Rosebush

Community Pubs and Quarry Hospitality

Tafarn Sinc is a pub clad entirely in corrugated zinc, with sawdust on the floor and Welsh spoken across the bar. It was built in 1876 in the grounds of the old railway station, originally as the Precelly Hotel, to house quarry workers and lure Victorian tourists up into the hills. It is the highest licensed pub in Pembrokeshire, and it very nearly closed in the 2010s. The village raised the money to save it, with a shove from the actor Rhys Ifans, and it became community-owned in 2017, taking the name Tafarn Sinc — the Zinc Pub — after landlord and landlady Brian and Hafwen Davies retired following twenty-five years behind the bar. Its own website describes it as a "Hearth of hiraeth." The kitchen runs to daily specials rather than a fixed menu, caters for vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free, and pours local ales, including Seren from the brewery in the village itself.

The other place to eat is the Old Post Office Bistro and Bar, housed in Rosebush House, a Grade II listed building the quarry owners put up in 1872. The landlady cooks outside normal hours and works around dietary needs, there's Stowford Press cider on draught, and reviewers settle on "really good and tasty food." Inside is a slate quarry apprentice piece, cut to the shape of a Welsh plank for cooking Welshcakes.

Award-Winning Farmhouse Cheese

For a village this small, the food punches above its weight. Pant Mawr Farmhouse Cheeses has been run by the Jennings family since 1983, when David, Cynthia and Jason came back from setting up dairies in Libya and North Yemen. Their Caws Preseli and oak-smoked Cerwyn have both taken Gold at the World Cheese Awards. The cheeses have been served at the Ryder Cup, on Concorde, and at Gordon's wine bar in London. The farm shop also holds the village post office.

A Village Built on Slate

Rosebush is the highest village in Pembrokeshire, sitting at 264 metres on the southern slopes of the Preseli Hills. The name is an anglicisation of Rhos-y-bwlch, "the gap on the moor," and the whole place is a wholly nineteenth-century invention, built on slate. The quarry supplied the roof of the Palace of Westminster. When demand fell, the owners tried to reinvent the village as a spa resort, laying out ornamental grounds and a lake and advertising the bracing air. It never quite took. The lake survives at the holiday park; the quarry survives as fern-covered ruins.

Walking the Preseli Heights

The walking is the real reason to come. A 4.8-mile circular loops past the workings and the disused railway line and climbs Foel Cwmcerwyn, at 536 metres the highest point in the national park, with views said to reach Devon and Ireland on a clear day. Along the crest runs the Golden Road, a ridge trackway around 5,000 years old, passing the outcrops thought to be the source of the Stonehenge bluestones.

Getting There and a Curious Postscript

You'll want a car — the nearest station is Clunderwen, six miles south, and the buses through Maenclochog are limited. In June 2013, someone put an explosive device inside the village letterbox and blew it up. It has since been replaced.