Pembroke Dock Infrastructure Project at Waterloo.

 An Alternative to the Destruction of Pembroke Dockyard's Last Pieces of Shipbuilding Heritage

Waterloo is an area on the eastern side of Pembroke Dock, Pembrokeshire, Wales. 

Originally the area, after 1815, was a row of single story cottages on the western side of the road to Pembroke Ferry. These cottages, built by workers at Pembroke Dockyard, overlooked East Llanion Pill, which until the mid-20th century was shallow inlet of  Cosheston Pill, itself an inlet of Milford Haven. After the the Cleddau Bridge opened in the 1975, the road to Pembroke Ferry was widened and improved to accommodate the A477 which from that date ran over the new bridge to the north side of Milford Haven.

Figure 1. Waterloo and East Llanion Pill in 1966. Depths are in fathoms and feet.

At the same time the bridge was being built, the shallow water at East Llanion Pill was reclaimed by Pembrokeshire County Council - an idea that had been envisaged initially in the nineteenth century. The reclaimed land became the industrial and commercial estate that we see today. The extract from an Admiralty Chart below shows the Waterloo area and Cosheston Pill before the land reclamation took place. The chart is dated 1966.

The industrial estate at Waterloo developed rapidly and today is a mixture of empty plots, fabrication and painting businesses, builders' merchants, travellers' site and PCC's civic amenity site (recycling facility).

A modern map of the site shows the extent of the land fill at East Llanion Pill

Figure 2. A chart of 2007. The Warrior has gone and the extent of landfill at East Llanion Pill is evident.

The area of land reclamation is now the Watereloo Industrial Estate.

Figure 3. The Waterloo Industrial Estate.

To the north of the Waterloo industrial estate is the area once occupied by an Admiralty oil storage depot. This depot was serviced by a berthing pontoon. This pontoon was famously the hulk of the iron clad battleship, HMS Warrior, which was moored alongside two stub jetties below the steep cliffs and woods of Llanion. You can see the location in Figure 1. Figure 4 shows the Warrior moored at this location. The photograph was taken in 1952.

Figure 4. HMS Warrior at Llanion in 1952.

An Alternative Site

The Waterloo industrial estate would seem to be a good alternative site for the Pembroke Dock Infrastructure project.

Space for Large Fabrication Sheds (Dimensions kindly supplied my Milford Haven Port Authority)

These sheds proposed for the site in Pembroke Dockyard are intended to be:

Figure 5. Locations of proposed large sheds in Pembroke Dockyard

Shed A – Fabrication building for sub-assemblies and marine engineering related activities (11,900sqm) – (170m X 70m and 40m to ridge)

Shed B – High bay ship repair and fabrication building (4,900sqm) – (75m X 65m and 40m to ridge)

Shed C - Light assembly and maintenance building (2,500sqm) – (129m X 20m and 10m to ridge)

 These sheds could be accommodated easily within the Waterloo Industrial Estate, as I will illustrate later.

Figure 6 shows the land at Waterloo and Llanion with known ownership. The map is an ongoing project and will be updated as more information is gathered.

Figure 6. Leasehold and Freehold Properties at Waterloo and Llanion

Most of the land north and west of the A477, has at some time been within public body ownership, whether this be Ministry of Defence, Pembrokeshire County Council or Welsh Ministers. For example, the former landfill site upon which most of the Waterloo Industrial Estate sits was the freehold of Pembrokeshire County Council (PCC). Some of this land has now been purchased by other organisations/businesses and much of the remainder has been leased out by PCC on terms varying form 10 years to 99 years. Some of this leasheold property has been sublet to others, and in one instance sublet again!

The ex-Admiralty land on the high ground east of the Cleddau Bridge, formerly a fuel oil depot, is largely owned by PCC and Welsh Ministers. The unshaded land north of the Waterloo Industrial Estate is of undetermined ownership, but it is believed to be in the freehold of PCC. If you know better, please let me know!

In the south-east corner of the Industrial Site is a travellers' site, the freehold of PCC, but this, I understand is being closed in the very near future.

There are several advantages to using the Waterloo Industrial Estate for the Pembroke Dock Infrastructure project. Many of the companies that already occupy the site have extensive and current experience of working on the type of devices and structures that the project envisages would be built or maintained in the dockyard. Indeed, some of the companies who operate their businesses from Waterloo Industrial Estate have already produced marine energy devices.

Other advantages of the site are that there is already a good communications infrastructure available and the buildings of the Bridge Innovation Centre gives access to state of the art business premises for meetings, offices and workshops.

The Bridges Innovation Centre is also home for the Marine Energy Engineering Centre of Excellence (MEECE), one of the cornerstones of the scheme proposed by Milford Haven Port Authority (MHPA) and supported by PCC, and academic institutions across Wales. It would make sense to have this centre adjacent to the facilities that MHPA propose placing in the dockyard. The Waterloo Industrial Estate is a far more sensible place to put facilities required, plus the heritage of the dockyard could be preserved for other purposes.

Indeed, one of the companies who have already made a commitment to Pembroke Dock is already based near at hand to the Waterloo site. This is Bombora, who have a presence at the The Offices, Cleddau Reach, Llanion. Their website is very informative.

The big problem with the Waterloo site is the lack of adequate access to deep water. However, this could be overcome by building a 70 metre wide hard standing down the western bank of Cosheston Pill, terminating in a slip where the water depth increases dramatically just east of the former mooring site of the Warrior. The water depth here drops off rapidly to 12+ metres (See Figure 2). The width of the channel a little further downstream has a width of 55 metres. If insufficient, this could be widened with judicious dredging just off the former NATO jetty at Burton. It must be recalled that in the past fleet auxiliary tankers and civilian oil tankers used to moor alongside the Warrior on a regular basis to discharge or take on fuel oil. They were not small ships. This area of the Milford Haven Waterway is a site designated for the testing of marine energy devices, a project sponsored by Marine Energy Wales and Pembrokeshire Coastal Forum. 

National Resources Wales (NRW) have had some concern over the cumulative effects of sea-floor disturbance at Llanion, associated with the test site, and the dredging and operations at Pembroke Dockyard. Confining subsurface work to this one area is likely to mitigate the cumulative effects that NRW has concerns about. See here and here.

Amongst other businesses that would be affected by the establishment of the Pembroke Dock Infrastructure project at Waterloo Industrial Estate would be Llanion Cove Ltd. This company operates a water sports activity centre north of the Industrial Estate and on land owned by MHPA. This land would be required to allow the PDI project to have access to deep water. Llanion Cove Ltd also run the The Cove restaurant, but should the PDI project go ahead at this location it could adapt its business to providing for the workforce on the site. The water sports activities could be relocated to the western dockyard where the  Timber Pond could be used as part of the initial training of customers. Slips 1 and 2 would provide good access to the waterway.

The map below (Figure 7) shows possible locations for the slipway and Sheds A, B and C that MHPA propose to erect on the buried remains of the western dockyard. The diagram is indicative only, but it does show that the big sheds and the proposed slip would fit into the site at Waterloo.

Figure 7. Possible placement of PDI Large Structures at Waterloo

In my next post I will explain the proposal in more detail. There are many questions that you will need answers for.