The Victorian government built St Catherine’s Fort in 1867 to help guard the approach to Milford Haven and the Pembroke Dock naval yard from a French invasion that never came, and its guns, designed to fire through iron shields, were not installed until 1886 and never fired in anger. The Windsor-Richards family bought the fort in 1907, filled it with hunting trophies and animal skins, and lived there as a private house until the government took it back in 1940; from 1968 to 1979 it operated as a zoo before standing empty for decades.
The fort has since reopened to visitors, with guides leading you through all three periods and views out over Carmarthen Bay towards Caldey. The island sits just off Tenby’s Castle Beach, below Tenby Castle on its headland, and the causeway floods at high water, so opening times shift with the tide and the weather. Dogs are welcome on a lead.
