Images

Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

From across the Afon Conwy at Deganwy the hill’s rocky prominence is even more apparent.

Image credit: A. Brookes (23.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

The changing face of fortification. Castell Caer Seion overlooks the medieval walled town and castle of Conwy. Both sites command the approach over the Afon Conwy from the east.

Image credit: A. Brookes (22.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

The rampart along the southern side of the eastern section. Natural slopes play a large part.

Image credit: A. Brookes (1.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

Looking from the Citadel towards the eastern part of the fort.

Image credit: A. Brookes (1.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

The massive stone rampart of the Citadel at the western end of the fort.

Image credit: A. Brookes (1.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

The entrance, with impressively surviving stone courses on either side.

Image credit: A. Brookes (1.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

Another view of the circular structure to the south of the entrance.

Image credit: A. Brookes (1.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by thesweetcheat

Strongly walled circular structure to the south of the entrance to the “citadel”.

Image credit: A. Brookes (1.4.2018)
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

Conwy Mountain and Castell Caer Seion from across the Conwy estuary on the Great Orme.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

The camera battery emptied itself shockingly quick, but after a short walk over here it found the power for half a dozen more pictures.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

Looking east over the entrance of the fort to Conway.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

With skies like that it was absolutely astonishing that some actual sunlight should find it’s way down to me. until now I thought sunshine had gone extinct in North Wales.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

Looking over an exterior entrance to Conway.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

Low cloud, hail, rain and sunshine and an inexhaustible amount of brutal wind all in one short trip to a hill fort.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

A good little hill fort, looking west to the north rim of cloudy Snowdonia.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by postman

From several miles south east of the fort.
Ready for take off ?

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by skins

Looking East into the fortification, with sign.

Image credit: skins
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by skins

Looking north, with hut circles and conwy morfa below.

Image credit: skins
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by skins

Looking back westerly, with a storm brewing, December 2010.

Image credit: skins
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by skins

looking towards the hill fort from Penmaenbach.

Image credit: skins
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Looking towards the superb Edwardian castle and walled town of Conwy which superseded this Iron Age settlement.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Castell Caer Seion (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Looking towards Conwy (note the superb castle and town walls, upper right) from Mynydd-y-Dref

Image credit: Robert Gladstone

Articles

Castell Caer Seion

After dropping the kids off at school and collage I decided that it has been too long since I last went out, it’s payday and there are blue skies and fluffy white clouds overhead so I grab me stuff, jump in the car and head out west.
The weather in Wales and me don’t get on all the time, in fact we argue constantly, I want sunshine and rainbows but Wales doesn’t care what I want so it tries it’s level best to deter me from coming at all, today was no different. The head sized hailstones half way there almost made me turn round but i’m more persistent than that.
By the time I parked in the car park the weather had settled into murky low cloud, the fort is visible on the euphemistically named Conway mountain, but there is no direct route, so a half mile walk east down the road to a crossroads turn left on to a wide footpath follow that up hill till you get to a T junction of footpaths, left again, when a right turn going uphill presents itself take it for a now direct route to the “citadel”.
Upon my return home and looking it up on Coflein I can see that the hill fort proper is much bigger than I thought so all I had a look at was the citadel, don’t make this mistake.
The citadel, I will continue to call it this, just for a laugh, takes up only a quarter of the entire fort, but it is the best preserved part, actually it has been partially restored if the pictures on Coflein are anything to go by.
I’ve been trying to find the time to come here for a couple of years and so far the weather is kind of cooperating, the wind is very strong but the rain passed by just a couple hundred meters away. I only spotted two definite round house platforms, there are more.
The battery in my camera now chooses it’s moment to let me down, so I swear loudly at it, it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I take it as a sign that it is time to go home and pick the kids up, but I stroll side ways over to a vantage point across from the fort and whisper sweetly to the camera, it allows me a few more photos, that’s why we anthropomorphise.
I don’t fancy retracing my steps laboriously back to the car so I try and head back in a straight line, it didn’t go well, two barbed wire fences, a wall and a small stream have to be crossed whilst keeping out of view of the two nearby houses, it was more fun but it probably took longer than the right way.

Folklore

Castell Caer Seion
Hillfort

This fort is on the summit of Mynydd y Dref (Conwy Mountain). It has 24 hut circles inside, and some outside its walls. There’s the remains of a larger building (a ‘citadel’ so Coflein grandly says) at one end of the fort.

This from ‘Notes and Queries’, March 12,1870.

I have [examined repeatedly the] remains on Conway mountain. They are intensely interesting.. They consist of a multitude of circular structures partly sunk below the ground, with rough walling a little raised above, evidently the substructure for huts... They are called by the country people “Cyttiau Gwyddelod,” which is generally interpreted ” the huts of the Irishmen,” but which in its primary meaning is “the huts of the savages,” or wild men, in contradistinction from the Gal, or agricultural race.

‘Cytiau’ (so I understand from the dictionary) does imply a rude kind of hut, more of an animal shelter, so this could be a dig at the Irish?? Or maybe not at all. Maybe a Proper Welsh person can explain the subtleties of the phrase for me.

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