St Davids Head, on which the village of Solva sits, contains features arising from volcanic activity that occurred 470 million years ago. The area’s distinctive extinct volcanos – Carn Llidi, Carnedd Leithr and Carn Penberi – which famously contributed to the ‘exultant strangeness’ that artist Graham Sutherland praised in Pembrokeshire’s landscape, are the results of igneous intrusions being contained within sedimentary rocks and extrusions forcing their way through them. The present coastal layout also results from these igneous areas – for example, at the end of the Gribin headland and opposite it, on the other side of the River Solva estuary. Here, the hard, volcanic rock has withstood the grinding of the sea, leaving promontories. The quarrying activity that took place further up the Solva valley at Middle Mill was also on an igneous intrusion.
During the last two ice ages – 50,000 and 18,000 years ago – most of Pembrokeshire was covered by ice, the melting of which formed the estuary of the River Cleddau, the spectacular Treffgarne Gorge and the steep valley of the River Solva. The Solva estuary was originally formed in St Brides Bay, beyond the present Green and Black Scars, before being drowned by rising sea levels resulting from glacial ice-melt.
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