The natural harbour (now the
Milford Haven Waterway) offering shelter from the prevailing south-westerly winds, has probably been used for many thousands of years. From maps, the first evidence of settlement is the name of the Carr Rocks at the entrance, derived from the
Norse-language for
rock. In 1172,
King Henry II's fleet and army were prepared in the mouth of the
Pembroke River and sailed to Ireland during the
Norman Invasion of Ireland. Until 1814, the area was mostly farmland and known as Paterchurch. The first recorded mention of Paterchurch was in 1289. A
medieval tower was built and like nearby 18th century and 19th century fortifications, it may have served as a lookout post. By the 17th century, additional domestic and farm buildings stood close to the tower and the isolated settlement had its own cemetery, whose last recorded burial is that of a Roger Adams, in 1731. The ruin of the tower now lies within the walls of the dockyard.
Paterchurch Tower was the centre of an estate said to stretch from Pennar Point to
Cosheston. This changed hands in 1422 when Ellen de Paterchurch married a John Adams. Prior to the building of the town and before the dockyard was thought of, various sales and exchanges took place between the principal local landowners – the Adams, Owen and Meyrick families. These exchanges left the
Meyricks in control of most of the land on which the
dockyard and new town were to develop. By 1802 the Paterchurch buildings were mostly ruins. During the
Second World War Pembroke Dock was targeted by the German
Luftwaffe. On Monday 19 August 1940 a Luftwaffe
Junkers Ju 88 bomber flew up the haven waterway and bombed a series of oil tanks sited at Pennar. The oil-fuelled fire that followed raged for 18 days and was recorded as the largest UK conflagration since the
Great Fire of London. Bombing on the night of 11 and 12 May 1941 resulted in 30 people killed and many injured in the town. Nearly 2,000 houses were damaged.
Naval dockyards The origins of naval shipbuilding on
Milford Haven were on the north side of the waterway. In November 1757, the Admiralty sent a surveying delegation to the haven, which prepared a report for Parliament recommending, "the construction of a Milford dock yard". The
Royal Maritime Auxiliary Service (RMAS) maintained a base in Pembroke Dock until disestablishment in 2008, including the MOD Salvage & Marine Team. The
Ministry of Defence sold the freehold of the site to the Milford Haven Port Authority (MHPA) in 2007. The dockyard wall is substantially complete and the dry dock also remains, along with two out of ten building slips. Among several surviving Georgian and Victorian buildings on the site is the Terrace, a row of houses for the dockyard officers.
Garrison Chapel at the end of the Terrace has been rebuilt using
Objective One funding from the
European Union and now serves as the Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre run by Pembroke Dock Heritage Trust.
Garrison As the dockyard and its importance grew, the need to defend it was addressed and Pembroke Dock became a military town. Work began in 1844 to build
defensible barracks. In 1845 the first occupiers were the
Royal Marines of the Portsmouth Division, followed through the years by many famous regiments. Between 1849 and 1857, two
Martello towers of dressed
Portland stone were constructed at the south-western and north-western corner of the dockyard; both were garrisoned by sergeants of artillery and their families. In the 1850s a hutted encampment was established nearby on Llanion Hill. In 1904 this was replaced by four brick-built barrack blocks, designed to house a thousand troops. The new Llanion Barracks was 'the first barracks to be constructed with a separate area for cooking and ablutions and was one of the most modern in the country'. The town remained garrisoned with troops until 1967. The two
Martello towers remain: one was a local museum but is for sale by auction in July 2019, while the other is in private hands and has been converted for residential use and is largely intact. A few buildings on the Llanion site still stand. The Officers' and Sergeants' Mess once used as council offices is now occupied by
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. The original guardroom remains and is now residential accommodation, and a listed Victoria
Powder Magazine remains set into the coastal slope which is accessible from Connacht Way. The old parade square has recently been converted for housing.
RAF base With the closure of the dockyard in 1926, the year of the
general strike, unemployment was high through the
Great Depression until 1931 when
No. 210 Squadron RAF arrived equipped with
Southampton II flying boats. For almost 30 years the
Royal Air Force was based at Pembroke Dock. During 1943, when home to the
Sunderland flying boats used to guard the
Western Approaches, it was the largest operational base for flying boats in the world. It was announced in 1957 that the RAF would be drastically reducing its presence. The two listed hangars have been rebuilt and are now used for other purposes. The full-scale
Millennium Falcon built for
The Empire Strikes Back was created in one of the hangars by Marcon Fabrications in 1979. ==Governance==