Pennard (electoral ward)

The A4118 road is in Swansea, Wales, connecting Dyfatty Street in Swansea City Centre with Port Eynon in the Gower Peninsula. The route runs through suburban areas until it reaches Upper Killay, where the road enters rural Gower. It passes over Fairwood Common and through several villages before terminating at Port Eynon.

Parkmill (Welsh: Melin y Parc) is a village in the Gower Peninsula, South Wales, midway between the villages of Penmaen and Ilston, about eight miles (13 km) west of Swansea, and about one mile (1.5 km) from the north coast of the Bristol Channel. The village lies to the north of the A4118, the main South Gower road between Swansea and Port Eynon, in a wooded area, at the bottom of a valley. The building at the centre of the village is a former school that is now home to the West Glamorgan Girl Guides Activity Centre. Pennard golf course lies immediately to the south of the village. Parkmill is in the Gower ward of the City and County of Swansea. Parkmill's only religious building is the Mount Pisgah United Reformed Church, a Congregational chapel, erected in 1822 and rebuilt in 1890. The area is little changed from the mid 19th century, when Samuel Lewis said in his 'A Topographical Dictionary of Wales' (1849): The hamlet of Park-Mill, forming the most populous part of the parish, [Ilston] is yet extremely rural; and the surrounding scenery, which is characterized by features of tranquillity and seclusion, is enlivened by the small rivulet called Pennarth Pill, winding along a beautiful dell, in which are the ruins of an ancient chapel. On this stream a cloth manufactory was established early in the present century, but it has been discontinued. The 'cloth manufactory', a 12th-century water-powered corn and saw mill, at Parkmill has since been renovated and a rural crafts centre sited in it, called the Gower Heritage Centre.

La Charrette was for several decades the smallest cinema in the UK. It closed in February 2008. A tiny, 23-seat venue, sited in a back garden in the town of Gorseinon, near Swansea, 'La Charrette' (French for 'the carriage') was built from a disused railway carriage. With flock wallpaper and hand-operated curtains, 'La Charrette' began showing films in 1953.

Kilvrough Manor is a large country house near Swansea. It is a Grade II* listed building. Its park is listed on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

Hunts Bay is located on the south coast of the Gower Peninsula, Wales, between Pwll du and Foxhole to the east of Three Cliffs Bay. It was once a sandy beach, but the sand depth on the beach is diminishing, leaving a rocky cove. The loss of sand has been attributed to sand dredging in the local coastal area.

Pennard (previously Llanarthbodu) is a village and community on the south of the Gower Peninsula, about 7 miles south-west of Swansea city centre. It falls within the Pennard electoral ward of Swansea. The Pennard community includes the larger settlements of Southgate and Kittle. the population as of 2011 was 2,688.

Parc le Breos was a great medieval deer park in the south of the Gower Peninsula, about eight miles (13 km) west of Swansea, Wales, and about 1+1⁄4 miles (2.0 km) north of the Bristol Channel. The park was an enclosed, oval area of 6.7 miles (10.8 km) in circumference, covering about 2,000 acres (810 ha) and measuring 2+1⁄2 miles (east–west) by just over 1+3⁄4 miles (4.1 km by 2.9 km). Parc le Breos was established in the 1220s CE by John de Braose (of the powerful Cambro-Norman de Braose dynasty), Marcher Lord of Gower and husband to Margaret Ferch Llywelyn, Llywelyn Fawr's daughter. Other than for deer husbandry, the park received an income from agistment, pannage, and from sales of wild honey, ferns and dead wood. There is evidence of rabbit warrens in the park. Whether the warrens were free or domestic is unknown.The park's boundary was originally marked by a wooden fence, or pale, on the top of an earth bank inside a ditch. Some parts of the pale survive.Prehistoric finds and an Iron Age enclosure (above Parkmill) show the area of Parc le Breos to have been settled by modern humans since the earliest times.

Parc Cwm long cairn (Welsh: carn hir Parc Cwm), also known as Parc le Breos burial chamber (siambr gladdu Parc le Breos), is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb, identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow. The cromlech, a megalithic burial chamber, was built around 5850 years before present (BP), during the early Neolithic. It is about seven 1⁄2 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula. A trapezoidal cairn of rubble – the upper part of the cromlech and its earth covering now removed – about 72 feet (22 m) long by 43 feet (13 m) (at its widest), is revetted by a low dry-stone wall. A bell-shaped, south-facing forecourt, formed by the wall, leads to a central passageway lined with limestone slabs set on end. Human remains had been placed in the two pairs of stone chambers that lead from the passageway. Corpses may have been placed in nearby caves until they decomposed, when the bones were moved to the tomb. The cromlech was discovered in 1869 by workmen digging for road stone. An excavation later that year revealed human bones (now known to have belonged to at least 40 people), animal remains, and Neolithic pottery. Samples from the site show the tomb to have been in use for between 300 and 800 years. North-West European lifestyles changed around 6000 BP, from the nomadic lives of the hunter-gatherer, to a settled life of agricultural farming: the Neolithic Revolution. However, analysis of the human remains found at Parc Cwm long cairn show the people interred in the cromlech continued to be either hunter-gatherers or herders, rather than agricultural farmers. Parc Cwm long cairn lies in a former medieval deer park, established in the 1220s CE by the Marcher Lord of Gower as Parc le Breos – an enclosed area of about 2,000 acres (810 ha), now mainly farmland. The cromlech is on the floor of a dry narrow limestone gorge containing about 500 acres (2.0 km2) of woodland. Free pedestrian access is via an asphalt track leading from the park's entrance, which has free parking for 12–15 cars about 250 yards (230 m) from the site. Parc Cwm long cairn is maintained by Cadw, the Welsh Government's historic environment division.

The Gower Peninsula (Welsh: Gŵyr) in the City and County of Swansea, Wales, contains over twenty villages and communities. Most of the peninsula is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Ilston (Welsh: Llanilltud Gwyr) is a village and community in Swansea, southwest Wales. Ilston has its own community council.

Cathole Cave, Cat Hole Cave or Cathole Rock Cave, is a cave near Parc Cwm long cairn at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula, Wales. It is a steep limestone outcrop, about 200 yards (180 m) north of the cromlech along the Parc le Breos Cwm valley and near the top of the gorge, about 50 feet (15 m) from the valley floor. The cave is a deep triangular fissure penetrating the hillside and narrowing towards the top. It has two entrances, with a natural platform outside the larger of the two. It is about seven 1⁄2 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula. The cave was used as a shelter by bands of Mesolithic hunters and as a Neolithic ossuary. During the first excavation of the cave in 1864, finds were made only from the Mesolithic to medieval periods. In his "The Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society vol.25 (1959), pp. 260–69", archaeologist Charles McBurney notes that "In the Post Glacial period the cave was much used by Mesolithic hunters"; a conclusion confirmed by John Campbell's excavation of 1977.A 1984 excavation by Aldhouse-Green revealed the earliest finds from the cave, two tanged points that may date to c. 28,000 BP, an interglacial period during the Late Pleistocene roughly contemporaneous with the Red Lady of Paviland. The "lady" was discovered in a cave between Port Eynon and Rhossili, about eight miles (13 km) west of Cathole Cave, and has been radiocarbon dated to c. 29,000 BP, the oldest known human burial in Great Britain.Rock art from the Upper Paleolithic, thought to represent a reindeer, was discovered on the back wall of Cathole Cave in September 2010. The engraving, measuring approximately 15 x 11 cm, has been radiocarbon dated to 14,505 ± 560 BP. According to George Nash, the archeologist who made the discovery, it is "the oldest rock art in the British Isles, if not north-western Europe". Following the discovery, the cave was laser-scanned (using point-cloud technology). Following this project and systematic vandalism, the entrance of the cave was gated with a metal grille. Despite this set-back Nash has made further discoveries. Other marks/motifs of a possible similar date have been found elsewhere within the rear section of the cave. Late glacial tool finds from the Upper Palaeolithic date to c. 12,000 BP: flint blades known as Cheddar points; smaller bladelets known as Cresswell points; scrapers; burins or lithic flakes; flint and bone awls; and a bone needle. Flint rarely occurs in Wales other than in drifts, or as small pebbles on beaches. Flint tools would therefore have to have been brought to Gower from other areas, such as those now known as southern or eastern England, or Antrim, either as finished tools or as incomplete, or unworked, nodules. Remains of red fox, Arctic fox, brown bear, tundra vole, and possibly reindeer, were found at the same level as the Upper Palaeolithic tools, providing evidence of the climate c. 12,000 BP. Other animal remains excavated during the 19th century, which may predate the Late glacial finds, include mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, red deer and giant deer.Several finds date to the Bronze Age, including a bronze socketed axe, two human skeletons, and sherds of pottery from burial urns and other vessels.

Gower (Welsh: Gŵyr) or the Gower Peninsula (Penrhyn Gŵyr) is in South West Wales and is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan, Wales. It projects towards the Bristol Channel. In 1956, the majority of Gower became the first area in the United Kingdom to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Until 1974, Gower was administered as a rural district. It was then merged with the county borough of Swansea. From 1974 to 1996, it formed the Swansea district. Since 1996, Gower has been administered as part of the unitary authority of the City and County of Swansea. Since its establishment in 1999, the Gower Senedd constituency has only elected Labour members. The Gower constituency in Westminster had previously also elected only Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) since 1908; the longest run (with Normanton and Makerfield) of any UK constituency. This ended in 2015 when the Conservatives took the seat. In 2017, it returned to Labour. The area of both constituencies covers the peninsula and the outer Gower areas of Clydach, Gowerton, Gorseinon, Felindre, Garnswllt and encompasses the area of the historic Lordship of Gower apart from the city of Swansea.