More Archaeology

 My mind is full of archaeology at the moment - I'm having such fun on the Cusop Castle Dig.

There will be an open session on site on Wednesday 10th June, from 4.15pm to 5pm, where anyone can turn up to find out what the progress is so far from Tim Hoverd, who is in charge of the dig.  There is parking at the church (which would appreciate a small donation), and no dogs are allowed on site.

And for those who have caught the digging bug, there will be another local dig in August.

Dorstone has been the scene of quite amazing archaeology around Arthur's Stone for years now, but the digging has been done by professionals and students.  This year, from 1st to 9th August, to discover more about the medieval origins of Dorstone, in various sites around the village.  Like Cusop, this will be a community dig, with all welcome - youngest participants must be 12+ and accompanied by an adult.  Tickets for the sessions (free) can be booked through Eventbrite - you can't just turn up - under dorstone-dig-a-medieval-mystery.  There will be a pre-dig talk in Dorstone Village Hall on Wednesday 17th June at 6pm. 

First Day of Cusop Dig

 

I am having so much fun, and we're only just starting this trench by taking the turf off!  The sharp eyed young girl who was in the same trench found some pottery, an iron nail - and some shiny stones!  Two other trenches have been opened so far, elsewhere on the site, and they're a bit further advanced than this one.  Next step is trowelling back to clean the surface and get down to the layer beneath the topsoil.

Local History

 I've been busy over the last few days with meetings about local history.  There's some fascinating research happening around Cusop Dingle, which I can't really talk about yet - and also I need to do a lot more research for my part of the project.

Meanwhile, plans for the Cusop Castle dig are going well, and we're all looking forward to seeing what we will find!

And, of course, we're gearing up at work for the Festival, which is almost upon us! 

A Long Walk and a Bus Ride

 I'm really glad I decided to go for a walk up Cusop Hill yesterday, when it was so hot I didn't even need a coat (and I nearly always wear a coat).  I'd been looking at some aerial photos of the area and saw what looked awfully like crop marks on top of Cusop Hill - and my curiosity was aroused.  

The public footpath goes up past Capodolwyn, and I was pleased to see that someone is renovating the house after many years of it lying empty.  On the way up the field, I startled a hare, who loped off into the distance, and when I had a sit down later, higher up the hill, a red kite flew by below me.  There's another ruined building above Capodolwyn, and I was lucky enough to find a piece of a slipware bowl there, probably from the 17th century.  I was up that way because I slightly mislaid the path, so I was following the fence line round until I came to the stile, which is usable though not in very good repair.

The views from the top of Cusop Hill are spectacular - all down the Wye Valley and across the plains of Herefordshire.  The traces of archaeology were less so.  I think that the markings I had taken to be ditches were actually natural features draining the water from boggy areas - though there had been some stone quarrying up there at some point, and there's a fairly modern pond with the spoil heap from digging it out right next to it.

Still, it was a glorious day, and the hedgerows were full of wild flowers as I came back into Hay.

This morning the weather was decidedly chilly and grey, but I had to go into Hereford to do a few things.  The Golden Valley is still blocked off, I think at Peterchurch, so the bus turned round to go down the hill and cross the river, for a non-stop journey to Hereford.  Despite the greyness (and some rain) it was lovely to see all the apple orchards in blossom.

One of the things I wanted to do was to look at the local history section of Hereford Library.  The Library has been in temporary accommodation in the Town Hall for some time now, and it's a very ornate building inside as well as out.  Being temporary, until the new premises in the Shire Hall are ready, there is only a small selection of books available, but I still found something useful.  I also joined the library, so next time I can check out up to twenty books (!).  I was given the choice of four different pictures to go on my new library card, and I chose the one with shelves of books facing each other, with birds flying between them.

On the way back, the bus was labelled the X15 rather than the X44, and again went non-stop on the other side of the river from the Golden Valley. 

Talk on the Armstrong Murder Case

 Tony Pryce started his interest in the Armstrong murder case back when he was an officer with West Mercian Police, and he had to visit a local solicitor's office in Hereford.  The firm was TA Matthews, and in a glass case there was a pipe and a letter.  The pipe had belonged to Major Armstrong, and the letter was to thank the original TA Matthews for all his help during the Major's trial and appeal process.

Since then, he's gone into incredible detail on every aspect of the case, including every person involved and their family backgrounds, and how they related to each other.  He believes the evidence is overwhelming that Major Armstrong was guilty.

One interesting detail is that some evidence from the case ended up in the Metropolitan Police Museum.  Back in 1921, when a murder investigation needed to be done, small police forces often didn't have the expertise to carry them out, so they applied to the Metropolitan Police to send experienced officers.  Modern day investigations typically involve 26 police officers and 4 support staff - back then the Met sent a Detective Chief Inspector (this was his last case before retirement) and a Detective Sergeant, and they started their investigations in secret, while staying at the Green Dragon Hotel in Hereford.

So there is a packet in the Black Museum labelled as arsenic from the chemist at Hay - but it has never been analysed.  Tony Pryce tried to persuade them to find out what the white powder was, but when they realised that the objective was to prove Major Armstrong's guilt rather than overturn the guilty verdict, they decided it wasn't worth spending the money to do it.  Tony Pryce believes that the packet was planted in the Major's bureau (which was produced as a surprise exhibit during the court case) by a member of the defence team, because he owed Major Armstrong a favour.  It's a fascinating theory, and very convincing.

There were so many fascinating details like this that the talk ran for an hour and a half instead of an hour, and he could have continued.  However, he got as far as the execution at Gloucester Prison (an ex-prison governor now gives guided tours of the building!) and stopped there.

Cusop Village Hall was so full they ran out of chairs and had people standing at the back and into the entrance hall!  And there wasn't time to show the video advert for the Cusop Castle dig, which will be happening from 5th to 14th June this year.  Also, I'll be giving a talk on Saturday 9th May at Cusop Castle at 4pm on medieval weapons and arrows, hopefully with audience participation! 

Dig for Cusop

Here's the new video advert for Cusop Dig in June!

More Archaeology in Hay

 Exciting news at the Castle mound in the old cattle market by the Swan - trial trenches are being opened up this week to search for evidence of the original Norman castle.  This is the castle that came before Matilda de Braose built the present Hay Castle.

Black Mountains Archaeology Ltd. have been hired by Powys County Council to do the dig, and it's professionals only - not like the Cusop Castle dig in June, which welcomes volunteers as a community dig.

I'm hoping to get there towards the end of the week to see what they've uncovered.

 

The Herefordshire Hoard

 Tim Hoverd came to Cusop Village Hall on Thursday evening to talk about the Herefordshire Hoard (or 'how can two metal detectorists be so spectacularly stupid?').  It's a talk he says he's given "too many times", but it's part of his job to publicise things like this, to show what happens when people don't follow the law in metal detecting.

Put briefly, two metal detectorists from South Wales walked some fields near Leominster without the land owner's permission (they asked the tenant farmer, who did not have the authority to allow it), and they found a hoard of silver coins from the Viking era.  They did not declare the find, as they were supposed to do, but eventually produced a few pieces to satisfy the Finds Liason Officer - an arm ring, a ring, a crystal orb bound with gold, and a badly damaged coin.

They intended to sell the rest of the coins - it was later estimated that there were around 300 of them. But the police quickly became involved.  The detectorists had taken photos of their finds, which is how the archaeologists could estimate how many coins were in the hoard.  Some were found when their homes were searched.  Others had been already sold, but once the story became public, it became almost impossible to sell any more of the coins on the open market, because they are very distinctive.

If archaeologists had been able to study the hoard, as a whole, they would have been able to tell a lot more about the dating, and the conditions at the time the hoard was buried, and who was most likely to have buried it.  From the few pieces that were recovered - about eighty coins were found - they can tell that the hoard was likely buried at the time that the Great Viking Army was sweeping across Saxon England.  The coins were mostly from Wessex and Mercia - and the designs on the coins showed an alliance between King Alfred the Great and his Mercian counterpart Ceolwulf II.  Some are struck with only one king's head, but there are others with both, known as "The Two Emperors" coins.

If the detectorists had declared the hoard, they would have got a huge payout.  As it was, they got six and ten years in prison, and one of the coin dealers they tried to sell the coins through was also prosecuted.  They were involved with the criminal underworld in South Wales, and owed someone nasty a lot of money - and Tim Hoverd suspects that the bulk of the coins went to some crime boss, and may never be seen again. 

Earlier in the evening, before the talk, Tim sat down with the committee of the Cusop Castle dig to flesh out a few details.  The dig will take place from Friday 5th June to Sunday 14th June, and they are looking for volunteers.  It won't all be heavy digging - there are plenty of jobs around site for people of all sorts of varying ability, and full training is given.  I'm going to be there as much as I can - bearing in mind that I was last a professional archaeologist over thirty years ago, and a full day's digging now would probably kill me!

If anyone is interested in volunteering, they should contact Cusop History Group - there's a link on their front page.  Under sixteen year olds must be accompanied by an adult who is taking a full part in the dig, and Tim has a strict No Dogs policy. 

Also at the talk, to sell copies of his new book, was Joseph Emmett.  It's called New Roots, Ancient Lands: Walking Through Herefordshire's History, and it looks very interesting - I bought a copy, but it might be some time before I get round to reading it.  In it, he visits local sites like Arthur's Stone and Mouse Castle, Snodhill Castle and the Gloucester to Hereford Canal, as well as other sites right across the county. 

The next Cusop History Group talk will be "The Murder of Katherine Armstrong and the Trial of Herbert Rowse Armstrong" with Tony Pryce, introduced by Peter Ford.  It will be at Cusop Village Hall on Thursday 16th April at 7pm.  Entry is £2, with donations for refreshments. 

Archaeology Talks

 This morning, I was whisked off to Brecon to give a talk about archaeology to a dementia group there.  I was talking about some of the digs I'd been on, and showing slides, and I had a few things to hand round, too, including my trowel!

The group meets at Kensington Baptist Church, near the Castle Hotel, which is a lovely modern building.  I gave the talk in the chapel part, and we had lunch in the hall (there's a proper kitchen - we had fish and chips).  All the people in the group were absolutely lovely, and told me all sorts of things about the local history of Brecon, and the farms they grew up in, and so on.  They asked interesting questions during the talk too.  I'd prepared quite a bit, but I was ready for the talk to go in several different directions, depending on what people were interested in.  In the end, it even included Martello Towers on the South Coast and the Wrexham Lager Brewery!  

Apparently there is another archaeologist who is one of the volunteers for the group, and she recently gave them a talk about Orkney and the archaeology up there (which is fascinating - I'm sorry I didn't get to meet her). 

So I had a lovely time - and I got a great compliment.  One of the ladies said that sometimes, speakers came and they couldn't wait for them to finish, but they wished I could have gone on for longer. 

So it was rather later than I had hoped when I got back to Hay, and I only caught the tail end of the Cusop Castle group meeting in the Swan.  Still, it was great to get back in touch with Denise Darbyshire again - who is doing research into the history of settlement in Cusop along with Peter Ford who lives across the road from me.

Next week, I'll be nice and early for the talk at Cusop Village Hall on the Herefordshire Hoard - the talk starts at 7.30pm and will be given by Tim Hoverd, the archaeologist from Herefordshire Council.  The group organising the dig at Cusop Castle this summer will be able to have a short meeting with him before the talk begins, and there will be a form available for anyone to sign if they are interested in being a volunteer on the dig.  Some people have already expressed an interest.  The dig is taking place at the beginning of June.  For further information, email the Cusop History Group.

Death of Ron Shoesmith

 I was sad to see the article in the Hereford Times this week with the title "'Doyen of history' dies".

Ron Shoesmith was 89, and he had retired to Brittany, where he died.

His career, though, was as an archaeologist - he was the Cathedral archaeologist  for Hereford Cathedral for 14 years.  There's even a gargoyle in his image, on the outer wall of the cathedral nave.  It was put up there in 2009.  Before his work for the Cathedral, he was the director of the City of Hereford Archaeology Unit, so he knew just about everything about archaeology in the city.  He wrote several books, to share this knowledge.

One of the tributes to him in the Hereford Times comes from Mark Haslam, of Herefordshire CAMRA - because he also wrote books about the history of local pubs. 

Trial Run for Ancient Monuments Tour

 I went up to Hay Bluff this morning, by a roundabout route, with Mary Anne.  We were checking out the route that the Enchanted Hour Tour is going to take around the local sites of historical interest.  

Mainly, we were checking that the route was easy to follow, so we didn't get lost, and that there was enough parking at each place we wanted to stop.

So we're doing two loops, one round Clyro and one round Llanigon.

For Clyro, we're stopping at the Roman fort at Boatside Farm, and Cwrt Ifan Gwynne (which was a Welsh castle).  We overshot the entrance to Cwrt Ifan Gwynne, which is also a Radnorshire Wildlife Trust site featuring dormice - distances that seemed quite long when I was walking are a lot shorter in a car! 

From there we go into Clyro and up the main road just past the petrol station.  Right next to the house there, in the field, is a Bronze Age barrow.  Then we head back to Hay, stopping at Clyro Castle on the way. 

On the other side of Hay we're going up the side road to Llanigon that leads up to Llanthomas Farm, for the site of Llanigon Castle (now a bungalow).   I was amazed at how many new houses have been built there since I last went that way!

Then we head up the lane next to Old Forge Garage to Penywyrlod.   Sadly, it wasn't possible to find a place to park near the Neolithic tomb, but there's plenty of space on the road at the old farmhouse, which also has a fascinating history.

And from there it's a straight run up to Hay Bluff car park, for a game of Hunt the Stone Circle (it's really quite easy to miss!).  Back when it was built, it was an important local monument - the family tombs down in the valley all have a view up to the stone circle, and what probably happened was that small rituals happened at the tombs, but several times a year people would hike up the mountain for more elaborate rituals at the circle.

On the way back down to Hay, there's also Twyn y Beddau, another Bronze Age tomb.  This one's even got a noticeboard to read.  It also has rocks on the top to stop the scramble bikes from riding over it - but that didn't stop one young man when we were there.  "Oi!" I yelled at him, "that's a 4,000 year old tomb!"

"Uh, sorry," he mumbled, as he rode away.

If anyone wants to go on the tour, it starts from Hay Library at 2pm on Friday 18th July - tickets available from the library.  No-one so far really wanted to go in a minibus, so it's going to be a fleet of cars (hence the checking to make sure we could all park at each site!).

Mary Anne asked me to give a quick overview of the different periods of history and prehistory for this area, so here goes:

For our purposes, we start with the Neolithic, the New Stone Age.  There would have been earlier people in the area, but they left very little trace that  we can see today.  The Neolithic people lived in extended family groups, each with their own family tomb, and centred around Hay Bluff, where they built their stone circle.  This would be around 5,000 years ago.

Then came the Bronze Age, and a change in burial practices.  Tombs got smaller, with only a small number of burials (I don't know where everyone else was buried).  Often the tombs are in places that overlook the tribal lands of the group that built them.  This would be about 4,000 years ago.

The Iron Age tribe in the area is the first one that we know the name of - the Silures.  They were the ones who attacked the Roman fort at Boatside Farm and drove the Romans out of their tribal territory.  Iron started to be used around 800BC.  The Romans arrived in Britain in 43AD, and built the fort at Boatside around 60AD.

The traditional date for the Romans leaving Britain is 410AD, and by this time the Silures were becoming Welsh.  The Normans arrived in 1066AD, and very quickly moved across the country, building castles everywhere, especially in disputed territory like the Welsh Marches.  This is also the time that the medieval monasteries were an important part of the landscape - right up until Henry VIII closed them down.  Disputes about religion are part of the history of Penywyrlod Farm, which was an important local centre for Puritans to meet and worship together, to the disapproval of the Church of England.

 So that's a very basic timeline, but it at least gives an idea of the periods that the ancient monuments belong to.

 

Visiting the Hoard

 I was lucky enough to arrive at the Black and White House in Hereford just as one of the guides was taking a party round, so I could tag along as she talked about the Herefordshire Hoard.

It's not one of the most impressive hoards that have been discovered - the pieces on display only filled a small case.  It was originally much bigger, though.  When the metal detectorists found the hoard, they decided not to declare it to the Coroners Court, which is the legal route.  Instead, they decided to try to sell it on the black market.  By the time they were caught, roughly 300 coins had dwindled to about 20.  

So, instead of getting 50% of the value of the hoard granted by the Coroner's Court, which would have been a very substantial sum, (possibly over 4 million pounds), at least one of the men involved is still in prison.  Recently, the Museum service has managed to track down and retrieve part of the hoard.

It's a great pity that the coins were split up, because the ones that were left told a fascinating story.  One of them was a silver dirham from Persia, showing just how far trade routes stretched in Viking times.

The prize of the collection, though, was a Two Emperors coin, so vanishingly rare that only two other examples have been found - one in 1840 and one in 1950.  The coin depicts King Alfred of Wessex sitting next to King Ceolwulf of Mercia, giving valuable evidence of an alliance between the two which is not mentioned in the historical record - and the coin is also extremely valuable in the monetary sense, to collectors.  That would be why we were only seeing replicas at the Black and White House, the real thing being safely under lock and key.  

My favourite piece, though, was the crystal ball - not the modern sort used in fortune telling, but something much smaller, about an inch in diameter.  Made out of pure quartz, and bound around with gold, it would originally have hung from a woman's belt - they have only been found in women's graves.  It was great to get a really good look at one.

Herefordshire Hoard

 I'm quite excited about this, as the last time the Hoard was put on public display I wasn't able to go.

The Herefordshire Hoard (or at least, replicas of the Herefordshire Hoard) will be on display at the Black and White House Museum in the middle of Hereford on Saturday 25th January, from 10am to 12.30, and from 1.30pm to 3.30pm.  Entrance costs £3.50.

There will be Viking themed craft activities throughout the day.

I kind of wish I still had my Viking re-enactment kit.

Enchanted Hour

 I had great fun at the Library yesterday - I was giving the talk for Enchanted Hour.

I trained as an archaeologist, so my chosen subject was the obscure archaeological remains in the local landscape.  The area around Hay is rich in Neolithic and Bronze Age tombs, and there's a Roman fort at Boatside Farm, and several medieval mottes.  A good crowd turned up for the talk, and they asked interesting questions afterwards, and everyone seemed to have a good time.  I even got filmed!  John Price, who films a lot of local events, was there with his camera.  It's the first time I've ever worn a microphone to do a talk.

Mary Anne, who organises the talks, thought it would be a wonderful idea if a group could get together to go to visit the tombs later in the year, and she's a lady who gets things done, so I may end up acting as a tour guide!

This afternoon, at 4pm, the Cusop History Society are meeting at Cusop Village Hall - I hadn't heard about it until someone told me yesterday.  They're going to get an update on work at Cusop Castle, so I'm going to go along to that.

Mary Anne is going back to South Africa in February, so the next Enchanted Hour will be in March, a talk about a journey that involves a dancing hippoptamus!

Arthur's Stone on the BBC

 Bone fragments have been found at Arthur's Stone!  It must have been just after we visited the site, and the dig is finishing now for the season.

One of the students found the cremated bone fragments (human bone) in a stone cist* which was part of the mound covering the monument.  It's very exciting, because actual evidence of burials or depositing human remains on the site are vanishingly rare.

The bones will be sent off to a specialist for analysis.

* A cist (or kist) is a stone box buried in the ground to contain human remains - bodies can be buried or cremated.  The one at Arthur's Stone was fairly small, and the remains were cremated.

Here's the link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-66246846?at_link_id=CB0482CE-26BE-11EE-84EA-181CD99D5CC3&at_ptr_name=facebook_page&at_medium=social&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_campaign_type=owned&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_link_origin=BBC_Hereford_%26_Worcester&at_link_type=web_link&at_format=link&fbclid=IwAR2hEDBepzAzxglueLEK3YACIHhTA7whb20pqy2b_BimkbjKlQT3ZihGHK0

Arthur's Stone Visit

 I was invited to join a party of friends to do the guided tour of the Arthur's Stone dig yesterday.

We met at the Swan for lunch, in the garden.  One couple had driven up from East Sussex, and were meeting us on the way to visiting family in Presteigne, so they turned up a bit late.  We ate from the sandwich menu, and the portions were generous, and came with crisps, some of which ended up going to the blackbird who was hanging around watching us - who can't have been really hungry because we watched him wrestling with a huge worm when we arrived.  I had the pulled pork and mozzarella on ciabatta, which was delicious.  

Then we realised that nobody actually knew the route to the dig - I'd been before, but I only knew the bus route to get to the bottom of the hill, and Julia wanted to avoid driving up that hill if she could.  I was in the second car, following Julia, and we lost her at the Hardwicke turn into the Golden Valley, where she went straight on.  I guided the second car via the bus route, and we got to the dig a little bit late for the start of the tour.  Fortunately, Julia turned up shortly after  that, so we joined Amber from English Heritage, who was explaining what they found last year in the field below the monument before moving round to this year's trench.

The archaeologist in the picture is drawing a section of the dry stone wall in front of him, which was part of the monument.  Beyond him is the passageway into the main chamber of the tomb - the bit that looks like the Stone Table in Narnia (and CS Lewis did visit the site, so it had to have been his inspiration).

Another famous visitor I wasn't aware of was King Charles I, during the Civil War, when he used Arthur's Stone as a rallying point for his troops in the area - so it was a well-known landmark back then.  King Arthur, despite the name of the site, is not known to have been a visitor, and in any case he could only have visited it about 4,000 years after it was built.

The rest of the stones in the picture (I think I've got this right) are the remains of the collapse of the drystone wall, which was sealing off the passageway.  They think the passage way was quite a bit deeper than it now appears, and of course had capstones covering it, under an earth mound.  As it appears now, it would have been pretty difficult to get the remains of the dear departed into the main chamber, as anyone would have to crawl down the passageway.  However, the main stones are not being touched by excavation - the trench here is as close as the archaeologists are allowed to get.

One of the students on the dig had just completed emptying out this depression in the stones, which they think may have been a kist, or secondary burial within the mound, rather than depositing the remains in the main chamber.

Finds have been pretty rare, but they did find a piece of something that isn't quite obsidian, and which came from either Scotland or Northern Ireland, around the Giant's Causeway area, since it is volcanic rock in origin.  This is proof that people were moving around, and trading, over those distances.  They also found a rather nice flint arrowhead.

All the finds, from all the years of the digs, are being kept together, so they can be analysed at the end of the dig.

Across the road in the field there were two more trenches (one with a plastic pipe running through it!)  where the archaeologists were trying to find the extent of the monument.  There's a rise in the road as it passes the Stone, indicating that the monument may extend under the road, but they didn't know how far it might have gone.  Some similar sites are very big, so they were hoping to find an edge to it.

Further off in the field there was another, much deeper trench, cut through a depression in the field with parch marks, indicating that there was something underneath the grass.  This turned out to be small quarries of the same flat stones that were used for the drystone wall around the Stone.  There are small quarries all over the place locally, but this one was not marked on any maps, and there haven't been any finds yet to give a date.  However, any quarries from the Romans onward would have taken all the stone that was useable, whereas these quarries had a lot of stone left behind, as if they were choosing just the stones they could use for one project and rejecting the rest.

It was a fascinating tour, and Amber had a full schedule - earlier that afternoon she'd taken the Woolhope Group around (the Woolhope Group had a dig at the Stone in 1901, when regrettably vague notes were taken on their findings) and as we left, she was guiding another group around the site.

Then it was back to the Swan for tea and scones in the garden - a really enjoyable afternoon, with some lovely and interesting people!

Longtown Castles Project

 As I don't have any new gossip to report, I thought it would be nice to share an article I found in the May/June issue of British Archaeology magazine.

A community archaeology project took place around Longtown Castle - or more accurately, both Longtown Castles - in the summers of 2016 and 2017, in a project run by Herefordshire Archaeology.  More than 130 volunteers worked on those digs.

I knew about the stone keep on top of a motte, with bailey earthworks - it's pretty obvious when you visit Longtown - but I didn't know that there was another motte at Ponthendre, only about half a mile distant.  The project was set up to find out more about the relationship between the two castles.

They discovered that the motte at Ponthendre had not been finished, and had never been occupied.  Longtown Castle itself, however, had been built in the remains of a Roman auxiliary fort.  Previously it had been thought that there was no Roman presence in Longtown.  

The ramparts were larger than would have been expected for a Roman fort, though, and the conclusion was that the ramparts had been made stronger by Harold Godwinson's army when they invaded Wales.  Prince Gruffydd ap Llywelyn had sacked Hereford in 1055, and this was a retaliatory invasion.  The defences at Hereford were also strengthened.

It is thought that the motte at Ponthendre was built by Walter de Lacy, who was granted the lordship of Longtown after the Norman Conquest of England, to defend the border against the Welsh.  As the motte at Ponthendre was never finished, it is thought that de Lacy preferred to use the castle that became his main stronghold, at Longtown, as his headquarters in the area, and it was around this castle that the de Lacys laid out burgage plots to encourage the growth of  their "Longe Town of Ewyas Lacy".

There is a new book out from Logaston Press detailing the excavations and the findings.  It is The March of Ewyas: the Story of Longtown Castle & the de Lacy Dynasty, by Martin Cook and Neil Kidd.

Digging in Dorstone

 The archaeologists are back on Dorstone Hill!

This time they've opened a trench right next to Arthur's Stone, and they're finding something really exciting:

That's a line of post holes leading up to the tomb.  Originally the timber posts were 60cm in diameter (that's two feet in old money).  

They don't know yet how far the post line extends - it may have been a processional way up to the tomb.

They've also opened another trench nearby which may have the remains of a structure in it, but that's not nearly so impressive looking as this!

The Mystery of the Saxon Sword

I was talking to John Price, via email, when he mentioned the Saxon sword. He had sent me some information about Penywyrlod barrow, and happened to add that Colwyn Vulliamy had done some digging in the Begwns around 1930 and had discovered a Saxon sword, believed to be the only one ever found in Wales.
He was kind enough to send me some links to further information. The dig itself is the subject of an article in MAN, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, for May 1931. Vulliamy was actually excavating a prehistoric hut circle, and found the sword, broken into two pieces, in the debris of a collapsed wall. It was pretty badly corroded, with only the tang that had fitted inside the lost hilt, but it was 34 inches long. There was also a bronze ring nearby which he supposed to be for the purpose of attaching the scabbard to a belt. Vulliamy also mentions the dig in his autobiography, Calico Pie.
A local newspaper article of the time mentioned that the sword had been given to the British Museum, and that sent me down a rabbit hole of research. A lot of the British Museum collection is listed online now, but there was no trace of the Vulliamy sword.
There was, however, another Saxon sword found in Wales. This one had been found or acquired at Builth Wells in 1969, from R Warren. It was made in the 9thC, and this one has the remains of a rather fine hilt:

This one is only 31cm long - or about 12 inches, but has hilt decoration in silver and niello, which is the black inlay on the silver, made of a mixture of sulphur, copper, silver and lead.

Still on the trail of the Vulliamy sword, I tried the catalogue of the National Museum of Wales. There was no sign of a Saxon sword, but they do have a good collection of Iron Age swords which were found around Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey, when the runway of RAF Valley was being extended in 1942. These would have been deliberately thrown into the lake as offerings.

And then John Price came to the rescue again. He got in touch with the Senior Curator for Archaeology at the National Museum in Cardiff, Evan Chapman, who provided a link to the "Medieval Sword (probably Saxon)", which is in storage in the collection of the National Museum of Wales, along with the bronze ring.

Penywyrlod Neolithic Long Barrow

I went back to the hills above Llanigon to go further back in time than the historic farmhouse.
This time, I went by the lanes to Llanigon and turned up by the Old Forge Garage to go up the hill. It wasn't as steep as the footpaths across Hay Common, but I was still pretty sweaty when I got to the stile, so I paused for refreshment:

I'd been looking up details about the long barrow on the Modern Antiquarian website, and some of the people commenting there said that the barrow was very close to the stile. I knew that wasn't right, because I had a vague memory of finding the site years before, so I set off up the hill and followed a track across a couple of fields.
I was starting to wonder if I'd gone too far when I went through the next gate into a field where a flock of sheep were sheltering from the sun in the shade of a line of hawthorn trees. I gave them a wide berth as I climbed up the hill, so as not to disturb them - and at the top, there it was!

The ground around it is pretty disturbed, so it's hard to see the limits of the original barrow that would have covered the burial chamber. According to the plans made during the Woolhope Society dig of 1920 - 21, the chamber was towards one end of the mound. They didn't find much in the way of artefacts, but the methodology of the dig was criticised, and later other archaeologists came to look over the spoil heap of the original excavation, where they found some flint, fragments of Beaker pottery, a Roman coin and some blue beads from what is believed to be a 6th century AD Saxon burial - which shows that the mound was visible and there was some memory of it as a place to bury the dead up to historic times. [Edited to add: I was using the book Prehistoric Sites of Breconshire by George Children and George Nash, from Logaston Press].
The original barrow was built during the Neolithic period, so roughly 5,000 years ago. The views from the barrow are very good, up the Wye and Llynfi valleys.
I decided to go on just as far as the next stile, close by - and beyond the stile was a lane, which must have been where the Modern Antiquarian visitors arrived at the site. I walked down the lane back towards Hay. On the way, I noticed several Red Admiral and Comma butterflies, and at one point I heard a pretty little bird singing from a nearby tree. When I looked it up back home, it turned out to be a male Stonechat, possibly the first one I've ever seen in real life!

This is a stock picture - the one I saw was too far up the tree for my camera to get more than a distant dot.