Maes y Castell Hut Circles, Caerhun Parish

These two hut circles sit on private land belonging to Maes y Castell farm near Pontwgan, very close to the farm buildings, and are marked on the Ordnance Survey map. There's very little online about these hut circles, which Coflein assigns to the Roman period.

You can see a short video of the hut circles, in which the contours are more obvious than in photos, here. The huts are at Ordnance Survey grid reference SH 7635 7067, but aren't on a footpath and can't be visited without permission of the landowner.

 

This small field contains two hut circles, one to the left in front of the large tree, and one to the right.

The left, westernmost circle, is quite obvious on the ground as a raised ring. The hut remains lie on a patch of flat land between gentle slopes, a little distance from the Afon Ro.

The centre of the western circle is patched with rushes.

The eastern circle is perhaps even more obvious, with quite a pronounced ring around it.

This one, too, has rushes at the centre. The land around this little field is quite boggy in places.

There are still a lot of stones quite obvious near the surface of the ground.

Looking back towards the western circle. Again, the stones just below the surface are quite obvious.

If these hut remains are of the Roman era then they might have been occupied at the same time as the fort at nearby Caerhun, now the site of the parish church. You can read a little about round huts here. The site also has photos of a few reconstructions, and a quite comprehensive list of hut sites in North-West Wales.

Din Lligwy and Din Lligwy Chapel, Angelsey

It's been rather a long break over the winter, but today we got out again in search of interesting places to visit, and we decided to go to Din Lligwy, the remains of a wonderful iron age village on the north coast of Anglesey. I'd been there years before, a long trip in the rain with friends, on the back of my dad's motorbike, and remembered being awed by the incredible preservation of the walls.

The village dates from around 400 A.D., so not ancient in terms of some of the places we've visited, and certainly not as old as the nearby burial chamber, which we failed to get to on this visit. Even so, it shows remarkable preservation for something so old, in part, I would assume, due to the size of the stones that make up the walls. It's surprising it hasn't been quarried for house-building, though. Finds have been made at the site from the end of the Roman occupation of the area, but it's thought to have been around for much longer than that. Evidence of iron smelting has been found in one structure in the complex. There are some rectangular buildings and some round, and the lot is surrounded by a hefty stone wall. The site is now surrounded by trees, but if the land was clear the site would have commanded a good view of the surrounding countryside, including an inlet from the sea a little to the west.

 

The first thing you notice on stopping in the small layby is the ruined church a little way away across the fields. I would advise using a satnav to find the place, but it's reasonably well signed.

 

 

 

It's an easy and relatively short walk across the fields, which were quite dry for the time of year.

I did get the urge to sing 'Wuthering Heights' by Kate Bush as we walked past the chapel.

The small woods surrounding the site have an age-old look with all of the straggling ivy, but I suspect they aren't that old. There's a lot of wild garlic, which will smell lovely in a few months. You climb up a relatively shallow set of steps to reach the site, and this approach reinforces the impression of its good location on top of a rise of land.

The village itself is not overgrown at all, and is managed by Cadw. The place is not staffed, though, and entry is free.

One of the Cadw noticeboards with an artist's reconstruction.

There's a rather lovely big house not far away. Old and new side by side.

The walls are a good four feet or so thick. This is the building thought to be where they smelted iron.

Information board about the iron workshop.

One of the round buildings with a very wide doorway.

There's something about these door sills, walking over them and thinking about the feet that have trodden over these stones in the past, slowly wearing the surface smooth.

Looking back out into the complex.

I love these upright stone walls, and they remind me a lot of the supposed Iron Age field boundary in our own fields at home.

Looking into another of the dwellings.

And another door sill. I really love this. Look at the smooth wear on the stone.

These round buildings are so perfectly crafted. It's wonderful to imagine them with roofs and a fire inside and people going to and fro.

Another of the square buildings with massively thick walls.

Another entrance to a building with a lovely post.

Beautiful curved wall.

Looking down into the metal workshop. I'm not sure what the pile of stones in the middle is.

More beautiful walls.

On the way back we visited the chapel, which was built in the first half of the 12th century and has a 16th century side chapel attached to the right.

The sheep think it's rather marvellous too, although they can't get inside. The chapel is surrounded by a low ruined wall.

At the end of the chapel is what appears to be a blocked up window. On the reconstruction this is shown as a rather lovely window. Presumably it was filled in to prevent further collapse.

Information board inside the chapel, showing the window at the end.

Another blocked up window and a rather ominous hole in the ground with stone steps leading down. I wondered if it were a well (obviously not because it's surprisingly dry down there), but apparently it's a burial vault.

Inside the burial vault to the right, with a niche in the wall.

The burial vault to the left, with a similar niche. I don't know what they were there for. Holding candles? Propping a plank to lie across and put coffins on? Who knows?

The end of the church and the doorway, which has a metal gate but it not locked.

Looking up at the end wall and the belfry. Is this original plaster?

 

Looking up at a rather ominous crack in the corner.

Apparently this is the churchyard cross base, which was brought inside to protect it. It's a shame the cross is no longer here.

There's a rather lovely view from here down over the bay, which is the inlet of water I mentioned before in relation to the siting of the iron age village.

Pretty sheep and a Wuthering Heights-esque broken tree.

Time to go home. Next time we'll manage to get to the burial chamber, too.

Conwy Mountain, Conwy Valley

Today was a beautiful winter's day, with a clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, so we decided to walk up Conwy Mountain, or Mynydd y Dref. I've only been up it once before, earlier this year. The mountain always seemed rather strange to me, a bit alien and different from the mountains I'm used to further up the valley. It always seems a very red place, often covered in the red of dried bracken, with a different ecology than the hills further inland, and a lot of the slopes around there are covered in scree.

To my shame, after living here for thirty years, I didn't know until that first trip up the mountain this autumn that there was an Iron Age hillfort, Caer Seion, up there. Looking at the aerial view on the link here I think there's a lot more to see than we saw today. It's always hard to get a grasp of these things from ground level, but we explored the most visible bit. It must have been an amazing place to live, with practically 360 visibility, up above the sea.

There used to be another hillfort on top of Penmaenmawr mountain very nearby, one of the largest in Europe, but horrifyingly this was entirely quarried away by the 1920s. I did wonder standing up on Conwy Mountain if the ghosts of the residents of Conwy Mountain hill fort look across at Penmaenmawr in smug satisfaction. Their hill fort is still there, even with some of the beautiful dry stone walls still erect. You can read the Royal Commission summary of Penmaenmawr hillfort here. (The Conwy Mountain summary is here.)

It's a fairly easy walk up the mountain from Sychnant Pass, taking you up a well maintained track which is a farmer's driveway (I feel sorry for the farmer), and then onto paths across grassland. The ground never gets very steep but when you reach the top, with views up the valley to the south, across to Llandudno and the Great Orme in the north, towards the Denbigh Moors in the east, and towards Anglesey and Puffin Island in the west, you really feel like you've achieved something. In the summer people paraglide from these hills, and you can see why.

We started the walk off from the small car park at the top of Sychnant Pass, which is a rather steep pass through the mountains from Conwy to Dwygyfylchi. It can feel rather scary sometimes to drive along, especially before they fixed the wall.

The view up the Conwy Valley from the edge of Conwy Mountain. You can see the valley sides becoming steeper and closing in up towards Dolgarrog and Trefriw. The floor of this glacial valley is broken up with smaller hills.

A wider angle view up the valley, looking much flatter than it does in real life.

Looking west towards Penmaenmawr along the coast.

Another rather misty look up the valley.

From the side of the mountain you get a wonderful view of Conwy, and you can see where it gets both its English name, Conwy Mountain, and the Welsh name Mynydd y Dref (Mountain of the Town.)

Information board on the side of the mountain.

The first glimpse of the ruined fort walls. The information board says they would have stood about three metres high with a walkway with a chest high stone wall on top, which is somewhat reminiscent of the town walls below that were built almost a thousand years later by the English invaders. The entrance at the right is still very striking. I think it's the entrance shown towards the left on the diagram above.

Large stone marking the end of the wall, I think.

I'm used to the hill fort on Pen y Gaer, my 'home' hill fort, which is fairly ruined, so it's amazing to see the wall intact here, with such dressed looking stone.

Closer up on that wall. What amazing workmanship. Just the sheer amount of stone up here must have taken hours to collect.

The other side of that entrance.

The residents had a wonderful view. I imagine field patterns and the amount of trees has changed, but the contours of the land would have been the same.

The light was beautiful and golden, and not too cold. In this weather living on top of a mountain in November seems viable.

Looking towards the western end of the fort.

Looking more north-west, the view out to sea.

From here the Great Orme, another site of great prehistoric activity, is clearly visible.

The light was beautiful on the sands below.

A rather older information board attached to one of the rocks. Unfortunately the writing is faded and in the majority unreadable.

You can get an idea here of just how much stone must have been transported up the mountain to make these walls.

The tide is out in the Conwy estuary, with the Great Orme and Llandudno beyond. One of the area's many caravan parks is below.

The walls, the view up the valley, and Conwy.

Looking down over that smaller enclosure on the outside of the walls.

A clearer view of the estuary, and the Conwy Golf Club in the foreground.

In the distance some of the quarrying works are visible, I think on Penmaenmawr Mountain, the site of that very important but destroyed hill fort.

The quarry is still working today, the mountain having been quarried since the Neolithic age. You can see some of the buildings catching the light.

The views really are far-reaching. Far in the distance is Anglesey, and just in front of it, Puffin Island, or Ynys Seiriol.

On the way off the mountain the dog was very happy to find a small pool to wallow in.

Then we caught a sighting of two Carneddau ponies, a breed of horse unique to the mountains of Snowdonia. People are currently trying to prove the genetic importance of these horses in order to have them exempted from rules requiring all horses to have passports (a measure introduced in Europe to stop them entering the human food chain). These are wild horses, but under these regulations are assumed to belong to the landowner.

A bit of tail.

I love these horses, pretty much the same as the Welsh Mountain Ponies (but genetically unique. Important to remember.)

A bit of leg...

Horse's head.

A lovely view with the sun behind.

Tail in the sunlight.

A bit more tail.

They must spend a lot of time eating...

I think this one was young, maybe a yearling. It was quite small.

Pretty little pony.

The colour the coat turned in the sunlight was amazing.

Still eating...

And a little more eating...

Yet more eating...

And so we headed home...