Category Archives: Archaeology

Striking colours and great views at Moel Fenlli hillfort on the Clwydian Range

Moel Fenlli hillfort (LiDAR view). Source: Lock, Gary and Ralston, Ian. 2024. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland. The car park is at the very top. Available at: https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk

The massive Iron Age Moel Fenlli hillfort is at the far western end of the Clwydian Range on the second highest peak, one of six hillforts on the range of hills. The site is named for the Welsh giant Benlli Gawr, a recognition of impressive scale. It is bivallate for most of the circuit (i.e. two sets of banks and ditches). The banks and ditches enclose a broadly oval area of 9.5 hectares (23.4 acres), set across the contours rather than following them. The hill drops steeply from the hillfort to north, east and south, and much but less so on its western end. The primary entrance was at the west. Both the ramparts and the interior are very obviously undulating, rising significantly to the east.

Natural springs are still found both in the near the centre of the hillfort and on the outer edges of the northern ramparts, and there are patches of well-established soft-sedge reeds (Juncus effesus) at other places around the interior edges of the ramparts, suggesting either permanent or seasonal water sources.

The 360º views over the valley of the river Clwyd and the foothills overlooking the Dee and its floodplain are sublime, as well as strategically valuable.

The hillfort itself is a kaleidoscope of rich reds and purples, bright greens and sunny yellows, all tremendously striking at this time of year (late summer teetering on early autumn) under a bright sun and against a blue sky .

The western ramparts of Moel Fenlli as seen from the path to Moel Famau

The two main footpaths up to the site lead from the car park at Bwlch Pen Barras (roughly translated as (“pass at the head of the ridge”), one climbing steeply up the side of the hill and through the ramparts (visible as a faint grey line on the photograph to the right) and the other zig-zagging along the side of the hill, with one steep stretch now improved with a floating staircase (see Visiting at the end). These were established after informal, ad hoc footpaths began to do significant harm to ramparts and ditches during the 1980s. There are no interpretation boards at the foot of the hillfort, although there may be something on the other side of the road where there are information boards at the foot of the walk up Moel Famau (I have posted about the Moel Famau walk here). See more about parking, footpaths etc, with photos of the views, in Visiting at the end.

Although Wynne-Ffoulkes found stone artefacts that he thought were Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age is the first phase identified with confidence, represented by an unexcavated cairn on the summit of the hillfort at the east end. Early Bronze Age barrows and cairns are common in northeast Wales, but without excavation its contents remain unknown. The pile of stones on top of its grass-covered surface is modern, with some of the stones robbed from the original cairn, causing serious damage to the upper levels. As these cairns were sometimes used for secondary interments in the mound itself, this may have destroyed archaeological evidence.

The hillfort was first excavated in 1849 over an eight day period by William Wynne-Ffoulkes, and published in 1850 in Archaeolgia Cambrensis. It is admirable that Wynne-Ffoulkes published his findings, but in an era before excavation methodologies had been refined and formalized, and before reporting standards were agreed, with specialists reporting on artefact types, it is difficult to make sense of some of this report, particularly as many of the artefacts found at the time have since been lost. In 1921 Willoughby Gardner visited and surveyed the site, producing the excellent plan shown further below, and he discussed the site and tracked down as many of the surviving artefacts from the Wynne-Ffoulkes excavations as possible for reassessment.

Rampart profiled. Source: Gardner 1921, p.245

The most prominent feature of the hillfort, and the most explored, are the ramparts, with two sets of banks and ditches for most of the circumference, with only one along two stretches of the south side, and three on the east side where the natural defences are at their weakest. Wynne-Ffoulkes refers to these as an agger and fosse arrangement, referring to a Roman earthwork or embankment and ditch system of fortifications, and it in these military terms that Wynne-Ffoulkes interprets the site. He and his colleague Rev. J. Williams cannot be faulted for their enthusiasm, with Wynne-Ffoulkes commenting that “trench after trench was dug out” and that trenches were cut “wherever the ground appeared inviting.” There is no plan to show where these trenches were located, and Wynne-Ffoulkes does not describe their positions in any but the vaguest terms.

The main rampart, tilted across the hilltop’s contour, was supported on the south by a ditch and a second bank set some distance away from the first bank creating, in Paul Kent’s words, “a wide shallow slope from the top of which the defences could bombard any attackers without fear of reciprocation.” According to Wynne-Ffoulkes, the bank reaches up to 10ft (3m) in places, but can be as low as 3-4ft (0.9-1.2m). The second bank is also substantial, only built along part of the circuit, although in places it seems to have been little more than a counterscarp, possibly created by maintenance of the ditch at the foot of the inner rampart, formed by clearing debris that had fallen into the ditch onto the edge of the ditch (see my post on Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor for a diagram explaining the terminology of hillfort defences). According to Gardner’s plan, in places there are sections of a third rampart or counter-scarp. At the east, the most vulnerable side from a defensive point of view, and the easiest approach, the additional bank and ditch were added.

Wynne-Ffoulkes describes the internal structure of the banks as “formed of earth and stones heaped up promiscuously,” and Gardner confirms that the inner rampart consisted of earth, rubble and stones, with more stone at the east end where it was readily available at the surface. Box ramparts were common in the area, many of them revetted with stone, but the construction of the banks and any structures on top of them remains unknown. In another 1850 paper Ffoulkes makes no comment about any sort of structure on the banks, although he does mention two sections that were “built in a solid mass (like a wall) without cement of any kind, alongside the rampart.” Gardner, however, states clearly that he was unable to determine if the ramparts were revetted with stone.

The inturned entrance. Source: Gardner 1921, p.246

The entrance in the inner rampart at the west end was inturned, a typical arrangement for hillforts in the area. The outermost rampart was simply open, and there are no flanking lateral banks. Wynne-Ffoulkes excavated here and says that the entrance “appeared to have an artificial surface, formed with stones of some size, laid flat ways as a rude pavement.” He detected a road leading from the entrance to the centre of the hillfort where there was “a never-failing crystal spring” that he thought had a reservoir in front of it. The spring is shown on Gardner’s 1921 plan, below. There is no further information about any structural activity that may have accompanied the entrance.

Plan of Moel Fenlli hillfort. Source: 1921, p.239

In the interior, which both Wynne-Foulkes and Gardner as having a very irregular surface, today largely covered with heather and grasses, Wynne-Ffoulkes identified circular hollows, which he interpreted as “cyttiau,” a Welsh term for huts, but on excavating them found nothing, although whether he was aware of the value of postholes and gullies as archaeological indicators of structures is not clear from this account. Some of the hollows can be seen on the LiDAR image at the top of the page. Based on the findings at Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor and roundhouses are a distinct possibility. An alternative explanation might be that they are quarry or storage pits, but without modern excavation any suggestion remains purely speculative. They are traditionally referred to as “hut platforms,” and a later topographical survey in 2006 by the Heather and Hillforts project identified around 61 of them.

Objects found during the excavations by Ffoulkes, without scale. Source: Archaeologia Cambrensis

Artefacts were few and far between, something that was a matter of obvious disappointment to Wynne-Ffoulkes whose primary objective was clearly objects rather than structures, but to his relief he was eventually able to find a mixture of artefacts. It is not clear whether these were found in the banks, ditches or the interior, as Wynne-Ffoulkes does not state exactly where the trenches from which they were excavated were located. He found stone tools that he describes as arrowheads, and what he described as a stone knife c. 5 inches (13cm) long that is very difficult to assess, even from the illustration provided. Gardner suggested that it was, rather, a palette. Wynne-Ffoulkes discovered white pottery, described as “coarse and peculiar,” pieces of a coarse red pottery that “appeared to be Roman” and sherds that he thought was similar to the Roman prestige pottery Samian. Rather than attempting to elucidate the descriptions provided by Wynne-Ffoulkes for other artefacts, here is his account:

ROMAN POTTERY, varying both in colour and fabrication-both coarse and fine red-black-red outside and black inside-and cream coloured; also IRON, so corroded that its form was no longer ascertainable; GLASS of a superior kind; a LEADEN ornament; part of a BRASS or BRONZE ring; and, in one of the easternmost trenches, just under the rampart, and below the original surface, (a fact somewhat material in determining the age of the rampart and the white pottery,) the rim of a vase, or urn, of white pottery; and, pursuing the excavations more towards the interior, I found fragments of FLINT ARROW-HEADS, and two almost entire, the points only being broken and, to close the catalogue, some small pieces of rather coarse red pottery, rough-cast (if I may be allowed the term) with atoms of spar, with which the mountain abounds.

Gardner was able to expect some of the pottery at Ruthin Castle, and one piece in the National Museum of Wales, and was able to confirm a Roman date for all the pieces surviving pieces, which included a mortarium, Samian sherds and 4th century Marne ware.

Moel y Gaer is the pale-topped spur in the centre on a greener hillside more or less at the centre of the photograph, with the two light footpaths forming a V-shape in front of it. Click to enlarge

From the ramparts the next hillfort in the range to the north, Moel y Gaer Llanbedr, can be seen very clearly (see left), its interior clearly visible from the higher ground on the Clwydian Range. Lloyd-Jones suggests that the proximity of Moel y Gaer Llanbedr and Moel Fenlli, with Moel Fenlli overlooking the smaller and lower hillfort, could mean that they had different, perhaps complementary roles. I could not pick out Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor on its hilltop in the valley below to the northeast, having idiotically left my OS map in the car, but that too should be visible from the highest part of the hillfort. Lines of sight to other contemporary sites are proposed by David Matthews and Erin Lloyd-Jones, but these would require some form of signalling system, because they are only just visible without binoculars or a long lens, if at all. It was too hazy to see the Dee estuary and the sea, but on a clearer day these too are visible in the distance.

No modern excavations have taken place, and I have found no records of any geophysical surveys, meaning that the hillfort, and in particular its interior, remain very poorly understood. Interpretation of the site is particularly difficult without data from stratified artefacts or scientific dating. Wynne-Ffoulkes believed that local tribes may have heard news of the impending “conquering but civilizing, sword of Rome” from the south, and that the hillfort was a defensive response. As to its role in the context of the other hillforts, he refers to the Clwydian Range hillforts as “encampments” and Foel Fenlli as a “Castra Clwydiana” (castra being a Roman term for a marching camp/fort). He saw the hillforts as a defensive barrier established by a “mountain chief who here held his sway amidst his faithful band, hovering over the adjacent country, his ready prey; or of some victorious invader who, distrustful of the conquered, would here have kept himself aloof from treachery and surprise; or, perchance, mark the boundaries of some warlike tribe, protected thus by art engrafted on nature, against aggression.”

Although today it is not questioned that hillforts appear defensive, and many of them will have had a defensive role, it is now thought that they may have been multi-functional. Defence against local livestock and grain store raiders may have been more important on a regular basis than protection against invaders from elsewhere in the country or from overseas. The presence of a spring and an earlier burial cairn may have formed the basis of more complex ideologies and belief systems, whilst the scale of the ramparts may have had as much to do with display and the establishment of identity as with protection and defence. Whilst Wynne-Ffoulkes interprets the presence of Roman pottery as signs of successful invasion, this might just as well have been the result of trade, exchange, or the acquisition of prestige items by the hillfort builders. Gardner, for example, suggested that the inhabitants purchased items from Deva (Roman Chester) or that Roman traders “went out into the wilds of Wales trafficking with the natives.” It is frequently suggested that hillforts positioned with wide views may have controlled large territories, but it is not clear how, from this height, such control would have been organized and maintained, and how protective strategies may have been deployed. David Matthews has studied lines of sight between hillforts in the mid- and northern Marches, suggesting that signalling may have improved communication and co-operationbetween communities.

Two hoards of 3rd to 4th-century Roman coins were also found on Foel Fenlli, in 1816 and 1845. Wynne-Ffoulkes says that one of the hoard, found some 30 years before his excavations, and which consisted of some 1500 coins, was lying on the surface of the inner rampart, on the northeast. They included a gold and silver coins, and of the 1500 found, Gardner could only find 43 of them, stored in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, dating to between around AD 330-350, all Gaulish from Treves, Lyons and Arles. Gardner assigns the later discovery of around 100 coins, found by a farmer on the northeast side, to the same sources and the same date range, although only a quarter of them were published in 1847.

The name of Moel Fenlli derives from Benlli Gawr, which translates from the Welsh as Benlli the Giant, and may have been a simple association of mythological giants with massive features, like Cadair Idris (throne of the giant Idris). However, tradition also has it that Benlli was a 5th century AD lord of Iâl (Yale), the name “giant” referring not to the massive physical stature of a mythical being but the Iâl lord’s despotic disposition. In this pseudo-historical version of the hillfort’s story, this was Lord Benlli’s fortress and it was destroyed by Saint Garmon (Germanus in Latin). See the full account in Gardner 1921 (available online).

Source: Gardner 1921 p.238

Visiting

Parking for Moel Fenlli and Moel Famau, showing the main footpaths up Moel Famau.

There are two options for parking for Foel Fenlli. First, on the approach from the west there is plenty parking along the side of the well-maintained B-road between the A494 and Ruthin (called Bwlch Pen Barras) and this is free for up to two hours (no return within two hours). Alternatively if you are thinking of combining Moel Fenlli with Moel Famau and beyond, there is a pay-and-display car park that lies either side of the Bwlch Pen Barras . This costs £2.50 a day (at the time of writing), payable by cash or card at payment machines and all payments go directly to maintenance of the Moel Famau Country Park. The What3Words location for the Bwlch Pen Barras Car Park is ///hobble.passwords.device. Other than car parking there are no facilities of any sort.

Aerial view of Moel Fenlli, looking south, showing footpaths leading from Bwlch Pen Barras car park. The yellow arrow shows the more direct route; the blue arrow shows the easier and longer route, albeit with one particularly steep section, with a floating staircase, indicated by the arrow. Source: Coflein

The steep route to the top of Moel Fenlli is at the very end of the Moel Fenlli side of the car park, on the left hand side, marked with a post, leading directly into woodland. When you emerge from the trees and bracken, the footpath goes more or less straight up the side of the hill. You need to be quite sure-footed because the narrow path is littered with broken stone that slips underfoot, and looks as though it turns into something of a stream after rainfall. At the top, only where it crosses the ramparts, there is a “floating” (wood framed and stone fill) staircase.

The easier route is on the right side of the Moel Fenlli car park, either past the gateway at the end of the car park, or more clearly signposted opposite the entrance to the car park on the Moel Famau side of Bwlch Pen Barras. This takes a leisurely zig-zag route along the side of the hill. Less leisurely is the anti-clockwise route around the hilltop, which takes you up onto the ramparts and along a spectacular circular walk around the hillfort; a very long floating staircase takes you up a very steep section that follows the Offa’s Dyke Path. It was a lot easier going clockwise, which I did quite by accident; it was a hot day and those following the Offa’s Dyke path uphill along the anti-clockwise route were extremely out of breath.

Floating staircase

Both footpaths have terrific views, and the walks around the banks of the hillfort give splendid views in all directions. There are well worn paths from the perimeter walk through the vegetation to the cairn, but for the most part the interior is a dense mass of heather and wild bilberries, very beautiful at this time of year with the heather in flower and the bilberry leaves turning bright red, but through which it is difficult to force passage.

The steep section on the Offa’s Dyke Path with a floating staircase. Those coming up were suffering; I was going down the hill towards the car park

OS map showing Moel Fenlli ( near the bottom, labelled Foel Fenlli) and Moel Famau (top) with the Offa’s Dyke Path clearly marked (click to enlarge). Source: Ordnance Survey Explorer 265, Clwydian Range

It can get very windy on the hilltop, even on what seems like a fine day, and strong gusts of wind can pack quite a punch on the higher, more exposed parts of the rampart footpath.

If you want to make a day of it, the walk can take in the Offa’s Dyke path to the north, which also crosses Moel Fammau (the highest peak on the hill range, but which does not have a hillfort) and, further on to the north, to the hillforts of Moel Arthur and Penycolddiau.

Do be warned that if you are thinking of including Moel Famau in your walk, it gets very busy during the school holidays on sunny days, even on week days, and the constant whining of small children being dragged up the path by parents loudly urging them on can be very tedious! I went up Moel Fenlli at about 10am, when both sides of the car park were quite empty, but by noon the route up to Moel Famau was beginning to get busy. I had forgotten that the children had not gone back to school, and the Moel Famau walk was more like a popular seaside venue than a hiking trail. There were no children on Moel Fenlli, and very few adults, so perhaps the best solution for a peaceful dual walk during the school vacations is to leave Moel Fenlli until after a walk to Moel Famau.

Sources:

Books, pamphlets and papers:

Brown, Ian 2004. Discovering a Welsh Landscape. Archaeology in the Clwydian Range. Windgather Press, p.58-82

Brown, Ian 2009. Beacons in the Landscape. The Hillforts of England and Wales. Windgather Press

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

Davies, J.L. and Frances Lynch 2000. The Late Bronze Age and Iron Age. In F. Lynch, S. Aldhouse-Green and J.L. Davies (eds.), Prehistoric Wales, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, p.139–219.

Gardner, W. 1921. The Ancient Hillfort of Moel Fenlli, Derbyshire. Archaeologia Cambrensis, Series 7, vol. 1, p.237-252
https://journals.library.wales/view/4718179/4729445/269#?m=26&xywh=-1912%2C612%2C6356%2C3040&cv=268

Grenter, Stephen 1984. Erosion of the Past. Archaeology in Clwyd, no.6, p.28-9

Gale, Fiona 1991. The Iron Age. In John Manley, Stephen Grenter and Fiona Gale (eds.) The Archaeology of Clwyd. Clwyd Archaeology Service, p.82-96

Heather and Hillforts Partnership Board 2011. Heather and Hillforts of the Clwydian Range and Llantysilio Mountains. Denbighshire County Council

Kent, Paul 1977. Hill Forts in the Moel Famau Country Park. County Planning Department, Clwyd

Lloyd Jones, Erin 2019. Connections between the hillforts of the Clwydian Range and the wider landscape. Unpublished PhD thesis, Bangor University
https://pure.bangor.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/22607372/2017_Jones_EL_PhD.pdf

Matthews, David. J. 2020. Caer Ogyrfan – hillfort of the norther border. In Tim Malim and George Nash (eds.) Old Oswestry Hillfort and Its Landscape. Ancient Past and Uncertain Future. Archaeopress, p.23-61

Wynne-Ffoulkes, William 1850. Castra Clwydiana II – Moel Fenlli. Archaeologia Cambrensis, New Series I, April 1850, p.81-89
https://datasyllwr.llgc.org.uk/journals/pdf/2989691.pdf

Wynne-Ffoulkes, William 1850. Castra Clwydiana II- Moel Gaer. Archaeologia Cambrensis, July 1850, p.174-187

Websites:

Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland (by Gary Lock and Ian Ralston, 2024).
https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk

Based in Churton
Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2026/08/23/a-visit-to-the-iron-age-hillfort-moel-y-gaer-in-rhosesmor/
Caer Drewyn hillfort
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-4ft
Burton Point: The small and rather puzzling Iron Age promontory fort on the Wirral
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2026/04/11/the-small-and-rather-puzzling-burton-point-promontory-hillfort-on-the-wirral/
Exploring Maiden Castle Iron Age Hillfort, Bickerton Hill (mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge)
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2025/12/01/exploring-maiden-castle-iron-age-hillfort-bickerton-hill-mid-cheshire-sandstone-ridge/
Beneath Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre – the Iron Age buildings and fields
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2026/06/02/beneath-chesters-roman-amphitheatre-the-iron-age-buildings-and-fields/

Clwydian Range and Dee Valley
Moel Fenlli
https://www.clwydianrangeanddeevalleyaonb.org.uk/article/moel-fenlli/
Moel Famau Country Park
https://www.clwydianrangeanddeevalleyaonb.org.uk/article/moel-famau-country-park/

Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust
Historic Landscape Characterization: The Vale of Clwyd
https://heneb.org.uk/archive/cpat/projects/longer/histland/clwyd/clwyd.htm#Themes
https://heneb.org.uk/archive/cpat/projects/longer/histland/clwyd/1038.htm

Coflein
Foel Fenlli hillfort
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/96522

A lovely visit with panoramic views: the Iron Age hillfort Moel y Gaer in Rhosesmor

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View from the inner rampart over the outer rampart and beyond to the distant landscape in the east

Introduction

Rhosesmor is a small village not far from Mold, which boasts an Iron Age hillfort a short walk from the village hall car park, with stunning 360° views over the surrounding hills and across the Dee estuary and beyond.

Aerial view of Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor by Chris Musson / CPAT. Source: Internet Archaeology

It was an iffy day when I visited, weather-wise, with a lot of cloud overhead and the threat of rain, but it was possible to see for many miles all around, and is very easy to understand why this could have been a strategically valuable location. The footpath around the top of the first, inner rampart is well worn and unimpeded, and a really lovely walk. The interior and the outer of the two banks, and both ditches, are covered with gorse, which was in flower. There are paths through the gorse on the plateau, but it makes it difficult to see the line of the second, outer rampart, which in the Iron Age was never a complete circuit.

When I was an archaeology undergraduate in the 1980s my parents moved from Hertfordshire to a village not far from Chester. Whenever I returned home my favourite pastime was taking the family dog and exploring the hills in northeast Wales. That led me to the Clwydian range and Moel y Gaer Llanbedr. As a newbie to Wales, with no understanding of Welsh placenames, I had no idea that there were actually three Moel y Gaer hillforts in the area and more further afield so when I returned to university (and bearing in mind that there was no Internet in those days) I spent some time in the library assembling data about Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor, thinking it was Moel y Gaer Llanbedr, before the penny dropped. Decades later I have at last got around to visiting the the Rhosesmor hillfort, and what a super site it is, with a complete panorama of diverse views. See Visiting information at the end of the post for parking details and the route from the car park to the hillfort.

The Archaeology

The best online source of information about the hillfort is Graeme Guilbert’s page about the site on the Internet Archaeology website, part of a bigger article about the excavation of Welsh hillforts. I recommend this, because as well as details about the site, many of which I have included below, the page has some really excellent photographs of the excavations during the 1970s and reconstructions of the two different types of roundhouse.

LiDAR view of Moel y Gaer. Source: Lock, Gary and Ralston, Ian. 2024. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland. Available at https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk

Moel y Gaer translates roughly as “the bare fort,” presumably referring to the somewhat barren moorland conditions characterizing the top of many hillforts, which accounts for why there are three of them with the same name in the area. It is perched on the southern end of Halkyn mountain, c.300m (984ft) above the Dee floodplain. The visible remains include two banks, both of which follow the contours of the hill. The higher, inner bank provides a complete circuit of the hillfort, whilst the second, lower bank, divided from the inner bank by a deep ditch, never provided a complete circuit, as the LiDAR image to the left makes clear. The most interesting and informative aspects of Moel y Gaer are, however, the structures and features that were excavated in the 1970s and are no longer visible, described briefly below.

The reservoir

Ironically the most clearly identifiable feature today is a rectangular reservoir, completely enclosed and covered in grass and a good perch for admiring the views. If you sit by one of the metal inspection batches, you can hear something whirring gently below, but otherwise it is just a grassy platform with some metal-topped lids.

It is because of the reservoir that the site was excavated by Graeme Guilbert and his team in the 1970s, with the bulk of the work carried out between 1972 and 1974. Although the development of a modern structure slapped on a prehistoric site was undoubtedly controversial, it did at least give the opportunity for archaeologists to investigate 0.6 hectares (1.4 acres) of the 2.7 hectares (6.6 acres), and the results were excellent. It is rare that it is possible to cut a 15ft trench through a rampart, due to time and cost constraints, but this was done at Moel y Gaer, and the information about the interior, enabled by the excavation of such a large area, is now referenced in all discussions of hillfort interiors.

Sketch of the possible Neolithic structure and well as the worked flint scatter, both in red, shown in relation to the later Iron Age structures. Source: Britnell 1991, p.58

The archaeology of the hilltop begins in the earlier prehistoric period. The earliest of these is the Neolithic, represented by worked flint and chert, including scrapers, blades and arrowheads and associated waste products. Pottery fragments were found in shallow pits. Most importantly, a possible rectangular structure, a very rare find, consisting of a short length of fence and a series of postholes, suggests a Neolithic settlement.

Two Early Bronze Age round barrows have been identified within the later ramparts. One is on the highest part of the hill near the reservoir; the other was apparently levelled during the Iron Age occupation of the hill, and when excavated was found to include a burial chamber but no skeleton (probably due to the acidic conditions), and no accompanying artefacts. Early Bronze Age barrows are common in the area, but most were left in tact. It is a puzzle why one was retained and the other levelled.

The first phase of the hillfort itself predates the banks and ditches and may date back to the Late Bronze Age, in the 8th or 7th century BC. A set of roundhouse structures and a palisade trench carved into the stone were found, although it is not clear if the roundhouses and the palisade (an elaborate fence) were contemporary or if the settlement was initially unenclosed. It had a gap of 11m, indicating an entrance, although it remains unknown if this was the only entrance into the enclosure. As Guilbert says, the size of the gap “may seem inappropriate to a purely aggressive, or even largely defensive purpose” and he suggests that the site may have been positioned as much for its visual impact as for security purposes. In 1977 some trial trenches were opened that suggest that the palisade extended around most of the hillfort perimeter. The pre-rampart palisade is not a unique feature, and there is at least one other in the region, at Eddisbury hillfort on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge.

Phase 1 of the hillfort showing the palisade slot at left and the roundhouses, many with porches. Source: Guilbert 2018, Internet Archaeology.

Importantly in Phase 1 there were 26 roundhouses, between c.6.5m and 11.5m in diameter. All were made of an inner and an outer ring of postholes, the inner and larger ones thought to hold roof supports and the outer one to hold much lighter wall supports. All had entrances, most of which were facing east or southeast, and some of which were provided with a square porch by the addition of two posts at their entrances. Eleven had hearths at or near the centre, suggesting that those with and without hearths were used differently. Some of the structures overlapped, suggesting that they were rebuilds. A cache of pebbles, thought to be for slingshots, were found in one of the roundhouses on the edge of the rampart. Other structures were also found, consisting of twelve small oval pits as well as a series of postholes in pairs, but these may or may not belong to Phase 1.

The footpath along inner rampart, following the line of the contour around the top of the hill, marked by the line of gorse

It is not known how long a period separated Phase 1 from Phase 2. Phase 2 of the hillfort consisted of the construction of the inner rampart and ditch. The surviving bank, which made up the rampart, was up to 6m wide and nearly 2m high. At the back it sloped towards the interior but its front was provided with a “showy” revetted stonework facing that alternated with wooden posts 0.6 – 0.9m apart. A generic image of a box rampart is shown below for reference. The rampart posts were tied into a wooden framework within the bank, and the interior was divided into compartments or cells that were filled with rubble, perhaps to provide additional structural integrity and to enable easy repairs when any one part of the rampart failed. This is referred to by Barry Cunliffe as “the Moel y Gaer style” of rampart building.

J. Forde-Johnston’s illustration of box ramparts, with my annotations showing key features. Source: Forde-Johnston 1976 p.180

Another section of the inner rampart

Phase 2 of the hillfort showing the earliest rampart at left, the roundhouses, and the 4-posters. Source: Guilbert 2018, Internet Archaeology.

The enclosed space in Phase 2 was occupied by a mixture of twelve roundhouses, different from the Phase 1 structures, and around thirty four-posted structures that were largely set apart from the roundhouses, indicating a level of deliberate planning. The roundhouses in this phase, between 5.7 and 8.1m in diameter, only had a single circuit of stakeholes and no separate roof supports, indicating more lightweight structures, with or without roofs. As in the previous phase, entrances were mainly aligned to the east. The four-posters are known from other hillfort and lowland sites, but there are no indications at Moel y Gaer about how they were used. Interestingly, when the site was abandoned the timbers from many of the 4-posters were removed, presumably for re-use elsewhere. The roundhouses and the ramparts on the bank were simply abandoned, leading to the decay of both. The period of Phase 2 occupation dates to the 4th century BC.

A gorse-covered section of the outer rampart seen from the inner rampart

Phase 3 involved the repair of the inner rampart, which was widened and heightened and topped with rubble, with new breastwork added along the top. This work was radiocarbon dated to the 4th -1st century BC. Work began on the second, outer rampart, of which intermittent sections and accompanying ditch survive. Only two stretches of the bank at the east end were built to a clearly visible height, all covered in gorse, but there are places on the walk along the upper rampart where you can clearly see the height of the second rampart, which must have been impressive in places on the other side of the inner rampart’s ditch. A palisade was built on top of it, which may have been intended to look like a more substantial wood-faced revetment from the outside. Possibly during this phase, although the relationship between the components is not clear, a set of rectangular buildings were added. These had no foundations of any type, but instead sat on sill-beams that were laid on the surface of the plateau. They were provided with stone floors and were accompanied by metalled areas interpreted as yards.

The east entrance

There were thought to be at least two entrances into the hillfort (either contemporary or belonging to different periods), one at the east end that remains in use,with an inturned entrance, and one at the west end that was later blocked in, a phenomenon noted at other hillforts in the region.

Moel y Gaer is interesting in relation to other hillforts on the Clwydian Range. Although the Egyptian temple on top of Moel Famau is just visible from the interior, there was no hillfort on Moel Famau. Moel Fenlli is just visible, but most of the hillforts on the Clwydian Range were focused on the Vale of Clwyd on the other side of the range. Moel y Gaer is, by contrast, focused on opposite side of the range, with exceptional views up and down the Dee and across the Wirral towards Merseyside, as well as east towards the mid-Cheshire sandstone ridge where there are other hillforts. There would have been a direct line of sight between Moel y Gaer and Burton Point, if the latter is confirmed as a promontory fort (see my post on the subject of the latter here).

Some of the unanswered questions

Even with an excavation on the scale of the rescue work carried out at Moel y Gaer in the face of the planned reservoir there are many questions that remain unanswered.

For example, the possibility of a Neolithic settlement is of considerable importance, but it is not known if the hilltop contains any more clues about this period of occupation.

In Phase 1 the 11m (36ft) gap in the palisade is something of a puzzle if the site was intended to be defensive. Speculating, it might have been intended to give easy and hurried access for livestock, perhaps in the event of a raid or for herd management purposes, but without the vital information from animal bone it cannot be determined if animals were ever present at the site.

The orientation of Iron Age roundhouses, showing that the majority are orientated between the east and southeast. Source: Oswald 1997

Similarly, in phase 2 it is suggested that roundhouses with and without hearths may have had different purposes, but these purposes cannot be assessed due to the lack of artefacts, and plant and animal remains. In both phases 1 and 2 the roundhouse entrances faced mainly east and southeast. There has been a lot of discussion about whether this sort of orientation, which was common, represented practical considerations such as allowing light and heat into the building from the early morning and excluding westerly winds; or whether more spiritual and cosmological motivations were concerned with aligning buildings to solar events.

In phase 2 it is not known what the four-poster buildings may have been used for unless data can be obtained from unexcavated parts of the hillfort. Although it has been traditionally suggested that such postholes represent buildings raised off the ground surface on posts, and that these may have been granaries, from most sites there is very little, if any evidence in the form of plant or animal remains, or artefacts, to indicate what function they may have had.

View from the inner rampart over the outer rampart

View from the inner rampart over the outer gorse-covered rampart towards the Dee estuary

In Phase 3 it is not known why the second, outer rampart was only built in incomplete sections, although Ian Brown suggests that such sites may reflect a building strategy employing separate working gangs or family units who simply failed to complete the work by joining up the sections by the time the hillfort was abandoned. The rectangular buildings that may or may not have been contemporary with the second rampart, and both their date and function remain ambiguous.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered question, common to all of the phases, is what sort of economic practices were adopted by those who occupied the hillfort. Today there is extensive livestock herding in the area, both sheep and cattle, and this may have formed the basis of subsistence in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, but there may also have been other types of agricultural and horticultural activity, or trade links may have supplied the cereal and vegetable components of diet. Nor is it known to what degree the builders of the Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort were related or in communication with the hillforts on the Clwydian Range, and if they may have shared or exchanged resources, or whether they were in conflict. In theory this was the territory in the Late Iron Age of a “tribe” known by Roman writers as the Deceangli, but whether this indicates solidarity between all communities in that territory, and over what sort of period of time, is unknown. Similarly, it is not known if there were affiliated lowland settlements in the valley below. Without evidence these and other livelihood questions remain open.

View from the ramparts out to Liverpool Bay

View to the east

Post-hillfort history

Of the post-hillfort history the earliest is the unconfirmed tradition that one of Owain Glyndŵr’s supporters, Hywel Gwynedd, set up a camp here, but was captured and beheaded in 1406. Excavations produced no signs of them. It is, however, a matter of history that in 1814 a fire-beacon was set up here during the Napoleonic Wars to take advantage of the superb views over the estuary and river.

On your way back to the car, the Victorian church of St Paul with its fantastic roof is well worth a visit.

See the National Church Trust website for information about the history of the church, but here are the first two paragraphs:

St Paul’s was built in local limestone between 1874-6 by the architect John Hill for the villagers working in the lead mining industry, which dates back to pre-Roman times. Rhosesmor grew as a distinct lead mining village in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. St Paul’s benefited from local landowners who contributed to the formation of the church. The site was given by Hugh Lupus, first Duke of Westminster (1825-1899) with foundation stone laid by Mrs J Strutt Bankes of Soughton Hall in 1874.

By 1890 necessary repairs, including the present roof beams, were undertaken by architect John Douglas of Chester. The west end Annunciation windows, by Jones and Willis were presented by the Revd W E Torr of Eastham, on the Wirral. The availability of funds grew over the next 25 years and Mr Scott Bankes, replaced the dilapidated chairs in the nave and supplied new fittings for the chancel.

Final Comments

Visiting hillforts is all about enjoying what you can see, but it is also about using excavation reports to imagine what was once there. The quiet serenity of a hilltop site with wide views, its former ramparts smoothed by centuries of erosion, is probably completely at odds with the busy lives represented by the roundhouses and four-posters, and the ongoing maintenance after the substantial ramparts were first built.

Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor is one of the most thoroughly investigated hillforts in north Wales, and it hints at many more possibilities, via geophysical survey and excavation, for understanding both this and other hillfort sites in the region, from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age.

With its panoramic views over the hills and the Dee, Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor is an absolutely marvellous place to visit.

Visiting

The hillfort is at top left. The parking is in the Rhosesmor community hall immediately off the B5123 (red arrow). The yellow arrows show the route to the hillfort. Source: Google Maps

The hillfort is at top left of the image. Parking is at the Rhosesmor community hall, marked on the map with a red arrow (What3Words ///litigate.messy.hems). There is a blue parking sign, but it is a bit hidden. From the car park the yellow arrows show the route.

It is a short walk along the lane towards the route up to the hillfort, with the churchyard of St Paul’s on your left.

At the junction head uphill along a private road. A very faded Public Footpath signpost points you in the right direction, but it is perfectly obvious. This is quite a short stretch, all uphill. It ends at the entrance to a house on the left and a metal gate on the right. Access to the hillfort is via the gate, which leads you onto the open hillside and its top. It is perhaps a 15 minute walk from the car park to the ramparts.

As you can see in many of the above photographs, the inner bank is fully accessible along a well worn footpath that goes around the full circuit of the hillfort, and their are walks through the gorse on the plateau itself. The lower bank and ditch are completely covered with gorse, and are not accessible unless you like to wrestle with very dense spiky gorse. The fully enclosed reservoir is covered in grass, and provides unobstructed views over the entire area.

St Paul’s Church has toilets and a small shop selling essentials as well as hot drinks. The church is very welcoming and well worth a visit for the beautifully crafted wooden ceiling over the apsidal chancel.

Sources

Books, papers and leaflets

Britnell, William J. 1991. The Neolithic. In John Manley, Stephen Grenter and Fiona Gale. The Archaeology of Clwyd. Clwyd County Council, p.55-64

Brown, Ian 2009. Beacons in the Landscape. The Hillforts of England and Wales. Windgather Press

Brück, Joana. The Architecture of Routine Life. In Joshua Pollard (ed.), Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell

Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (leaflet – no date). Moel y Gaer.

Cunliffe, Barry 2005 (4th edition). Iron Age Communities in Britain. Routledge

Garner Dan (and contributors) 2016. Hillforts of the Cheshire Ridge. Investigations undertaken by The Habitats and Hillforts Landscape Partnership Scheme 2009–2012. Archaeopress

Guilbert, Graeme 1975. Moel y Gaer: an area excavation on the defences. Antiquity 49, 109-117

Guilbert, G., 1977. The Northern Welsh Marches: some recent developments. In J. Collis (ed), The Iron Age in Britain — A review. University of Sheffield, p.41–50.

Guilbert, Graeme 2018. Historical Excavation and Survey of Hillforts in Wales: some critical issues. Internet Archaeology 48
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/3/toc.html
Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor page: https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/3/box1.html

Davies, Jeffrey L. and Frances Lynch 2000. The Late Bronze Age and Iron Age. Frances Lynch, Stephen Aldhouse-Green and Jeffrey L Davies (eds.) Prehistoric Wales. Sutton Publishing, p.79-138

Oswald, A 1997. A doorway on the past: practical and mystic concerns in the orientation of roundhouse doorways. In (eds.) A. Gwilt and Colin Haselgrove. Reconstructing Iron Age Societies. Oxbow Monograph 71, p.87-95

Websites

Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland
By Gary Lock and Ian Ralston 2024
https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk

Butser Ancient Farm Archive
The Moel y Gaer House
https://www.butser.org.uk/page43.html

Heneb Historic Environment Record
Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort, Iron Age phase
https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/report/page.php?watprn=CPAT100296

Walking at the magnificent Iron Age ‘Old Oswestry’ hillfort

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This post looks at the walk around the hillfort and its ramparts, with its section of Wat’s Dyke at its foot, and lovely views across the landscape. Parking details are at the end.

Old Oswestry from the southwest, via the footpath across the field from Gatacre car park

This makes a great day trip with a visit to the Whittington Castle (see Wikipedia), only 2.5km away to the east, or the market town of Oswestry just to the south (see the official Visit Oswestry site here). It is free of charge to visit at any time, with one main parking area and a small lay-by. See Visiting details at the end.

Signage from Old Oswestry. Click to expand.

Old Oswestry hillfort is a magnificent archaeological site and local landmark dating to the 4th to 7th centuries BC during the Iron Age with terrific views over the surrounding lowland landscape. Seen from above the pentagonal shape is particularly distinctive, and you notice this whilst walking, as it is one of the few hillforts at which you reach corners. It is also undulating – as you walk around the top you will notice that they path goes up and down, never at all steeply but just enough to draw attention to the varying levels. If you keep looking across the plateau you will see that this too is undulating; sometimes you can see across it but at other times you can’t. It is one of the most impressive and least-understood hillforts in the country, excavated only twice with sample trenches, with much more knowledge remaining to be discovered.

In April there are bluebells, celandines and wood anemones, and to keep the scrub down there are small herds of black sheep (Soay and Hebridean crosses) roaming the banks and ditches. On my visit this August, just a few days ago, the long-term drought had left everything incredibly parched, and the plateau grass had died off. Some of the young trees and shrubs were in fruit with red hawthorn berries, blackberries and dark purple alder berries. There had obviously been rosebay willowherb recently in flower, with its fluffy seeds catching the sun, and some gigantic thistles had recently gone over. Otherwise, it was the bracken that was winning the fight against the drought, in spite of a fine herd of attractive black sheep.

Banks and ditches at the western entrance looking north

The site of Old Oswestry is built on a hill of clay, sands, gravels and mixed boulders left behind after the retreat of the last glacier, the whole thing lying on a bed of glacial clay. You can see boulders underfoot as you walk around the perimeter of the plateau. Old Oswestry is the largest of three similar hillocks, one of which is immediately visible to the south. The hillfort was excavated in 1939 and 1940 with seven trenches cut mainly across the ramparts, followed 80 years by a small excavation of three trenches in 2021 and 2022, again across the ramparts. The interior has never been subject to excavation.

Hillfort phases. Source: English Heritage

The earliest known occupants used the hillfort during the Neolithic, and left behind two polished stone axes and a set of worked stone tools. The story of the archaeology of the Iron Age hillfort is complicated, but in essence it began with two banks that supported ramparts (defences built of stone), separated from each other by a ditch. The first pair of banks and ditches followed the natural line of the hill, only interrupted by two entrances, on the east and west sides. Over the 300 years that the hillfort remained in use, additional banks and ditches were added, in a less straight forward arrangement, causing the entrances to become corridors with banks along their sides. In total, there are two banks on the eastern side, five on the southern side, four on the south and seven on the west where a complex of hollowed out depressions were added either side of the western entrance. To date it is not known what the hollows were used for and they remain unique in Britain. There are photos of them below.

Map showing Wat’s Dyke (brown line) and Offa’s Dyke (green line). Source: Keith Ray and authors on ResearchGate

The hillfort was incorporated by Wat’s Dyke, which arrives at the hillfort’s southern corner, and departs at its northern end, using the hillfort’s presence as a component of the linear boundary that extends over a 60 km (37 mile) stretch of the Welsh border built in the 8th or 9th century AD. It begins in Maesbury, just south of Oswestry and extends all the way to Basingwerk, near Holywell, on the north Wales coast, roughly parallel to Offa’s Dyke, but much shorter. Although its purpose is currently a matter of speculation, it is thought to mark the border of Mercia in the west, and to be both a defensive and a symbolic structure, marking differences is political allegiance and administrative systems. There is only one small part of it visible at Old Oswestry, at the southwest corner, but the line of the Dyke is marked by a line of hedgerow and trees that heads north from the hillfort.

LiDAR view of Old Oswestry, with Wat’s Dyke (red arrows) and the craters and trenches (pink arrows) clearly visible. Click to enlarge. Source: Lock, Gary and Ralston, Ian. 2024. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland: https://tinyurl.com/mputmk3d

In the LiDAR image of Old Oswestry to the right, Wat’s Dyke can be seen at the bottom left, where it meets the corner on a perpendicular on the southern side and extends from northeast corner of the hillfort, both visible as a shaded bank leading into and out of the hillfort. The builders were obviously great pragmatists, making good use of a natural barrier in the landscape!

During the First World War, the interior of the hillfort enclosure was used for military training purposes, including the digging of practice trenches and setting off mortars and other explosive devices that left small craters in the top. Marks of both the trenches and the craters are visible in some aerial photographs, and are visible in the LiDAR image right (click to expand).

The photographs are a mixture from April 2025 and August 2026, showing the difference between the well-watered spring and the long-term drought of 2026.

View from the foot of the west entrance to the west

View across the fields at the entrance to the hillfort

The west entrance towards the plateau

From the bottom of the west entrance there is a shallow slope, with wide wood-framed stone steps to avoid mud slippage, leading up to the plateau. Here, there is a walk that follows the circumference of the hillfort.

East side of the top of the hillfort. Note that this photograph was taken in April 2025; in August 2026 the plateau was completely parched, and a light yellow colour as in some of the photographs below.

The middle of the interior is fenced off for pasture most of the way round, although you can enter it at the eastern entrance, where you also get a good sense of how undulating the plateau actually is, even though it looks completely flat in aerial photographs. At this point, as with many others, you cannot see from one side of the enclosed space to the other. Walking to the highest point of the plateau from the eastern entrance, up a slight slope, gives you panoramic views.

View across the eastern entrance towards the north in August 2026

The ramparts and ditches can all be explored freely, and these give an excellent idea, even after centuries of erosion, of the scale of the construction work that made up the site. All of the rampart banks are so magnificently high that if you stand in the ditches, all you can see is the walls of the banks either side of you. It is in the ditches and on the side of banks, rather than along the plateau itself, that most of the wild flowers are to be found.

Across the top two banks and ditches to the view beyond

Optional stairways that lead across the banks and ditches from the circumference walk, showing the surviving depth of one of the ditches

The line of Wat’s Dyke marked by the hedgerow and trees, heading north from the northern edge of the hillfort

April 2025

Rosebay willowherb, August 2026

View east from the plateau

Perimeter walk around the plateau

Upper and second ramparts looking west

Walking along the top of the second rampart to the east

Walking to the west along the third rampart

The hollows at the west end are reached most easily from a black metal kissing gate on the north side (left, going up) on the slope from the western entrance. This lets onto a single track footpath that passes at the bottom of the hollows and lets you get a sense of the scale of them, which is impressive. The hollows on the other side of the footpath can also been seen, but are much smaller. A footpath actually goes across the middle of them, but they are best seen from the second (looking down) or third ramparts (looking back).

One of the ponds or cells that you can see in the aerial photograph at the top of the page

One of the ponds or cells that you can see in the illustration at the top of the page, to the left of the west entrance as you go uphill, in April 2025. This was dry in the drought conditions of August 2026, but some of the hollows still had marsh plants at their edges.

Soft-stem bulrush growing around the base of the hollows even after a drought

Returning to the car via the west entrance

The great bank at the base of the hillfort and the lesser bank below it

The Tudor “Park Hall,” which burned down in 1918. Source: Lost Heritage website

The hillfort itself is dramatic and breathtaking, but the surrounding landscape also bears unmistakeable signs of Oswestry’s heritage, whilst beneath the fields there may well be more of the area’s prehistory to uncover. The hillfort used to part of the Park Hall estate, which once had one of England’s most impressive Tudor houses at its core before it tragically burned down in 1918. The Oldport Farm immediately below the hillfort on its southeastern side dates at least to the 17th century, and perhaps earlier, and the fields retain the imprint of much earlier agricultural heritage. During the First World War both the centre of the hillfort and other places in the vicinity, was used for digging practice trenches, both a chilling and touching reminder of the realities of the war. A Prisoner of War Camp and cemetery were both established nearby. There are even glimpses of the impact of the Industrial Revolution from the top of the hillfort, with the 19th century railway and Thomas Telford’s A5.

If you are looking for a great place for a short walk that focuses on a splendidly impressive and nationally important site, this should not be missed. The walk can be extended via other footpaths, or can be combined with a visit to Oswestry itself, which is a very attractive market town. You can download the Visit Oswestry’s Heritage Trail here.

The site was owned by Lord Harlech until 1946 when he handed it over to the state, and it is now the responsibility of English Heritage.

Sketchfab 3-D interactive model of Old Oswestry Hillfort. Click here to go to the Sketchfab page.

Visiting

The route to Old Oswestry Hillfort, showing the main parking area at Gatacre car park, as well as the lay-by at the foot of the west entrance. Source: Old Oswestry Hillfort website – visiting page

The site is managed by English Heritage and it is free of charge to visit at any time, with one main parking area a five minute walk away from the hillfort, and a small lay-by. There is brown heritage signage from the A5, which takes you through a residential area to the Gatacre Playing Field car park where there is plenty of parking (What3Words ///spray.funky.tasters). There is also a layby with room for four or five cars. Both parking areas are shown on the map produced by the Old Oswestry Hillfort website.

From Gatacre Playing Field car park showing the field route and the lane route to the western entrance to the hillfort. Source: What3Words

I always park at the Gatacre car park because there is always plenty of room and it is only a five minute walk from the hillfort’s west entrance (the main access route to the hillfort). The route to the hillfort is all on the flat, along a metalled path and a small, very quiet lane.

If it hasn’t been raining, there is an even shorter route if you use the footpath (Oswald’s Way) from just beyond the car park to cut across the field – this was a gorgeous vista of sunflowers in August 2026, and would probably be even more sunflower-intensive in years that have had a bit of rainfall.

There are no facilities at the hillfort of any description, but there are plenty within Oswestry itself, only a short drive (less than two miles / 3.5km) from the site, or at Whittington Castle to the east.

The west entrance is a long, shallow slope now provided with long wood-framed steps lined with stone to protect visitors from muddy conditions, that leads up to the top. At the top, there is a footpath all around the plateau. The western and eastern entrances also offer access via gates and footpaths to the lower banks and ditches as well as the puzzling hollows that flank the west entrance. Note that sheep roam the banks and ditches, so gates must be closed and dogs must be kept on leads.

Bracken on the banks and ditches at the northwestern corner of the hillfort

Although the entire plateau walk is a nice easy stroll all the way around, well-worn by dog walkers, some of the lower ramparts are more challenging. Most of the hillfort walks along banks and ditches are very easy to access on the south and west sides, but bracken can be a perpetual problem on some of the ramparts and ditches beneath the plateau on the north and east sides of the hillfort, particularly in the summer. It seriously impedes passage, as well as potentially doing significant damage to archaeological deposits, whilst its density eliminates other species, significantly reducing biodiversity. Love it or hate it, one has to admire the tenacity of bracken under such extreme conditions. Both volunteer work and sheep are combining to reduce the impact of such invasive species, managing the site for the benefit of biodiversity, the archaeology and visitors. If you find one of the rampart or ditch walks a bit of a struggle, there are plenty of others to try.

There are plenty of well thought out information signs along the course of the west entrance as well as on the footpath around the top, providing details about the archaeology and history of the site.

The walk can be extended via other footpaths. For example the diagonal route across the field from the car park to the hillfort’s west entrance is part of Oswald’s Trail, a 12 mile / 13 km circular walk about which you can read more on the Shropshire’s Great Outdoors website. Or it can be combined with a visit to Oswestry itself, which is a very attractive market town. You can download the Visit Oswestry’s Heritage Trail here.

View from the hillfort towards Oswestry

Sunflowers on the path across the field from Gatacre Playing Fields to the western entrance of the hillfort

Artist's reconstruction of Old Oswestry Hillfort, based on the discovery of two roundhouses. By Ivan Lapper.

Artist’s reconstruction of Old Oswestry Hillfort based on the surviving earthworks and entrances and the discovery during excavations of the ephemeral remains of two roundhouses. There are no ramparts shown on top of the banks, but the illustration gives a sense of how the interior might have looked, and how the east entrance may have been configured. By Ivan Lapper. Source: English Heritage

Beneath Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre – the Iron Age buildings and fields

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Introduction

Aerial photograph of the half of the Chester amphitheatre that is visible. The rest lies beneath derelict buildings and car-parking. Image source: Environment Agency via Wikipedia

Partly as a result of the Gladiators of Britain exhibition last year and the Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 year Story exhibition this year (closes 12 July 2026), both at Chester’s Grosvenor Museum, there has been a lot of recent interest about the development of the Chester amphitheatre. The Gladiators project focused attention on the Roman period but the current exhibition looks at 8000 years of how the chunk of land on which the amphitheatre sits was used from early prehistory onwards. Of these various periods of use, one of the most interesting is the discovery of a section of an Iron Age settlement and field management, representing a number of phases of the Middle and Late Iron Age. These phases were found, together with earlier prehistoric material, during the last of three seasons of excavation that took place between 2004 and 2006, included in volume 1 of the amphitheatre publication produced by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner in 2018 (see Sources at end).
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The challenges of locating the Iron Age in West Cheshire

Artist’s impression of Maiden Castle on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge. Produced by the Habitats and Hillforts Project 2008-2012. Image source: Sandstone Ridge Trust

The Iron Age in West Cheshire was first recognized at hill-top sites known as hillforts in Britain, characterized by banks and ditches surrounding an internal space, but it has been amply demonstrated in other parts of the country that lowland settlements, some enclosed with a bank and ditch, formed the settlement focus of farming livelihoods. It has always been difficult to identify such lowland sites in the West Cheshire area, for reasons discussed below, although the presence of six hillforts on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge strongly implied that there must be corresponding lowland sites on the land to east and west.

Hillforts on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge. Image source: Garner 2012, p.4.

In 1982, in response to this absence of known lowland sites in the fields around the hillforts on the Sandstone Ridge, James Schoenwetter used proxy botanical data from nearby waterlogged contexts to search for evidence for agricultural activity contemporary with the hillforts. He found evidence that strongly suggested that lowland agricultural settlements must have been present in the vicinity of Peckforton Mere, near the Sandstone Ridge. However it was was not until 2001 that the nearest settlement to the mid-Cheshire sandstone ridge was found at Bruen Stapleford near Tarvin, during the laying of a Transco gas pipeline. Since then a small number of sites have been surveyed and/or excavated across West Cheshire and the Wirral, with other possible sites awaiting survey and excavation. The Iron Age levels at the Chester Amphitheatre, were revealed in 2006.

Quite apart from the urban and suburban sprawl of Chester and the Wirral on what was once rural land, finding the lowland sites in West Cheshire has been complicated by the composition of the soil in the Cheshire Basin, the nature of the archaeology itself, and the reduction of funding for research archaeology over the last few decades.

Aerial photography has been of great value for identifying sites in some parts of the country, but the moisture-retaining boulder clays deposited across the Cheshire lowlands by the last glaciation mean that the outlines of structures and enclosures, which show up in other areas as crop-marks, cannot always be seen in this region. It is only during periods of drought that crop marks are likely to put in an appearance.

VCP rim-sherd found in one of the roundhouse (Building 1) gullies at the amphitheatre, on display at the Grosvenor Museum

Field-walking (the survey of ploughed fields on foot, collecting all artefacts found) also faces serious challenges. The boulder clays of the Cheshire Plain boulder are acidic, meaning that organic materials (plants, bone and antler, foodstuff, textiles, leather etc) and metals have often disintegrated in the past and are only very rarely found today. Field-walking tends to rely on pottery and stone artefacts, and although both often survive in local conditions, by the time of the Iron Age smaller stone tools were no longer in use, with only larger stone items like querns and pounders (grain and pigment grinding objects) and anvils (for metalwork) remaining in use. It is also a problem that the Iron Age in the West Cheshire region is largely aceramic. Pottery often present at other Iron Age sites in Britain, is usually absent in this immediate area, with only a particular type known as Very Coarse Pottery (VCP), used for producing and transporting salt from the East Cheshire brine springs, consistently found in the region.

Composite image of two maps showing the distribution of Iron Age sites in northwest England and northeast Wales. Sourced from Ritchie 2018 and Nevell 2025 (click to enlarge)

Because of these challenges, individual objects found in the area are most often found by metal detectorists who report their findings to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The last time I checked there were 43 findspots dating to the Iron Age in West Cheshire, although not all can be dated with precision.

Most of the Iron Age lowland sites discovered have been the result of developer-led watching briefs and funding for excavation and publication. This simply means that instead of excavation being guided by archaeological research projects and survey activities, sites are usually found when, for example, new buildings are erected, cables or pipelines are laid down and new quarries are opened. Archaeologists are assigned to maintain watching briefs on such projects, funded by the developer in question, in case archaeological features are identified. Watching briefs have been responsible, for example, for the Late Prehistoric discoveries at Bruen Stapleford near Tarvin (where a gas pipeline was due to be laid), Saighton Camp at Huntington (in advance of a new housing estate), and Puddington Lane sites 129 and 154 at Burton on the Wirral (where sections of an offshore power cable were being laid). A 2026 article in British Archaeology (the publication of the Council for British Archaeology) by Sarah Wolferstan states that nearly 98% of UK archaeology is now developer-funded.

Large scale evironmental and heritage conservation projects are few and far between, but in this region included the Heather and Hillforts project that first oversaw the exploration, survey and excavation of both the uplands in northeast Wales in the early 2000s, and in a later phase the mid-Cheshire Ridge between 2008 and 2011, with the archaeological work overseen by Dan Garner, resulting in two main publications made available in 2012 and 2016.

Chester Amphitheatre under excavation in 2004. Source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig 26, p.24 (Kindle edition)

The Chester Amphitheatre Project was a special project. Unlike the above examples, the Chester Amphitheatre was the focus of a very welcome three-year project that was initiated for research purposes. In 2000 it was deemed that the deteriorating state of the amphitheatre needed to be addressed, and English Heritage issued a call for tenders to produce a conservation plan together with costings. Discussions between English Heritage, Chester City Council and a number of specialists resulted in the Chester Amphitheatre Project in 2003. Excavations took place between 2004 and 2006, led by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner and funded by English Heritage and Chester City Council.
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Settlement features in the West Cheshire Iron Age

The structures that make up Late Prehistoric settlement sites in Britain, enclosed and unenclosed, are usually round-houses and four-posted (or “four-poster”) buildings. In West Cheshire none have produced evidence of enclosures (banks and/or ditches) surrounding the settlements, but none of the sites has been fully excavated meaning that whether or not any of them were enclosed is currently unresolved. The remains of field systems, sealed beneath early Roman levels, are of great interest, providing clues to the agricultural activity that formed the basis of Late Prehistoric livelihoods.

Reconstructed Iron Age roundhouse on private land at the site of an excavation on the west side of the river Dee at Poulton, south of Chester. Source: Cootes et al 2020 (see Sources at end of post)

Roundhouses in the area are defined by circular gullies or ditches, sometimes single and sometimes double (concentric). The largest roundhouse in this area reach was Bruen Stapleford’s Structure 3, with a diameter of c.19m but smaller examples are more usual, with the smallest clustering around 7.5-8m, with the amphitheatre roundhouse measuring c.8.4m diameter. Gullies can either be complete, leaving a gap for one or more entrances, or interrupted. Outer gullies are often interpreted as drains or eavesdrips to collect rainwater run-off from the roof. The inner gully is often a foundation trench for posts or stakes, which will have performed the job of anchors for the walls, which may have been made of wattle-and-daub (long slender branches woven together and then coated with clay or equivalent), planks, or an alternative construction material that has so far not been observed, such as turf. Alternatively, the outer gully may hold the walling material, whilst the inner gully may hold weight-bearing posts to support the roof timbers. The interior may have additional features, such as hearths or shallow pits. The activities that took place in roundhouses are still not well understood in spite of including “house” in their names. Whilst some may well have provided accommodation for group/family members (depending on how family and social units were defined and organized), others are likely to have have been used for a number of other activities related to farming, craft and/or community activities.

Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort, phase 2, showing both roundhouses and four-posters. Image source: Graeme Guilbert 2018, Internet Archaeology Journal

Four-posted buildings are even more elusive in the West Cheshire and Wirral areas, but happily two phases of one four-poster was found at the amphitheatre, and another was as at the Chester Business Park excavation in Huntington, another lowland site. They are also represented at the upland Beeston Castle hillfort. A particularly good example outside the immediate area is Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort (phase 2) in Flintshire. these structures are often described as “possible granaries,” but this is only one possible interpretation of their role within a given site or region. They are usually quite small, and either square or rectangular around 3.5 x 3.5m or 3.0 x 3.5m on average, and although they may well have stored cereal grain, particularly where there is sufficient evidence to suggest this purpose, they could also have stored other goods such as animal hides, wool and textiles, salt, and preserved foods, and some may not have been used for storage at all. For example, Janice Kinory suggests that one possible interpretation of for four postholes is that some of them could have been hanging frames, rather than buildings, used for maturing slaughtered and/or cuts of butchered livestock. Adrian Chadwick raises the possibility that some of them could have been excarnation (exposed funeral) platforms. As with roundhouses, they may have had multiple roles and it is only by excavation of the organic and inorganic remains associated with them that the uses of these buildings will continue to be clarified and refined.
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The Iron Age beneath the Chester Amphitheatre

Because Late Bronze Age and Iron Age lowland sites are elusive, it is always exciting when a new one is discovered. The Chester amphitheatre is one of Chester’s best known landmarks, and the 2004-2006 excavations (Wilmott and Garner 2018) were expected to provide information primarily about the Roman and post-Roman uses of the site, so the 2006 discovery of Iron Age activity underlying the Roman amphitheatre, a short distance from the river Dee, provided a very welcome insight into the Chester area and environs prior to the arrival of the Roman legions. Most significantly, the Iron Age finds included not only structural evidence and a small number of artefacts, but also two distinct phases of field system, providing information about the development of field-management methodologies in the region. The source of the amphitheatre’s Iron Age data used in this post is in Part 2, Before The Amphitheatre, in the 2018 publication by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner (see “Sources” at the end of the post). Some of the images shown on this post have also been taken from the Kindle version of the same publication. See image captions for details of all image sources.

Mesolithic stone tools and cores from the amphitheatre site, Phase 1a on display at the Grosvenor Museum’s “Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 Year Story” exhibition, found during the Wilmott and Garner 2018 excavation

The amphitheatre site had been surveyed and excavated several times previously, beginning in the early 1930s, discussed in detail by Wilmott and Garner 2018, but this was the first of the amphitheatre excavations to produce evidence of Iron Age occupation underlying the Roman levels.

The amphitheatre site has been divided into a number of periods, phases and sub-phases, of which Period 1 represents all the prehistoric phases, of which phase 1a consists of ephemeral data from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age (not included here, but extensively described and illustrated in Wilmott and Garner 2018, providing an important contribution to the understanding of earlier prehistoric presence in the area); phases 1b and 1c, which date to the Middle Iron Age and include structural elements and evidence of ard cultivation respectively; and phase 2, which produced evidence of Late Iron Age cord-rig cultivation. Later periods, not listed here, describe the history of the Roman amphitheatre.

The phases of Period 1 (Prehistory):

Amphitheatre Period 1 (Prehistory) phases, with radiocarbon dates indication that periods 1b – 2 covered the period c.400BC to the pre-amphitheatre Roman period.

Phase 1b (Middle Iron Age, 400-200 Cal.BC)

Amphitheatre roundhouse during excavation

Part of the roundhouse under excavation. Source: Grosvenor Museum’s “Chester Amphitheatre – 8000 Years of Stories” exhibition, from the Wilmott and Garner 2018 excavation

Phase 1b includes the only Iron Age settlement features found during the excavation, consisting of a single roundhouse (Building 1) and a four-posted building that was built in three phases (Building 2).

Building 1, was defined by two concentric gullies that made up part of a curvilinear structure that would have been about 8.4m in diameter if it had been complete. The inner gully was probably a construction trench for the walls of the house. A rim-sherd of VCP was found in one of the gullies. A shallow pit was found towards the centre of the building measuring c.1m x 0.75m and 0.07m, its function unspecified. Plant remains were collected and sampled, containing very few cereal remains, representing hulled barley and a glume base of spelt wheat. Buttercup, sheep’s sorrel, and vetches and other wild species. may have been used as floor covering, animal fodder or bedding.

Chester Middle Iron Age structure (Building 1) in the Chester Amphitheatre

The Chester Amphitheatre Iron Age, part of Buildings 1 and Building 2. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.33 p.44 (Kindle version)

Building 2 comprised three postholes representing two sides of what the excavators interpreted as a four-posted building, erected in two phases as shown on the illustration above. It is only the second example of a lowland site with four-poster identified in the West Cheshire area (the other is at the Chester Business Park site). In Phase i of Building 2 the structure measured 3.5×3.5m. The postholes suggest that at least two of the posts were around 0.4m diameter and most of them had stone packing material to support the posts. Plant remains were found in all three of the main postholes, including remains of spelt wheat, a small amount of emmer wheat, and low amounts of barley. There were also abundant weed seeds, plenty of small grass seeds, a sloe stone and charcoal containing oak and lesser amounts of alder and hazel. Charcoal in Building 2 postholes, which is also found spread elsewhere on the site, suggests Building 2 appears to have been destroyed by fire in phase i, either deliberately (which has been proposed at, for example, the Iron Age roundhouse at Prestatyn) or accidentally. In Phase ii the four-posted building had shifted position, suggesting that phase ii was a replacement building, its footprint overlapping with the older structure. It also had three postholes, but is thought to have been rectangular, measuring c.3.5 x 4m. Postholes from phase ii (again with processing waste dominating over actual grains) contained spelt wheat, emmer wheat, grasses and charcoal dominated again by oak with smaller quantities of alder and hazel. In this phase the post packing material was so disturbed that it is suggested that the building was deliberately dismantled by the removal of the posts, something seen at other sites in Britain possibly including Prestatyn, where it was thought that the roundhouse was probably deliberately dismantled (before being set on fire).

Phase iii of Building 2 is far less easy to understand. It consists of a sub-circular cut that truncated posthole 3. It appeared to be lined with red clay, and although showed no signs of burning, a later fill was charcoal-rich, suggesting a hearth. The plant remains were dominated by the by-products of spelt wheat processing. Features that could not be connected to the structure included a pair of stake-holes and a single posthole, with another stake-hole nearby.

All the Building 1 and Building 2 levels were sealed under Period 1’s, Phase 1c, the ard-marked soil.
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**Period 1, phase 1c (Middle Iron Age)**

Amphitheatre cultivation and ard marks Phase 1c. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.34 p.46 (Kindle version)

Phase 1c, the lower level of cultivation at the site, represents patches of Middle Iron Age cultivation, with marks in the ground thought to have been made by an ard. An ard is a predecessor of the plough, also known as a scratch-plough, a simple tool, usually pulled by livestock, that carves a shallow line into the soil rather than turning and lifting it like the later and more sophisticated plough. The marks are associated with a number of different patches of cultivated land within the amphitheatre that post-date the Phase 1b round-house and 4-poster, and are not associated with known structures.

**Period 1, phase 2 (Late Iron Age)**

Cultivation soils and cord-rig earthworks of Period 1, Phase 2, with cut features of Phase 3

Cultivation soils and cord-rig earthworks of Period 1, Phase 2, with features of the Roman Phase 3. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.36, p.48 (Kindle version)

Phase 2 consists of an upper level of cultivation soils showing a distinctive cord-rig arrangement of parallel low banks and shallow furrows, providing raised rows for planting, and ditches for drainage, over an area at the north of the site some 15 x 6m in area. An east-west alignment of 11 ridges was recorded, c.0.64m apart. These undulating earthworks “are a dramatic archaeological discovery, and represent the evidence for arable cultivation immediately prior to the construction of the first amphitheatre, in the last phases of the pre-Roman period” (Wilmott and Garner 2018, p.47).

The Chester Amphitheatre cord-rig is the first to have been recorded south of Northumberland. To the southwest another type of earthwork consists of a pair of circular depressions, the function of which remains unknown. Burnt vegetation, including possible turves, may be indicative of land clearance and digging the burnt material back into the soil to be cultivated.
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The Iron Age livelihood at the Amphitheatre

The occupants of the settlement located themselves very close to the river Dee, with access to both water and an excellent route for communication and travel. One roundhouse, two phases of a four-poster and two phases of field management data do not necessarily represent a full settlement and farming system. Because the excavation was limited to the amphitheatre itself, It is possible that beyond these boundaries, either destroyed by later roads and buildings or lying beneath them, a more extensive community settlement could have existed.

Photograph of the excavation showing a section of Iron Age field system

Photograph of the excavation showing a section of Iron Age cord-rig field system ( photograph from the “Chester Amphitheatre – an 8000 year story” exhibition, from the Wilmott and Garner 2018 excavation)

Field systems, many of them enclosed, were an increasingly familiar aspect of Late Prehistoric landscape management throughout Britain. The presence of a clear chronological sequence of field management approaches is particularly helpful, suggesting improved efficiencies and the desire or the need to apply new techniques to improve output, marked by the replacement of Middle Iron Age ard-marks by Late Iron Age cord-rig earthworks. Burnt plant rhizomes and possibly turves in phase 2 may have been turned into the ground to help fertilize the field, and heat-cracked stone that found on cultivation levels, mentioned below, may also have been part of general refuse spread on fields as fertilizer.

Spelt crop. Image source: Waldkorn

The plant remains at the site include cereal grains and chaff (the inedible parts of the plant), and together with the field-working marks indicate that this was agricultural land. The best represented of the cereal remains was spelt wheat, which became increasingly popular over emmer wheat during the course of the Iron Age, perhaps due to its greater tolerance of poor, marginal soils, cold and damp conditions, its ability to do well without large amounts of fertilizer and its resistance to pests and diseases. Other types represented are emmer wheat and hulled 6-row barley in smaller amounts, as well as indeterminate remains. As well as grains, the chaff produced during processing could be used for, amongst other things, animal fodder and fuel. There is also evidence of quantities of brassiceae, (the mustard and cabbage family). Weeds suggest a broadly grassland environment, some of which may have been used for roofing, flooring and animal fodder as well as other uses. Wood found at the site, invaluable for buildings, fencing, fuel, tools, weapons, handles, containers and a variety of other objects and furnishings, mainly includes oak, alder/hazel and willow.

Red sandstone saddle quern piece. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.42, p.63 (Kindle version)

A broken red sandstone fragment of Middle Iron Age saddle quern is a nice find (shown above), also relating to agricultural activities. It was found in a post-hole in phase 1b, with its grinding surface worn to a characteristic shallow dish-shape. Similar fragments have been found at other sites in the region, with a whole example found at Beeston Castle hillfort. Querns were traditionally used for grinding cereal grain and seeds, but could also be employed for working pigments into powder. As suggested below for the VCP, it is possible that fragments of tools and equipment were inserted into structural features as tokens of some sort. A quern fragment from the Chester Business Park site was found, for example, in what has been interpreted as a former Iron Age well.

The farming year: a reconstruction based on evidence from settlements at Iron Age Danebury (Hampshire) and region. Source: Cunliffe 2005, p.419, fig.16.5. Click to enlarge.

Even though domesticated animal remains have not been found at the amphitheatre from prehistoric phases (although they are plentiful in the Roman phases), they would have been necessary to provide fertilizer for the crops, and evidence at other sites in the region have usually been seen as indicative of a mixed cultivation and livestock herding strategy. At Poulton near Rossett (30km south of Chester) for example, where preservation has been much better than any other Late Prehistoric sites in the area, the trifecta of cattle, sheep/goat and pig is indicated by the animal bones, which could have been employed not only for meat and fertilizer and, in the case for cattle and sheep/goat for dairy products, but also for hides for tanning and sheep’s wool for textiles. Sheep and goat are very difficult to distinguish archaeologically, but both would have been viable. A dog burial at Poulton suggests that at least that particular animal had value in everyday life.

Chester Amphitheatre VCP sherd. A particularly nice piece with a decorated rim. No complete VCP vessel has been found in Britain, but sufficient sherds have been found to show that it has a relatively narrow base and a flaring rim. Displayed at the “Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 Year Story” exhibition

Pottery was generally not found in West Cheshire and Wirral sites from the Iron Age, although it is found in Late Bronze Age levels, and has been found north of the Mersey. The exception to this is Cheshire Stony VCP, Very Coarse Pottery, which is found in varying quantities in the area. A particularly nice single piece of VCP rim sherd, with “pie-crust” decoration and 71 body sherds, were found at the amphitheatre, with the rim sherd shown above found in the gully of Building 1. VCP was used in the region for transporting salt, and may be indicative that the people at the amphitheatre settlement were importing salt from the salt brine springs in the Middlewich area. In her 2012 study of VCP Janice Kinory, building on the work of Elaine Morris, suggests that sometimes both single and more numerous sherds deposited in post-holes or gullies could have had a symbolic function, indicating the importance of salt itself, the value of social connections with salt producers, or the importance of the pottery itself to families and/or communities. The piece of VCP with “pie crust” decoration along the rim is similar to an example found at Poulton in Structure 2.

Corroded spearhead. On display at the “Chester Amphitheatre. An 8000 Year Story” exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum

The single, highly corroded iron spearhead is sadly the only metalwork to be found in Period 1, and there is no evidence to suggest that any metalworking took place. It was originally leaf-shaped, an elegant design that was common in the early Roman period as well, but this spear-head was found securely stratified in phase 1c in the lower of the two cultivation levels.

Fired clay, which is often found at Iron Age sites, was found in small quantities, of two locally available clay types, but its purpose at the amphitheatre is unknown.

Heat-shattered stone is a feature common on the local sites, and the amphitheatre produced 56kg of it from prehistoric levels, mainly local sandstone. Some dates from a Phase 1a (early prehistory) pit, but the main concentrations were in the cultivation areas during phases 1c and 2. At other sites in the area it is generally found within settlement structure features, but that may well be a reflection of the fact that only at Saighton Camp at Huntington has an excavation of a contemporary field system taken place in the West Cheshire area. The function of heat-shattered (or cracked / affected) stone has been much debated, with a number of plausible suggestions, including use for heating up or boiling water for various activities including tenderizing meat and cooking. Their presence on cultivated levels may suggest that, as with fields in other regions, they could have been spread on fields along with other refuse as fertilizer.
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Final Comments

Excavations exploring the amphitheatre environs in the Grosvenor Park are ongoing. Image Source: CAER blog 2019

As with most excavated sites dating to Late Prehistory in the West Cheshire and Wirral areas, the amphitheatre has added more invaluable data to the slowly accumulating knowledge regarding the period in this region.

Although most archaeological and historical evidence in Chester is from Roman and medieval periods, the presence of Iron Age predecessors in the city suggesting that this may have been a farming locale before the arrival of the Romans, is an exciting find. The site was used both during the Middle and Late Iron Age periods, a period of up to 400 years, during which field management techniques improved.

There is always the possibility that as parts of Chester’s built environment are replaced with new planning developments, such as the upcoming Northgate 2 housing project, other Iron Age remains will be found beneath Roman levels. The ongoing excavations in Grosvenor Park, to the east of the amphitheatre may eventually reach the lower levels contemporary with the amphitheatre finds. With more excavated sites within the region there is also the hope that it will be possible to assemble sufficient data to characterize the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age periods in West Cheshire and the Wirral, and to differentiate more fully between this and other regions in the Northwest and further afield.

Sources

Books and papers

Blockley, Kevin 1989. Prestatyn 1984-5. An Iron Age Farmstead and Romano-British Industrial Settlement in North Wales. BAR British Series 210.

Brück, Joanna 2008. Chapter 11. The Architecture of Routine Life. In Joshua Pollard (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell Publishing, p.248-267

Chadwick, Adrian M. 2009. The Iron Age and Romano-British Periods in West Yorkshire. Research Agenda. West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service.
https://www.wyjs.org.uk/media/1271/iron-age-and-roman.pdf

Collens, Jill 1999. Flying on the Edge: Aerial Photography and Settlement Patterns in Cheshire and Merseyside. In Mike Nevell 1999 (ed.) Living on the Edge of Empire. Archaeology North West, Volume 3 (Issue 13 for 1998).
https://www.academia.edu/14506084/Living_on_the_Edge_of_Empire_Models_Methodology_and_Marginality_Late_Prehistoric_and_Romano_British_Rural_Settlement_in_North_West_England
Or
https://www.castleshawarchaeology.co.uk/documents/anw13-living-on-the-edge-1999-ebook.pdf

Cootes, Kevin; Rea Carlin, Janet Axworthy, Matt Thomas, Roxanne Guildford, and David Jordan 2020. Tales of the unexpected: Uncovering an Illuminating Iron Age Settlement at Poulton. Current Archaeology 366, September 2020, p.18-25
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351840056_Uncovering_an_illuminating_Iron_Age_settlement_at_Poulton

Cootes, Kevin; Janet Axworthy, David Jordan, Matt Thomas and Rea Carlin, 2021a. Poulton Cheshire: The excavation of a lowland Iron Age settlement. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, vol.91, 2021, p.103-178
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25824/1/JCAS_ns_091_Cootes_IA_Poulton_Offprint.pdf
or
https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/648373506.pdf

Cunliffe, Barry 2005 (4th edition). Iron Age Communities in Britain. Routledge

Fowler, P.J. 1981, 1983 (2^nd edition). The Farming of Prehistoric Britain. Cambridge University Press

Garner, D. (and contributors) 2012. Hillforts of the Cheshire Sandstone Ridge. Habitats and Hillforts Landscape Partnership Scheme. Cheshire West and Chester Council.
https://www.sandstoneridge.org.uk/lib/file-234636.pdf

Garner D. (and contributors) 2016. Hillforts of the Cheshire Ridge. Investigations undertaken by The Habitats and Hillforts Landscape Partnership Scheme 2009–2012. Archaeopress
Abridged version available online, minus appendices (there is no index in either print or online versions):
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Marshall14/publication/313797404_Hillforts_of_the_Cheshire_Ridge_Investigations_undertaken_by_The_Habitats_and_Hillforts_Landscape_Partnership_Scheme_2009-2012/links/58a6860aa6fdcc0e078652a7/Hillforts-of-the-Cheshire-Ridge-Investigations-undertaken-by-The-Habitats-and-Hillforts-Landscape-Partnership-Scheme-2009-2012.pdf?__cf_chl_tk=hzbN0_un1j_np6Me4Z0bWxtROgI9juclGR.5XFzS5iY-1764184426-1.0.1.1-RsTsNKNPcI.Zt7JSR8rdabCJKMfRvmSXkjpGJZHx31c

Garner, Dan 2024. Chester Business Park 2003: A summary of the excavation of a late prehistoric and Roman rural site. Journal of Chester Archaeological Society 94, p.63

Guilbert, Graeme 2018. Historical Excavation and Survey of Hillforts in Wales: some critical issues. Internet Archaeology Journal 48
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/3/index.html
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/3/box1.html

Johnston, Robert 2008. Chapter 12. Later Prehistoric Landscapes and Inhabitation. In Joshua Pollard (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell Publishing, p.268-287

Kinory, Janice 2012. Salt Production, Distribution and Use in the British Iron Age. BAR British Series 559.

Morris, Elaine L. 1983. Salt and ceramic exchange in Western Britain during the first Millennium B.C. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/437245/1/Morris.pdf

Mytum, Harold and James Meek 2020. Experimental archaeology and roundhouse excavated signatures: the investigation of two reconstructed Iron Age buildings at Castell Henllys, Wales. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339595363_Experimental_archaeology_and_roundhouse_excavated_signatures_the_investigation_of_two_reconstructed_Iron_Age_buildings_at_Castell_Henllys_Wales

Nevell, Mike 1994. Late prehistory pottery types from the Mersey Basin. In Peter Carrington (ed.) From Flints to Flower Pots. Current Research in the Dee-Mersey Region. Chester City Council, p.33-42.

Nevell, Mike 2025. Northwest Regional Research Framework: Later Prehistory
https://researchframeworks.org/nwrf/resource-assessments/later-prehistory/

Ritchie, Matt 2018. A Brief Introduction to Iron Age Settlement in Wales. Internet Archaeology 48. https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/2/1.html

Schoenwetter, James 1982. Environmental Archaeology of the Peckforton Hills. Cheshire Archaeological Bulletin, no.8, 1982, p.10-12

Schoenwetter, James 1983. Environmental Archaeology of the Peckforton Hills.
https://core.tdar.org/document/6256/environmental-archaeology-of-the-peckfo
rton-hills

Wilmott, Tony and Dan Garner 2018. The Roman Amphitheatre of Chester. Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology. Oxbow [available on Kindle, although not all of the tables of data are fully legible – page numbers cited in the text refer to the Kindle version]

Wolferstan, Sarah 2026. Oral and performance storytelling for archaeological engagement and research. British Archaeology, July – August 2026, p.51

Wood, P. N. and D.G. Griffiths 2022. Excavations at Chester. Roman land division and probable villa in the hinterland of Deva. Excavation at Saighton Army Camp, Huntington. Archaeopress Roman Archaeology 93
https://www.academia.edu/121134097/Excavations_at_Chester_Roman_land_division_and_a_probable_villa_in_the_hinterland_of_Deva_Excavation_at_Saighton_Army_Camp_Huntington_Chester
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Websites

Based In Churton
Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 year story: Exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2026/05/21/chester-amphitheatre-the-grosvenor-museum-exhibition-and-the-university-of-chesters-upcoming-vr-experience/
The small and rather puzzling Burton Point promontory fort on the Wirral
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2026/04/11/the-small-and-rather-puzzling-burton-point-promontory-hillfort-on-the-wirral/
Exploring Maiden Castle Iron Age Hillfort, Bickerton Hill (mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge)
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2025/12/01/exploring-maiden-castle-iron-age-hillfort-bickerton-hill-mid-cheshire-sandstone-ridge/
The three official first days of spring: astronomical, meteorological and phenological
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2026/03/20/the-three-first-days-of-spring-astronomical-meteorological-and-phenological/

Denbighshire Countryside Services
Heather and Hillforts of the Clwydian Range and Llantysillio Mountains
https://www.denbighshirecountryside.org.uk/files/13491026-2854.Heather%26Hillforts_PT_72.pdf

Heather and Hillforts Landscape Project
[N.B. – most of the document links are broken]
https://heatherandhillforts.co.uk/index.php/en/about/about-the-project

Historic England Introductions to Heritage Assets October 2018
Field Systems
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-field-systems/heag204-field-systems/
Hillforts
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-hillforts/heag206-hillforts/

Chester Amphitheatre – the Grosvenor Museum exhibition and the University of Chester’s upcoming VR experience

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After a successful expedition in to Chester, which included an excellent coffee break with 3-D artist Julian Baum (Take27), I went to see the Grosvenor Museum’s Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 year story exhibition, running until 12th July, in which one of Julian’s reconstruction images is included. Julian has also been working on the Our City, Our Story: Deva Victrix project under the auspices of the University of Chester, run by Dr Caroline Pudney (Senior Lecturer in Archaeology), which explores how Virtual Reality (VR) and the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can contribute to an interactive experience of the amphitheatre. This project was showcased in Chester on Saturday 23rd May. I mention Julian Baum’s work not merely to give him a shameless (although well-deserved) plug, but because the work he contributed to last year’s Gladiators of Britain, the current Chester Amphitheatre exhibition and the upcoming Our City, Our Story VR and AI project are examples of how the trend from static and video reconstruction towards more interactive experiences can complement traditional approaches to provide richer visitor experiences, discussed further below.

The “Chester Amphitheatre” exhibition

The Chester Amphitheatre exhibition is a stand-alone exhibition, complete in its own right, but for those who attended Gladiators of Britain (about which I posted, with a description of the amphitheatre on the blog here), the continuity of themes between the two exhibitions works very nicely, although as the name of the current exhibition indicates, this is not just about the Roman period. This multi-period approach to the amphitheatre is the exhibition’s major strength, providing an excellent sense of how the same chunk of land has been used from the post-glacial period until the present day. Apologies for the poor photographs. I accidentally left my camera at home and they were taken with my elderly iPhone. As anyone who follows the blog will know, I am rubbish with the thing!

The exhibition space, in Gallery 1 on the ground floor, is well thought out and very elegantly laid out, with a combination of interpretation boards on the walls, artefacts displayed in well-lit cabinets and clear labelling to identify individual objects. It begins with details of the excavations, from which an understanding of the site was obtained, and then follows a chronological path, beginning with the Mesolithic (meaning Middle Stone Age, the period that starts in the post-glacial period).

The site was first explored in the early 1930s by Professor Robert Newstead, curator of the Grosvenor Museum at the time, and Dr J.P. Droop. Although it had been assumed, on the basis of other legionary sites in England, that an amphitheatre had existed at Deva, its location was unknown, and it was not until a new road was laid out in 1929 that Roman remains were found and the amphitheatre was identified. The road would have sliced across the top half of the amphitheatre, but following the discovery of Roman remains was thankfully re-routed to run around it instead of across it, allowing the site to be preserved and enabling further excavations to take place. The most recent of those was the excavation project established by English Heritage and the former Chester City Council, lead by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner between 2004 and 2006, published in 2018. These excavations resulted in a re-evaluation of the Roman amphitheatre and its phases, and provided invaluable information about both its pre-Roman and post-Roman periods.

It is one of the interesting aspects of work into the later prehistory of West Cheshire, that wherever an archaeologist happens to poke a trowel, at both hillfort and lowland sites, earlier prehistoric material is likely to be found. The type of material often found is epitomized by the finds at the amphitheatre. The Mesolithic was characterized by very small stone tools called microliths, and a selection of these were found on the amphitheatre site, together with waste products from the manufacturing process, showing that the tools had been made on the spot. Neolithic and/or Early Bronze Age tools, again made of stone, are also represented and these too are found all over the Cheshire area.

One of the most exciting discoveries of the excavation was the previously unsuspected presence an Iron Age settlement, made up of round houses and rectangular buildings, as well as portions of a cord-rig field system, very like medieval ridge-and-furrow. Two photographs show details of one of the foundation features of one of the round-houses and a section of cord-rig as they were found during the excavation. There is a particularly nice sherd of specialist pottery on display, known as VCP (Very Coarse Pottery), that was used for producing and transporting salt. A highly corroded spear tip was also discovered, one of the few pieces of Iron Age metalwork to survive in the area due to the highly acidic soil. Both are shown to the left.
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Photograph of the excavation showing a section of Iron Age field system

Chester Amphitheatre exhibition

The Roman amphitheatre is inevitably the main focus of the exhibition, which is unsurprising given its scale and duration. Now understood to consist of two main phases, having been expanded in its second phase, it was in use from c.AD 74/75. It is estimated that the second phase of the amphitheatre could have accommodated up to between 7500-8000 spectators and it is to this phase that two of the larger objects in the exhibition belong: the tethering stone to which wild animals would have been tied, and a coping stone (rounded stone topping for a wall) that contains the inscription “SERANO LOCUS,” roughly meaning “Serano’s Place,” possibly an attempt to lay claim to a particular seat that sat behind the low wall. The many other Roman artefacts on display include ornaments, gaming pieces, pottery (samian ware, grey ware, orange ware etc) and other items made of metals and glass.

Capstone engraved SERANO LOCUS

Saxo-Norman artefacts

A display of Saxon-Norman objects demonstrates that there may be some degree of continued use of the amphitheatre’s space after the Roman abandonment of the site, albeit for a completely different purpose.

The excavations have also helped to clarify some of the medieval structures associated with the Romanesque St John the Baptist’s Church (at one point Chester’s cathedral) and how its churchyard encroached on the original amphitheatre during the Middle Ages. The other side of the churchyard’s footprint, extending into the Grosvenor Park, is currently under excavation by West Cheshire Museums and the University of Chester.

Medieval jug

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Post-medieval finds demonstrate how, as the amphitheatre was gradually lost due to stone robbing for other buildings, the accumulation of debris and ongoing building works as Chester continued to expand beyond the walls, the former amphitheatre site continued to be occupied, and broken objects continued to be abandoned, as they are today. A particularly nice find was a pit dug in Tudor times, containing a fascinating array of broken, discarded items. Civil War finds included lead gun shot and the remains of gunpowder holders. There is even a fabulous packet for a loaf of bread with a pre-decimalization price printed on it, with bright, happy colours, a splendidly cheery tiger and the strapline “The Swinging New Bread.” Very 60s! See below.

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).

The Chester amphitheatre’s tethering stone

Brilliant bread packet, pre-decimalization (which was implemented in 1971)

The amphitheatre through the ages, an excellent illustration covering an entire wall of the exhibition, demonstrating how different periods are captured in the vertical stratigraphy of the site. By India Hackett

The amphitheatre through the ages, an excellent illustration by India Hackett covering an entire wall of the exhibition, demonstrating how different periods are captured in the vertical stratigraphy of the site, including a Civil War canon, the tethering stone on the Roman level, flanked by gladiators, and the Iron Age roundhouse and fields being ploughed beneath.

The Chester Amphitheatre exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum runs until 12th July 2026. Access to the exhibition is free of charge. For the Grosvenor Museum’s opening times, see their website for information here: https://grosvenormuseum.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/

The University of Chester’s Virtual Reality approach to the same amphitheatre site during the Roman period (Our City, Our Story: Deva Victrix in VR), was showcased for the first time on Saturday 23rd May, 11am – 4pm in Exchange Square (Northgate St). Julian Baum and other key members of the project team, were all on hand to provide insights into how visitors of the very near future will be able to interact directly with virtual Romans in a reconstruction of their original setting. Feedback is seen as part of the project design and when people filled in the feedback forms, was very welcome.

Image from the “Our City, Our Story: Deva Victrix in VR” project.

Accuracy has been of great importance to the project. The VR model of the amphitheatre itself, for example, is derived directly from the data unearthed in the excavations that are the subject of the museum’s exhibition and was developed by Julian in conjunction with Tony Wilmott, one of the site’s excavation directors. The animated Roman residents of Deva Victrix, developed by VR company Imito, help to bring the amphitheatre to life, allowing visitors to participate and interact with Roman soldiers and other characters.

Although the museum exhibition and the VR project are separate entities, run by the museum and the university respectively, the two approaches, traditional and virtual, have the potential to work in tandem and to complement each other very well. The current museum exhibition presents the physical and tactile raw data (artefacts and architectural components) and uses interpretation boards to create an empirical understanding of how data is translated into knowledge about the amphitheatre. Nothing can replace artefacts as evocative components of the past, but the information derived from them can be handled in a number of different ways. Although running as a separate project, the VR approach demonstrates the potential for a more interactive and immersive exposure to a vision of the past that allows a relationship with history to be formed, however briefly. The combination of artefacts and displays of the information they impart, supported by immersive experiences, may provide a glimpse of the future of how history could be communicated and how people may begin to explore their past in a variety of different ways.

Julian Baum’s reconstruction of the fortress at Chester and the outer buildings in the mid 3rd Century.

The small and rather puzzling Burton Point Iron Age promontory fort on the Wirral

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Burton Point from below

The earthworks at Burton Point have been consistently dated to the Iron Age, and the site has usually been described as a promontory hillfort. This post is about the prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval history of the site, with a particular focus on the Iron Age.

The footpath over the railway leading to the viewing platform in the wooded area within the RSPB wildlife reserve, and the earthworks below. Source: Google Maps

The site is located on a former promontory at the end of a headland at the western edge of the RSPB Burton Wetlands nature reserve. You may see older websites saying that Burton Point is on private land, but this has now changed and entry to the viewing point over the defences now simply requires a ticket via the RSPB reception area. The site is served by good footpaths and signposting and includes basic interpretation signage to give visitors some idea of what might have been there during the Iron Age. As the RSPB reserve is really excellent (I have written about it here) it makes for a great day out even for people who are not particular bird aficionados.

Burton Point fortifications as seen from the footpath in the above imgae

Burton Point fortifications as seen from the approach along the footpath from the RSPB reserve, highlighted in red

Do note that on the whole, there is not a lot to actually see. The Iron Age defences are on the other side of a fence, with notices not to cross the fence, so exploring the bank and ditch would be trespass. Even though you are overlooking the defences, it is not at all easy to make out what is going on. The other approach is to take the cycle track that runs near the base of Burton Point to try and get a look at it from below, but here again it is difficult to make out where the defences are located and how they would have been deployed to protect an Iron Age settlement. The best way to get a good look of the site is from above, and you can do this by viewing the Mister Drone UK video of the site, which is by far the most effective way of understanding the relationship between the different parts of the site and the modern landscape and former riverscape.

Archaeological phases

Between 2005 and 2006 the University of Chester undertook three field surveys: contour, topographical and geophysical, as well as a documentary review to track down any historical reference to the site in contemporary records. These were reported by Gary Crawford-Coupe in the Journal of Chester Archaeological Society in 2006.

As you can see in the 1689 map above, it was a very noticeable promontory, with the river channel running along its base, offering clear views upriver towards Chester, and downriver towards Hilbre Island, which we could see on the day. The visibility of Hilbre will depend to a great degree on the weather, but this was the hottest day of the year to date, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Opposite, on the Welsh side, is Flint Castle which, like Burton Point, is now set back from the river by a long margin of accumulated silt, but was right on the water’s edge when it was built in 1277.

The four main periods of archaeological evidence proposed for the site are Neolithic, Iron Age, Medieval and 17th century. The site was quarried extensively for red sandstone, which has caused changes to its appearance. These are discussed by Gary Crawford-Coupe’s 2006 paper, based on the University of Chester’s field surveys, which is the best source of collated information, and can be downloaded free of charge from the Archaeological Data Service (see Sources at the end).

Neolithic

View along the Dee Estuary to the northwest towards the coast from the former riverbed under Burton Point

Although there are scatters of Mesolithic lithic finds on the Wirral dating to the earlier and later Mesolithic, examples of which were found in the nearby village of Burton, there is nothing dating to this period at Burton Point. Three interesting finds dating to the Neolithic were, however, found, discussed in Crawford-Coupe’s paper. There were two arrowheads, one tanged and one transverse, and a polished axe head from Graig Lwyd in Penmaenmawr. Graig Lwyd axes were found over a wide area and represent a successful trading network.

Iron Age

The site

Fortification at Burton Point, consisting of a bank and ditch

The site has not been excavated so recognition of a site and its interpretation as an Iron Age promontory fort has mainly been a matter of the presence of a bank and ditch. The bank and ditch arrangement is referred to as a glacis type (in which the bank runs directly on a diagonal slope into the ditch). The site has produced no further late prehistoric information, and no diagnostic artefacts have been recovered although it should be noted that the lack of finds from the Iron Age in the Cheshire area is entirely typical. The main object type discovered from Iron Age sites is VCP (Very Coarse Pottery), a distinctive coarse pottery used for transporting salt, but none of this has been found at Burton Point to date. In spite of this lack of corroborating evidence, most of those who have inspected and commented on the site have been confident that this is indeed a small Iron Age promontory hillfort that could have supported a small population, perhaps little larger than an extended family. It was first registered as a Scheduled Monument in 1913 and in 1979 the schedule was modified to include a larger area.

Artist’s impression of Maiden Castle on Bickerton Hill, overlooking the Cheshire Plain to the west, which in an interesting experiment had a clear line of sight to Burton Point. Produced by the Habitats and Hillforts Project 2008-2012. Source: Sandstone Ridge Trust

There is good circumstantial evidence to suggest an Iron Age date for the Burton area. Burton Point was also well positioned for visual communication with contemporary sites, as discussed by David Matthews in 2006 and Erin Lloyd Jones in 2019. A 2011 experiment, the Hilltop Glow event, organized by the former Heather and Hillforts project, demonstrated that Burton Point and reported on the BBC (BBC News March 2011) was one of ten Iron Age hillfort sites (on the Clwydian Range, Halkyn Mountain, the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge, and at Burton Point) that determined which sites could be seen from one another when torches were lit. The BBC report of the experiment quoted Heather and Hilltops representative Erin Robinson, stating that Burton Point was visible as far away as Maiden Castle at Bickerton Hill, 25km /15.5 miles (shown above), as well as nearer sites on the Clwydian Range. Burton Point would also have been in the proximity of Iron Age sites 129 and 154 at Puddington Lane in nearby Burton Village, which confirm that a later Bronze Age and Iron Age presence were in this area. By boat, Iron Age settlements in both Chester and Meols would have been within easy reach: Iron Age settlement features were found during the excavations of the Roman amphitheatre in Chester; and at Meols a number of Iron Age finds, including coins, have lead to suggestions that Meols may have been a trading port with connections to both north and south along the coast at that time.

Burton Point LiDAR image from the Atlas of Iron Age of Britain and Ireland (EN3190). The line leading diagonally from northeast to southwest is the footpath leading to the viewing area.

There are however some features that remain puzzling. If this is supposed to be a settlement on a promontory, separated from the rest of the headland by a bank and ditch, it is remarkably difficult to understand its form from what remains, whether you are overlooking the site, looking up at it from below, or examining maps, LiDAR imaging or aerial photographs. This is partly due to quarrying and erosion, but also because it is impossible to walk over what remains of the site, which is fenced off. However, what may have been the Iron Age defences appear to be set below what remains of the headland. This means that the settlement on the promontory would have been lower than the headland behind it, a strategic disadvantage if the bank and ditch were defensive rather than merely statements of territory or prestige. On my first visit it seemed counter-intuitive that this was a promontory hillfort because the defences were only around 20ft above the river bed. Once the term “fort” is removed from the equation, it is still puzzling, and although a short stretch of bank and ditch were visible, they were below the level at which we were standing on the headland behind the defences, a few feet higher than the defences. Faint heart never won fair hillfort, so a few days later I parked up near the cycle track that runs around the base of Burton Point and had another look from what would have been the Dee riverbed, from where the headland clearly rises above the level of the defences. The Mister Drone footage and the above LiDAR image, which I found only later also indicate that the defences were below the headland behind it.

Even so, the bank and ditch may have been more symbolic than actually defensive. Speculating wildly, if the promontory was occupied for its views or as a trading point, the defences could have been built to control access to and exit from a specialized site. In this case, or any other function for the site (including domestic settlement) the bank and ditch could have had more to do with a statement of territoriality and prestige than any actual threat.

The surveys undertaken by the University of Chester (Crawford-Coupe 2005) were unable to provide definitive data to substantiate the proposed dating. The tangle of tree roots prevented any detection of sub-surface structures.

There are alternative suggestions. After his visit to inspect the site in November 1950, Professor A.W. Lawrence, thought that the earthworks represented quarry upcast prior to starting a new quarry (Historic England Research Records Monument No.67150). The same source puts forward the possibility that even if it is accepted that the bank and ditch are defensive, they could represent “a Dark Age Celtic Fort,” partly based on the possibility that the parish name Burton may be derived from Burh-tun, meaning “farm/dwelling by the fort.” The CHER record (9/1) mentions, without a reference, that “[i]t has been suggested that it maybe the military base of the Dane, Hingamund.”

The site continues to interest those researching the Iron Age and has been mentioned in subsequent reports on other sites, placing it in a wider regional context. As Crawford-Coupe points out, matters are unlikely to be clarified until an excavation takes place.

Composite map showing the distribution of Iron Age sites in northwest England and north Wales. Sources: I combined the two maps from Ritchie 2018 and Nevell 2025

Roman

For those wondering whether there may have been a Roman trading post or watchpost here, perhaps part of a network with Meols, both reasonable thoughts given the notable lines of sight on a clear day, a single Roman brooch was found (SMR-no.59). A single object cannot be extrapolated into a whole site or a particular set of activities but the discovery is still interesting, particularly as there was a find of another Roman brooch (SMR no.56), a fibula-type, in a field opposite Ness Gardens only 1.5 miles / 2.4 km away from Burton Point. I have not yet found a detailed account or image of either brooch.

Medieval use and quarrying

Flint Castle on the Dee Estuary, opposite Burton Point

After the site was abandoned in the Roman period, it is thought that it was used for stone quarrying by Edward I for Flint Castle, together with stone from Ness where Edward kept a small garrison. Most of the stone used for Flint Castle was yellow sandstone, that tends to look rather grey today, but red sandstone that could have been quarried from Burton Point and its vicinity was also used as infill and for some inner stonework.

Richard II’s Cheshire archers are thought to have embarked from Burton Point on the expedition to Ireland in 1399.

Post-medieval land use, quarrying and burials

As has already been mentioned, in the Middle Ages the channel of the Dee is thought to have run up to the base of Burton Point, and there are various records of requests for access to the small headland for mooring, unloading and storage. The University of Chester survey published in 2006 noted a section of wall and some pavings, which may have had something to do with these requests, but it is all fairly ambiguous.

1732 map of the river Dee and estuary showing Burton Point. Source: sustainablebeach.co.uk

In 1889 it was reported that 29 burials were found, all interred orientated east to west, with no grave goods. An east-west burial is consistent with a Christian burial, but that does not narrow it down much. When the skeletal remains were examined, there were no marks to indicate how they died, which seems to rule out a Civil War explanation, but leaves the possibility of plague or shipwreck. A shipwreck was recorded for 1637. Shipwreck victims may or may not have incurred injuries during the wrecking of the ship, but plague would have left no signs at all and would be consistent with such a remote burial, unconnected with a church and consecrated land.

Final Comments

Imaginative reconstruction of how an Iron Age site may have looked

Given that no roundhouses or any indications of palisades have been found at the site, this information sign represents a profound act of imagination based loosely on structures found on other Iron Age sites in the general area.

Partly due to erosion and quarrying that have obliterated most of the site, and partly due to the position of the defences at a level lower than the main headland, the site is not particularly easy to understand as an Iron Age defended promontory settlement. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted as such, demonstrated by the University of Chester report published in 2006, and its inclusion in discussions of the Iron Age in the area, its presence on distribution maps of Iron Age sites and its inclusion on online Atlas of Iron Age Hillforts in Britain and Ireland. There do remain questions about the overall plan of the proposed late prehistoric settlement.

Sources

Books and papers

Britnell, W.J. and Silvester, R.J. 2018. 1. Introduction. In (eds.) Britnell, W.J. and Silvester, R.J. 2018. Hillforts and Defended Enclosures of the Welsh Borderland. Internet Archaeology 48
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/7/1.html

Crawford-Coupe, Gary 2006. II. The Archaeology of Burton Point. Journal of Chester Archaeological Society, new series 89, p.71-90
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_080/JCAS_ns_080_071-090.pdf

Gregory, Richard A. and Mark Adams with contributions by Denise Druce, Laura Griffin, Chris Howard-Davis, Gwladys Monteil, Elaine L. Morris, Rob Philpott, Ian Smith and Adam Tinsley 2019. Excavation at Two Cropmark Enclosures at Puddington Lane, Burton, Wirral, 2010–2015.
Journal of Chester Archaeological Society, new series 89, 2019, p.1–69
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_089/JCAS_ns_089_001-070.pdf

Griffiths, David., Robert A. Philpott, Geoff Egan and contributors 2007. Meols, the Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast. Oxford University School of Archaeology: Monograph 68: Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/meols_sal_2007/downloads.cfm

Lloyd Jones, Erin 2019. Connections between the hillforts of the Clwydian Range and the wider landscape. Unpublished PhD, Bangor University
https://pure.bangor.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/22607372/2017_Jones_EL_PhD.pdf

Matthews, David J. 2006. Mapping hillfort intervisibility and its potential to define Iron Age tribal areas in the northern and mid Marches. Unpublished MA Thesis

Matthews, Keith J. 2001. The Iron Age of Northwest England: A socio-economic model. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 76, p.1-51
https://www.academia.edu/900876/The_Iron_Age_of_North_West_England_A_Socio_Economic_Model

Morgan, Victorian and Paul Morgan 2004. Prehistoric Cheshire. Landmark Publishing

Nevell, Mike 2025. Northwest Regional Research Framework: Later Prehistory
https://researchframeworks.org/nwrf/resource-assessments/later-prehistory/

Philpott, Robert A. and Mark H. Adams and contributors 2010. Irby, Wirral. Excavations on a Late Prehistoric Romano-British and Medieval site 1987-96. National Museums Liverpool

Ritchie, Matt 2018. A Brief Introduction to Iron Age Settlement in Wales. Internet Archaeology 48. https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/2/1.html

Silvester R.J. 2018. 4. North-east Wales and the Cheshire borderlands. In (eds.) Britnell, W.J. and Silvester, R.J. 2018. Hillforts and Defended Enclosures of the Welsh Borderland. Internet Archaeology 48
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/7/toc.html

Wilmott, Tony and Dan Garner 2018. The Roman Amphitheatre of Chester, Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology. Oxbow Books

Websites

ARCHAEOdeath
The Archaeology of Burton Point: The Heritage Open Day at Burton Mere RSPB
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2022/09/16/the-archaeology-of-burton-point-the-heritage-open-day-at-burton-mere-rspb/

Atlas of Hillforts in Britain and Ireland
EN3190 – Burton Point. Gary Lock and Ian Ralston 2012-2016
https://tinyurl.com/mrxeu34s

Based In Churton
Exploring Maiden Castle Iron Age Hillfort, Bickerton Hill (mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge)
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-8Az
Sunshine, archaeology and great views at Caer Drewyn Iron Age hillfort at Corwen
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-4ft
Hillforts and amazing views – and why is there an Egyptian temple on the top of Moel Famau?
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-9dE
The fabulous nature reserve at the RSPB’s Burton Mere Wetlands
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-7QS

BBC News
North Wales Hillfort Test of Iron Age Communication
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-11832323

Heritage Gateway
Historic England Research Records Monument Number 67150.
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=67150&resourceID=19191

Historic England
Promontory fort on Burton Point 550m south west of Burton Point Farm
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1013298?section=official-list-entry

Mister Drone UK
Burton Point, Iron Age Fort Remains search by drone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9izFQLB148

Northwest Regional Resource
Introduction: The Later Prehistoric Resource. 1200BC-43AD. Compiled by Michael Nevell, with contributions.
https://researchframeworks.org/nwrf/resource-assessments/later-prehistory/

A Sustainable Vision for Hoylake Beach
The Curious Case of the Cheesemongers (for the very useful 1732 map of the Wirral)
https://sustainablebeach.org.uk/index.php/evidence-and-data/library/the-curious-case-of-the-cheesemongers/

The view across to Wales from the foot of Burton Point

Hillforts and amazing views – and why is there an Egyptian temple on the top of Moel Famau?

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The Jubilee Tower

It was something of a surprise when I walked up to the top of Moel Famau during the week and found myself face to face with a building that was clearly based on an ancient Egyptian temple, the Grade II listed Jubilee Tower. People talk about the views, the hillforts, the heather, the bilberries and the bird life, but no-one had mentioned that there was a rather unexpected slice of Egyptomania on the peak. One would certainly, thankfully, not be permitted to build on a national beauty spot these days, but I suppose that it could be a lot worse, like the hideous, overpriced café on Snowdon. The Jubilee Tower is not elegant, it is not authentic, and it is anything but pretty, but it did make me smile, and other walkers were clearly enjoying it too. Heritage comes in various forms, some of them most unexpected. The Egyptian Revival produced some splendid buildings and monuments, and although this one is not amongst the most accomplished, its location singles it out as a fairly remarkable example, a genuine curiosity.

Map of Moel Famau footpaths, as well as the locations of Moel y Gaer and Foel Fenlli hillforts. Source: Nearly Uphill

Moel Famau, on the Clwydian Range, is lovely. It is the highest peak on the Clwydians and a very popular destination for hikers and dog walkers alike. I don’t really remember my first visit, so it was very much like visiting for the first time. There are a number of different approaches to the peak. I went along the Bwlch Pen Barras road, a pass through the Clwydian Range where there are two official starting points with car parks. one of which takes you through the coed (wood), but it was far too gloriously sunny to be under cover, which means that that the best starting point was the large amount of lay-by parking (which I believe is free) or the Bwlch Pen Barras car park (payment required) . The What3Words address for the Bwlch Pen Barras car park is ///hobble.passwords.device. You are already very high up at this point, with terrific views over the Vale of Clwyd before you even start, and the footpath that I took (the purple track at far left of the above map) provides superb views over the Vale of Clwyd.

The walk, along a wide, well maintained path, starts very gently and for the first 20 minutes or so is very easy. It becomes much steeper for a fairly short section leading up to the peak, but people of all levels of fitness seemed to be tackling it, some stopping frequently for a breather. It’s worth that last push because the 360º views are breathtaking.

If you climb up the steps to the top of the Egyptian Revival “temple” there are metal plaques explaining the building. It turns out that what we see today is just the stump of a much more ambitious project, the Jubilee Tower, which included an obelisk. It was designed by architect Thomas Harrison, and was built to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of George III in 1810, paid for by public subscription, with Flintshire magistrate Lord Kenyon laying the foundation stone in October of that year. Harrison’s buildings in Chester are far less frivolous, with most of his work in the Neoclassical style, including the Grosvenor Bridge and the Propylaeum (monumental gateway) into Chester Castle and the Neoclassical building that is now owned by the university but was previously occupied by the council as its Shire Hall. The building materials were taken up by horse and cart. The design of the obelisk was modified during construction, with a shorter and stumpier version being completed in about 1817 after a break in work due to financial difficulties and a dispute between Harrison and the builder. Unfortunately the obelisk soon started to deteriorate, and eventually collapsed in a storm in 1862. The rest of the structure continued to decay until 1970 when it underwent restoration, and in 2013 it again required significant restoration work. Here’s the Coflein description of the Jubilee Tower:

The Jubilee Tower in the Edwardian period. Source: BBC News

The monument now survives as a battered plinth, 12-15m diameter, of roughly coursed rubble stone. Located on a mound which may be artificial. Each face has a central blind doorway of dressed stone, in simple Egyptian style, under a roll-moulded lintel; roughly hewn cornice or hoodmould. Above these blind openings are broad rectangular panels of dressed freestone with roll-moulded surrounds. The corners of the monument have stone and concrete steps, starting from low square projections, which lead to the centre of the monument. Inside are the circular rubble stone footings of a former higher section of tower, 6m in diameter. Around the outside of the monument is a renewed retaining wall 0.5-1m high, open at the corners. A plaque reads ‘Cefn Gwlad award 1970’, with Prince of Wales emblems.

The Egyptian Revival followed Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. He took with him over 100 specialists, the “savants,” amongst whom were artists and draughtsmen who recorded the ancient Egyptian temples.

One of the first and very popular books to publish these images was Dominique Vivant-Denon’s “Journeys in Upper and Lower Egypt” published in 1802. Even before Jean-François Champollion’s translation of hieroglyphs in 1822, and over a century before Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922, Egypt had wriggled its way firmly into the British imagination. Even so, I would love to have been at the meeting where plonking a pseudo-Egyptian monument on the top of a remote beauty spot in honour of the king’s jubilee was presented as a such a good idea that people invested in it.

Moel y Gaer hillfort is the green beret on top of the pinkish-brown supr

Also on the top of the temple are plaques showing the names of the hills all around, with Cadair Idris and Snowdonia visible as silvery silhouettes through the slight haze, and the Moel Arthur hillfort next along on the Clwydian Range.

Looking northeast towards Prestatyn across Moel Arthur and Penycloddiau hillforts from the top of Jubilee Tower

View from the main path to Moel y Gaer hillfort

If you are a fan of the Iron Age this is a terrific walk. The path passes Moel y Gaer, which sits on a spur of the hillside, and is a piece of absolute perfection. It is not on a public footpath, but it is clearly visible from the main route up Moel Famau. Its banks and ditches form an elegant tiara, and its position overlooking the Vale of Clwyd is superb. Once you have reached the peak of Moel Famau, the hill housing the Moel Arthur hillfort is clearly visible, with Penycloddiau beyond. Foel Fenlli is a walk in its own right, but it is an important part of the walk back down from Moel Famau, because its vast banks and ditches are clearly outlined against a bright sky, yelling its late prehistoric credentials, a far more aggressive and prominent statement than Moel y Gaer.

The impressive fortifications of Foel Fenlli, as seen from the Moel y Gaer path

Apart from the acres of dark brown heather and the bright spring green of the valley below, there is not a lot of plant life to see at this time of year, although it is very striking without a floral contribution. The heather, dark chestnut brown and lifeless at this time of year, has been cut into a peculiar pattern of rectangles to encourage new growth, apparently for the benefit of wildlife. There is not much in the way of shrubs and the trees in the wood are conifer plantations. There are plenty of birds of prey if you have equipped yourself with binoculars. I look forward to visiting again when the heather is in flower in late summer, which should be stunning.

It is about a 40 minute walk up, although I forgot to take a note of the times in either direction and have the impression that it took me only about half an hour back down, with extra time added for pausing to enjoy the views and for lazy mellowing and exploring the monument at the top. I am something of a route-marcher, so that needs to be taken into account. You can walk on beyond Moel Famau in various directions on public footpaths. Most obviously the path continues, in a much narrower form, across the Clwydian Range, which looks like an absolutely splendid option. If you have the energy, you can walk to the village of Bodfari, in another pass through the Clwydian Range, whilst the Offa’s Dyke Trail goes all the way to Prestatyn. In the opposite direction, you can follow the route over Foel Fenlli all the way to Chirk, skirting the dramatic Eglyseg Mountain and passing Castell Dinas Bran and the Pontcysyllte aqueduct.

It was one of those spring days when everyone looked as though they had been released from a cage, shedding winter like a bad memory. Super. To read more about the environment and archaeology of the Clwydian Range and Llantysilio Mountains see the PDF produced by the Heather and Hillforts project.

Aerial view of the Clwydian Range. Coflein image 662395. Source: Coflein

The three official first days of spring: astronomical, meteorological and phenological

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Bryn Celli Ddu, southeast Anglesey

Plan of the Bryn Celli Ddu Neolithic tomb on Anglesey, by Steve Burrows, showing a section through the tomb and marking the line of the mid-summer solstice (typically on or around the 21st June), the longest day of the year, with the sun rising to filter through the passage, lighting up the chamber (see video at end). Image source: medievalheritage.eu

Today, 20th March 2026, is the Vernal Equinox which, astronomically speaking, is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. As my birthday, which falls towards the end of March, is usually accompanied by wind, rain and, on one memorable day on the M25, a snow blizzard that stopped traffic in its tracks, it usually takes me a while to accept that the longed-for spring really has actually arrived, in whatever guise it chooses to present itself. Fortunately, this year we have had some glorious spring days, two of which were spent with a happy heart at Little Moreton Hall and Moel Fammau, and the daffodils and hyacinths are fabulous.

Although there is plenty of evidence of archaeological sites being aligned to take advantage of specific astronomical events in Britain, particularly during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, most notoriously aligned to the mid-summer solstice, the phenological signs will have been of greater significance for the annual cyclical activities of hunters, farmers and traders, a period of evaluation and preparation following the completion of the winter’s work-streams. Marking multi-textured passages and cycles of time at different scales would have been of critical importance for making decisions and minimizing risk in seasonal livelihood management, but it was clearly incorporated into more spiritual and funerary aspects of life.

Section of the Iron Age hillfort Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor, on the Clwydian Range in northeast Wales, showing the orientation of roundhouses in Phase 1, with the majority of entrances with porches facing to the southeast. Although this orientation could be due to avoidance of prevailing winds, or to permit views across to the main hillfort entrance, it has been suggested that southeast roundhouse entrances may have allowed early morning entry of the sun into the house, moving around the interior to mark the passage of time throughout the day. Image source: Guilbert 2018

I have been reading throughout the winter about Britain’s Iron Age and, as always with archaeology and early history, the sense of different perceptions and experiences of linear, cyclical and punctuated time all working in complex relationships with one another, has been striking. The Iron Age does not provide as many hints about the ways in which communities connected with the cosmos as earlier periods, particularly in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. In spite of the lack of funerary and ceremonial data, however, in many parts of Iron Age Britain indications can be found that mark the passage of time. The agricultural basis of its livelihoods and the ideological and religious ideas that flowed around seasonal variations suggest two of probably multiple temporal schemes, the cyclical arrival and departure of seasons and the more cumulative course of those cyclical seasons every successive year as one generation eventually succeeded the next. More punctuated events are captured too, in the form of individual acts captured in the archaeological record, which themselves become part of how life was experienced.

Alternative theories of roundhouse use by Parker Pearson and Sharpies 1999: “Interpretations of the use of space in British Iron Age roundhouses: (a) Fitzpatrick’s sunwise scheme (Fitzpatrick 1994); (b) an extension of Fitzpatrick’s scheme in the light of wheelhouse layout; (c) the sunwise pattern of movement within the house, including the metaphor of the human life cycle round the house; (d) the organization of seniority around the central hearth).” Source: Parker Pearson and Sharpies 1999, image drawn by Adrian Chadwick)

The farming year: a reconst5rcution based on evidence from settlements at Iron Age Danebury and region. Source: Cunliffe 2005, p.419, fig.16.5

There are three ways of defining seasons that are officially recognized as valid measurements of seasonal episodes: astronomical, meteorological and phenological. The technical, astronomical measurement of the seasons, based on and solstices. The equinoxes are the times of year when the sun appears directly over the equator, resulting in nearly equal proportions of day to night, and during the March equinox the sun appears to rise precisely in the east.

Where astronomical seasons are based on the strict observation of the arrival of equinoxes and solstices, meteorological seasons simply divide the year into four handy chunks of three months each, with spring occupying March, April and May. This means that whilst astronomical spring begins on 20th March, meteorological spring starts even earlier, on the 1st March, which seems ridiculously counter-intuitive, given that many of us are still shuddering from February’s machinations in spite of some of the pioneering courage of the brave early spring bulbs.

Phenological seasons are far more a matter of the senses, based on the observation of the natural world, with new shoots and bright new leaves accompanying bluebells, camellias and early blossom to give a finger-in-the-air impression of seasonal transformation. This year my early-flowering dwarf daffodils, crocuses and dwarf irises were even earlier than usual, arriving at the same time as the snowdrops in mid February, but all of them looked a little self-conscious and rather put out, surrounded by the decaying brown stems of last summer’s offerings, left as they were to shelter insect life. Spring felt more present when the camellias came into flower, and the rest of the daffodils decided to join their tiny relatives. The feeling that spring has or has not arrived is a phenological response to the eventual arrival of spring, and in the past had a direct impact on how people responded in every aspect of their lives.

It is interesting (and rather a relief) that even today in the modern west, where so many aspects of our existence are so standardized, regulated and thoroughly systematized we have three officially recognized ways of marking seasonal transitions, acknowledging their essentially liminal character.

The orientation of Iron Age roundhouses, showing that the majority are orientated between the east and southeast. Source: Oswald 1997

Sources:

Books and papers:

Cunliffe, Barry 2005 (4th edition). Iron Age Communities in Britain. Routledge

Fitzpatrick, A., 1994. Outside in: the structure of an Early Iron Age house at Dunston Park, Thatcham, Berkshire. In Fitzpatrick and Morris (eds.), p.68-72.

Fitzpatrick, A. and E. Morris (eds.) 1994. The Iron Age in Wessex: Recent Work. Trust for Wessex
Archaeology.

Guilbert, Graeme. 2018. Historical Excavation and Survey of Hillforts in Wales: some critical issues. Internet Archaeology 48. https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue48/3/toc.html

Oswald, A., 1997. A doorway on the past: practical and mystic concerns in the orientation of roundhouse doorways. In Gwilt, A. and Haselgrove, C. (eds.), Reconstructing Iron Age Societies: New Approaches to the British Iron Age. Oxbow Monograph 71, p.87-95

Parker Pearson, Mike 1999. Food, Sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age
with Particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9:1, p.43-69

Parker Pearson, Mike and N. Sharpies, with J. Mulville and H. Smith, 1999. Between Land and Sea: Excavations at Dun Vulan. Sheffield Academic Press

Websites:

Met Office
Understanding equinoxes and solstices
https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-about/weather/seasons/equinox-and-solstice

RCAHMW
Anglesey’s Neolithic tomb with a solar secret: ‘Here Comes the Sun’!
https://rcahmw.gov.uk/angleseys-neolithic-tomb-with-a-solar-secret-here-comes-the-sun/

Royal Museums Greenwich
What and when is the Autumn equinox?
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/time/what-when-autumnal-equinox?_gl=1*1hixw7w*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExMTQ1NTc1LjE3NzEwNzc4NDY.*_ga_4MH5VEZTEK*czE3NzEwNzc4NDYkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzEwNzc5NTgkajE3JGwwJGgw*_ga_7JJ3J5DBF6*czE3NzEwNzc4NDYkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzEwNzc5NTgkajE3JGwwJGgw

The Great Pyramid in the Giza suburb of Cairo

It is not much of a surprise that the pyramids of Egypt, together with the later obelisks, were pointing unambiguously at the sun, whatever the time of year.

Metal detecting in a field near Churton, West Cheshire

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Button with an emblem of a crown at the top, little stars flanking it and elsewhere around the circuit, and text at the base

Not only have I never done any metal detecting myself, but I have never seen it being carried out either. I was lucky enough to have my first exposure to this activity with Rob Jones, famous in these parts for finding the superb Roman lead ingot near Rossett, now in the Wrexham Museum, which lead to the discovery of the Rossett Villa (being excavated late this year by DigVentures after initial work was completed at the site in 2021). With Helen Anderson, who organized the day with Rob and very kindly invited me along, we met at the field near Churton which is owned by Helen’s family, so we had no problem with obtaining permission. Rob did all the hard work, whilst Helen and I basked in the sunshine, diligently dry-brushing the thick red earth off anything that Rob found, irrespective of how old or recent it might be.

The other side of the button above

Rob Jones in situ at the field, very kindly agreeing to pose!

Rob has been a metal detectorist since 1996, and in 2020 was awarded the The Searcher Magazine‘s ‘Most Significant Find Wales’ award for his discovery of the Rossett Roman ingot. He works closely with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, reporting all his finds so that they can be included in the PAS database, and (with luck) helping to identify previously unidentified sites. He has worked as an on-site expert with archaeological projects at, for example, the Rossett villa and Basingwerk Abbey in Holywell, supplementing archaeological survey and excavation activities and helping to identify potentially rewarding places to investigate.

The field near Churton was naturally less promising than either, not having been home to either Roman or Medieval buildings, but it had the merit of being virgin territory, never having been built on or investigated before. Although under ridge and furrow in the Middle Ages, it has been largely unused for the last few decades. We had no real idea what the field might reveal, but it turned out to be a right old mix, even though the field was, in Rob’s terms fairly “quiet.”

17th century musket and pistol balls

We were all delighted by two lead musket balls and a smaller pistol ball (above), probably dating to the 17th century, all of them found in one small patch of the field in quick succession. Even though they are small, the little spheres are noticeably heavy in the palm of the hand. Both the local churches in Farndon and Holt, on opposite sides of the river, both named for St Chad, have musket ball shots in the masonry due to the offensives of the opposing forces that used the churches as their bases. I have posted about both – the post on the Grade-II* St Chad’s in Farndon (5 minutes down the road from Churton) here, and the one on the Grade-1 listed St Chad’s in Holt here.
A very intriguing object was what appeared to be a very small pouch, with holes at the top, perhaps for attaching to clothing. It would be good to know more about what this was used for.
One of the most entertaining of the finds was a piece of a toy gun, nicely made and originally painted blue, with the words RUSTLER GEM clearly visible.
A small button with four holes, the shape of a flying saucer, was surrounded by lettering, the bottom half of which clearly states “Chester,” with the rest too worn to be read, apart from a possible M. at the start (an initial?) and a clear DY at the end, perhaps preceded by an E. A brief lurch around the Internet suggests that these are typical on suits and waistcoats of the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, and are marked with the name of the tailor.
Another button with a metal loop has a crown engraved on the loop side, together with other emblems and some indecipherable text, and is perfectly plain on the other.
A broken pair of cufflinks, with only one face remaining, was rather charming, and a piece of thimble was the sort of thing that only an experienced detectorist would have recognized.
The oldest coin we found was a penny dating to 1861, and there was also a 2003 five pence piece!

The Rustler after cleaning

The other side of the Rustler Gem

The pouch with two holes at the top, function unknown.

Top left is the half cufflink. Bottom right is the piece of thimble.

Other bits and pieces were a mixture of broken bits of modern equipment and pieces that were largely unidentifiable but, as they were found, each piece was welcomed back into the world with equal enthusiasm, brushed free of damp earth, photographed and bagged up for further examination. There was almost nothing else other than metal, although we did poke around in the holes made, and kicked out all the available mole hills to see if there was anything non-metallic. It was remnant, random stuff of everyday life, but no less rewarding for that.

The other side of the cufflink, showing the lightly ornamented face

The four-holed button showing “Chester” at the bottom and indecipherable text at the top, possibly a tailor’s name, apparently beginning with an M. and ending with DY (perhaps preceded by an E).

Many sincere thanks to Rob for taking the time to spend the day with us, and also for showing us how a metal detector functions, with different fittings available to improve sensitivity, and how a separate pointer probe helps to focus in on the object that the detector has identified after the hole has been dug. Rob even has a special customized spade for making small holes, not unlike a long-handled bulb planter but far more robust. The metal detector is a far more subtle piece of equipment than I had anticipated, and it was an education to see it in action. And many thanks to Helen for inviting me! Truly fascinating, and such a fun and mellow day.

Probably a curtain rail holder – inevitably there is a lot of junk as well as more interesting historical objects

Modern and Roman Repairs of a Samian Bowl in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester

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A recent Bluesky post by Nina Willburger (drnwillburger.bsky.social) about a 1st century AD Samian ware vessel found in Ladenburg, Germany, repaired in antiquity with lead rivets, reminded me of one of my favourite objects in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester.

Repaired Roman vessel from Chester in the Newgate Room in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester

It is always a good moment in a museum, especially a small local one, when one looks into a display cabinet and finds something completely unexpected. In the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, there is a high quality Samian bowl that was reconstructed in modern times with deliberately lighter pieces of matt clay added to make it perfectly clear what is old and what is new. What is more interesting is that this elegantly decorated bowl was originally repaired in the Roman period with lead rivets, and this really seizes the attention. It has no label, so there are no details about its date, provenance, history or subject matter, but it appears to show two hunting dogs facing towards each other with a stylized floral motif between them, with other stylized floral and animal forms circling the bowl beneath them. This is a common type of subject matter for Samian ware. Samian (terra sigillata) was the prestige table-ware of the Roman world. It was manufactured between the 1st and 3rd centuries, mainly in Gaul (today parts of France, Belgium and western Germany), and has a distinctive reddish-orange and glossy surface, with a very fine fabric texture. Although Samian could be undecorated, the most prestigious examples featured raised decoration, sometimes showing animal and floral motifs drawn from nature with more elaborate items representing gladiatorial events and simplified narratives drawn from Classical mythology.

Samian sherds from Silchester, a few of dozens rejected by Victorian excavators and thrown onto their spoil heap

Often all that is left of pottery at Roman sites are broken sherds that had been disposed of when a pot was broken. It is a fact of archaeological work that during excavations archaeologists are always in the position of finding the component parts of objects, the broken pieces that once made up a whole item. Today the majority of these are collected and weighed as a source of data about site usage, but in earlier periods of archaeological exploration, smaller and unremarkable sherds were often discarded. More remarkable sherds have always been privileged for collection and recording, as demonstrated by the pages from the excavation report of the Holt tileworks shown below. Where it is clear that sherds belonged to a single vessel attempts might be made to reconstruct the entire vessel, enabling the original appearance of an item to be understood by attempting to restore it to something resembling its original condition. Because of its inherent beauty and complexity, Samian pottery is often the recipient of modern reconstructions. Professor Robert Newstead (1859-1947), curator of the the Grosvenor Museum, was responsible for many of the museum’s reconstructions, using a lighter shade of clay to make it clear that modern repairs had been made.

Samian pottery found at the Chester tileworks at Holt. Source: Grimes 1930

Fascinatingly, in several parts of the world high value vessels were often repaired during antiquity, enabling broken items to continue in use, although perhaps for a new purpose. In recent years archaeologists and conservationists have shown considerable interest in preserving ancient repairs, recognising them as part of the life-history of an object, and an indication of how such objects were perceived and valued in the past.

Prehistoric repair of a Badarian pot. BM EA62175. Source: British Museum CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In some parts of the world ancient repairs may date back to prehistoric periods. In around 4400-4000 BC, for example, repairs of bowls of Egyptian prehistoric Badarian ware, a very finely made ceramic belonging to nomadic sheep herders, were often achieved by drilling broken pieces to provide holes that could then bound together with cord, sinew or strips of leather. The Badarian pottery was some of the finest quality ware ever produced in Egypt, requiring considerable artistic flair and manufacturing skill, and was therefore certainly worth repairing.

A ceramic vessel may be broken in many ways at any point during its lifecycle from kiln, via transportation to purchase and usage and finally to breakage. As Angelika Kuettner (Chipstone Foundation) explains:

The Samian bowl in the Grosvenor Museum, clearly showing the lead rivets

Whether broken by shipment, cataclysmic weather event, a clumsy servant, a rowdy guest, unsupervised children or animals, or impassioned religious or political zealots, the owner of the ill-fated ceramic object then had to decide whether to repair the dish or dispose of it as waste, as something devalued to the point where it was completely worthless.

The reasons for repairing an item may depend on a number of variables, including such practical considerations as income and geography. Perhaps the owner of the bowl could not afford to purchase a replacement, or there was nowhere nearby to purchase anything similar at the particular time of its breakage. Perhaps the theme had particular significance and nothing equivalent was available locally. As well as practical reasons for a repair, there may have been sentimental reasons attached to a vessel, either because it was connected with a special person or event, perhaps because it was a gift or a family heirloom. It is even possible that the item was discarded by its owner when broken and retrieved by a servant in the household who took the opportunity to repair and own a luxury item. There is no way of knowing what motives were involved in this or any other ancient repair, each one having its own story. In this and other cases it is curious that the repair was so conspicuous, with no attempt at disguise, leading to the appearance of a luxury item being severely compromised.

Lead ingot from a river jetty site at the edge of Chester racecourse dating to 74AD. Source: David Mason’s “Roman Chester. The City of the Eagles,” p.45

The repaired pieces of Samian in the Grosvenor Museum were joined together using lead staples or rivets. As with the Badarian example shown above, the Samian repair technique required holes to be drilled into the object concerned before the rivet or staple could be applied. There is a video at the end that shows how this may have been achieved. Lead was used as a standard building material in Chester, for pipes and as waterproof lining for cisterns and reservoirs, and was mined from places like Halkyn mountain and Meliden near Flint, both in northeast Wales. David Mason estimates that 39 tons or 50 wagon-loads for water pipes, and 34 tons or 43 wagon-loads for reservoir linings were used during the building of Chester. Lead was readily available and would not have been difficult to source for the repair. Research has demonstrated that decorated platters, dishes and bowls are by the the most frequently repaired pieces of Samian in Britain, at both military and civil centres. Unsurprisingly, the number of repairs are highest in remote and upland areas

Bronze cauldron at the Grosvenor Museum

Another example of Roman repair work in the Grosvenor Museum is is a particularly nice bronze cauldron in the Newstead Gallery, shown right. According to the accompanying label, it was found in Chester’s Roman barracks by Professor Newstead, squashed almost flat, and was found to be made of a single sheet of bronze. Fascinatingly, it had been repaired 14 times during the period of its use, indicating how much it was valued. It was conserved and remounted by York Archaeological Trust in 2009, and looks stunning. As well as this story of ancient repairs this demonstrates a very imaginative and evocative approach to using the remaining parts discovered in an excavation to provide a very evocative reconstruction of the original form.

Repairs of favoured objects have continued to be made throughout history, still to be found sometimes centuries later in people’s homes. Stapling was common in the 19th century for the repair of valued ceramic items like the ornamental dish shown below. Cleverly, the rivets are clearly visible on the underside but do not actually pierce the main surface when turned over.

Repaired 19th century dish

A more extreme example is this piece of Kutani, obviously very much-loved by its owner judging from the number of rivets used to repair it.

The repair of a Kutani cup. Photograph by Helen Anderson, with thanks

The left hand image shows the multiple staples used in the repair of a Kutani cup, preserving the vessel so that the main design, right, can still be displayed. Photograph by Helen Anderson, with thanks

Kintsugi repaired vessel. Photograph by Haragayato. Source: Wikimedia Commons BY-SA 4.0

Interestingly, in spite of easy access to endless retail products at relatively low cost today, we often choose to repair items that we hold dear or which would cost too much to replace, rather than purchasing new versions. Ceramics are stapled or glued together, like the 19th century dish above, and the now international fashion for a technique called kintsugi (“golden joinery”) pioneered in Japan has given new life to broken objects by combining gold with an adhesive agent to provide a vessel with an entirely new life-force whilst retaining something of its original essence. This has become a skilled craft in its own right, and some kintsugi items now have a unique and precious value of their own. Having had a go at this with a lovely but broken dish that I found in my parents’ loft, I can attest to how much skill is required to produce something both beautiful and functional, skills that I apparently don’t have in any abundance 🙂

The Samian bowl in the Grosvenor Museum, showing both ancient repairs and modern repairs to allow reconstruction and provide a good sense of the original object

The repaired Samian bowl in the Grosvenor Museum, reveals both ancient repairs and modern reconstruction work. Both are part of its life history. There are just as many stories to be found in repaired items as in perfect ones, perhaps more. Although we are often accustomed to seeing only the brightest, best and most complete objects in museum collections, sometimes it is those that were broken and then repaired or otherwise curated by their owners that give us a personal sense of a connection with the past. Archaeology always includes unknowns, and there is never going to be an answer as to why this particular bowl was repaired, but it evokes a sense of the personal in a way that more perfect, undamaged objects in museum collections may not.

Discarded dinner set found in a ditch at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall. Source: Vindolanda Charitable Trust

Vessels that had been repaired, whether lashed, stapled and/or glued would probably never be able to carry liquids without at least some leakage, but they could happily carry dried goods, continue to have decorative and sentimental and even prestige value and to be considered by their owners to retain a useful life.

Just as interesting as all the Samian items that have been repaired, is a single remarkable case of disposal from Vindolanda, which engagingly provides evidence of one of the biggest temper-tantrums recorded in British archaeology. The Vindolanda Charitable Trust website explains:

In our Museum at Vindolanda we have an almost complete dinner set of Samian Ware which was imported from the famous La Graufesenque potteries (near the modern French town of Millau at the southern end of the Gorges du Tarn). Using the potters stamps we have dated this collection to the late AD80s. The pottery had been broken in transit and was thrown, unused, into the ditch of the fort. . . . Imagine how disappointing it would be to finally get your delivery only for it to be broken!

It puts breakages received from Amazon into perspective.
xxx

Professor Newstead and some of his restored Samian items, in the Newstead Gallery of the Grosvenor Museum.

At the end of the post see a nice video by Guy de la Bédoyère who, amongst other things, discusses the variable quality of Samian found in Britain and elsewhere; and another one that shows how, in the Roman period, mending holes may have been made in Samian using a manual drill that uses a simple but effective technology deriving from the use of spindle whorls.

Sources:

Books and papers

Albert, Kasi 2012. Ceramic rivet repair: History, technology, and conservation approaches. Studies in Conservation, 57(sup1), S1–S8.

Hsieh, Julia 2016. The Practice of Repairing Vessels in Ancient Egypt. Methods of Repair and Anthropological Implications. Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 79, No. 4 (December 2016), pp. 280-283

Dooijes, Renske and Olivier Nieuwenhuyse 2007. Ancient Repairs: Techniques and Social Meaning. In (eds): M. Benz and U. Kästner (red.), Konservieren oder restaurieren, die Restaurierung griechischer Vasen von der Antike bis heute (3rd suppl. to the CVA Germany), Beck Publishers, 15-20
https://www.academia.edu/13881341/Ancient_repairs_techniques_and_social_meaning

Garachon, Isabelle 2010. Old Repairs of China and Glass. Rijksmuseum Bulletin, 15th March 2010., Vol. 58 No.
https://www.academia.edu/10120934/Old_repairs_of_China_and_glass

Gosden, Chris and Yvonne Marshall 1999. The Cultural Biography of Objects. World Archaeology 31(2), October 1999, p.169-178

Grimes, W.F. 1930. Holt, Denbighshire: Twentieth Legion at Castle Lyons. Y Cymmrodor. Society of Cymmrodorion.

Kopytoff, Igor 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In (ed.) Arjun Appadurai. The Social Life of Things. Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press

Mason, David J.P. 2001, 2007. Roman Chester. The City of the Eagles. Tempus Publishing

Ramakers, Hanneke 2013. Historic Repairs. Conservation Journal Autumn 2013 Issue 61
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/conservation-journal/spring-2013-issue-61/historic-repairs/

Willis, Steven 2004 Samian Pottery, a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and Beyond: the results of the English Heritage funded Samian Project. An e-monograph. Internet Archaeology 17.
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/willis_toc.html
Chapter 11, 1-7 – Samian Repaired
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/1/11.1_2.html

Websites

BlueSky – Dr Nina Willburger
Fascinating glimpse into everyday Roman life
https://bsky.app/profile/drnwillburger.bsky.social/post/3m73bxsbs4k2n

Chipstone Foundation
Simply Riveting: Broken and Mended Ceramics by Angelika R. Kuettner, 2016
https://chipstone.org/images.php/742/Ceramics-in-America-2016/Simply-Riveting:-Broken-and-Mended-Ceramics

Field Museum
Restoring Pottery
https://www.fieldmuseum.org/science/research/area/conserving-our-collections/treatment/restoring-pottery

Alice T. Miner Museum
Conserving the Collection: Ceramic Repair Techniques by Ellen E. Adams, Thursday, August 26, 2021
http://minermuseum.blogspot.com/2021/08/conserving-collection-ceramic-repair.html

Vindolanda Charitable Trust
A Closer Look at Samian Pottery
https://www.vindolanda.com/blog/a-closer-look-at-samian-pottery

Ancient technology: Using a pump drill to mend a samian ware bowl.
byu/Potted-History inArchaeology

Visiting

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Books, pamphlets and papers:

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Introduction

The Archaeology

Some of the unanswered questions

Post-hillfort history

Final Comments

Visiting

Sources

Books, papers and leaflets

Websites

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Visiting

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Introduction

The challenges of locating the Iron Age in West Cheshire

Settlement features in the West Cheshire Iron Age

The Iron Age beneath the Chester Amphitheatre

Phase 1b (Middle Iron Age, 400-200 Cal.BC)

Period 1, phase 1c (Middle Iron Age)

Period 1, phase 2 (Late Iron Age)

The Iron Age livelihood at the Amphitheatre

Final Comments

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Archaeological phases

Neolithic

Iron Age

The site

Roman

Medieval use and quarrying

Post-medieval land use, quarrying and burials

Final Comments

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Sources:

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**Period 1, phase 1c (Middle Iron Age)**

**Period 1, phase 2 (Late Iron Age)**