Fishguard, set in a small bay in St. George's Channel, remained a fishing village until the sixteenth century. Following the arrival of the Normans in Britain the Anglo-Norman leader, Robert FitzMartin, who sought to extend his lands by invading the least populous and defended point on the Welsh coast, took Fishguard and assigned the village and surrounding district to his follower Jordan de Cannington. An English colony was introduced to the region, but the English and Welsh populations would not integrate or acknowledge his authority, and so the estate was gifted to St. Dogmael's Abbey (NPRN 94164), in whose possession it remained until the sixteenth century.
The village began to evolve into a town only when the population was increased by settlers from Newport, who fled from a pestilence which ravaged their town. It became a market town in the late eighteenth century. When the herring trade began to wane, Fishguard developed trading links with Bristol, Liverpool and Ireland, but the port too was to decline in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Fishguard is noted as the site of the last invasion of Britain by the French, when a force of 1,400 soldiers landed in nearby Llanwnda (NPRN 33202) in 1797, but was forced to retreat by the local men and women. Today Fishguard is famed as a major port and crossing point on St. George's Channel (NPRN 34308), though the ferry port itself is in the adjoining community of Goodwick.

Source: Lewis, S. A Topographical History of Wales, 1833

K Steele, RCAHMW, 12 January 2009