[tricey]

St Davids and St Georges are the largest islands in the Atlantic Archipelago, a group of islands found to the West of the English Channel and Bay of Biscay, off mainland Europe.

Their history is brief, having only been settled relatively recently in comparison to the European mainland. The islands are barely mentioned in Greek or Roman texts, although there are theories that perhaps one or more of the islands are the seed that grew to become the myth of Atlantis, a hypothetical island in the mid-Atlantic that legend claims was destroyed by floods with the loss of all inhabitants.

Although evidence of a lost civilisation on the islands is thin, there’s certainly a shared common root to their histories. The story of the lands are as much about the natural phenomena that gave rise to them as the people who inhabited them.

The islands were settled by Irish and Welsh monastic communities in the Middle Ages, primarily in the areas around Sheffield on St Georges and Basingstoke on St Davids. Any written references recovered from these early communities suggest that the land was much smaller and any land bridges were prone to frequent flooding. Gales and stormy weather conditions meant that life on the islands was anything but idyllic.

In 1651 there was significant seismic activity across the Mid Atlantic Ridge and between the continental shelves of Europe and Africa. A devastating earthquake ripped through the Atlantic causing flooding across Europe, in the relatively unpopulated regions of North America on the eastern seaboard and across low-lying coastal regions of North Africa.

Whilst stories in London suggested that the quakes were a sign of God’s anger with the murder of King Charles I two years earlier, in fact a more profound and tangible change in the landscape emerged as a shocking story. Although devastated by the earthquakes, new landmasses rose from the sea to form the modern islands of St Davids and St Georges, transforming them from mere islets in to two substantial landmasses.

The rocks and cliffs in the north eastern region, now known as St Patricks, had previously been the escape for monks and holy men. The multiple communities became joined by salty marshland, including a land bridge to towering mountains across New Yorkshire on modern day St Georges. The Beacons to the south had previously been rocky outcrops, but now formed a north-south spine across modern-day St Davids, a broad island of around 200 miles from east to west.

Little grew in these marshes, and the opportunities for cultivation and agrarian development in either the rocky highlands or the flooded lowlands were limited. It was not until the arrival of members of the Bedford Level Corporation in the later part of the 17th Century, that the population began to grow.

The company, founded by Francis Russell the 4th Earl of Bedford, arrived with the skills and intent to drain the salt marshes much as they had across the Fens in Cambridgeshire. Over a period of several years they were able to recover rich arable land that encouraged a great influx of people from across the British Isles.