing in the Second World War. In the summer of 1941 a bomb fell in fields near Priory Road, and later that year, a bomb damaged a house in Brooke Avenue. In neither instance were there casualties. In 1960, the
Esso Company completed work on an oil refinery near the town, which opened despite environmental objections. This was followed by similar developments by many other chief oil companies in a 10-year period, including
Texaco,
Amoco,
Gulf and
BP. In 1974, Milford could boast an oil trade of 58,554,000 tons, which was three times the combined trade of all the other ports of Wales. In 1996 the area hit the headlines internationally when the oil tanker
Sea Empress ran aground, causing a substantial oil spill. By the early 1980s, the
Esso refinery was the second largest in the UK.
Toponymy Milford Haven is an
Anglicization of an old Scandinavian name "Melrfjordr" that was first applied to the waterway – the
Old Norse Melr, meaning sandbank, and
fjordr, meaning
fjord or inlet, developing into "Milford"; then later the term "Haven" from the
Germanic word
Haven for
port or
harbour was added. The town was named Milford after the waterway, and Haven was added later in around 1868 when the railway terminus was built. The Welsh for Milford Haven, "Aberdaugleddau", refers to the estuary which is the meeting point of the "White River Cleddau" (Afon Cleddau Wen) and the "Black River Cleddau" (Afon Cleddau Ddu). In Welsh, the term
Aber is the "pouring out" of a river, hence the description of the
confluence of the two rivers and their forming an estuary. Also, Cleddau may make reference to the action of a weapon or tool cutting through the land. ==Geography and climate==