Archaeologists Return To Abermagwr Roman Villa For New Excavation

Public open day planned at the most north-westerly Roman villa in Wales. 

Abermagwr Roman villa excavations 2010: later stone robbing removed the upper stone walls of the villa, but the clay and stone packed foundations survive well. They can be seen in this view.

Archaeologists Toby Driver and Jeffrey Davies are to return to the excavation of the Abermagwr Roman villa near Trawsgoed, Aberystwyth, to attempt to solve some unanswered questions. For two weeks in mid July, last year’s excavation trench will be re-opened and enlarged so that archaeologists can learn more of the buried Roman villa and its surrounding courtyard.

And as part of the Festival of British Archaeology, the public will be able to visit the site on Saturday 16th July to look at Roman finds, enjoy site tours and try their hand at surveying. There will even be a children’s trench where archaeological skills can be learnt, weather permitting of course.

Roman villas were high-status homes of wealthy landowners which sat at the heart of a farming estate. They are common throughout southern England and south Wales, but rare in mid and west Wales. The nearby Trawsgoed Roman fort, excavated by Dr Jeffrey Davis in the 1980s, was abandoned around AD 130. The Abermagwr villa dates to the late 200s and early 300s AD. The discovery of the most north-westerly Roman villa in Wales, dating to the third and fourth centuries AD, has forced archaeologists to re-think the whole nature of Roman settlement across mid and north Wales.

Abermagwr Roman villa. Reconstruction drawing of how the villa may have appeared, standing within a cobbled farmyard (Crown Copyright RCAHMW).

Toby Driver, an archaeologist with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales in Aberystwyth, explained the significance of the discovery.

“ The late Roman villa at Abermagwr is really a very special discovery for mid and west Wales. It is Ceredigion’s first Roman villa, and the site of Ceredigion’s earliest known slate roof. Nothing else like the Abermagwr Roman villa exists in mid and north-west Wales although there must be other similar sites awaiting discovery. The finds from the site show the incredible Roman supply network which existed 1700 years ago. Abermagwr has produced fragments of a Spanish olive oil jar, and coinage minted in southern France and Germany. The finds can still be seen as part of a special display in the Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth.”

Abermagwr Roman villa. A late Roman coin from the villa

“We are very grateful to local landowner Huw Tudor for allowing us to return to the site. Last year we had site visits from the three local primary schools, and around 300 visitors came to see us excavating over the two week dig. It is exciting to have an open day planned this year on the 16th July, between 10am-3pm. It will be a chance for the people of Ceredigion to see history being unearthed.”

The 2011 excavations are supported by the Royal Commission and Dyfed Archaeological Trust, with funding from the Department of Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, the Cambrian Archaeological Association, Society of Antiquaries, and the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

Further information and contact details:
The Abermagwr site can be found on the Royal Commissions’ online database, www.coflein.gov.uk . Search for ‘Abermagwr Roman villa’ in the Quick Search option. The Internet can be searched for ‘Abermagwr villa’ - there are lots of references and articles already online from its initial discovery in 2009. Alternatively, contact Toby Driver on 01970  621207 or toby.driver@rcahmw.gov.uk

Further Abermagwr Links:
4th Century Roman Villa Discovered In Wales
Investigating a probable Roman villa near Aberystwyth
Rediscovering a Roman villa in mid Wales


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Swyddi Gwag - Uwch Bensaer/Syrfëwr Cadwraeth

Hysbyseb swydd

Uwch Bensaer/Syrfëwr Cadwraeth

2 swydd yn Nantgarw (ger Caerdydd) a Gogledd Cymru

Cyflog yn dechrau ar £34,000 gan godi i £42,000 y flwyddyn.

Cadw yw gwasanaeth amgylchedd hanesyddol Llywodraeth Cymru. Mae’r swyddi hyn yn gyfle arbennig i chwarae rhan flaenllaw i gadw ac i hybu treftadaeth eithriadol Cymru.

Mae’r swyddi uwch hyn yn y gangen Eiddo mewn Gofal wrth galon gwaith Cadw i warchod ei safleoedd yn ôl y safon orau sy’n bosibl ac i sicrhau bod y safleoedd yn lleoedd diogel, hwylus a difyr i ymweld â nhw. Bydd y ddau ddeiliad swydd yn arwain tîm amlddisgyblaeth o staff arbenigol mewn dylunio a gwaith cadwraeth, gan gynnwys timau o grefftwyr cadwraeth ledled Cymru, ac yn cydweithio’n agos â chydweithwyr sy’n gyfrifol am wasanaethau i ymwelwyr, dehongli a gwaith gwarchod archaeoleg. Bydd y naill swydd yn gyfrifol am safleoedd Cadw yn y De a’r llall yn gyrifol am safleoedd yn y Gogledd.

Mae’r rôl yn gofyn am bensaer neu syrfëwr profiadol sydd â chymwysterau proffesiynol a phrofiad o gadwraeth a henebion. Swyddi ym Mand Rheoli 1 y Gwasanaeth Sifil yw’r rhain. Cynigir cyflog cychwynnol rhwng £34,000 a £42,000 i’r ymgeiswyr llwyddiannus a hynny ar sail eu sgiliau, eu gwybodaeth, eu profiad a’u perfformiad yn y cyfweliad. Does dim modd negodi ynghylch yr amrediad cyflog.

I wneud cais, ewch i www.cymru.gov.uk/recruitment
Ffacs 029 2082 5454 E-bost hr-helpdesk@cymru.gsi.gov.uk

I gael rhagor o wybodaeth am Cadw ac am y swydd hon,
ewch i www.cadw.cymru.gov.uk neu ffoniwch 01443 336083

Y dyddiad cau 25 Gorffennaf 2011 

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Job Vacancies - Senior Conservation Architect/Surveyor

Job advert

Senior Conservation Architect/Surveyor

2 posts based in Nantgarw (near Cardiff) and north Wales

Salary starting at £34,000 and rising to £42,000 per annum.

Cadw is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service. These vacancies provide a special opportunity to play a leading role in conserving and promoting the outstanding heritage of Wales.

These senior posts in the Properties in Care branch are at the heart of Cadw’s work to conserve its sites to the best possible standard and to ensure that the sites are safe, accessible and stimulating places to visit. Each postholder will lead a multi-disciplinary team of conservation design and works specialist staff, including teams of conservation craft workers based across Wales, and working closely with colleagues responsible for visitor services, interpretation and archaeological protection. One post will be responsible for Cadw sites in south Wales and the other for sites in north Wales.

The role requires an experienced professional qualified architect or surveyor with conservation and ancient monument experience. These posts are in the Civil Service Management Band 1. A starting salary between £34,000 and £42,000 will be offered to the successful candidate based on their skills, knowledge and experience and performance at interview. This range is not negotiable.

To apply please visit www.wales.gov.uk/recruitment
Fax 029 2082 5454 Email hr-helpdesk@wales.gsi.gov.uk

For more information about Cadw and this role go to
www.cadw.wales.gov.uk or phone 01443 336083

Closing date 25 July 2011

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Swydd Wag - Cyfarwyddwr Cynorthwyol Eiddo mewn Gofal

Hysbyseb swydd

Cyfarwyddwr Cynorthwyol Eiddo mewn Gofal

Swyddfa yn Nantgarw (ger Caerdydd)

Cyflog yn dechrau ar £54,500 gan godi i £66,800 y flwyddyn.

Cadw yw gwasanaeth amgylchedd hanesyddol Llywodraeth Cymru. Mae’r swydd hon yn gyfle prin i chwarae rhan flaenllaw i gadw a hybu treftadaeth eithriadol Cymru.

Mae deiliad y swydd yn rhan o’r tîm uwch-reolwyr sy’n cyfeirio camau i ddiogelu, cadw a hybu dealltwriaeth o’r amgylchedd hanesyddol. Dyma rôl allweddol wrth galon Cadw, yn arwain tîm amlddisgyblaeth ddawnus ac yn cydweithio â phartneriaid ledled Cymru ac yn wir yn rhyngwladol.

Ar gyfer y rôl hon mae angen pensaer neu syrfëwr sydd â chymwysterau proffesiynol a phrofiad arwyddocaol o henebion a’r hygrededd i roi hyder i’r bobl y mae Cadw’n gweithio gyda nhw. Swydd ym Mand Rheoli 1 y Gwasanaeth Sifil yw hon. Cynigir cyflog cychwynnol rhwng £54,500 a £66,800 i’r ymgeisydd llwyddiannus a hynny ar sail ei sgiliau, ei wybodaeth, ei brofiad a’i berfformiad yn y cyfweliad. Does dim modd negodi ynghylch yr amrediad cyflog.

I wneud cais, ewch i www.cymru.gov.uk/recruitment
Ffacs 029 2082 5454
E-bost hr-helpdesk@cymru.gsi.gov.uk

I gael rhagor o wybodaeth am Cadw ac am y swydd
hon, ewch i www.cadw.cymru.gov.uk neu ffoniwch
01443 336083

Y dyddiad cau 25 Gorffennaf 2011

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Job Vacancy - Assistant Director Properties in Care

Job advert

Assistant Director Properties in Care

Based in Nantgarw (near Cardiff)

Salary starting at £54,500 and rising to £66,800 per annum.

Cadw is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service. This vacancy provides a rare opportunity to play a leading role in conserving and promoting the outstanding heritage of Wales.

This post is part of the senior management team which directs action to protect, preserve and promote understanding of the historic environment. Leading a talented multi-disciplinary team and working with partners across Wales and indeed internationally, this is a key role at the heart of Cadw.

This role requires a professionally qualified architect or surveyor with significant experience of monument conservation and the credibility to give confidence to the people Cadw works with. The post is in the Civil Service Executive Band 1. A starting salary between £54,500 and £66,800 will be offered to the successful candidate based on their skills, knowledge and experience and performance at interview. This range is not negotiable.

To apply please visit www.wales.gov.uk/recruitment
Fax 029 2082 5454
Email hr-helpdesk@wales.gsi.gov.uk

For more information about Cadw and this
role go to www.cadw.wales.gov.uk  or phone
01443 336083

Closing date 25 July 2011

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Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales
By Adam Voelcker, 2011.
Published by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales
April 2011
ISBN: 978-1-871184-41-9
Price: £14.95
Postage: £0.00
Buy Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

Review of Contents

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales by Adam Voelcker with a forward by HRH The Prince of Wales, published by The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, paperback, 136pp, £14.95.

This book explores the beautiful and inspiring buildings of the Arts and Crafts architect Herbert Luck North (1871-1941). Although less well known than the architects with whom he began his career, J. D. Sedding and Edwin Luytens, North was an outstanding designer of humane buildings that were sensitively grounded in their local environments. He took an early interest in vernacular building traditions, writing two pioneering books on Snowdonia churches and houses, and he absorbed into his own design work distinctive regional details, the use of local materials and a keen sense of how buildings could complement the landscape. He had a direct or indirect influence on a number of Welsh architects, and his thoughtful, modest and sensitive approach, so lovingly expressed in this new book, still has the power to inspire.

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales is superbly illustrated with specially-commissioned photography and ground-plans as well as historical photographs and North’s handsome original drawings. It will enable an understanding of this significant architect’s legacy for the first time, and allow more people to appreciate the richness of his contribution to our built heritage.

CONTENTS
Forward by HRH The Prince of Wales
Preface
Introduction
Early Life: 1871-1898
Early Projects 1898-1900
Domestic Work 1900-1940
Church Work
Other Work
North's Legacy
Notes and References
UK map
Chronological List of Selected Works
Herbert Luck North Collection
Bibliography
Index

Related Publication Links:
Order your copy of  Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

• Book Sales   

Related Link:
Book Launch at the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC)


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Book Launch at the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC)

The Royal Commission’s latest work Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales written by Adam Voelcker, was launched at the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) conference held at the St George hotel in Llandudno on Friday June 17. The previous evening delegates from the conference were taken on a guided tour by the author of some of the distinctive houses that North designed in Llanfairfechan, including his home, Wern Isaf, where he lived from 1901 until his death in 1940. The book covers all aspects of North’s life and career and is profusely illustrated with original plans, designs, photographs and other archive material and also contains a gazetteer of the buildings North designed, including many that never got built. The National Monuments Record of Wales holds many of his original drawings and plans which can be viewed at our reading room in Aberystwyth.


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Royal Commission films with Ray Mears on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire

Toby Driver filming with Ray Mears inside a prehistoric hut on the southern side of Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire.

The Royal Commission has been getting some insight into prehistoric ways of life and survival on an off-shore island from the expert – Ray Mears. As part of the Skomer Island project, where the Royal Commission is working with partners to map and understand the well-preserved prehistoric houses and fields, we were invited to film with Ray Mears for his new television series Wild Britain, due to be aired on ITV in autumn 2011.

Filming inside one of the best preserved Iron Age huts on the south of the island, which is still accessible to visitors, Ray was fascinated to hear how a combination of aerial photography, airborne laser scanning and detailed ground survey is allowing the Royal Commission to develop a new understanding of the ways that Skomer was settled and farmed in later prehistory.

However, Ray’s international knowledge of the ways that modern tribes and peoples live off the land brought new insight some aspects of Skomer’s prehistory. Ray reminded Toby Driver that Burdock root was a common cultivated vegetable before potatoes came to the British Isles, and an important part of prehistoric diets; it still grows on the island today and may once have formed a staple crop. He also discussed the need for managed woodland on the island in prehistory, which would have provided not only a renewable source of straight poles for building and fencing, but also hazel nuts in the autumn which were a valuable source of prehistoric protein. Current blank areas in the prehistoric fields may show where permanent managed woodland was located.

Ray was particularly taken with some recent finds of stone tools from Skomer, collected from the ground surface during survey work this spring. Properly recorded prehistoric finds from Skomer are lacking, so these rare finds will be carefully studied and catalogued before being placed in a museum. Ray liked a hand-sized rubbing stone, collected from the prehistoric fields on the northern part of the island and doubtless used with a quern stone to grind corn to make flour. He noted that Aboriginal examples of rubbing stones can be passed down many generations as a family tool. He also like a small flint ‘burin’, manufactured from a flint beach pebble, which is a pointed tool held between thumb and forefinger. It was found along with other flints on an eroding headland on the north-west of the island. Some burins may have been used to pierce holes in leather, but Ray thought that this one was just the right shape to cut needles from animal shin bones; the Inuit people of the Arctic still use similar tools today.

A probable prehistoric rubbing stone, perhaps used to grind grain on a quern stone, collected from prehistoric fields on the northern part of Skomer Island during Royal Commission fieldwork in 2011.

Work continues by the Royal Commission during 2011/12 to make a new map of Skomer Island’s prehistoric fields, working from specially-flown airborne laser scanning data or LIDAR from the Environment Agency. Find out more about Skomer Island in prehistory at www.coflein.gov.uk . ‘Quicksearch’ for Skomer.

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Gwent Family History Society Open Day - Cwmbran

Gwent Family History Society Open Day, Cwmbran

On Saturday 11th June 2011, the Royal Commission attended the Gwent Family History Society Open Day in Cwmbran where we helped genealogists find images and information on where their ancestors lived, worked and worshipped.

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Surveying a 19th Century Manganese Mine

RCAHMW Investigator Spencer Smith carrying out a GPS Survey of a Manganese Mine on Mynydd Nodol, Arenig, Bala.

The Atlanterra Project have been surveying a 19th Century Manganese Mine on Mynydd Nodol, Arenig, Bala. The survey is amplifying work carried out by the Uplands Survey and will produce a detailed plan of the workings and associated infrastructure.

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Garth Point Pier - Site Details Online Images Associated Sites & Records

RCAHMW colour slide oblique aerial photograph of Bangor Garth Pier, Bangor, 2004.
DI2005_0811     NPRN: 34150

Stretching over 460m across the Menai Straits, Garth Point Pier is the longest surviving pier in Wales. Originally built for pleasure steamers, it was constructed in steel and cast-iron in 1896 by J.J. Webster of London and the contractor was Alfred Thorne of London. It was damaged by a ship in 1914 and was closed in 1971, but re-opened in ...
Read full site description of Garth Point Pier on Coflein - Discovering Our Past Online

Related Wales History Links:
Read more: Garth Point Pier www.coflein.gov.uk
 Online Images (10)
 Associated Collection Records (21)


Coflein is the NMRW's public online database, searchable geographically through Ordnance Survey maps or by text queries.

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