AT their April meeting, members of Pembroke Ladies Probus Club invited Tony Ensom to talk about the Tudor Merchant House in Tenby.

Tony is the husband of Jill, the secretary of the club, and he is a volunteer there.

In his introduction he explained how the Landsker Line separated Pembrokeshire, with the original inhabitants settling in the north of the county and the invading Normans settling in the south and building fortified towns such as Pembroke and Tenby, hence the area became known as little England beyond Wales.

The Tudor Merchant’s stone house was built in the late 15th century and is the oldest house still standing in Tenby. The rest were demolished when the Georgians built their fine town houses around the harbour. Today it is owned and maintained as a Grade 1 listed building by the National Trust and furnished as it would have been in 1500.

Tony explained how the merchant occupant of the house would have had uninterrupted views of the harbour from which he traded his goods. The lower floor of the house would have been his shop, the first floor living quarters and the upper floor for sleeping. He was able to pass on snippets about the everyday life in the house and to give amusing explanations of such well known phrases as “upper crust, “left on the shelf” and the term “bogeyman”.

His talk and slides enabled his audience to have a really good insight into Tudor life in Tenby and was very much enjoyed by all.

Viv McCann gave the vote of thanks and admitted that, although she is a volunteer at the Tudor Merchant House, she had learned new things from Tony’s informative and entertaining presentation and congratulated him on an interesting talk. The next meeting is on May 17 when the guest speaker will be Maggie Thomas who will discuss the role of magistrates in the community.