Sea caves concealed in the limestone cliffs of the southwest Gower have yielded a wealth of famous archeological finds –most notably the “Red Lady of Paviland”, a skeleton stained with red ochre and adorned with shell necklaces and ivory rods, which the local curate who found it in 1823 mistakenly believed to be the bones of a Roman-era prostitute. In fact, modern carbon-dating techniques have shown the “Red Lady” was a 25–30-year-old male, and that he lived not 2000, but 29,000 years ago, making these the oldest remains of a modern human ever discovered in Europe.
Most of the prehistoric vestiges to have come to light at RHOSSILI itself date from a more recent period in the late Bronze Age, by which time sea levels would have been what they are today. In a tiny cave on the far side of Burry Holm (the headland bounding the north end of the beach) a narrow opening in the rock leads into Culver Hole where, during excavations in the 1920s, an ossuary containing the bones of thirty or more individuals was discovered, along with eleven urns of human ashes.
Rhossili appears to have been continuously inhabited through the Roman era and Dark Ages, as Celtic missionary saints began to spread Christianity along the Welsh coast. The name of the beach itself derives from the old Welsh for “moor” – “rhos” – and the now forgotten “Saint Suilen” or “Saint Sili”, who probably founded the first church here in the sixth century AD. It would have served as a waystage on the coastal pilgrimage circuit, with travellers passing through en route to the shrine of Saint Cenydd just inland.
Later enlarged by the Normans, the settlement became engulfed in sand over the course of the fifteenth century, forcing a move to higher ground on the headland above the bay. The precise whereabouts of the old village, meanwhile, became forgotten, and remained a mystery until a powerful spring tide in the 1970s uncovered ruins at the foot of Rhossili Down; they’re now protected as an ancient monument.
One remnant, however, had clearly been deemed too valuable to leave for the sand to swallow. Spanning the entrance to Rhossili’s church of st mary’s is an incongruous early twelfth-century archway, complete with trademark Norman dog-tooth mouldings, which must have been salvaged from the deserted medieval village. St Mary’s other claim to fame is a small memorial plaque to local boy Edgar “Taff” Evans, a member of Scott’s ill-fated 1910–1913 Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic. The Welshman was the first to perish on the long walk back from the south pole, collapsing from exhaustion, frostbite and the effects of repeated head injuries, at the base of the Beardmore Glacier on February 16,1912. His body was the only one never recovered.
In 1800, a Rhossili fisherman and his wife working in a cove just west of Culver Hole hit the jackpot when they stumbled upon a hoard of Portuguese gold moidores and doubloons glittering in the rocks. Seven years later, a further 12lbs/5.5kg of Spanish dollars were dug up on the main beach, sparking a mini gold rush. Rumours circulated at the time that the coins must have come from a galleon carrying the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, said to have been wrecked here during the reign of Charles II in the late-seventeenth century. No record exists of any such disaster, but that doesn’t mean to say it didn’t happen – a curtain of silence often closed around such events so that those who benefited
from them could hold on to their loot. A graphic reminder of how treacherous the Bristol Channel winds can be for shipping are the blackened timbers protruding from the sand at the southern end of RHOSSILI BEACH. Picked clean by the waves like the carcass of some giant sea monster, the wooden shell is all that survives of a Norwegian barque called the Helvetia, which ran aground during a fierce storm in 1887. Visible at low tide, the timbers have had a major battering in recent years; only fragments now remain.