Llanion Cottages, 2

Explorer Tom Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre occupies the old Royal Dockyard Chapel, a building that has seen ships, airmen and generations of local families pass through its doors. Inside, the town's maritime and military stories have room to spread out. I reckon the chapel would still prefer a proper shipbuilding explanation before anyone mentions a film spaceship. The chapel was built in the 1830s for the Royal Dockyard and later served wartime airmen. The museum's trust now uses it to tell more than two centuries of dockyard and community history. Its collection includes ships built here, flying boats that operated from Pembroke Dock and people who lived through those years. The trust originally formed to preserve the story of a Short Sunderland aircraft that sank at its moorings in a gale in November 1940, with no crew aboard. The operator also points visitors toward material connected with the Pembroke Dock-built HMS Erebus and the Arctic expedition in which it disappeared. These are compelling stories, but the building itself deserves attention: a surviving Georgian military chapel now doing a public job as a museum. Restoration work in 2026 has affected some outdoor access, so check the centre's latest notice before travelling. Follow the marked entrance and allow time for the volunteers' knowledge as well as the displays. Look at a ship or aircraft model, then imagine the people who built, maintained or waited for the real thing. Pembroke Dock's history is bigger than a list of vessels. The film spaceship can have its turn, but it must wait behind the workers at the front of the queue.