| Ddisgrifiad / Description | This was a strongly walled fort, crowning a bald hill rising to 1247 feet above ordanance datum and forming the eastern end of a long ridge which descends from the Carneddau towards the Conwy Valley. The earliest printed reference to the site (Pennant, 1773), refers to it as Pen Caer Helen, but the present name is applied in an eighteenth century Stowe M.S. in the British Museum Library. The site has frequently been described, but the reports are not of much value except those by H. H. Hughes and Dr. Willoughby Gardner, in Arch. Camb. 1906, describing the results of a slight excavation carried out in 1905. The defences certainly covered several periods. The entrance lies at the west end of the fort; but anyone entering the fort from the west finds his way barred by a triangular area, covered with chevaux-de-frise, these are pointed stones, varying from one to three feet in length, though the smaller stones are more common and seem originally to have been set at one foot intervals. Their purpose seems to have been to impale horses carrying invaders or robbers etc. trying to jump them whilst trying to gain entrance to the fort.
There are the foundations of twelve huts in the interior of the fort. Their diameters vary from fifteen to thirty feet. That of the majority being about twenty feet. Those numbered were excavated by H. H. Hughes in 1905 but produced no evidence of date. However, they did contain traces of ironworkings. The huts appear as levelled circular platforms on the hillside, generally surrounded in whole or part by a low wall of earth and stone. In the area east of the fence which crosses the site there are some vague hollows, some of which may perhaps indicate the sites of more huts but their character is so uncertain that they are not recorded on any plans. Outside the entrance on the north west side are two barrows, each about twenty two feet in diameter, in both the old ground surface was found to be covered with charcoal and burnt bone, with a few very small fragments of copper and bronze.
Original Index No. M0084. |