Welsh Coaching Accident 1835
On the 19th December 1835, Edward Jenkins was driving his Gloucester to Carmarthen royal mail coach, along the turnpike between Senny Bridge and Landovery. The coach was lightly loaded and Jenkins had whipped up the horses to full gallop as they approached a left hand bend. The team of horses drifted across the road as they began to turn only to find they were heading directly towards a cart coming in the opposite direction. Jenkins, who had been drinking, tried to turn the team to the left but he lost control. The horses charged off the road and down a 121 ft (38m) precipice, dragging the coach and its occupants with them. When it reached the bottom of the precipice, the coach hit a large ash tree and disintegrated, scattering the coachman, guard and passengers across the bottom of the ravine. Passengers on the outside included a Colonel Gwynn, Daniel Jones and a Mr. Edwards. Two of the passengers who had paid more for their tickets and started the journey inside were David Lloyd Harris, a Llandovery solicitor and a young lad belied to be called Kernick, they were lucky to survive.
Miraculously, all the people on the coach survived the accident. Following the crash the coachman, Jenkins was fined £5 plus costs by the magistrate at Llandovery for being inebriated while in charge of a mail coach. He always denied being drunk at the time of the accident.
In 1841 six years after the accident, a monument was erected at the point where the stagecoach left the road. Its modest obelisk is surrounded by a cast iron fence which today looks as if it has been left as an obstruction in the middle of the layby. The monument bears the following inscription;
The pillar was erected by John Jones Marble and Stone Mason Landdarog near Carmarthen. It was repainted and restored by the postal office in 1930