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A material connection between Plas Newydd (Llangollen) and Brynkinalt (Chirk)? (Plas Newydd #5)

Introduction

Brynkinalt, just outside Chirk

I went with a friend on a guided tour of the house, partly because it looked stunning, but also because I have been exploring the places with which Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby might have had connections that either influenced or directly contributed to Plas Newydd. By “influence” I mean the decorative styles that could have had an impact on the way in which the decorative vision of Plas Newydd in Llangollen was born and developed. By “direct contribution” I mean the acquisition of the pieces of wood, glass, tiling, etc that make up the fabulous pastiche of decorative arts at Plas Newydd. Photographs were permitted outside, but banned in the interior (which is still a family home) so I have been unable to include anything much to supplement the descriptions below. xxx

Plas Newydd in Llangollen

Brynkinalt was of particular interest not only because, thanks to the excerpts from diaries and letters of Lady Eleanor and Miss Ponsonby, I knew that the ladies had been visitors to the house, but because reading up on the house informed me that it had been a Jacobean creation that had been radically altered in 1808 whilst the ladies were resident at Plas Newydd. If I understand Lady Eleanor correctly, she would not have been shy about asking for unwanted decorative features if they became available. My introductory piece about Plas Newydd is here, and the full series of five posts can be found here (including this one).
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Brynkinalt

The Coflein description of Brynkinalt, is as follows:

Brynkinalt, with the new wing added in 1808

[T]his 1612 building now forms the central portion of the present brick built hall. The additions of 1808 include the single-storey wings on either side of the south front, which were further lengthened to include a billiard room and conservatory on either side. Two conservatories, now gone, were inserted into the south front between the cross wings. The west front was extended northwards to include an extensive service wing. All the extensions were castellated and the entire building was stuccoed. Work began in 1928 and stopped during the war to be taken up again in the 1950’s to reduce or remove the nineteenth century additions: the stucco was removed, except at the end of the east wing, and the large service wing which housed the kitchen at the rear was demolished except for the outer range which remains.

Brynkinallt consists of two principal floors with recessed bays, forward wings and a central porch. The doorway is has a Gothic pointed arch with a studded oak door and crest over, set below a label mould which rises to a string which extends between floors completely around the front elevation. The windows are ogee-moulded behind a chamfered surround, mullioned and transomed: 5-light to the porch chamber, 4-light to the ground floor of the wings, 3-light above and 3-light without transoms to the attics.

The interior is largely in a heavy Classical style. Of specific interest is a fine marble seventeenth century chimneypiece with a heraldic over-mantel with carvings. There is a great stair hall of 1808, with a gallery, Tuscan columns

The description gives something of a sense of how much Brynkinalt has changed since it was built in 1612. The Great Hall, for example, replaced a courtyard surrounded by some 50 rooms, so as large as it is, the house is now much more modest than it was originally.

Brynkinalt from the rear, showing some of the gothic-style lancet windows installed in around 1808

The exterior retains much of its Jacobean appearance, albeit with the addition of some Gothic-inspired elaborations. Removal of most of the 19th century external rendering has restored the splendid brickwork to view on the most visible parts of the house, although there is still much to be done at the rear, which gives a very good sense of the task that has already been undertaken. The interior has been radically remodelled, with only the oak-panelled hall providing a sense of the Jacobean house. Nearly all of the other Jacobean decorative arts and furnishings vanished due to Lady Charlotte’s re-imagining of Brynkinalt, and although the current interior is attractive and imaginative, it retains only pockets of its Jacobean heritage and it is not known what was done with the stripped-out Jacobean interior when those rooms were replaced.
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Links between the owners of the two houses

Anne Wellesley, Countess of Mornington, mother of Arthur Wellesley,who became the Duke of Wellington. Source: Wikipedia

The connections that tie these two houses together were very confusing at first. Family histories make my head spin, and not in an enjoyable way, but it was necessary to get to grips with the essentials. This was firstly because if the ladies were actively collecting when the house was being refurbished they might have benefitted from the unwanted decorative features and furnishings, and secondly because when Arthur Wellesely, the first Duke of Wellington, visited his grandmother Anne Hill-Trevor at Brynkinalt he also visited Eleanor and Sarah and, on at least one occasion, is said to have brought them decorative gifts.

The Viscountess Dungannon Anne Hill-Trevor (1715-1799), née Anne Stafford, wife of Arthur Hill-Trevor, the First Viscount of Dungannon (second creation, the first title having expired) lived at Brynkinalt and was partially responsible for introducing Lady Eleanor and Miss Ponsonby into local society, sharing both family and friends in Ireland with the two ladies. Anne’s daughter, also Anne (1742-1831), married the first Earl of Mornington, Garrett Welsley (1735-1781) with whom she had nine children, one of whom was Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852) who became the first Duke of Wellington. As mentioned above, Wellesley, before he was awarded his title, visited the ladies when on visits to his grandmother at Brynkinalt.

Dungannon (Brynkinalt) visits to Plas Newydd. Source: Early Tourists in Wales.

Dungannon (Brynkinalt) visits to Plas Newydd. Source: Copied from the Early Tourists in Wales website.

When the first Viscount died, Anne remained at Brynkinalt. Their only son having died, the title passed to one of their grandsons, who became the the second Viscount of Dungannon, another Arthur Hill-Trevor (1763-1837). It was his wife Charlotte (1763-1823) who initiated transformations of Brynkinalt, beginning in 1808, which removed much of the Jacobean architecture and interiors and added new kings featuring spacious rooms, large windows, tall ceilings, a plethora of ornamental columns and lightly coloured walls to replace dark panelling. Anne and Charlotte, between the date of Charlotte’s marriage (1795) and the first Viscountess Anne’s death (1799), were briefly contemporaries at Brynkinalt.

The diaries of Lady Eleanor report that even after Anne’s death in 1799 (the year that they received a gift of a cow from the estate, as well as venison and partridges sent with a messenger), visits to Brynkinalt continued. Elizabeth Mavor says that in 1805 “there were jaunts to Porkington, Brynkinalt [and] Aston,” and an earlier reference in the journal to playing cards at Brynkinalt suggest that they were still welcome visitors. Certainly in January 1805 they were at Brynkinalt when the journal provides a short account of meeting someone who had arrived in St Petersburg the day after the assassination of “Emperor Paul.” Other visits may well have coincided with the period in which Charlotte, the second Lady Dungannon (died 1823), was beginning to make her transformations in 1808. Mary Carryll, who had accompanied Lady Eleanor and Miss Ponsonby from Ireland as their servant and good friend, was on visiting terms with Lady Dungannon’s upper servants. The visits were probably less frequent, but there are clear indications that they continued, and Michael Freeman’s EArly Tourists in Wales website records that Lord and Lady Dungannon continued to visit the ladies at Plas Newydd.
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Direct contributions?

The removal of Jacobean features by Lady Charlotte probably included panelling, overmantels, doors, and furnishings that would not have fitted into her hybridized Neoclassical vision. Unwanted carvings and furnishings could have been snapped up by local dealers and salvage companies, and some of it may have been purchased by private collectors. As I have already mentioned above, if there were items going spare, it seems entirely likely that Lady Eleanor would not have been at all shy about asking for any unwanted decorative items.

Library window in Plas Newydd, with wyvern closely resembling that of Brynkinalt in the landing window at Brynkinalt at bottom left.

Sadly, in spite of the strong suggestion of the timings of Brynkinalt being remodelled as a fashionable country house over the period when Plas Newydd was becoming a showcase for earlier decorative arts, it is impossible, from the very few remaining pieces of Jacobean carving left at Brynkinalt to do anything more than speculate that some stripped-out pieces of Brynkinalt carving may now adorn the walls of Plas Newydd.

The stained glass, however, may be another story. Plas Newydd is stuffed with stained glass fragments that are patchworked together to fit particular spaces (I have written about the stained glass here, based on the survey by Mostyn Lewis). There is one tiny corner of Plas Newydd, a single quarry/tiny pane of glass that suggests that a piece of Brynkinalt stained glass has found its way to Plas Newydd (see photo above). In the Plas Newydd library there is a black wyvern (dragon with two legs) with a gold crown around its neck, standing on a red cushion, which had formerly been framed in a gold lozenge. This is such a good match for one at the top of the Great Hall staircase at Brynkinalt that it seems likely that the Plas Newydd fragment does derive, however it was acquired, from Brynkinalt. It would be interesting to see if there are other connections of this sort between the stained glass fragments at Plas Newydd and the surviving stained glass panes at Brynkinalt.
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Influence?

Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham. Source: Wikipedia

The absence of any formal research into any possible relationship between the two houses means that the evidence for direct influence is minimal at the moment, but the indirect influence in the form of the communication of ideas, could well be detected in Plas Newydd, and this lies in both the shape of the lancet windows and the stained glass.

When Plan Newydd is discussed, it is often in the same breath as Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, where Sir Hugh Walpole created an imaginative extravaganza to celebrate past styles, reinventing the Gothic to produce something that emulated architectural features but took a far more light-hearted, frivolous tone. The same comment was made on the Brynkinalt guided tour concerning the changes made by Charlotte, Viscountess of Dungannon. Lady Charlotte introduced Gothic-style window tracery in some rooms, arcading in the conservatory, castle-style turrets and crenellations, lending Gothic flourishes to a dominantly Neoclassical vision. Whether or not the Ladies ever saw images from Strawberry Hill is not clear at the moment. They had an a voracious appetite for experiencing the world vicariously via books and newspapers, so it is entirely possible. It is extremely likely, however, that they could have had first hand experience of the new Gothic windows and the other modifications at Brynkinalt.

Library side of the prismatic arch, Plas Newydd

The most obvious potential influence on the stained glass is the large window on a landing at the top of the stairs leading from the Great Hall to the gallery, in which the glass is arranged in a similar way to that in the bedrooms at Plas Newydd. There are also over-door panels of stained glass that would have been good models for the “prismatic arch” between the dining room and library at Plas Newydd.
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General Yorke and George Hunter Robertson

Although General Yorke owned Plas Newydd between 1876 and 1890 and George Robertson owned it between 1890 and 1910, and both contributed to the decorative features of the house, it seems unlikely that either were linked in any material way with Brynkinalt. Any connections are likely to have been purely sociable. General Yorke was a member of the Yorke’s of Erddig, another aristocratic family on the Wales-England borders, so there may have been polite connections. George Robertson was a wealthy cotton trader from Liverpool, an outsider to the area with no previous links to Llangollen or Chirk. Although he was an important resident in Llangollen, there is no sign of any synergy between the two houses. In short, there is no indication that Brynkinalt or its owners had contributed anything to Plas Newydd after the deaths of Anne Hill-Trevor and Charlotte Hill-Trevor.
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Final Comments

Closer view of the wyvern at Plas Newydd. Apologies for the poor quality of the image, which is partly behind a curtain and on the wrong side of a rope barrier.

It will require a far more detailed investigation than my quick visit to attempt to unravel whether the connections between the owners of the two houses resulted in the transfer of any of the decorative arts from Brynkinalt to Plas Newydd. At the moment the presence of any direct and indirect influences are purely speculative. It probably occurs to anyone reading this that the most obvious thing to do would be to contact the Brynkinalt office to see if they have any additional input on the subject. I did try, but received no reply, so if anyone else has anything to contribute on the subject, please do get in touch.

The visit to Brynkinalt was interesting in its own right, with a lovely exterior including a small formal garden that was meticulously manicured, and was showing splendid late summer colour. There are many treats in store for the visitor in the interior, but the feature that completely stole my heart was the tiny first floor stone-built conservatory overlooking the valley below, an extravaganza of floral bliss with arcades and pillars. The bougainvillea alone was wonderfully exotic. For movie enthusiasts, the house was the the setting for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and the stories about how this happened and the steps required to make the house ready for filming are a real eye-opener. It was more than somewhat daunting to hear about the sheer amount of work and the corresponding costs associated with renovating and maintaining the building, and there is still much to be done, particularly to the exterior. It was a good couple of hours well spent, and I recommend one of their open days.
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Panel commemorating the 1808 alterations at Brynkinalt

Panel on the rear of the house commemorating the 1808 alterations at Brynkinalt

Sources

Books and papers

Mavor, Elizabeth 1971, 2011 (2nd edition). The Ladies of Llangollen. A Study in Romantic Friendship. Moonrise Press.

Mavor, Elizabeth 1984. Life with the Ladies of Llangollen. Viking (hardback).

Websites

Age of Revolution – Making the World Over 1775-1848
Wellington’s Places: Brynkinalt Hall. Some Welsh and Irish connections. By Dr. Mick Crumplin
ageofrevolution.org/themes/society/wellingtons-places/

Based In Churton
Splendid stained glass patchworks at Plas Newydd, Llangollen (Plas Newydd #2)
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2025/05/16/spendid-stained-glass-patchworks-at-plas-newydd-llangollen/
Introduction to Plas Newydd in Llangollen: A packed extravaganza of the decorative arts (#1)
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/category/llangollen/plas-newydd-llangollen/

Brynkinalt
Home page
https://www.brynkinalt.co.uk/
(Brief details are also included in Brynkinalt advertising leaflets)

Coflein
Brynkinalt; Brynkinallt Hall; Bryncunallt, Chirk
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/26866

Early Tourists in Wales
The Ladies of Llangollen
https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/mansions-and-grounds/ladies-of-llangollen/
Descriptions of Plas Newydd and the Ladies of Llangollen
https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/mansions-and-grounds/ladies-of-llangollen/descriptions-of-plas-newydd-and-the-ladies-of-llangollen/
Visitors to Plas Newydd
https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/mansions-and-grounds/ladies-of-llangollen/visitors-to-plas-newydd/
Plas Newydd: List of Visitors, Alphabetical Order
https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/mansions-and-grounds/ladies-of-llangollen/visitors-to-plas-newydd/plas-newydd-list-of-visitors-alphabetical-order/

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Cheshire Proverbs 7: “Rain has such narrow shoulders . . . “

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Rain in Churton

Rain has such narrow shoulders it will get everywhere

J.C. Bridge no.274, page 105

Beeston hill, seen from Churton, under a very black cloud

And oh boy. When it rains around here one is left in no doubt on the subject. It comes down in dense sheets of uncompromising verticality, bouncing when it hits pavements, roads and patios and it pools morosely wherever it gets the opportunity, seeping into every nook and cranny. The river Dee builds ominously between its banks, eventually overflowing into its floodplain, drenching footpaths and edging its way ominously towards the little hairdresser at the foot of Holt and isolating the new house above the footpath on the Farndon side of the bridge.

I lived in Aberdyfi on the mid-Welsh coast for two years immediately prior to coming to West Cheshire after leaving London, and I thought that I would never see such thoroughly determined rainfall ever again. But most Aberdyfi houses are on the side of a steep hill, mine included, and all the rainwater had the courtesy to run downhill and deposit itself into the sea. Cheshire, being flat and often poorly drained, is different. The wellington boots that I bought for mudlarking on the Thames foreshore when I lived in London have come into their own for use on what I once thought of as dry land. In west Cheshire, dry land is a very movable feast.

Joseph Bridge offers no comments about this proverb, presumably believing, very justifiably, that this one speaks for itself. Not all of them do, even when Bridge seems to think that they are perfectly transparent, but this one is completely unambiguous to a resident on the Welsh borders.

I started this series on Cheshire Proverbs a couple of years ago and then, during a big rearrangement, lost the Joseph Bridge book on which it was based: Cheshire Proverbs and other Sayings and Rhymes Connected with the City and County Palatine of Chester. I found it the other day, and even though there has been a big gap between the previous proverb in the series and this one, it seemed worth reviving. If you would like to know about his proverbs, sayings and rhymes, you can see the Introduction to the series here. Other proverbs in the series are listed here, at the very end of the Archaeology, Heritage and Art page.

“Gladiators of Britain” at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, 20th September 2025- 25th January 2026

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Introduction

The new Gladiators of Britain exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum fits the archaeology of a huge story very cleverly into a relatively small space, with a great many remarkable objects that have been very well chosen to illustrate the topic.

Thanks to Chester Archaeological Society I was lucky enough to be one of a group who were invited to a guided preview of the exhibition in late September 2025, just as it was opening. Many thanks to Pauline Clarke (Excursions Officer at Chester Archaeological Society) and Elizabeth Montgomery (Grosvenor Museum) for organizing our visit. Liz took us around the exhibit in two groups, and explained how the original exhibition had been organized by Glynn Davis, Senior Collections & Learning Curator from Colchester and Ipswich Museums, who had arranged for the loan of objects from both Chester’s Grosvenor Museum and London’s British Museum, partly to contextualize the remarkable and substantially important find of the Colchester Vase, shown both in the above poster and in photographs below. When this exhibition had closed, the various parties who had contributed to the Colchester exhibition were approached with a view to loaning the same objects to enable a travelling exhibition, which is what we see at the Grosvenor today, using objects and interpretation boards to introduce gladiatorial contests in Britain.
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The Chester Amphitheatre

Before talking about the exhibition I though that it might be useful to put it into the context of the Chester amphitheatre. For those completely happy with the history of the Chester amphitheatre, what amphitheatres were for and the roles they performed, do skip ahead.

Colosseum Rome, opened AD 80; a sestertius coin, on display at the Gladiators of Britain the exhibition

Rome’s Colosseum, which opened in AD 80, shown on a sestertius coin, on display at the Gladiators of Britain exhibition

Gladiatorial conquests took place in amphitheatres. The best known amphitheatre in Europe is Rome’s own stone-built Colosseum, which remains even today a stunning piece of architectural ambition, remarkably preserved and awe-inspiringly vast. The exhibition has a video running on a small tablet that shows a super 3-D reconstruction of what the Colosseum may have looked like in the past (by Aleksander Ilic). It provides a sense not only of an amphitheatre’s structural components but also of its monumental grandeur, reflecting its importance to Roman ideas of the necessities of urban infrastructure and social identity.

Like all other Roman military centres and towns, Chester (Roman Deva), established c.AD 74/75 was provided with an amphitheatre, currently the largest known in Britain. As the museum curator, Elizabeth Montgomery, made clear when guiding us around the exhibit, that statement comes with the caveat that at the important northern centre of York (Eboracum) the amphitheatre has not yet been located, but the scale of the Chester amphitheatre is a very impressive feather in Deva’s cap. Located just beyond the southeast corner of the fortification, just beyond the city walls and the New Gate (formerly the Wolf Gate) on Little St John’s Street.

The Chester amphitheatre as it is today, showing the small room that housed the shrine to Nemesis at bottom right

Britain was attractive to Rome as a target for invasion partly because, at the edge of the known world, it was an quick win for both Julius Caesar and then Claudius. It was far more prestigious to expand the Empire to its geographical limit than to merely curate its existing holdings. It is clear too that by the first century AD the Romans stationed on the Rhine had begun to become materially aware of Britain via her trading relationship with Gaul, benefitting from her produce, raising an awareness of her resources, and providing a strong secondary reason both for the Claudian invasion and for sustained occupation. Although Britain remained a peripheral province in a world where Rome was the centre of the geographical and cultural universe, the province had successive governors who were responsible for maintaining Britain as a component part of the Empire, with most of the infrastructure to mark it out as Roman territory. Every major fortress and town boasted an amphitheatre and Chester had one from shortly after the establishment of the legionary fortress in the first century AD.

A wall map from the exhibition showing the location of 17 known amphitheatre or amphitheatre-like structures in Britain

An amphitheatre such as the one we have in Chester was multi-functional. Although usually exclusively associated in people’s mind with spectacular and often gory action, where trained gladiators fought both other humans and wild animals, it was also used to execute criminals, to host military displays, to offer less lethal forms of entertainment and to display religious ceremonies and rituals. It also doubled up as an additional training space for the military, only a very short march from the parade ground that was on today’s Frodsham Street, where training and drilling, manoeuvres and tactics, to prepare soldiers for the realities of military engagement against a potentially fractious population; and at the same time kept large numbers of men sufficiently busy to minimize the disputes that might break out.

Because many of the activities, particularly the gladiatorial events, attracted large audiences (in their 1000s), they had in common with football stadiums that they were designed to accommodate a large number of spectators, funnelling them via staircases and ramps to the raked seating, providing them with ease of access and clear visibility of the spectacle that unfolded below, a major task of civil engineering based on an understanding of crowd control. The large number of entrances at the Chester amphitheatre is indicative of this understanding of how people flowed into a central location.

Gladiatorial event shown on a 2nd century slate found in Chester, on display at the exhibition

Sadly, although the Chester amphitheatre may have been used following the abandonment of Britain in AD 410 as a local defensive enclosure, the amphitheatre’s vast walls were subsequently robbed for building materials so thoroughly that it was reduced to it to nothing more than its foundations and the arena floor. This denuded space was subsequently used as a dump, slowly filling in, and eventually becoming completely covered over and forgotten. Buildings and gardens obliterated all evidence, with only Little St John’s Street, bending in a puzzling way, following the old line of the amphitheatre walls. Perhaps the first hint that an amphitheatre may have been part of the Roman footprint of Chester was a slate plaque found in 1738 that showed a gladiatorial scene.

The Chester amphitheatre was rediscovered in 1929 when a new extension to the the Georgian and Victorian Dee House Ursuline Convent School, still sitting over the southern part of the amphitheatre, (and now known simply as Dee House), required a new basement for heating equipment, and the works that followed encountered Roman remains. These were quickly recognised by W.J. Williams of the Chester Archaeological Society, who knew of the slate plaque, and shortly afterwards trial trenches were excavated by the Grosvenor Professor Robert Newstead of the Grosvenor Museum and Professor J.P. Droop, confirming that this was indeed the Roman city’s amphitheatre.

Area of the amphitheatre in Detail of John McGahey's 1852 painting of Chester

Detail of John McGahey’s 1852 painting of Chester from an air balloon (with my rough indicator of location of amphitheatre in red show how completely the amphitheatre area was covered over). Source: Ainsworth and Wilmott 2005 / Chester City Council

The site was already under threat from a new road, preparatory work for which had already taken place to run it across the centre of what was now known to be the amphitheatre. The public and heritage organizations instantly responded, and different sources of pressure caused the plan to be cancelled. Chester Archaeological Society (C.A.S.) took the lead in raising funds to clear the site and enable access for further excavations. Although these plans were interrupted by the Second World War (during which air raid shelters were dug into the amphitheatre, destroying archaeological material), these excavations took place in the 1960s, lead by F. Hugh Thompson, who proposed a phased build for the amphitheatre. In the 1990s a proposal to develop the site as a heritage destination led to planning permission for the Grade II listed Dee House to be knocked down to enable the excavation of the land beneath, but this met with financial problems, the plans faded and the planning permission lapsed in 1995 (a real lost opportunity). In 2000 the site was again excavated, this time by Keith Matthews of Chester Archaeology, who revealed more data and came to different conclusions about the phasing the amphitheatre.

In January 2003 Chester City Council joined forces with English Heritage to initiate the Chester Amphitheatre Project, covering both the amphitheatre and flanking areas. Objectives included non-invasive survey, excavation where appropriate and publication of the findings. The work took place between 2004 and 2007, led by Dan Garner (Chester City Council) and Tony Wilmott (English Heritage). The survey and excavations between 2005-2006 led by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner, published in 2018, were particularly informative. The presence of the listed building Dee House on the other side of the site, although derelict, has prevented any further progress being made.

Phasing of the amphitheatre shown in blue (first amphitheatre) and orange (second amphitheatre). Source: Ainsworth and Wilmott 2005, p.23

The outcome of all this work has been a narrative of the large oval (rather than elliptical) amphitheatre’s two-phase construction. The first phase was erected early in the fortress’s history probably shortly after the establishment of the legionary fortress after AD 74/75. The early date of the amphitheatre at around AD80 is not unusual, with other early examples known from, for example, Dorchester, Silchester, Cirencester and Caerleon. The second amphitheatre has destroyed some of the evidence of the first. The first amphitheatre was built in more than one phase, but it appears to have matured as a wooden scaffold holding seating, with a wall at its back, and another wall separating the seating from the arena. The access to upper levels was via an external staircase, an arrangement that is otherwise only known from Pompeii at a similar date. An interesting feature of the early amphitheatre phase is a small painted shrine dedicated to the deity Nemesis, which was retained in the second amphitheatre.

The second main phase of amphitheatre construction resulted in Britain’s biggest example of this type of building. A new outer wall was built following the line of the earlier amphitheatre, a vast 2m (6ft 7ins) thick and 1.8m (5ft 11in) outside the outer wall of the first structure. The original four entrances identified in the first amphitheatre were retained but new entrances were added that lead to the interior (vomitoria) to allow access to upper seating, suggsting that the outer wall was much higher than the earlier amphitheatre, an impression that is reinforced by the sheer size of the new outer wall. As Willmot and Garner say (2018) “its size; the number, complexity and organization of entrances and the treatment of the exterior facade all place it in an architectural class beyond that of the other amphitheatres in the province.” It is estimated that the new amphitheatre could have accommodated up to between 7500-8000 spectators. It is to this phase that the tethering stone belongs, as well as a coping stone (rounded stone topping for a wall) that contains the inscription “SERANO LOCUS” (see photo of both at the end of the post).

Julian Baum's reconstruction of Roman Chester, showing the dominance of the amphitheatre. Copyright Julian Baum, used with permission

Julian Baum’s incredibly life-like reconstruction of Roman Chester, showing the dominance of the amphitheatre, with the parade ground to its north. See more details of the amphitheatre on Julian Baum’s site at https://jbt27.artstation.com/projects/bKDayr?album_id=332464 Copyright Julian Baum, used with kind permission (click to expand)

As well as being essentially a part of the urban townscape, albeit excluded from the fortress, the tall, impressive structure that would have made an impression far beyond the immediate environs of the city. The surrounding landscape would have been in no doubt that the Ro mans had arrived, settled, and were here to stay, their amphitheatre not unlike a medieval cathedral in its powerful messaging. This is abundantly clear in Julian Baum’s reconstructions, such as the one here, demonstrating how the amphitheatre could act as a symbol of Roman presence, sophistication and power. Another of Julian’s reconstructions, showing the city at sunset, is on display in the exhibition, and both clearly demonstrate how dominant a feature the amphitheatre must have been and how important it was to the inhabitants of the fortress.
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The Gladiators of Britain Exhibition

As there are no written records of the events that took place in Britain’s amphitheatres, the focus of the exhibition is on archaeological data and its interpretation. There are some very short inscriptions in stone that hint at the importance of the gladiatorial events, but the bulk of the data that informs ideas of what remains are the amphitheatres of Britain themselves, and the objects that record the spectacles that people attended. The exhibition has brought together some very evocative pieces. All the photos below are from the exhibition.

The exhibition does not attempt to analyse the Chester amphitheatre and nor does it set out to answer the bigger questions about how gladiators were trained, where they came from, or how they were deployed. What it does superbly well is demonstrate how the gladiatorial spectacle was captured both in massive architectural endeavour and in material remains preserved in the archaeological record.

The Colchester Vase

The exhibition opens with some details about the amphitheatres in which gladiatorial confrontations took place. Not only is there a video by Alexander Illci showing a reconstruction of Rome’s magnificent Colosseum, but there is a fabulous, splendidly detailed coin showing the amphitheatre in raised relief, dating from AD 80. The exhibition then goes on to explore the world of gladiators via specially chosen objects that reflect the impact how amphitheatres and gladiators contributed to o Roman urban life, even far from the heartland of the Roman Empire.

The Colchester Vase, being perhaps the key object that inspired the exhibition, is worth taking time over when you visit. Apart from the fact that it is superbly well crafted, a piece of real excellence, it tells more than one story, with each component moulded in high relief. To ensure that the vessel can be appreciated in its entirety, a mirror has been placed behind it, and the lighting highlights the relief figures very clearly. It shows a gladiator versus another gladiator, a gladiator versus a beast, and beasts chasing beasts.

Gladiatorial Helmet from Hawkedon, Suffolk

Another key object in the exhibition is the helmet from Hawkedon in Suffolk, one of the most important objects to be found in connection with the history of gladiators in Britain. Unlike the Colchester Vase, or any of the other objects depicting gladiatorial action discussed below, this was design to participate in the action, worn to protect the gladiator and give him the best chance of survival. The frontpiece is modern, added to give a complete impression of what the original item looked like. Analysis of the metal suggests that it was made on the continent and hints that both it and perhaps its owenr may have travelled to Britain for participation in the amphtheatre.

Amongst many other discoveries during the excavations , the one that confirms that gladiatorial bouts undoubtedly took place in the Chester amphitheatre was a huge sandstone tethering stone, which tied animals and some human contestants alike to a central point to prevent them seeking refuge at the sidelines where they could not be viewed by the full circle of spectators (shown at the end of the post). This somewhat daunting object is on display in the exhibition. Although by far the crudest of the many lovely objects on view, it is the one that moves the exhibition from art-works to action, forcing the visitor to engage with the the very savage and bloody nature of the contests. It is one thing to look at a pretty scene on a vase or stone; it is quite another to be confronted with the block that physically chained the victim to its unavoidable fate.

Second century pottery lamp from Italy in the Gladiators of Britain exhibition

Although the gladiators were the stars of the events, the members of the audience were just as important for the success and ambience of the amphitheatres, and many of the other objects in the exhibition reflect the sense of involvement and enjoyment that individuals took from amphitheatre events. One item that clearly demonstrates this sense of involvement is A coping stone, inscribed SERANO LOCUS (shown at the very end of this post), may have been part of the arena wall, perhaps marking the place (“locus”) of a spectator named Seranus. Although the more remarkable of the items in the exhibition, such as the Colchester Vase, were probably specially commissioned, other items are far less prestigious. The many oil lamps in the exhibition, showing scenes of gladiators in action, were probably purchased like souvenirs when peformances were taking place. It is thought that traces of outer buildings and the remains of food items at Chester represent snack stalls, and it is entirely likely that souvenirs could also have been sold in the same vicinity, or after the event in marketplaces.

Altar dedicated to Nemesis by Sextius Marcianus, found in a shrine at the amphitheatre.

Also on display is the shrine to the goddess Nemesis, apparently retained in the second amphitheatre after being built for the first one, adds a religious dimension to proceedings, a feature known from other amphitheatres in the Empire as well. Representing fate, Nemesis was appropriate to the prospective fortunes of both winner and loser. Nemesis was particularly appropriate for a gladiatorial outlook, whether winner or loser, representing fate. It was dedicated by the centurion Sextius Marcianus who had it made after experiencing a vision.

There are a great many more objects in the exhibition. Each has been well chosen to show different aspects of the gladiatorial experience, and each is well explained in the labelling. A wide variety of materials are represented, including stone, metals, wood and pottery, and many are decorated with great imagination. Some were component parts of the amphitheatres themselves. Others were items used in the arena, whilst a wide range of items were designed for the home. Most of these were the objects that people chose to commission or purchase, took into their homes and cared for, maintaining them in beautiful condition. As the exhibition demostrates so clearly, when they were buried, broken or lost in transit, they became archaeological remnants, and in doing so became threads of several different lines of investigation that continue to feed into broader research about the Roman occupation of Britain.

As well as the objects themselves, the information labels and interpretation boards not only inform, but create an all-encompassing experience that helps visitors to get to grips with a fascinating if gory subject matter. The interpretation boards are beautifully designed, giving the exhibition a good sense of coherence. Fortunately there is no gore on show, so this is entirely child-friendly (with games and dress-up outfits available for children) and whilst the exhibition does not judge, it leaves visitors in little doubt that this was a form of entertainment that potentially had a life or death outcome, whether for human or animal.

The exhibition may be small but it makes a terrific impact, making superb use of the space available, and seeking at every turn to inform and involve. The art work on the interpretation boards is attractive, and there is a lightness of touch to the whole presentation and the delicate artwork that manages to complement rather than overwhelm the exhibits and the themes. It is really well done. Don’t miss it!

With many thanks to the Grosvenor Museum’s Liz Montgomery for a really engaging guided tour of the exhibition.

The exhibition is free of charge to enter, and the museum opening times are shown on its website: https://grosvenormuseum.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/visit-us/. Do note, as shown above, that group tours are available on Mondays, and you can phone up to arrange them. The exhibition is on in Chester until January 25th 2026.

Enjoy!

For anyone wanting to gain an impression of what the Chester amphitheatre may have looked like, the following YouTube video by 3-D modeller Julian Baum in collaboration with archaeologist Tony Willmot may help to visualize the building:

Sources and further reading:

Books and Papers

Hunt cup from Colchester

Ainsworth, Stewart and Tony Wilmott 2005. Chester Amphitheatre. From Gladiators to Gardens. Chester City Council and English Heritage

de la Bédoyère, Guy 2001. The Buildings of Roman Britain. Tempus

de la Bédoyère, Guy 2013. Roman Britain: A New History. Thames and Hudson

Carrington, Peter1994. Chester. B.T. Batsford / English Heritage

Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Keith 2001. Chester amphitheatre excavations in 2000. Chester City Council
https://www.academia.edu/4403653/Chester_amphitheatre_excavations_in_2000 (open access but requires free log-in)

Mason, David, J.P. 2001, 2007 (2nd edition). Roman Chester. City of Eagles. Tempus

Neubauer, Wolfgang; Christian Gugl, Markus Scholz, Geert Verhoeven, Immo Trinks, Klaus Löcker, Michael Doneus, Timothy Saey and Marc Van Meirvenne 2014. The Discovery of the School of Gladiators at Carnuntum, Austria. Antiquity. Antiquity. 2014, 88 (339), p173-190. Published online 2nd January 2015
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/discovery-of-the-school-of-gladiators-at-carnuntum-austria/4ACC29C5CC928A88A8A4F5ADC3E989CB

Salway, Peter 1984. Roman Britain. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press

Thompson, F.H. 1976, The excavation of the Roman amphitheatre at Chester, Archaeologia 1976, 105, p.127–239

Wilmott, Tony; Dan Garner and Stewart Ainsworth. The Roman Amphitheatre at Chester: An Interim Account. English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 1, 2006, 7
https://moscow.sci-hub.st/4860/8932e6265dd8765296a9986ccfcd3dcd/wilmott2006.pdf

Wilmott, Tony and Dan Garner 2018. The Roman Amphitheatre of Chester. Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology. Oxbow (also available on Kindle, although not all of the tables are fully legible)

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Websites

artnet
A Roman-Era Vase, Once Considered a Cremation Vessel, Turns Out to Be an Early Form of Sports Memorabilia for a Gladiator Fan. April 13th 2023
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/colchester-vase-sports-memorabilia-2270088

Based in Churton
Peter Carrington’s excellent guided walk of Roman Chester during the Festival of Ideas. Andie Byrnes, July 6th 2025
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-7OD

Colchester City Council
Historic Colchester Vase goes on tour with the British Museum. 19th November 2024
https://www.colchester.gov.uk/info/cbc-article/?id=KA-04817

Grosvenor Museum Chester
Gladiators of Britain exhibition
https://events.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/event/gladiators-of-britain/

Julian Baum, VXF Artist and Illustrator
Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre
https://jbt27.artstation.com/projects/bKDayr?album_id=332464

Beast fighting. Found in Ephesus (British Museum).

Beast fighting. Found in Ephesus, Turkey (British Museum).

Tethering stone from Chester amphitheatre

The SERANO LOCUS coping stone

A very beautiful autumnal sunshine walk along the Wirral estuary from Burton to Parkgate

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Beautiful feathers on a bird of prey at Burton, Wirral

Yesterday seemed, at first, to have been doomed from the start. I was supposed to be driving to Aberdyfi in mid-Wales to do something specific, but 20 minutes from home, already running very late, realized that I had left two components essential to the task on the kitchen table. Having returned home and collected the required items, I was leaving the house and went to take a quick snapshot in my garden of a squirrel running upside down along a power line and rapidly closing on an oblivious turtle dove, and found to my dismay that the camera couldn’t read the SD card. Nooooooo! I knew I had a spare somewhere, but where? Ridiculous to go to Aberdyfi on a sunny blue-skied day like this without a camera. After half an hour of fruitless searching I picked up the phone and cancelled my visit. Twenty minutes later I had found the wretched thing. Instead of the planned expedition, I found myself grabbing the camera and car keys before heading up the Wirral to Burton to park up along the estuary and go for a very fine walk along part of the Wirral section of the King Charles III England Coast Path. I hadn’t even got out of the car when I saw the above bird of prey, which politely held position whilst I scrambled out of the car. A perfect way to turn around a very unpromising start to the day.

I have made a short visit to the estuary cycle track and walk in the past, simply to get a good look at the purported Iron Age promontory fort on Burton Point, but although it was enjoyable, it was a short stroll because the skies opened and I got drenched. Today, with no risk of rain, I decided to walk from Burton towards Parkgate, which I guessed to be about an hour’s walk each way. When I reached the “You are Here” board (with which the walk is dotted at key points) at Moorside, alongside Parkgate Spring and on the very edge of Parkgate, this was a full hour.

Parking is easy along the section of Station Road that lies along the estuary for the Burton to Moorside (near Parkgate) section of the “King Charles III England Coast Path” (What3Words: ///glows.lung.headsets). Source: Google Maps

Parking for this particular walk is along the section of Station Road that runs along the side of the estuary, indicated by the red circle on the map.

The walk itself begins along the section of Denhall Lane that turns along the side of the estuary and passes a café, as indicated by the black arrow on the map. Although vehicles are permitted as far as the café (just beyond the left edge of the map), they are banned beyond this point.

This first stretch of metalled lane is dominated by dog walkers and cyclists. Do keep an ear open for the cyclists as they can pick up a lot of speed along the lane and don’t always give a lot of notice of their impending arrival. The path goes through various changes. After some time it parts from the lane and becomes much more of a footpath with rough stone underfoot, which probably accounts for why the cyclists vanish from the scene at this point. At one stage it becomes a track across a field, although there is a route around this in wet weather that diverts inland for a while. The entire walk is well maintained with pedestrian gates and bridges where needed. One field had horses in it, so do take care if you are walking dogs.

Scenically, the walk is always split between two different experiences to left and right. The views across both wetlands and former wetlands to the Welsh foothills to the southwest are lovely on a sunny day, and you can keep an eye open for bird life. On the other side of the path, immediately hugging its edges, there is an almost uninterrupted run of very fine hedgerows and trees. At this time of year there is not a great deal to see on the estuary, although I was delighted to see lovely white egrets in a distant blue pool, as well as a couple of birds of prey hovering splendidly overhead. Most of the flowers in the estuary have gone over, but the autumnal leaves, berries, rose-hips and other fruits of the shrubs and hedges and the multiple colours of the changing leaves on trees along the paths were endless and superb, really gorgeous against a blue sky with the sun shining on them.

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Nearing Neston I spotted a line of vast red sandstone blocks extending out into the estuary vegetation, and a small spur of land also extends out at this point. An information board explains that this is part of the Neston Colliery, Denhall Quay. There is a particularly good book about the collieries, The Neston Collieries, 1759–1855: An Industrial Revolution in Rural Cheshire (Anthony Annakin-Smith, second edition), published by the University of Chester, which I read and enjoyed a few years ago. The sandstone blocks are massive, and as well as retaining original metalwork, one of them has become a memorial stone, as has one of the trees on the small spur of land. The line of sandstone, now a piece of industrial archaeology, is a very small hint of the extensive work that once took place here, but is an important one. The author of the above-mentioned book refers to it in a short online page here, from which the following is taken:

There are still some signs today of the old mining operations. Most prominent is Denhall Quay, the remains of which still jut out into the Dee Estuary. This was built in 1791 and was used to ship coal to North Wales, Ireland and occasionally to foreign countries, as well as inland via newly-built canals. Also, if you know where to look it is possible to trace the location of many of the shafts that were once in use, including one hidden behind a brick wall in Riverside Walk. Easier and arguably more rewarding to find is The Harp Inn! The building was standing in the mines’ earliest days and records show it was a public house for the miners no later than 1813 and probably much earlier. It has several photos on its walls from the mines’ later days.

This is the point that I turned around and walked back. The image immediately above the map shows point where the Parkgate Spring emerges, very audible but not actually visible.

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There are very few places to sit down along the walk, so I would recommend that if you need to rest your legs occasionally, you take your own portable seating. Regarding refreshments, I have mentioned Net’s Café, near the Burton end. I haven’t visited and apparently there’s no website, but it is just off Denhall Lane and it is listed on Trip Advisor here. There is also a very good pub called The Harp, which I actually have visited, with outdoor tables immediately overlooking the wetlands towards the Welsh hills, just outside Little Neston. The food being served there looked excellent, and I can give a solid thumbs-up for the cider. The pub was particularly well situated for my return from Parkgate as the zoom lens on my camera, a particular beauty that has been worryingly on the twitch for weeks, suddenly stopped working and was now, just to ram home the overall message, rattling. A glass of cider and a seat in the sun were perfect for jury-rigging the wretched thing so that the zoom now worked like an old-fashioned telescope and the camera’s autofocus, which was refusing point-blank to engage in conversation with the lens, could be operated manually on the lens itself. Sigh. New lens on order.

If you can do this walk in September when the berries are at their best, do take the opportunity, because it is stunning, particularly on a sunny day. And all on the flat too, so entirely appropriate for unwilling legs.
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A guided walk to learn about the distinctive architectural creativity of John Douglas in Chester

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John Douglas. A photograph that apparently first appeared in “Building News” in 1890. Source: Wikipedia

For those who are interested in local heritage, it is probably not possible to live in or near Chester without knowing the name of the architect John Douglas. John Douglas (1830-1911) was a prolific architect, working right at the end of the Victorian era but demonstrating a fundamental affiliation with Victorian architectural ideals. According to Chantal’s research, between the buildings he built and those that he renovated and adapted, he contributed to over 500 buildings in Britain. Not much is known about him, but he trained in Lancashire where a new middle class, rising in both wealth and influence, was creating an unprecedented demand for domestic, commercial and civic architecture. His are some of the most imaginative and and engaging of Chester’s Victorian buildings, providing the city with an important additional layer of interest and texture. He was also responsible for other local buildings at Eaton Hall (including Eccleston), Aldford and Port Sunlight, as well as many other UK locations. Although never bowing to the past in his architectural inventions, Douglas incorporated elements of Chester’s earlier architectural styles into his unique creations, remaining sensitive to the original city whilst leaving a highly distinctive and creative legacy of his own.

Grosvenor Park Street

Our guide on the Heritage Open Day walk was Chantal Bradburn, art historian and head of Outreach at the University of Chester, who had done such a splendid job several days previously, introducing a large group of us to the Western Command at the Churchill Building. Called “John Douglas in Chester,” this was a brand new walk, and a great idea to add it to the many events offered last week. Instead of taking us on a route-march of every building that Douglas built in Chester, Chantal selected a representative few, which both captured different aspects of his work and at the same time demonstrated an underlying thread between them all. By choosing a careful sample of Douglas’s total Chester output, she was able to impart far more knowledge about both Douglas and the individual buildings than if she had tried to include more, although she did finish up the tour with recommendations for other buildings to inspect nearby. As with her Churchill Building talk, and perhaps even more so, it is impossible to do any sort of justice to all the facts that she imparted, and particularly to do any justice at all to her ability to contextualise the architecture within its social and economic environment, as well as discussing it in art-historical terms, so this is just a short taster of a really great guided walk.

We started at the lodge in the Grosvenor Park, an obviously Victorian take on the Tudor half-timbered buildings that partly define Chester’s heritage, commissioned by the Grosvenor estate to provide a touch of additional elegance to the second Marquess of Westminster’s 1867 philanthropic donation of the land to create a park.

Grosvenor Park Lodge

The Grosvenor Park Lodge by John Douglas

Grosvenor Park Lodge from the rear

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Detail of carved woodwork on the Grosvenor Park Lodge: “Nobilitatis virtus non stemma character”

With Ruabon brick at its base and half-timbering at first floor level, it features sculptural elements and carvings that provide it with real charm. Douglas apparently thought it entirely appropriate to add a medieval-style sandstone extension to his building, which as Chantal pointed out, reflects the multi-period character of many of Chester’s buildings.

It became clear as we proceeded on the walk that this willingness to go with the flow of Chester architecture by echoing some of its variety and diversity, without ever trying to replicate it, was a key characteristic of Douglas’s approach. He always preferred local materials, and this too indicates a real wish to connect with Chester’s earlier architectural heritage. It’s great to see it being used as a café, providing a useful service on the edge of the park.

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Our next stop was just over the road, on Grosvenor Park Street. The 1872 Grade II* listed houses, numbers 6-11 on Grosvenor Park Street make up of a row of terraced houses and a Zion Chapel have long been a favourite of mine. Together they are a fabulous, wildly imaginative mixture of different elements all of Ruabon red brick, including gothic style features, turrets, and a dozen other twiddly bits. It is always wonderful to see how brick can be used to create elements that are more conventionally associated with stonework in this country. Whether the mullioned windows, some with original leading, let in a lot of light I doubt, but they are wonderfully ornamental. It was particularly interesting that Douglas built these houses on land that he owned, renting them out afterwards. He did not skimp on materials or architectural design in order to make a bigger profit. This set of buildings argues that he really cared about not only the quality of his own work, but about what he as an individual could contribute to Chester.FULL RUN HERE

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Perhaps one of his best known buildings in this part of extramural Chester is quite unlike either his lodge or his fantastic domestic extravaganza. However, as Chantal pointed out, the Chester Public Baths are still in proportion, a good fit with the domestic buildings in this part of Chester in spite of its being a public leisure facility. Chantal positioned the idea of swimming and the provision of a public baths in the social context of Victorian values and ideals, but made it clear that Douglas had put his own particular spin on the resulting building. Both practical and decorative, it is a very fine example of a building that is at once distinctively Victorian but also takes admired aspects from Chester’s past.

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Further down Bath Street, I would not have guessed at first sight that the Grade II listed buildings on the right were another Douglas innovation, but the signs are there when you pause to look more closely, and particularly when you have Chantal’s expertise to provide detailed knowledge and insights. Except for the building at the far south, nearest to the Baths, which is more typical of other Douglas buildings nearby, the main run of houses is built of buff sandstone, quite different in material, colour, and texture from other Douglas buildings and, for that matter, from anything else that I recall seeing in Chester. It dates to 1903, quite late in Douglas’s life, and perhaps this accounts for some of the distinctive features discussed by Chantal. There is an echo of the buildings on Grosvenor Park Street, but this has a much more monumental feeling to it and even with the decorative features and the short spires, seems less light-hearted and, in spite of the ornamental features, a little more monumental in feel.

If you follow the building all the way round the corner you will see that the houses link to a building built by Douglas to house Prudential Assurance. It’s name today, Lombard House, reflects a later use by the eponymous bank. To the left of the entrance, just around the corner, there is a charming female statue inset into a niche holding a snake and book. This is Prudence, one of the four cardinal virtues (the others being Justice, Fortitude and Temperance), adopted by Prudential Assurance as their emblem in 1848 for her qualities of foresight, intelligence, thoughtfulness and knowledge. Although more traditionally shown with a mirror representing self-awareness, a book is also part of her iconography, representing knowledge, wisdom and and good judgement.
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Our final stop for the day took in two architectural features, bringing us into the city within the walls – the wrought iron extravaganza that sits on top of the Georgian East Gate, with its splendid clock, and the former Grosvenor Club building immediately to its west. These both speak of late Victorian Chester’s ambition and its delight in ornament and display, giving an unmistakeably Victorian sparkle to this part of the city. Chantal gave us details about the clock that I hadn’t heard before concerning its construction, as well as an entertaining factoid about the date of construction, reminding me that it is very easy to become complacent about even such a dominant landmark. I had known nothing about the Grosvenor Club (including its name and purpose) so this too was a learning curve.

The Grosvenor Club

The Grosvenor Club on the right with the rest of Eastgate Street taken from the top of the East Gate bridge, under the clock.

When the tour was over, and Chantal had pointed us at other Douglas buildings in the vicinity so that we could investigate further on our own, she was still surrounded by a group of people asking many questions, and this had been the trend of the entire walk, with tons of information being imparted and lots of questions following. Keep an eye open for this walk being offered in the future. It’s a good one!

The nearby Parker’s Buildings

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Grosvenor Park Lodge detail

Thinking about John Douglas and his work over the following few days, and looking up other examples of his work, his buildings generally aim to provide an attractive environment of well-being, based on the idea that past and present reinforce one another in a very comfortable and attractive way. Although many of the John Douglas buildings were impressive, and some of them were intended to be imposing, others were homes along streets that made use of vernacular features both from Chester, with inspiration taken from European cities, and from the medieval period onwards. His preference for local materials is clearly demonstrated, and his love of decorative features is a real celebration of life. He took a modern approach to architecture, incorporating traditional styles into his new interpretive schemes, as well as Germanic and French ideas that gave his work a rather more cosmopolitan edge than other architecture in the city, and in doing so added real value to Chester. The best of the Victorian architecture of Chester simply oozes a sense of excitement and self-confidence about their lived present and their anticipated future, and John Douglas reflects this unfurling era with real exuberance. His contributions to places like wealthy Eccleston and Aldford are also attractive, but perhaps Douglas is at his most appealing when contributing to Port Sunlight, the village built in the late 1880s by Lord Lever for his factory workers, contributing his skills with around 30 other architects, to create a very different type of community. It must have been a real pleasure to live in one of his remarkable houses. It is very nice to see that the ones that I have found to date seem to be very well maintained. It is only a shame that subsequent architectural projects in Chester have only occasionally managed to live up to both his high standards and his creativity.

“Cheshire’s Archives: A Story Shared.” Great to learn about the new Cheshire Archives, opening next year

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The Cheshire Archives building in Chester. Source: Cheshire Archives: A Story Shared

On Wednesday 17th September, as part of Heritage Open Day, Paul Newman from the Cheshire Archives and Tim Brown from the architectural firm Ellis Williams, explained to a well-attended audience at the Grosvenor Museum how the new archive project had been rolled out and what we can expect next year when the new Chester building opens. I am dying to get my hands on the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum records that they hold, having already written a long screed about the asylum between 1854 and 1870 (across four posts here), so I was attending the event with a real sense of anticipation.

The Cheshire Archives, which since 1986 have been located in Duke St in Chester, closed in 2022, having won a Lottery grant to build two brand new buildings. The former Duke Street premises of the Archives were in a set of lovely Victorian buildings, which were once warehouses of the legendary Browns Department Store, but the Archives were beginning to outgrow them. The archive collections go back to the mid 12th century, and continue to be added today, representing different aspects of community life, working and domestic, at different periods. As its role became more important, the Archive outgrew the building, with boxes that would reach 8km if laid end to end, and it had a number of environmental issues as well as providing less than ideal facilities for both staff and researchers. Targets to reach a larger and more diverse audience were difficult, and it became clear that a move was the only realistic solution.

The new Crewe Cheshire Archives building. Source: Cheshire’s Archive: A Story Shared

An initial investment of National Lottery money to explore the project in 2020 was successful, and a full National Lottery Fund grant was subsequently allocated, with work began in earnest in 2022. The locations in Crewe and Chester will spread the collection between east and west sides of Cheshire to provide accessible storage for the archive collections in conditions that are much more favourable. Outreach programmes will be more viable, reaching a much wider audience of different ages and backgrounds. Digital access will be much improved, with new ways to access local collections and historical data, including a postcode search and community-selected highlights referred to as “Gems.” At the same time, the salt mines in Winsford will continue to store other records, which are available to order to either location with a one-week turnaround. A permanent exhibition will be set up, and exhibition spaces will eventually be available for those using the archives. The new offices will open in 2026, and the project will continue as a measuring and monitoring exercise into 2027.

Location of the site on Lightfoot Street. Source: Cheshire West and Chester

The architectural firm Ellis Williams, who had undertaken the ambitious and successful conversion of Chester’s Story House, was appointed to develop both of the new buildings. Interestingly, although they have many of the same internal features, their appearance is very dissimilar. Both have very modern appearances, but each has been adapted to its own immediate neighbourhood. Initial design ideas were more radical, but certainly in the Chester case the emphasis soon shifted towards meeting planning requirements for some degree of continuity between the proposed new building and the surrounding architectural context and local character. Documents detailing some of the plans can be found here: https://www.cheshirestoryshared.org/home/the-plan

The new archive building in Chester will be located on the mainly residential Lightfoot Street, which runs along the railway line behind the Chester railway station. This has created some challenges in terms of accessibility, and the Council were unwilling to sell the entire site, so parking is confined to 35 spaces.

A low wall with indented panels on Chester Lightfoot Street, which separates the archive site from the road. Source: Google Maps.

The site is divided from the road by a low wall with indented sections, and it was a planning requirement that this should be preserved. The idea here is to knock through some of the indented panels, whilst leaving others in tact, replacing those that are to be knocked through with wrought iron artwork, so that the Archive site is visible through the panels, creating a linkage between both sides of the wall. There is a slight slope of around 2.5m downhill from the road level, which requires stairs and slopes to enable ease of access. Parking will include spaces for school coaches and there will be a loading bay at the rear. The shape of the building itself will echo the twin-gabled shape of railway sheds and platform roofs, but is super-modern in design, and it will feature an “active frontage,” a term that refers to the integration of the building with the street onto which it faces. Work began in 2017.

Inside, the two-storey Chester building will be split between a public-facing space on the ground floor and a more staff-orientated space on the first floor. It will total 3000 sq ft (c.270 sq m). The ground floor foyer, which although north-facing should be light-filled, will be an exhibition space, and will include a theatre area with movable walls, lighting and seating, to ensure maximum flexibility. A help desk will be located at the rear. The research rooms will have desks for research, with a total of six computers available at any one time (most people apparently bring their own kit) and there will also be a chill-out area. The first floor will include, with archive storage in rolling racks, offices and meeting rooms. Energy considerations have been factored in, making best possible use of the available technologies, and various levels of security and fire-safety measures are part of the overall plans.

The foundations have been established and work is underway on the lower level brickwork, whilst a steel frame and roof have also been erected. Archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology had been given time to carry out an assessment, but found very little of interest beyond sundry 19th century railway features. The resulting report can be found here.

The archives will probably be open for a 5-day week. I should have asked whether this was Monday to Friday, or whether a weekend day would also be included, but it did not occur to me at the time. I am really looking forward to visiting the new Cheshire Archives building when it opens in late summer 2026, and experimenting with some of their upcoming digital services. In the meantime there is a website showcasing some of the Archive’s activities at Cheshire’s Archives: A Story Shared.

Thanks very much to Paul Newman and Tim Brown for not only delivering a terrifically informative presentation but for answering the numerous audience questions.

A revealing talk and guided tour: The Churchill Building and the Western Command 1937 – Today

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The Churchill Building portico dates from 1997, but the original Neo-Georgian military Western Command building can be seen behind it.

The portico dates from 1997, but the original Neo-Georgian military Western Command building can be seen behind it.

With many thanks to Chantal Bradburn for an excellent lecture in the Churchill Building in the University of Chester’s Queen’s Campus. Chantal is the University’s Outreach representative, with a strong background in art history and a particular interest in architecture in its social context. Her talk, entitled “Western Command (Churchill Building),” covered the design and original purpose of the building as the headquarters of the Western Command, including the fascinating underground bunkers, and the building’s subsequent phases of use. The presentation and the subsequent walk around the building’s exterior brought the Western Command to life. Chantal’s ability to convey an impression of the building as it was in military times, based partly on her research and partly on feedback from people who have attended the talk or contacted her over the years, was of critical importance, because the interior had been completely re-envisioned in grandiose style by the subsequent bank, and converted once again in more pragmatic terms into the University of Chester’s Business School. Only the exterior retains the essential character of the Western Command building.

The eastern wing of the Western Command (Churchill Building) gives a good impression of how the building appeared when it was first built

The building, then known as Capital House, was completed in around 1938, almost certainly in response to the threat of war. Neo-Georgian is not my favourite of the various architectural experiments in Chester. I have grumbled on and off about the Wheeler Building on the blog for years, and there are a number of more modest buildings dotting the streets of the historic city whose architects seem to believe that slapping some symmetrical rectangular windows into plain blocks of undifferentiated brickwork will do the trick nicely, completely missing the point of refined elegance and delicate embellishments that characterized Georgian harmonies. On the other hand, as Chantal pointed out, at least in the case of the Churchill Building there are good reasons for this style, which is better than most of its siblings, relating not merely to the practicalities of budget constraints for such a large building.

The eastern entrance to the Churchill Building with subtle nods to Art Deco

The importance of establishing a dignified military presence referenced the power and prestige of the city’s Georgian predecessors, which were themselves influenced by Classical architecture, whilst some low-key features nod to both the medieval military past and, in an even more subtle way, other contemporary styles. I would not have noticed these had Chantal not pointed them out. Although the subsequent Northwest Securities bank slapped a gigantic Classical-style portico on the front, the original building consisted of flat-roofed blocks that provided an impressive frontage, which relies for its impact on the size of its footprint rather than the height of its two-storey walls. Chantal pointed out that the position of the building was strategically very fine, with its views over the river and the city beyond, only matched in its vantage points by the site chosen for the castle.

As the northwest HQ for intelligence on what was quite literally Britain’s western front during the war, the personnel serving in the Western Command building had a critical role not only leading up to and during the war, but for a surprising amount of time after it. Chantal told us a great many stories about the role of the building and the people who worked there, highlighting the complexities that different levels of security caused for both employees and contractors, and emphasizing the degree of secrecy that was associated with the activities that took place within the Churchill Building.

Bunkers excavated into the sandstone at the Churchill Building. Source: 28DaysLater

To the east of the building, up-river, the remarkable and extensive underground bunkers were built to provide shelter and a command centre should it become necessary, both during and after the Second World War. They extend from the level of the building down towards the river. It is reputed that Churchill, who is known to have visited the building, may have met there with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Charles de Gaulle. No documentation supports this view, but there are apparently anecdotal accounts that support the possibility. The bunkers are now too dangerous to visit (see a photograph of a point of collapse on the 28DaysLater website). The sandstone through which former miners in the army excavated to create the bunkers is sponge-like, attracting damp that is not helping with the stability of the underground structures. Chantal showed photographs and explained past survey work and future plans (dependent as always on funding).

The building passed to the Royal Army Pay Corps in 1972, and from 1972 it was taken over as offices for a banking corporation. The presentation took place in a huge room with an enormous table, all very glossy and highly polished, and heavily influence by Art Deco designs. This was part of the bank’s improbable legacy. It is quite staggering how the bank took over a military building and turned it into an extrovert and financially corrosive expression of self-indulgent excess. Where these details have survived, the legacy is huge fun, but quite mad. The bank’s vast portico, converting the Neo-Georgian blocks into a pseudo Classical temple, is equally pretentious. I am very fond of the University, having had a great time doing some post-graduate research there a couple of years back, but it really does seem to have saddled itself with buildings that for all their scale and practicality are amongst the least aesthetically charming of the various Cestrian styles. In their favour, the University does make the most of them.

The opening of the Churchill Building by John Spencer Churchill (centre in grey suit), when it became part of the University of Chester in October 2015. Source: Cheshire Live

It is interesting to note that in the case of both military base and commercial bank, the building was off-limits to the public, not only physically but visually. The arrangement of buildings at the time meant that the view through the gates, then in a different position, blocked any view of the heart of the complex. It has been particularly interesting for local people who have lived in the area for a number of decades to have access to the building at last, and to be able to see what was so long hidden from view, perhaps particularly when family members and friends worked there.

The building had been out of use for a decade when the University took it over in 2015 to make it the centre for their Business School, with most of the building adapted to this task with the usual collection of teaching, research and computer rooms, areas for socializing and a café. Wisely, the decision was made to preserve some of the more elaborate flourishes of the bank’s idea of good taste, and there are some distinctly New York style decorative features in the foyer. More to the point, the building’s foundation stone and its frame, appropriately made of carved stone rather than the less expensive brick, has been preserved and is now installed above the reception desk as a very welcome piece of the building’s material heritage. The exterior, now sporting a leaded dormer roof, still retains the essence of its stern and uncompromising military purpose, but its survival first as a bank and then as a major component of a university campus is a testimony to its durability.

It is impossible to do justice to Chantal’s talk, which was stuffed full of information. Chantal does these talks quite frequently, and I do recommend that you keep an eye open for her next ones, because she provides a vivid insight into a world that is not normally associated with Chester, and which was clearly a very important part of the city’s social and economic profile from the 1930s onwards. More than any other talk that I have attended since moving to the area, this is the one that surprised me most, and left me with a new set of insights into Chester’s less publicized wartime and post-war history. Splendid.

“Landscape of Neolithic Axes” – A hugely enjoyable afternoon of talks at Penmaenmawr

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Introduction

What a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon on Saturday 16th August organized by the Landscape of Neolithic Axes project, part of the Carneddau Landscape Partnership. The subject matter, “Landscape of Neolithic Axes,” focused on the production, distribution and role of axeheads made on stone sourced above Llanfairfechan and Penmaenmawr. These shaped and polished axeheads were distributed to locations all over Britain.

Penmaenmawr, which hosted the event, is a lively little village perched above the north Wales coast, with fabulous views out to the sea, which was particularly jewel-like on the sunny day of our visit. The sense of seascape and landscape merging almost seamlessly into one another, only faintly interrupted by the line of the village, was remarkable. Brown signposts to “Druid’s Circle” (Cefn Coch prehistoric stone circle) and the immediacy of the rocky hills just above were incredibly tempting, but we were headed for the Community Hall that was hosting a series of public lectures.

It was a very well attended event. The same three talks took place first in the morning starting at 10am, and then again in the afternoon at 2pm. That was extremely generous as it gave those of us coming from further away the chance to leave home at a reasonable time, and the afternoon talks sounded just as fresh as if they were being delivered for the first time.

Key sites in the area of Neolithic axe production around Penmaenmawr and Llainfairfechan

A map of the area, showing all the key sites. From the temporary exhibition at Penmaenmawr Museum (click to enlarge)

Although outside visitors were invited to attend, the event was clearly organized, at least in part, in recognition of the volunteers and the community for all their support. Many of the attendees had been volunteers on the extensive survey and excavation work that took place not only on Graig Lwyd itself but on nearby outcrops formed of the same intrusive rock. The talks were designed to be fully accessible to all levels of familiarity with the subject, and were based not only on the latest local research, which has been conducted to the highest standards, but also on the most up to date academic findings in the rest of Britain and in Europe. It was a genuinely impressive and thoroughly riveting trio of talks.

Apologies for the quality of the photos that I took on my smartphone at the exhibition, and which are dotted throughout this post – I have been unable to improve them much, in spite of tinkering in Photoshop.

A quick note on Neolithic axeheads

Polished Graig Lwyd Neolithic axehead. Photograph and copyright David Longley. Source: Carneddau Partnership

Just a quick note on the manufacture of axeheads for anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with the subject. The Neolithic spans the time period from around 6000-4500BC and in part of this period axeheads made of particular types of stone, found only in certain geographic areas, became an important type of commodity, traded throughout Britain. The stone axes made from the outcrops at Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan, a stone valued both for its durability and workability has been found all over Britain. The working of the stone and the networks that distributed them were complex, not only logistically but in terms of inter-community co-operation and the development of relationships. Axeheads, hafted on to wooden handles, were highly valued items, presumably not merely because of their value as utility tools, but as prestige items that were often difficult to obtain. This idea is reinforced by finds of axeheads that were never used, and by the fact that some were apparently deliberately broken to take them out of circulation.

Digitized image of a drawing of Graig Lwyd axeheads as published in RCAHMW Caernarvonshire Inventory Volume I : East, Figure 10, 1956. Source: RCAHMW

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The talks

There is, of course, no possibility of doing justice to the talks, and I have not tried to capture everything that was covered. I hope that I have managed to capture just a little flavour of some aspects of the research discussed by the three speakers in the very short sketches below. Thanks very much to the the three presenters who provided such a good summary of their work, the directions that their research is taking and how it all relates to the Penmaenmawr area.
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Jane Kenney (Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project and Heneb)
About “The Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project”

Roughouts (part-completed axeheads) from the Graig Lwyd area. Photographed in the temporary exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum

Dr Kenney, who has been running the project, explained that this is the 6th and final year of the project that is part of the part of the Carneddau Landscape Partnership Scheme, the overarching objectives of which are to protect and conserve natural and cultural heritage, engaging local people and visitors with that heritage.

The project covers the important period 4000-2500BC that sees the arrival of the earliest farmers, pottery and new funerary monuments, who began to move into the territories of Mesolithic groups who hunted, collected plant foods and fished. Polished stone axe-heads were part of the new material assemblage that was required by these innovators. Although wooden handles rarely survive, it is clear from the few that do that axe and adze heads were intended to be hafted. The example on the poster at the top of the page, and also shown further down the page, is from Cumbria and is now at the British Museum. There were a number of places from which suitable stones were sourced and worked, and Graig Lwyd behind Penmaenmawr was one of these. The wide distribution of axe heads throughout Britain and Ireland reflects not only the functional value of this type of tool, but their social significance too.

William Hazzledine Warren, who first discovered the Graig Lwyd site in 1821. Source: Peoples Collection Wales

Graig Lywyd was first discovered by Samuel Hazzledine Warren, who was both geologist and prehistorian, in 1919. He found literally tons of worked material at the outcrop known as Graig Lwyd, made on an igneous microdiorite called augite granophyre, a type of rock formed of liquid magma intrusions that has the combined virtues of being hard enough to use for chopping wood, but also has a structure suitable for knapping into the required shapes. He published his findings, starting over two centuries of archaeological research in the area.

Stone sources from around Penmaenmawr. From the temporary exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum. Click to enlarge.

The whole of Penmaenmawr is made out of this, with the rock around the exposed edges of Graig Lwyd and nearby outcrops, Dinas and Garreg Fawr, being the most suitable, precisely because they were so exposed, and after repeated freezing and thawing developed fractures that become scree that can be easily exploited. Graig Lwyd, Dinas and Garreg Fawr became a very important source with examples distributed all the across England and Wales with at least one present in Scotland too. Warren’s work was built upon by other independent local researchers, including David T. Jones with whom Kenney worked in the initial stages of the project to identify several possible sources of axe manufacturing.

As this became a wide-ranging landscape project, the team involved an army of volunteers to do the hard work, as well as children from local schools. Different approaches were taken to excavation, beginning with 1m sq test pits, with everything bagged by layer and pit. Even at this early stage trend became noticeable, with flakes dominating and roughouts being found but later stages of manufacture, including completed objects, absent. This was a pattern that was repeated at different outcrops. Bigger trenches were opened that provided more detailed information, some of it near the outcrops themselves but others further down slopes where material had travelled over the centuries. At the same time, more test pits were opened in newly identified areas. The test pits, which investigated below the surface, supplemented the surface finds and showed that there was much more to be found. As well as roughouts and waste materials, manufacturing tools like hammerstones were also found, helping to provide a more complete understanding of the manufacturing process.

Image showing the excavation of test pits forming part of the Carneddau Scheme. The workings were previously thought to be focussed only on the area of Graiglwyd axe factory but are now known to extend over a much wider area. Source: RCAHMW

Flint tool and flakes (waste materials from tool making) found at Maes-y- . Photographed at the temporary exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum

An exciting find above a a marshy area near Dinas that produced lots of axe-working debris and some finished axes may have been a settlement area, now called Maes y Bryn, where different activities took place. As well as axe debris, scattered over a wide area, there were lots of flint flakes scattered over the area, which are entirely consistent with a settlement site. The flints were mainly flakes, the waste from domestic tool manufacture, which were probably domestic.

As well as the Neolithic findings, there were Bronze Age and Iron Age discoveries as well. For example, not only has the Dinas outcrop produced plenty of Neolithic axe production data, but it has a very nice Iron Age hillfort on top, and there are plenty of Iron Age field systems in the area. The early and later medieval use of the land is also of considerable interest. The area clearly has a considerable amount of future potential, but for the immediate future the focus has to be on post-excavation work, with the challenge of dealing with the huge quantities of axe-making debris that was found: 163 buckets as of last year, and yet more of it this year!

The next talk, by PhD student Becky Vickers was a fascinating insight into how these 163+ buckets are beginning to be assessed.

Excavation of an axe production site in the Penmaenmawr-Llanfairfechan area

Investigating a test pit in the Penmaenmawr-Llanfairfechan area. Source: RCAHMW

Becky Vickers (PhD candidate, University of Sheffield)
New research on Axe-Making

Poster from the exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum showing some of the varieties of tool found on the outcrops on the Penmaenmawr mountain

The moment I saw that this talk was on the programme I was looking forward to it. There are dozens of studies looking at flint and chert tool analysis and reconstruction, including how the waste flakes inform about the manufacturing process. The essence of the approach is to look at how basic raw materials undergo a process of reduction, using stone and organic tools (wood, bone, antler etc) to strike a stone directly or indirectly (e.g. hitting an antler-made tool with a hammer stone to create a particular form). It is a lot less common for other types of stone tools to be analyzed using similar methods and perspectives, gaining an understanding of them from raw material to finished product and, beyond manufacturing, how they were used.

This was the main thrust of the first part of the presentation by Becky Vickers, and it was immensely informative. She first took us through the anatomy of a tool and flakes, identifying key factors that indicate how the tools were made and how waste flakes can be distinguished from loose scree. Three main stages of reduction were identified after the raw material had been sourced, which represent a process from rough-out (rough shaping of a piece of stone), through clearly identifiable shape, to final product. Part of the research has been to study the waste flakes from the production process and the pieces of stone that were flaked away from what would become finished (or abandoned) tools. Waste flakes can be just as informative as roughouts and finished products about the manufacturing process, an essential part of the production process, helping to answer questions about how flakes changed through various stages and where these stages took place.

Not only axes were made at the sites. From an interpretation board at the temporary exhibition.

Similarly, one of the many interesting points picked out here (amongst far too many to list in this post) is that not all of the axes produced in the Graig Lwyd and related areas were of the most traditional axe form. Others were carved into shapes that could be used as both small and large general-purpose tools, as well as scrapers and picks. These give a sense of the versatility and different scales of the production process. The hammerstones that would have assisted with the reduction of the stone to form tools are very rare, suggesting that they were valued items that were carried from the site when the work was done.

The analysis of the objects found suggests that these different processes took place at different locations. Some of the initial work to create a tool from the raw material was found at the source of the stone. Roughouts, the initial shaping of the stone into a piece that resembles the final tool, were also found at the source of the stone, but after that further refinement took place elsewhere, perhaps initially in at temporary, seasonal settlement sites that may also have been used as bases for pastoral activities, and were perhaps finished in specialized workshop areas.

A few of the 163 tubs of artefacts and waste flakes found during the project. From the temporary exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum.

Another aspect of Becky Vickers’s work is experimental archaeology. She has been working with experimental archaeologists Dr James Dilley and videographer and photographer Emma Jones, who have all worked together to carry out, record and understand the implications of end-to-end production processes. See the video at the very end of this post. Attempting to reproduce the original methodology to complete a final tool have been of real value to Becky Vickers. enabling her to to adapt her ideas. Experiments showed that 1700-3000 small flakes could be produced from one tool, depending on the reduction process chosen. Interestingly, this is not at all well represented in the archaeological assemblage. Many of the smaller flakes are now missing, either washed away by the weather or missed in the archaeological process. Although she has over 163 huge tubs of finds to wade through, the job could have been much more challenging if all the very small waste flakes that must have been produced in the Neolithic had also been found!

Detail from an interpretation panel at the temporary exhibition

Sometimes is is clear that part-made axes deliberately destroyed, intentionally putting them out of action. This aspect of the research suggests that choices were being made about the suitability of a tool during the manufacturing process and, where an item was found to be wanting, it had to be disposed of in a particular way.

The analysis is to finish in spring 2016, and it will be very interesting to see some of the results.

We broke at this point for more tea and coffee. Following both of the above lectures, a variety of questions were posed by the audience, and it was interesting to note that many of them centred on how the axeheads fitted into not only industrial and economic aspects of life, but on the wider question of how they were involved in how societies and individuals defined themselves and how such objects became culturally embedded with their own particular signficance. It was handy, then, that the afternoon was wrapped up with the Headline Talk by one of Britain’s best known Neolithic specialists, Dr Alison Sheridan, who tackled these and other wide-ranging topics about axe manufacturing and the axe trade in Europe, Britain and Ireland.

Headline Talk: Alison Sheridan (Associate Researcher, National Museums of Scotland)
About the Wider World of the Axes

The Shulishader hafted axehead (Stornoway, Lewis). Source: National Museum of Scotland

After hearing about the Penmaenmawr landscape, and its role in the axe trade, Dr Sheridan introduced the wider picture, and offering insights into the social importance of axes in Britain and Europe.

On a practical front, the axehead is an essential component of the toolkit for land clearance and for cutting and shaping wood for making houses, boats, other tools and weapons. However, they were not all put to work. Some were not destined to chop anything. Both haft and axehead of the Shulishader axe, for example,found on the Isle of Lewis and dating c.3300-3000BC were beautifully shaped and seem to have been less for everyday use and more for display. Whether valued for their utilitarian use or for the prestigious character of the item itself, they demonstrated a high level of interconnection between communities. Some types of stone were obviously preferred and even when it was logistically challenging, items made of these preferred raw materials travelled over long networks. The Irish Stone Axe Project, for example, has found at least 9000 porcellanite axes in Ireland. The networks that distributed these tools presumably also helped to maintain social ties so that communities could support each other in times of need, for finding marriage partners, for exchanging ideas and for a great many other interconnections.

The distribution of axeheads from Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan across Britain. From the temporary exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum. Apologies that it is so lop-sided!

Dr Sheridan described how since the mid 1900s thin sections taken of rocks used for tool manufacture has enabled the study of mineral composition, helping to create a picture not only where these have been sourced, but how far these tools have travelled. Although there were a number of quarries in Wales, axes were also imported from elsewhere, including one in southwest Wales from the Italian Alps. The extent and complexity of these networks suggests that this was not just a case of economic models of supply and demand and factory-type production line manufacturing. Instead, Dr Sheridan argues that something more complicated was happening, with social and ideological factors driving production and movement.

In order to contextualize the axe trade, Dr Sheridan gave an overview of the establishment of farming and its associated new traditions with the arrival from Europe of livestock and crops. Much of her work has been informed by DNA analysis of human remains, which suggests several periods of migration, resulting in the widespread adoption of pioneering new methods of farming by indigenous hunting populations. Two strands in particular impacted Wales, one responsible for the types of megalithic tombs found on the west coasts of England, Wales and Scotland, and in Ireland and another responsible for the those who introduced the Carinated Bowl tradition. They brought with them not only new economic activities, pottery and funerary traditions, but new domestic architecture based on farmsteads and new tool types.

Jadeitite axe, Kincraigy (Raymoghy) found in Co. Donegal, Ireland. Source: National Museum of Ireland

One of the remarkable aspects of the network of European trade, exchange and communication that grew up around axeheads is the arrival of polished green Jadeitite axeheads from high in the Italian Alps, which have been found as far away as the Scottish borders, County Mayo in Ireland, the Black Sea and Morocco. These were special purpose objects that were never intended to be used. The edges can be translucent when ground thin, so that when held up to the light the edges display a halo, and they can be polished to an almost mirror-like surface. They were the subject of the pan-European Projet JADE headed by Professor Pierre Pétrequin, a three year project from 2007-2010 that has produced four volumes of findings. Dr Sheridan described how a strand of interesting ethnoarchaeological work has been carried out in Papua New Guinea to gain insights into axe productions, where the highest mountains, being closest to the Gods, were seen as the ideal source of rocks for tool manufacture. As Dr Sheridan said, every single axehead had an amazing biographical tale to tell, based on its perceived value as a prestige item.

Ehenside Tarn haft and axehead, Cumbria. Source: British Museum (POA.190.6)

One of the best-known sites for accessing the raw material for axeheads in Britain is Great Langdale in Cumbria, where a greenish rock was sought out. Dr Sheridan suggested that both the choice of stone and its treatment were influenced by Alpine axeheads in terms of colour, shape, aesthetic beauty as well as its ability to take polish. These were circulated long distance Britain and Ireland, with some performing a functional role whilst others seem to have performed a more ceremonial role. The Great Langdale quarries were very heard to reach. As with the Papua New Guinea example, the social value lies in the difficulty of obtaining stone in first place.

Dr Sheridan went on to describe other examples of British axehead finds, including the working of blue-green igneous riebeckite-felsite axeheads on Shetland, where people were making more axeheads than they could possibly use. One site alone, a Neolithic house, produced a very unusual find of 12 axeheads, perhaps amassed as wealth to be exchanged with other communities.

The obvious question in discussion of exchange networks, is what Neolithic axeheads were exchanged for. Dr Sheridan suggested that on the basis of evidence of extensive saltern production (salt made by evaporating sea water or brine from inland springs) axeheads could have been exchanged for salt. Salt has always been a trade commodity, and although it can be difficult to detect archaeologically, it is a very intriguing line of potential research.

Seen in the context of Dr Sheridan’s talk, the Penmaenmawr axeheads are part of a much wider series of Neolithic networks that produced and distributed not only utilitarian tools, but items of status and prestige that could be preserved and curated to become components of more esoteric value systems.

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The Exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum

Geology of the Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan outcrops

An incredibly helpful portion of an interpretation panel at the temporary exhibition in the museum explaining the geology of the Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan outcrops. Click to enlarge.

We had intended to arrive early enough to see the small exhibition on the same theme in the Penmaenmawr Museum, but the A55 crawled along at 30mph nearly the entire way, so we had arrived just in time to sit down with a complementary coffee and utterly delicious chocolate Hobnob. Fortunately we were fabulously lucky that some of the museum personnel were packing up at the end of the day, and one of their number generously allowed us in to see the exhibition after they should have closed for the day. Thank you Suryiah for letting us in! The exhibition was beautifully done. Seven interpretation boards covered the geology, the process of axe production on Graig Lwyd and other outcrops, the types of tool found, and provided a cabinet full of axes in various stages of construction, waste flakes and some flint implements to provide an excellent idea of the range of items that were being found on the mountain. Photographs of the interpretation boards and their beautiful photographs and illustrations have been used throughout this post. It will be good to go back and see the entire museum on another day.
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Final Comments

The Graig Lwyd stone quarry as it looks today. Source: RCAHMW

It was a splendid afternoon of talks. If you have the chance to hear any of the researchers speak in the future, do take advantage of the opportunity! The lectures were being filmed, so hopefully they will become available online at some stage.

The sheer number of logos referencing so many organizations on the poster and on presentations says an awful lot about the complexities of funding and organizing something this complex, particularly in the long-term. Thanks so much not only to the funders, organizers and speakers, but to the volunteers who provided cups of tea and coffee (life-saving), glasses of water and luxury biscuits, and to all the people who enabled the exhibition to happen, including the museum staff. It was so well done. The long round of applause at the end of the event said it all, but it was also great to see people queuing up to thank the organisers on the way out.

My thanks also to Helen Anderson not only for driving us, but for letting me know that the event was taking place.

A few selected pieces of further reading

These are bits and pieces from my own reading, not anything recommended by the organizers of the event.

Books and papers

A short list of general introductory reading

Polished axehead from Graig Lwyd stone found on Anglesey. Source: Peoples Collection Wales

Burrow, Steve 2006. The Tomb Builders in Wales 4000-3000BC. National Museum of Wales

Edmonds, Mark 1995. Stone Tools and Society. Working Stone in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain. Routledge

Malone, Caroline 2001. Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Tempus

Ray, Keith and Julian Thomas. Neolithic Britain. The Transformation of Social Worlds. Oxford University Press

Specific to Axehead Production (all available to view online)

Ennos, Roland and João Oliveira 2020. The mechanical properties of wood and the design of Neolithic stone axes. Journal of Lithic Studies. 8. p.11-24
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359751898_The_mechanical_properties_of_wood_and_the_design_of_Neolithic_stone_axes

Pétrequin, Pierre and Alison Sheridan, Estelle Gauthier, Serge Cassen, Michel Errera,
Lutz Klassen 2015. Projet JADE 2. ‘Object-signs’ and social interpretations of Alpine jade axeheads in the European Neolithic: theory and methodology. In : T. Kerig and S. Shennan (eds.), Connecting networks . Oxford, Archaeopress, p.83-102
(Free to access, but you need a free Academia account):
https://www.academia.edu/13644414/PETREQUIN_P_SHERIDAN_et_al_2015_Projet_JADE_2_Object_signs_and_social_interpretations_of_Alpine_jade_axeheads_in_the_European_Neolithic_theory_and_methodology_in_T_Kerig_et_S_Shennan_ed_Connecting_networks_Oxford_Archaeopress_83_102

Sheridan, Alison and Gabriel Cooney, Eoin Grogan 1992. Stone Axe Studies in Ireland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 1992, p.389-416
https://core.ac.uk/reader/325992590

Topping, Peter 2010. 3 Neolithic Axe Quarries and Flint Mines: Towards an Ethnography of Prehistoric Extraction. In (eds.) Margaret Brewer-LaPorta, Adrian Burke and David Field. Ancient Mines and Quarries. A Trans-Atlantic Perspective. Oxbow Books, chapter 3.
(Free to access, but you need a free Academia account):
https://www.academia.edu/17310103/_2010_Neolithic_Axe_Quarries_and_Flint_Mines_Towards_an_Ethnography_of_Prehistoric_Extraction

Walker, Katherine 2015. Axe-heads and Identity: an investigation into the roles of imported
axe-heads in identity formation in Neolithic Britain. Unpublished PhD. University of Southampton, Faculty of Humanities (Archaeology), Volume 1 of 2
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/383149/1/K.Walker%2520-%2520PhD%2520thesis.pdf

Williams, J.Ll.W. and Jane Kenney 2009. Graig Lwyd (Group VII) Lithic Assemblages from the Excavations at Parc Bryn Cegin, Llandygai, Gwynedd, Wales – Analysis and Interpretation. Internet Archaeology 26
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue26/williams_index.html

Websites and YouTube videos

Gwynedd Archaeological Trust
Group VII Axe-working Sites and Stone Sources, Llanfairfechan, Conwy. Report and gazetteer. Project No. G2495. Cadw Report No. 1416. December 2017. By Jane Kenney
https://www.walesher1974.org/her/groups/GAT/media/GAT_Reports/GAT_report_1416_compressed.pdf
Landscape of Neolithic Axes: Report on fieldwork in 2021 at Llanfairfechan. Project No. G2495. Prepared for: Cadw. Report No. 1623. March 2022. By Jane Kenney and George Smith
walesher1974.org/her/groups/GAT/media/GAT_Reports/GATreport_1623_compressed_revised.pdf
Landscape of Neolithic Axes. Report on fieldwork in 2022 at Llanfairfechan. Project G2495. Prepared for: Cadw. Report No.1698. March 2023. By Jane Kenney and George Smith
https://walesher1974.org/her/groups/GAT/media/GAT_Reports/GATreport_1698_compressed.pdf

Heneb
Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project: Year 1 Test Pitting, Ty’n y Llwyfan, Llanfairfechan.
https://heneb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fieldwork2019.pdf
Group VII Axe-working Sites and Stone Sources, Llanfairfechan, Conwy. Report and gazetteer. Project No. G2495. Prepared for: Cadw. Report No. 1416. December 2017. By
Jane Kenney
https://heneb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/initialsurvey.pdf

A Research Framework for the Archaeology of Wales
Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. Version 03; Final Refresh Document February 2017
www.archaeoleg.org.uk/pdf/review2017/neolithicreview2017.pdf

Carneddau Landscape Partnership
Conserving and celebrating the landscape of the Carneddau
(The Carneddau landscape is an area stretching across almost 220 square kilometres in Northen Snowdonia. Its mountain uplands are dominated by Carnedd Llywelyn and Carnedd Dafydd – two of Wales’ five 1,000m peaks)
https://carneddaupartnership.wales/
Landscape of Neolithic Axes
https://carneddaupartnership.wales/project/landscape-of-neolithic-axes/

Penmaenmawr Historical Society and Museum
https://www.penmaenmawrmuseum.co.uk/

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See the website at www.ancientcraft.co.uk

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Open Day of the CRAG excavations at Bryneglwys, Llantysilio Mountain

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Many thanks to the Clwydian Range Archaeology Group (CRAG) for organizing an Open Day to the Bryneglwys excavations on 9th August 2025, and to Dr Ian Brooks of Engineering Archaeological Services (EAS), who is consulting for CRAG, for an excellent guided tour of the Bryneglwys archaeological site. The volunteer excavators, all CRAG members, were remarkably tolerant of us peering into their trenches as they worked. Thanks are due too to Dr Pauline Clarke for arranging for Chester Archaeological Society members to visit. The site is on private land, so visits are by invitation only, and it was a great opportunity to get a feel not only for the pioneering nature of the excavations, but also for the way in which that particular landscape has been used over long periods of time. I attended with another CAS member, Helen Anderson, and we both enjoyed it enormously.

The site sits on the west-facing lower slopes of the Llantysilio mountain near Bryneglwys, with views both across the valley and down the valley towards the southwest. Unlike the Clwydian range, which runs broadly north to south, with a tilt towards the east, the main line of the Llantysilio mountain runs roughly northeast to southwest, with the valley of Afon Morwynion along its western edge, crossing below the end of the Clwydian Range. It is now followed by the A5104 from Llandegla to Corwen, with the A494 picking up the route of the River Dee, and following it to Bala and Lake Tegid, and beyond into midwest Wales. This has almost certainly been an important route connecting northern and middle parts of Wales with the English northwest at least since the end of the last Ice Age, with Iron Age hillforts standing prominent guard over much of the route.

The undulating Llantisylio mountain rising above the village and site of Bryneglwys, its ridge marked by a prominent modern trackway

Research goals

When it was established, the remit of the Bryneglwys project was partly to investigate potential sites identified by the landowner, a keen supporter of the excavations. It was thought that at least one of the sites might be an early-mid Bronze Age cairn. As sites from the period are an important aspect of northeast Wales, and there are very few known from the Llantysilio mountain, this was an opportunity to improve knowledge on the subject and extend an understanding of how these sites were distributed both locally and in northeast Wales. Given the relative proximity of two Iron Age hillforts. Given the proximity of an Iron Age hillfort, it was not out of the question that Iron Age data might be recovered.

View to the west of the lower Bryneglwys excavation area

The medieval history of the area was also taken into account. Bryneglwys village is first mentioned by name in documents in 1284. Its church, which dates to the late 15th or early 16th century, contains a 14th century slab. Not far away, just outside Llangollen are the ruins of the 1201 the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis, established in 1201 and forced to close in 1537, which may have owned farm property in this location. The economic activities of Valle Crucis Cistercian monastery near Llangollen are not well documented and any archaeological evidence contributing information would obviously be useful. The Clwyd and Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) report on the subject of granges in northeast Wales collated the information available, but is far from definitive on the subject, and it would be very useful to know if a grange had indeed been established in the Bryneglwys area.

Finally, as usual in rural landscape investigations, seeing what else turned up in the process, including far more recent use of the landscape, was very much part of project scope and has produced some interesting results about changes agricultural land use and the challenges of dealing with drought conditions.
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Survey and excavations

Initial surveys

The Bryneglwys project has produced some revealing results touching on some if not all of these areas of interest. The initial investigation focused on non-invasive topographical and geophysical surveys, the combination of which determined where the initial excavations should take place. The topographical investigations located areas where potential archaeological and historical features are visible to the eye, including field boundaries, trackways, a natural spring uphill from the known archaeological features, and evidence of ridge-and-furrow agriculture. The online resource Archwilio was employed to supplement ground-level observations by providing a birds-eye view of the location. The geophysical surveys, allowing the team to assess what might lie beneath the surface level, identified features that seemed non-natural and might be man-made. The excavations have been following up on some of these initial investigations.

Like the Clwydian Range, the Llantisylio mountain has a ridge that is now covered in moorland scrub, although the remains ridge and furrow ploughing show that it was cultivated during the Middle Ages. The lower slopes at Bryneglwys, having been cultivated and/or grazed for centuries, are largely fee of moorland scrub. The geological bedrock over which all the Bryneglwys excavations are located is composed of the same cleaved Silurian siltstones that I mentioned on my Dinas Bran post, and look horrendous to excavate. The current excavations have been taking place either side of a boundary marked by a low turfed stone wall topped with shrubs dating from at least 1740, fields that are now used for herding sheep, although they were ploughed in the past. Although there were findings of a few Mesolithic tools, which are often found in the area, the main discoveries were far more substantial.

Bronze Age ring cairn and associated finds

Bryneglwys composite photographs of the ring cairn, excavated over two seasons. Source: Clwydian Range Archaeology Group

On the upper side of the boundary wall, the furthest away from the valley floor, the most exciting find to date has been the discovery of a Bronze Age ring cairn, the diameter of which was around 7m. All four quadrants were excavated over two seasons,

It is thought that the monument probably started life as a small stone circle with upright stones, some modified, and that the structure was later adapted into a banked ring into which the cremated bones and artefacts were deposited on a clay base before being topped with a low cairn. There were four other deposits of cremated bone and charcoal. The repeated use of cairns is a normal for the period, indicating the importance of these sites from one generation to the next.

The cremated human remains were found together with some pieces of pottery. One of these was a large but very poorly fired piece around 120mm in diameter, found upright in the ground just outside the main ring of boulders. The rim was missing, probably due to plough activity.

Pottery vessel as it was found at the ring cairn, Bryneglwys. Source: Clwydian Range Archaeology Group

Although this poorly fired vessel with the rim missing does not look particularly exceptional today, it must have been an important contribution to the ring cairn

There were also around 40 sherds of other pottery in the cairn accompanying the cremated remains, some with attractive cord-impressed designs that were perhaps intended emulate basketry.

Pottery sherds from Bryneglwys ring cairn. Source: Clwydian Range Archaeology Group

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One of the cremations was deposited in a circle of stones, which was deposited with a quartz crystal and one of two flint arrowheads found at the site. There were a number of tools made on flint and chert, including two barbed and tanged arrowheads, thumbnail scrapers and a small knife blade. The flint was very fine and may have been imported. Tools made on chert were also found. As well as those in the ring cairn itself, there was also a flint scatter which is at present focused around the ring cairn. The amount of flint has been unusual for the area, and is of particular interest.
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Remarkably, over 150 pieces of quartz were found in and around the circle, and include a range of different forms and types.

A sample of some of the quarts items found in the ring cairn. Source: Clwydian Range Archaeology Group

There were also a large number of other more general-purpose but important tools like hammer stones and shale disk-shaped items, the function of which is uncertain but look rather like lids. Most of the finds from the site are currently on show at a temporary exhibition in the Llangollen Museum but some were on display on a table in the field serving as a car park, together with photographs of those on loan to the exhibition.

The volume of finds in the site has clearly been both rewarding and very informative, providing new insights into the funerary and ceremonial tradition in the area. The site has now been refilled.

Standing on the refilled excavation of the ring cairn, looking towards the southwest

As ring cairns are rarely found in isolation, the team immediately went looking for similar sites, and a little to the south opened a sample trench, which has unearthed the foundations of another circular cairn which needs to be fully excavated in order to reveal more details.

Lines of sight are an important element of landscape archaeology. Because so little is known about what, if any, contemporary sites may have been located in the vicinity, this cannot yet be achieved. Another reason for its position, however, may have been the views from across the valley to the west and down the valley towards Rhug, with distant hilltops figuring as prominent markers not only as landmarks in their own right but also as markers of important routes below that ultimately lead to northwest and midwest Wales, including the Cadair Idris and Snowdonia areas respectively. The later hillforts, dating to the late Bronze Age and Iron Age that adorn some of these hilltops are indications of the importance of these routes and of the need to protect resources.

The horseshoe feature

The horse-shoe shaped feature, with boulders along one of the banks. Excavated but not yet understood, radiocarbon dates should at least help to establish when it was constructed

Another site that was excavated and has now been refilled was a horse-shoe shaped feature defined by a bank with what looked like an entrance interrupting it on its western side. Apart from a small group of stones, a large one of which seems to have a cup mark, and some evidence of burning on the flat floor of the feature, this nearly sterile. Sufficient burnt debris has survived to be sent for radiocarbon dating. Photographs of the cup-marked surface have been sent to an expert on the subject and it seems probable that this is indeed an example of a form of stone marking common to upland areas during the Bronze Age.

The horse-shoe shaped site produced what is probably a cup-marked stone. Source: CRAG Facebook page

The other excavated areas

In the final days of this year’s work, during which further geophysical survey has been carried out, three excavated areas were opened on the basis of previous geophysical survey results, and were being worked on by volunteers during our visit. At the moment it is not at all clear what the features uncovered represent, and nor is it known when they may date to. A piece of medieval pottery from one of the trenches is not particularly informative.

Although it would be very nice if some information about land management during prehistoric and medieval periods became available, this is clearly some way off at the moment, but by no means out of the scope of the project should it gain future funding.
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General Context

There is no mention of the Llantysilio mountain in my fairly thorough collection of books about prehistoric Wales, and looking at the Ordnance Survey map, there are only two archaeological sites marked in the vicinity, both Iron Age hillforts. One of these is Moel y Gaer, about 2km as the crow flies, but uphill all the way, roughly east from Bryneglwys village (not to be confused with either of the two of the same name on the Clwydian Range). The other is Caer Drewyn (about which I have posted here) and is around 7km to the southwest. The usually helpful Megalithic Portal had nothing else to add. Archwilio is somewhat more informative, but makes it clear that this is still an area that is surprisingly short on recorded prehistoric data when compared with, for example, the Clwydian Range or the nearby Eglwyseg mountain. Further information is provided by Heneb, which comments that there are “Bronze Age hilltop burial monuments on Moel y Gamelin and Gribin Oernant” (on their Llantysilio Mountain HLCA 1142 page).

The Archwilio website shows possible sites (unexcavated) in the Bryneglwys area, as well as the Iron Age hillfort Moel y Gaer (not to be confused with those of the same name on the Clywdian Range)

This emphasis on the survival of cairns and ceremonial sites in the archaeological record is typical. Settlement data is very thin on the ground anywhere in Britain, because having been built in perishable materials, they have decayed into the ground. Archaeological data is therefore skewed towards funerary sites, which probably also double as statements of identity and territorial affiliation. Ceremonial sites are known throughout Wales, although in northeast Wales these are rarely found. The function of henges (banked and ditched enclosures, with ditches on the inside) and stone or timber circles seems, in northeast Wales, to have been either irrelevant or was incorporated into cairn designs, like ring cairns, that combined funerary and ceremonial functions.

Distribution of round barrows and cairns in Wales after c.2100BC – c.1600BC. Source: Burrow 2011, p.106

Looking in general terms at the early to mid Bronze Age of northeast Wales, beginning a little before 2100BC and lasting to around 1600BC, there are plenty of round cairns on the Clwydian range, the Eglwyseg range, and Ruabon mountain, apparently coinciding with improvement in climatic conditions. Writing in 2004 Steve Burrows noted that a survey by Cadw had identified 17 cairns on the Clwydian Range alone; and more have been identified since then. These are just a small sample of the 1000s that have been found throughout Wales as a whole. It is interesting to note that most of these are on, rather than above, worked land. Although most of those remaining are on uplands, the presence of lowland and valley bottom locations indicates that even though many of those on land attractive to more recent farmers may have been ploughed out, they were certainly there. On the least attractive land for cultivation, pastoral herding was probably favoured, requiring smaller groups and greater mobility for at least part of the year.

Most of the remains interred in cairns are cremated, and represent a tiny proportion of the population, indicating that communities were singling out particular individuals for burial. Where sufficient bone has been preserved amongst the cremated remains, it has been determined that these may be adults, children or infants, male and female. The presence of children may or may not suggest that a sense of family lineage was involved. Unfortunately DNA testing techniques are problematic and so far no familial connections have been proved within Bronze Age cairns in Britain.

Barbed and tangled arrowhead from the Bryneglwys ringcairn. Source: Clwydian Range Archaeology Group

Grave goods accompanied many, but not all of the interments. The Bryneglwys ring cairn burials were accompanied, probably added at different times, with pottery and flint tools and flakes, but some sites have produced no objects, whilst others contained more elaborate items. The single most famous example of a grave object dominating the narrative is the Mold Cape (about which I have posted previously here) but less remarkable sites include some well preserved pottery, quantities of well-crafted stone tools and some objects made of copper and bronze. Flint tools may seem more mundane, but many were beautifully crafted and, in the case of flint, the material itself may have had a certain amount of status. Some raw flint can be found on beaches and in glacial deposits, it is only rarely of high quality, suggesting that where fine flint is found, like the Bryneglwys flint used for tool manufacture, it could have been imported.

In terms of landscape use in northeast Wales the proliferation of cairns suggests there was a requirement for display of belief and ideology, and perhaps identity or territoriality, in the positioning of highly visible funerary monuments in land that could also be employed for either crop growing or pastoral herding. Although the western valley, slopes and heights of the Llantysilio mountain have not revealed much information about land use in the Bronze Age, the Bryneglwys excavations are beginning to add to this wider regional knowledge base of information.

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Final Comments

The mapped Llantysilio site data suggest that although the current Bryneglwys excavations by CRAG are not in completely virgin territory, there are considerable gaps in knowledge and the work is pioneering in terms of starting to do a professional job of opening up the landscape archaeology of the Llantysilio mountain area. There’s real knowledge buried in them there hills.

For those interested in exploring further, the Bryneglwys excavations are being carried out on private land, but to get a sense of the landscape there is a track across the Llantysilion mountain, taking in Moel y Gaer hillfort and offering wide views of the surrounding hills and valleys, which can be approached from the Horseshoe Pass. Bryneglwys itself is bisected by the Welsh Cistercian Way, a modern creation, but an interesting one that focuses on monastic sites in Wales and is featured by the British Pilgrimage Trust. The site is also located just south of the line of the 122 mile (196km) Clwydian Way, a long-distance walking trail that was established by members of the Ramblers’ Association as a Millennium Project in 2000. Website links below.

Thanks again to the team for a great visit.
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Sources

The guided tour by Dr Ian Brooks (Engineering Archaeological Services on behalf of CRAG) on 9th August 2025 was the primary source of information about the excavations, with particular thanks to Dr Brooks for taking time out of his busy life to go over my first draft and suggest corrections, and for forwarding CRAG suggestions regarding my account of the ring cairn excavation. Much appreciated!

The Ordnance Survey map for this area is the Explorer 256, Wrexham and Llangollen

Books and papers

Brown, Ian. 2004. Discovering a Welsh Landscape. Archaeology in the Clwydian Range. Windgather Press

Burrow, Steve. 2011. Shadowland. Wales 3000-1500BC. Oxbow / National Museum of Wales

Jenkins, David A. 1991. The Environment: Past and Present. In (eds.) John Manley, Stephen Grenter and Fiona Gale. The Archaeology of Clwyd. Clwyd County Council

Jones, Glanville 1991. Medieval Settlement. In (eds.) John Manley, Stephen Grenter and Fiona Gale. The Archaeology of Clwyd. Clwyd County Council

Lynch, Frances, 2000. The Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. In (eds.) Frances Lynch, Stephen Aldhouse-Green and Jeffrey L. Davies. Sutton, p.79-138.

Pratt, D., 2011. Valle Crucis abbey: lands and charters. Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society 59, p.9-55

Williams, D.H., 1990. Atlas of Cistercian Lands. University of Wales Press
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Websites

(in order of usefulness for this topic)

Clwydian Range Archaeology Group
Website
https://cragnorthwales.wordpress.com/
Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/CRAGNorthWales

CBA Newsletters
No. 64. Autumn 2022:
Excavation of a Ring Cairn at Bryneglwys, Denbighshire From CBA Wales
https://cragnorthwales.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/newsletter-report-in-publisher.pdf
No. 66. Autumn 2023:
Excavation of a Ring Cairn at Bryneglwys, Denbighshire (Part 2) by The Clwydian Range Archaeology Group (CRAG), p.13-15
https://cragnorthwales.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/20231017-cba-wales-newsletter-66-autumn-2023.pdf

Clwydian Range and Dee Valley
The Dee Valley
https://www.clwydianrangeanddeevalleyaonb.org.uk/projects/the-dee-valley/

Archwilio
Denbighshire (search under “Bryneglwys” to centre in on the area)
https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/arch.php?county=Denbighshire&lang=eng

Clwyd and Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT)
CPAT Report No. 1340. The Monastic Granges of East Wales. A Scheduling Enhancement Project. By R.J. Silvester and R. Hankinson, March 2015
https://coflein.gov.uk/media/241/979/652240.pdf
Historic Settlements in Denbighshire. CPAT Report no.1257. By R.J. Silvester, C.H.R. Martin and S.E. Watson, March 2014, p.14-15
https://coflein.gov.uk/media/287/517/652224.pdf

Coflein
Moel y Gaer hillfort, Llantysilio mountain
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/306813/

Heneb
Llantysilio Mountain, Brynegleys, Corwen and Llantysilio Communities, Denbighshire (HLCA 1142)
https://heneb.org.uk/hcla/vale-of-llangollen-and-eglwyseg/llantysilio-mountain-brynegleys-corwen-and-llantysilio-communities-denbighshire-hlca-1142/
Llantysilio Mountain and Moel y Gaer Hillfort (walk and background history)
https://heneb.org.uk/archive/cpat/walks/moelygaer.pdf

Megalithic Portal
Moel y Gaer, Llantysilio
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=14086

Based In Churton
Who was Brymbo Man, what was the Mold Cape and why do they matter? (3-part series)
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2023/03/18/part-1-who-was-brymbo-man-what-was-the-mold-cape-and-why-do-they-matter/
Caer Drewyn, Corwen
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2023/09/11/sunshine-and-great-views-at-caer-drewyn-iron-age-hillfort-at-corwen/
Valle Crucis Cistercian Abbey
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2021/11/23/monastic-northeast-wales-and-west-cheshire-2-valle-crucis/

The British Pilgrimage Trust
The Welsh Cistercian Way
British Pilgrimage Trust
https://www.britishpilgrimage.org/portfolio/welsh-cistercian-way
The Welsh Cistercian Way on Google
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1nDf0d1rqf5P5uWJDDYvg2i8L8Lo&hl=en&femb=1&ll=53.02208569877805%2C-3.2900072936767533&z=15

The Clwydian Way
This area lies in section 9, but note that to follow the trail requires a paid subscription to the Ordnance Survey online.
https://www.clwydianway.co.uk/

Engineering Archaeological Services Ltd
http://eas-archaeology.co.uk/

The site of the ring cairn, refilled after the excavation

Thanks to Helen Anderson for this photograph of the 11am Open Day group standing by the ring cairn and the scene towards the southwest in the distance (copyright Helen Anderson)

The fabulous nature reserve at the RSPB’s Burton Mere Wetlands

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When I got up this morning and saw what a beautiful day awaited, I decided on the spur of the moment to go to the RSPB nature reserve on the Dee estuary at Burton.

Burton village, well-kept and firmly manicured, is located on the southwest of the Wirral, about 20 minutes drive out of Chester, an area now better known for giving its name to the nearby wetlands. The wetlands are divided into two separate entities. The first is the splendidly well organized and laid out nature reserve operated by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (the RSPB) which was specially set up for the benefit of birds and bird watchers, but accommodates general visitors too. There is also a route through the wetlands on the far side of the RSPB reserve, and extending well beyond it, which is the Sustrans route number 568, developed for cyclists but welcoming walkers. It crosses the wetlands from Connah’s Quay, meeting the Wirral peninsula at just above Burton Point, and continuing on to Neston. They provide two very different but both marvellous experiences of the wetland scenery. I have already posted a short piece about my short visit to the Sustrans cycle and walking route in the Burton Point area, although I want to walk the whole thing eventually.

A lapwing stretching its wings, whilst a common sandpiper stands by unimpressed

The RSPB wetland reserve

Greylag geese with their bright orange beaks at the RSPB’s Burton Mere

Several miles of wetland are enclosed within the RSPB reserve, which attract thousands of birds of many different species, with the river Dee invisible along the far edge of north Wales. The canalization of the Dee, completed in 1737, completely changed the environmental conditions of this part of the estuary, forcing the river to run along the Welsh edge of the estuary. The canalized channel of the Dee is not visible from the nature reserve, but the miles of wetland are lovely. There are huge expanses of pond and small lake, as well as flooded wetlands in the distance. On a bright day with blue skies overhead it is gorgeous. The reserve backs on to farmland at the rear, includes a woodland walk, and has a very attractive red sandstone railway bridge crossing the tracks below and even boasts the remains of an Iron Age hillfort which, if somewhat puzzling as an archaeological entity, has lovely views along the estuary towards Hilbre Island and across to north Wales.

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For bird watchers there is an enclosed viewing room where the ticket office is located, and throughout the reserve there are coverts and hides like the one above, all of them with benches, and all with windows suitable for both seated and standing visitors, and there are also viewing screens and viewing platforms dotted throughout.

For less specialist visitors there are some splendid wending walks through the reserve, where water-loving plant and tree species abound, many in flower or producing berries at this time of year, and all providing a myriad of colours and textures over a base of deep greens and rich browns, which provide excellent resources for insect life. The plants are so dense that where there is water running beneath boardwalks the water is scarcely visible.

The walks are all nice and even underfoot, many of the boardwalks coated in wire mesh to prevent them becoming slippery, and it is all beautifully maintained. Being located on the side of the estuary, the nature reserve is nearly all on the flat. All the main walks are wheelchair friendly, as are the hides and coverts. There are actually four miles of signposted walks, as well as the woodland walk, which takes about half an hour. There are plenty of benches dotted around for a moment of relaxation and contemplation. Burton Point, at the furthest end of the nature reserve, is a tiny headland, which involves walking a short way up a slight slope and an informal footpath, and offers some great views along the estuary. It is supposed to be the site of a small Iron Age promontory hillfort, but the evidence for this is difficult to see, although an interpretation sign does its best to offer a visualization of how it may have looked.

Even if you are not a regular bird watcher, the water birds are fascinating. There are plenty of information boards showing what you are likely to see, and there is a whiteboard in the reception area showing a list of what has been spotted on a given and previous days. Binoculars and cameras with enormous lenses (one of them in camouflage colours!) were very much in evidence and I soon found at why – my nice all-round lens, a 28-300mm zoom, was struggling desperately at its top end, and something much more powerful would have been helpful. Do note that you can hire or buy binoculars from the reception area to get a better view of what birdlife is spending its time on the wetlands. At this time of year the geese dominate, both in numbers and in voice. Their honking can be heard wherever you are in the reserve, even when you can’t see them, There were Canada and greylag geese in great numbers, and a handful of Egyptian geese sunbathing on the far side of one of the stretches of open water, but there are plenty of other species too.

Greylag geese at the RSPB's Burton Mere nature reserve

There was something distinctly conversational, and rather cross, going on here, and you should have heard the honking!

Of the smaller water birds, as well as the familiar moorhens, coots and mallards, there were gorgeous lapwings and a variety of small wading birds, with slender legs and long beaks, including a common sandpiper that was distinguished by its rusty coloured plumage. There were multiple grey herons looking like statues, waiting patiently for unsuspecting fish to swim by, and I spotted some tiny little fish in one of the ponds near the cafe which are presumably a popular part of the herons’ dietary intake. There must be lots of reed-loving birds hidden in the wetlands, successfully shielding themselves from prying eyes. There was apparently a spotted redshank, which was causing some excitement among the better informed bird watchers in one covert, but although I followed the directions that a father was giving his son (along the lines of – left of that greylag goose walking in front of that moorhen and then two back and one over) I was unable to spot it. Bird feeders dotted around were attracting blue tits and great tits in great numbers and there were pied wagtails in some of the many trees that line the edges of some of the paths. There’s an A-Z of bird species on the RSPB website.

One of many grey herons, on the hunt for unsuspecting fish

This is a super place to visit, and seasonal changes in bird and plant life mean that there will always be something new to see, and there are plenty of butterflies, bees, dragonflies, damsonfiles and other insects to observe if you look carefully. The grasshopper in the image below was particularly well camouflaged, and apparently there are sometimes lizards sunbathing in the sunnier patches. On Burton Point there are rabbit warrens, and according to some of the signage (much of it directed at children, but still informative to older visitors) the local animals have a vibrant night life.

Spot the grasshopper

Regarding the hillfort on the promontory, Burton Point, there are websites that say that the small headland on which the site is located is privately owned and should not be entered without permission, but this is in fact now included in the RSPB reserve and is served by good footpaths and includes interpretation signage to give visitors some idea of what was here. I’ll talk more about this site on a separate post.

Burton Point, a low promontory that overlooks the Dee estuary and is the possible site of an Iron Age Hillfort. In this photograph the footpath at far right leads into the woodland, where a vantage point looks down on the fortifications, but you can also see what remains of the fortifications at the far left of the photo where an earthwork is clearly visible

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Visiting the RSPB reserve

Meadow Brown butterfly beautifully camouflaged

The RSPB reserve is very easy to find, although if you rely on that Google SatNav, please note that mine, having been asked to find “RSPB Burton” informed us we had reached our destination before we had actually arrived. Fortunately, if you use the What3Words smartphone ap, which is stupendous (narrowing locations down to metre-sized locations) you can find it at ///readings.sideburns.handicaps. Other details can be found on the RSPB website which includes the address, postcode, as well as details of the current ticket price and full details about what the nature reserve offers the visitor: https://www.rspb.org.uk/days-out/reserves/dee-estuary-burton-mere-wetlands.

The RSPB site has been very well thought out, and is very welcoming. A single lane road from Puddington Lane has speed bumps and plenty of passing places, leading to a well-sized car park. Entrance is via a building with a look-out over the estuary. The entrance fee is £7.00 at the time of writing (July 2025), which helps to support the charity. There is a nice modern cafe on site, which sells tea, very good coffee, cold drinks and snacks. This is also where the toilets are located. There is a small shop next to the ticket desk that sells gifts, books and bird food.

I have been following the RSPB Burton reserve on Twitter for a couple of years, without ever having managed to get there, and every day they take a photograph of their whiteboard to give you an idea of what species have been observed recently so that you know what to look out for. You can find this at https://x.com/RSPB_BurtonMere. There is a placeholder for them on Bluesky but no content just yet.

I rarely give an opinion about wheelchair use, but there were actually several wheelchairs users out and about today. It would not be possible to get wheelchairs up to the Burton Point hill fort, or navigate them down one or two of the little tracks that run at the back of the reserve, but all of the coverts and hides are wheelchair friendly and, for both wheelchair users and children, the viewing windows extend from low to high for both seated and standing visitors. The same comments go for those with unwilling legs.

Dogs are not permitted, and nor are drones.

Excerpt from the RSPB’s leaflet about Burton Mere, showing the top things to do on a seasonal basis

Introduction

Brynkinalt

Links between the owners of the two houses

Direct contributions?

Influence?

General Yorke and George Hunter Robertson

Final Comments

Sources

Books and papers

Websites

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Rain has such narrow shoulders it will get everywhere

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Introduction

The Chester Amphitheatre

The Gladiators of Britain Exhibition

Sources and further reading:

Books and Papers

xxx Websites

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Introduction

A quick note on Neolithic axeheads

The talks

Jane Kenney (Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project and Heneb) About “The Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project”

Becky Vickers (PhD candidate, University of Sheffield) New research on Axe-Making

Headline Talk: Alison Sheridan (Associate Researcher, National Museums of Scotland) About the Wider World of the Axes

The Exhibition at the Penmaenmawr Museum

Final Comments

A few selected pieces of further reading

Books and papers

A short list of general introductory reading

Specific to Axehead Production (all available to view online)

Websites and YouTube videos

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Research goals

Survey and excavations

Initial surveys

Bronze Age ring cairn and associated finds

The horseshoe feature

The other excavated areas

General Context

Final Comments

Sources

Books and papers

Websites

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The RSPB wetland reserve

Visiting the RSPB reserve

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xxx
Websites

Jane Kenney (Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project and Heneb)
About “The Landscape of Neolithic Axes Project”

Becky Vickers (PhD candidate, University of Sheffield)
New research on Axe-Making

Headline Talk: Alison Sheridan (Associate Researcher, National Museums of Scotland)
About the Wider World of the Axes