The Northumberland, the public house that was established where the Northumberland stands today, was built around 1834, when the New Dock was built by the Llanelly Railway and Dock Company. At that time there were very few street names and houses were identified by their location, ie New Dock, Dolau, Machynys, Sea Side, Copperworks, Copperworks Yard, and so on.

Even as late as 1861, when the pub was called ‘The Stanley Inn’, there was no mention of the domestic housing that was also built around the New Dock, including Stanley Street and Stanley Court.

During renovation works carried out by Mr & Mrs Twining, when they moved into the Northumberland around 1963, they found a billhead showing ‘The Stanley Inn’, confirming that this was previously the name of the inn.

The UK census of 1871 reveals that the name had been changed to ‘The Northumberland’, New Dock Street: (One of the 12 licensed houses in the New Dock/Morfa district in 1872.)

Ten years later the landlord of the Northumberland was Thomas Evans aged 50 who lived there with his wife. Also staying at the Northumberland was Ann Henry aged 30, a domestic servant and John Davies, a visitor, aged 27, who was working in the tinplate works.

Some years ago a local woman wrote her life story and related how, as a child, she remembered seeing a coffin of a sea captain who had drowned whilst at sea. The captain’s coffin, which was kept in the Northumberland until the funeral, had a glass window in the lid so that the body could be viewed. As the one time landlord Jeremiah Forsdike was a mariner and a publican, it is more than possible, that the captain in the coffin was none other than Jeremiah.