There are very few street names in Dinas but this straggling village divides into smaller hamlets whose names form part of our addresses. Tegfan is situated in Iet-yr-Esgyrn or ‘Gate of the Bones’. Very satisfactory.
It’s a dead-end quiet corner not far from the old Ramah burial ground and the graveyard of St Brynach’s Church. I love the place and I’ve always thought the name suited. It certainly dates back to 1889 when it appears on an Ordnance Survey map.
However, in 1992 B G Charles published his monumental labour of love, a massive two-volume seminal study, which represents the work of a life-time. Unfortunately ‘The Place-names of Pembrokeshire’ casts some doubt on the original naming of our little part of Dinas, relegating our splendid ‘Gate of the Bones’ to a rather mundane ‘Gate to the Ridge’, by losing the final ‘n’.
I see no Ridge, however, and shall stick with Bones.
(I am very grateful to Reg Davies for drawing my attention to this entry in ‘The Place-names of Pembrokeshire’ by B G Charles – published by the National Library of Wales 1992.)
Tegfan, Dinas Cross 