Signs of the times

My chosen "One Street" is Fishguard's West Street but although it is, or perhaps was, the town's main drag, it has only one street sign. This is it, and it reveals that the street possesses two names, the other one being Y Wesh. You might logically assume that's the Welsh name for West Street - but you'd be wrong. West Street translates as Heol y Gorllewin - Y Wesh is just the local moniker, nothing more. It has no other meaning and in fact the dipthong sh doesn't exist in Welsh. So why Y Wesh? I've never found any etymology and I have no idea how it came to be: put it down to the pecularities of Pembrokeshire speech, preserved here in written form.
(Y is 'the' in Welsh, Wesh presumably a corruption of 'West'.)

Also in this shot are the signs Dynion and Merched indicating the public conveniences, and helpfully translated as Gents and Ladies. But the Welsh words mean men and women, Wales being an essentially classless society. It was the English (and previously the Norman) invaders, colonists and industrialists who created an upper class.

Names and signs are important for locating and identifying where we are and what places are called and how we get from one to another. The gap between these buildings is the point at which a steep path winds down towards the harbour. Once it would have been a useful shortcut linking the upper town with the fishing and boat-building and rope-making activities that took place below. It's not used much any more and seems to collect rubbish and dog poo. Even worse, it's lost its identity as an access route because sometime in the last couple of years someone went to the trouble of levering away from the quoin, around from Y Wesh, this sign which indicated whither the path leads. Does this matter? I think it does, and I still miss the sign.