Grave's End Burial Marker, Pwlldu

This circle of limestone rocks is sited on the cliffs above Pwlldu Bay, in an area known as Grave's End. They mark the mass burial of the victims of The Caesar, an Admiralty tender vessel that floundered on the cliffs below on the night of November 28, 1760. The ship was on a recruitment mission for the Navy when a severe storm raged along the Bristol Channel, and forced it onto the rocks of a jagged gully, known today as Caesar's Hole.

Whilst the captain, mate and select crew members scrambled along the rocks to safety, the same could not be said of the poor men the captain, hoping the ship might survive the night, ordered manacled and locked below deck, in fear his prized captives would escape should they make it ashore alive. These young men had been forcibly taken from the villages around the Welsh coastline and press-ganged into the Navy's service. As many as 90 men lost their lives to the storm and the captain's cruelty that night.

The next morning, local villagers seeking valuable salvage from the wreck, were shocked when they met the grim sight of the drowned men, some still manacled to the drifting timbers of the ship, floating in the bay. Showing more respect for the lost souls than the captain and his men, who had not even raised the alarm that there were still men aboard the ship, the villagers hauled the wretched bodies ashore and buried them all in the nearest patch of deep soil, marking the area with a ring of stones.