Tenby Weather Station is one of the oldest in Wales and possibly the
longest running. It has been in several locations, but its present location has
been the same since 1969. The ‘station’ is comprised of two separate sites, the
Stevenson Screen at the golf course and the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder
located at the top of the tower on Castle Hill, which overlooks the harbour,
Castle Beach and with views to Caldey Island.
There is a fairly long list of volunteers that have been prepared to
venture out in all (most) weathers to take readings and feed them back to the
Met Office. The more recent (last 25 or so years) volunteers took over from a
gentleman by the name of Mr Harold Hewitt. Dickie and Trisha Putwain became
involved in mid-1995 when Dickie took most of the readings and Trisha assisted
and telephoned the readings in on a daily basis. Dickie attended the
Climatological Observers’ course in October 1996, with Trisha attending the
course in November 1999. A Certificate celebrating 105 years of the Tenby
Weather Station was received by Dickie and Trisha in April 1997. The station is
now in it’s 131st year!
Unfortunately, Dickie passed away in May 2003, at which time Trisha then
took over the responsibility for the station. Their daughter Rosie, who had
helped with taking readings, continued to help her mum. There were several
local people who also assisted to cover holidays and occasions when Trisha and
Rosie were not able to do the readings. Trisha continued, to great extent on
her own for seven years, by which time it was getting quite a task. My wife
worked in the same school as Trisha, and Trisha happened to mention that it was
getting a bit much and wished she had some regular help. My wife very kindly
volunteered my services, without me knowing at that point, which led to me
becoming a volunteer in January 2010.
Trisha and I, and with the assistance of Rosie when her and her mum
‘house swapped’ in the summer, kept up with observations for a few years, but
Trisha was struggling with walking and so a call for more volunteers went out.
We were fortunate to have some local interest with a small number of local people
volunteering for various lengths of time. We were very fortunate to receive
interest from Diana & David Bradley who joined the team. Work circumstances
often becomes a barrier for volunteers who unfortunately then are not able to
help out for long. Some volunteer for a few years and then find the commitment
can become problematic or restrictive. For 3 or 4 years we had a reliable group
of volunteers but then lost a couple due to changes of circumstances. A couple
of years later and my work circumstances changed meaning I would not be
available as often and potentially create gaps in readings, therefore, another
call for volunteers went out. Luckily, we were joined by Richard Harries and
Harry Gardener. We were very fortunate that Di and David, who are both retired
teachers, are still assisting and have been of great assistance for quite a few
years now.
Richard, who was born on the family farm in Pembrokeshire, has for most
of his life had a ‘close relationship’ with the weather. Farming is obviously
very dependant on the weather, but Richard went into the Merchant Navy after
undertaking a Marine Engineering Apprenticeship qualifying as an Officer. This
took him on travels all around the world experiencing 120-foot waves, crashing
through frozen seas, and ‘melting’ in the tropics and the Middle East. As if
the weather wasn’t enough to deal with, there was the added fun of trying to
avoid hitting the rocks going through the Madagascar channel and having to deal
with limpet mines being attached to the large crude carrier tankers that he
worked on!
When Richard left the Merchant Navy, he got married, and his work became
varied including such things as Security, Lecturer in Electronic, Electrical
and Mechanical Engineering, Software Documenter, and an Engineer in a local
cheese factory where he learnt that stormy weather could curdle the huge trays
of processed cheese!
Harry
saw an appeal requesting for extra helpers with weather recording, so decided
that as he was retired and living in and loving Tenby, volunteered for helping
with collecting and changing the sunshine cards. Harry was aware of the
glass ‘orb’ and the way it is designed such that the sun marks or burns the
card providing record of the sunshine hours on the card each day. As Harry puts
it, ‘I knew it was in a superbly romantic location, so I selflessly volunteered
to regularly climb to the most superb 360 viewpoint in Tenby two early evenings
about 5pm each week’.
The Campbell-Stokes
sunshine recorder is mounted on the top wall of the north side of a medieval
tower (a remnant of Tenby Castle) that is the highest point on Castle Hill.
Once you have climbed up to it you find complete uninterrupted 360-degree views
over the sea and back over the town.
About
twenty yards away north you can look down on the head and figure of a statue of
a cloaked Prince Albert on an impressive pillar surrounded by seats for the
glorious views, with a grand set of wide steps up to him. This is the
Welsh Albert Memorial raised by public subscription. He faces the other way
onto the town and into Wales.Castle
Tower is accessed via a heavy, triple locked, studded, wooden door, and once
inside, you ascend a spiral staircase. At first floor level there is access to the
side tower and continuing up to the next level brings you to the battlement
atop the side tower. Then you turn and climb up onto the somewhat open and
exposed top battlement of the higher tower, which faces out to sea on three
sides, and the glass sphere gleaming within the Campbell-Stokes frame sits on
top of the north wall.
The Stevenson
Screen has been located at the Tenby Golf Course since 1969. It was relocated in
the spring of 2023, but only a short distance from its original location, due
to some redevelopments of the Golf Course facilities being undertaken. The
photographs below were taken on particularly cold mornings (10/01/2021 &
23/01/2021), and unusually icy, for the location.
My interest in
the weather started way before becoming a volunteer weather observer, dating
back to my childhood growing up in Norfolk. We lived on the second highest hill
in Norfolk, which really isn’t very high, and experienced some fascinating
weather events that intrigued me. I was also a keen CB Radio enthusiast with a
fantastic communication range due to the elevated location, also experiencing
weather impacts on radio communications. Sometimes restricting communication to
only a few miles and other times (in certain conditions) able to communicate
thousands of miles!
My career in
environmental work has many associations with the weather, particularly air
pollution which has been a major part of my work. I have been involved with
monitoring environmental impacts, developing policy and regulations, also
regulating industry, and advocating behavioural change to improve the
environment within which we live.
I am fortunate
that my employers, Environmental Compliance Limited, understand the links
between what the business does and how it relates to the weather, so are happy
for me to take a little bit of time out of the working day to undertake weather
observations. As a business, we make use of weather data for a range of
purposes to assist clients meet their environmental obligations and also to
promote sustainable business practice to help improvement of the environment
for everyone. This data is purchased from the MET Office as being the most
reliable data to use. This is down to the large number of volunteers that
undertake daily observations across the country at specific times of day and in
methodical and consistent ways.
There is
something very rewarding about volunteering for something that, whilst
individually seems a very small gesture, contributes towards providing data
that can be used in so many ways to help build resilience and help deliver the
mechanisms for future forecasting that will hopefully help save lives in the
future as the weather patterns change over the coming decades.
Oliver Matthews
Tenby Weather
Station Coordinator
On behalf of, and
with grateful thanks to, the Tenby Weather Team.
(Dedicated to
Trisha Putwain – an absolute inspiration and friend)
