Mercantile Quay warehouses, Bridgend, Cardigan
The stone-built warehouses south of the Teifi date from Cardigan’s heyday as a port. They are prominent on the right in the old drawing.
Bridgend Warehouse, furthest from the bridge, is now self-catering apartments called the Granary Lofts. A warehouse was built on the site in 1745, and parts of it may have been incorporated into the 19th-century warehouse we see today.
Bridge Warehouse is now the Albion Aberteifi hotel, named after the brig Albion which carried local slate and 180 destitute emigrants from Cardigan to New Brunswick, Canada, in 1819. They founded a Welsh settlement, which they named Cardigan. On the walls on the third floor there are still Victorian pencil sketches of sailing ships and calculations of sails and rope lengths (pictured).
The quay in front of the warehouses was once known as the Mercantile Quay. The Cardigan Mercantile Company was established in 1876 and traded here in many types of goods, including timber, coal and culm (coal dust). It also supplied ropes and other items for ships.
One of the company’s ships, a schooner named Mouse, sank near the mouth of the Teifi estuary in 1900 but was refloated – only to get into trouble at almost the same place during a gale in 1903! The Cardigan lifeboat rescued the crew both times.
In 1903 sailor Richard Morgan, 39, drowned after falling between a schooner and a quay wall. The ship had brought a cargo of manure from London for the Cardigan Mercantile Co.
In 1918 fire broke out on the company’s premises, causing thousands pounds of damage. The fire brigade concentrated on keeping the flames clear of the nearby Bridgend Foundry.
Major Eric Gordon, 59, of Tenby Road, Cardigan, dived into the estuary at Mercantile Quay in June 1955 to try to save a woman. They both drowned.
Behind the warehouses are ruined limekilns, where limestone and culm were burned to make lime for fertilising fields and protecting stone walls. The kilns are described as “old” on the OS map of 1904, implying that they were disused by then.
Postcode: SA43 3AA View Location Map
Website of The Albion Aberteifi
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