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Wales
Tre'r CeiriHillfort
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Alternative route to Tre'r Ceiri, carry on the road to Llithfaen, in the village take a right as if going to the welsh language school, after a few old cottages on your right you can park on the left, in a nice car park with picnic tables. Facing out of the car park you here take off across to Tre'r Ceiri, it's a good approach to this fantastic example, keeping left form the bridle way, then cross a stile over a fence and then another over a wall near a farmers trailer and head up to it across the heather. There's stunning views from this location. With over 150 huts, and in places 15 foot high walls it's well worth the walk up. We stayed for two hours and had it to ourselves. You can then come back on yourself and go up Yr Eifl with its ancient cairn, this pre-dates Tre'r Ceiri ( although there is a bronze age cairn on Ceiri-pre-dating the hill fort) the top of the cairn takes up most of the summit but has been disrupted, it's worth the climb if you have the energy left. |
Posted by skins23rd January 2008ce Edited 24th June 2008ce |
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At last, fair enough weather to make an attempt on the fantastic hillfort of Tre'r Ceiri . City of the Giants, What a cool name. Parking is available on the road to the south, a foopath winds it's way up giving a good view of Mynnyd Carnguwch .Nearer the top, firstly an information board tells us precious little about the place, and then the little path takes us through the western entrance which is well preserved at a hieght of about 5ft. The Southern wall (which is about 7ft thick all the way round) hangs precariously above jagged rocky cliffs and has a rock outcrop incorperated into it, following the wall to the top of the hill it brings us to Carnedd Tre'r Ceiri a 20m wide cairn which was once like a step pyramid with three tiers. The wall loops around the cairn then takes care of the northern hillside, which also has a covered entrance incorparating six capstones . Inside the fort walls are supposedly the remains of 150 hutcircles. Some are very well preserved more so than the more often visited Holyhead hutcircles if it wasn't left to nature and had a full time gardener it would be better than Chysauster in Cornwall. Some circle walls and entrances are 6ft tall, and the way the stones fit together is little short of magic, some are huge with natural basins and cupmarks. Back to the northern wall, and the main entrance, going out, the wall (8ft tall) sweeps the pedestrian to the right and down to another wall and entrance, here there is another info board and a virtual path over to cairn topped Yr Eifl which I climbed about two thirds the way up to get a higher up picture. An absolute wonder this place I couldv'e stayed for hours, it's long walk up ensures peace and solitude and so much of the city remains. |
Posted by postman28th July 2007ce Edited 28th July 2007ce |
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In the isolated Lleyn peninsula we can find a real ancient Iron Age hillfort connected to the Vortigern legends. Below the superb viewpoints from Yr Eifl (anglicised to ‘the Rivals’, but in Welsh ‘the Fork’) lies one of the most spectacular hillforts, Tre’r Ceiri. On a rocky heather-covered plateau below the eastern peak some 150 huts, that might have supported up tp 500 people, can still be seen clearly. Locally known as the ‘Town of the Giants’, the walls are still more than 4 metres high in places - no wonder how it received its name.The hight of the walls might very well be caused by its isolation and position 457 metres above sea level, which has prevented all too much stones being looted, as was the case for so very many similar hillforts. Many of these stones have curious holes in them, varying in size but never large ones. These holes are no mystery, they were drilled to show where the walls had been subject to a conservation project. A ten year long conservation project was carried out on Tre'r Ceiri by Gwynedd Archaeological Trust and Gwynedd Council. The drystone walls were becoming extremely fragile and erosion by the increasing numbers of visitors was causing an alarming amount of damage. The collapses in the walls were causing the masonry to loose its structural integrity. The collapses were rebuilt in the original building style and the edges of the conserved/rebuilt masonry were marked with small drill holes. |
Posted by Vortigern13th November 2002ce |
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Much of this [ruin of the walls] was due to to excavations which were made in the huts some fifty years ago, by people of the neighbourhood. An old woman of Llithfain dreamt that a copper cauldron full of gold was buried in Tre'r Ceiri. This unfortunate dream did more harm to the cytiau of Tre'r Ceiri than many centuries of natural causes of decay.From an article in Archaeologia Cambrensis, Jan 1904: 'An Exploration of some of the cytiau in Tre'r Ceiri' by the Rev. S Baring-Gould and Robert Burnard. It includes some illustrations of their finds. http://www.archive.org/stream/archaeologiacam05powegoog#page/n9/mode/2up Possibly a bit mean - how much digging would you have done before you got disillusioned? Surely not much. But it does suggest that Treasure would not be seen as an unreasonable thing to find here, and also that dreams are not an unreasonable way of receiving believable information about such Hidden Things. |
Posted by Rhiannon4th May 2011ce Edited 4th May 2011ce |
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Just at the foot of the fort is the village of Llanaelhaearn, and its holy well of St Aelhaiarn. Aelhaiarn is one of those Celtic saints with a bizarre life story. He started off as a servant of St Beuno (see Clynnog Fawr). St B liked to commune with God outdoors. Actually he often liked to pray in the middle of rivers. I can appreciate the trance-like state this might induce - perhaps that's why he liked it. Or perhaps he just thought he could get a bit of peace and quiet in the middle of a river. However, one day his servant followed him. St B was so incensed at being disturbed that he didn't recognise his friend and rashly muttered that God should teach the man a lesson. Upon that, a pack of wild animals rushed up and tore the poor man to pieces. Beuno must have relented at this point and pulling himself out of the river, ran round collecting up all the bits he could find. Rather cleverly he reassembled them, but just couldn't find a missing eyebrow. He may have considered a caterpillar, but eventually plumped for the iron tip of his staff. I wonder if the iron nature of the item has any bearing? He then brought the man back to life, and he was known as Aelhaiarn, or 'iron eyebrow'. Aelhaiarn became a priest and tended the well at the foot of Tre'r Ceiri. The water consequently became renowned for its powers of bodily restoration. I have based this on the story given by Nigel Pennick in his 'Celtic Saints' (1997) but it would be better to find the original 'Life'. You can also read a much better (and slightly more complex) version on p228-30 of 'Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, with his Life' by William Derham. Published 1760. which I have found online at google books, and which is from a journey made in 1661. |
Posted by Rhiannon 14th March 2006ce Edited 15th June 2009ce |
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Local tradition places Vortigern in Nant Gwrtheyrn (the ‘Valley of Vortigern’), a rocky valley leading down from Yr Eifl to the west coast of the Lleyn peninsula. Vortigern was supposed to have once had his headquarters there. Here we also find his ‘city’: Castel Gwrtheyrn, once so marked on Ordnance Survey maps, but now unlocated. The best candidate for this fortress surely is Tre'r Ceiri, which lies just on the other slope of Yr Eifl, very close to the valley. His grave, Bedd Gwrtheyrn, is also to be found somewhere around here, as there are several locations bearing names familiar to us, such as Carn Fadrun, or the 'fort of Modrun' (she was a granddaughter of Vortigern) further south. |
Posted by Vortigern 13th November 2002ce |
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RCAHMW: Aerial photo of Tre'r CeiriThis is an aerial photo of the fort from the RCAHMW Web site. The page is intended to be viewed as a pop-up window, so it's not got any navigation features on it. If you want to see more similar material, take a look at the NMRW Photo Page and follow your nose from there. |
Posted by Kammer2nd December 2002ce Edited 15th June 2009ce |
Vortigern StudiesTre'r Ceiri described on the Vortigern Studies website. |
Posted by Vortigern 13th November 2002ce |
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