Site in Pembrokeshire suggests area was more militarised than previously thought, says expert who made discovery
overturns assumptions that the area’s indigenous Celtic tribe was on peaceful terms with the Roman invaders.
He is all the more excited because it is right next to a Roman road that he has also identified for the first time. Merrony said that this fort suggested this part of Wales was considerably more militarised than previously thought: “I now don’t think they were pro-Roman at all, but that the Romans were hitting the area with an iron fist.”
He drove to that field. “Sticking out of the ground was a triangular piece that looked like a Roman roofing slate. I thought: ‘Surely not?’ I pulled it up and lo and behold, it’s an archetypal Roman roofing slate, an absolute peach. Flip it upside down and you can see underneath a diagonal line where it was grooved to fit into the one that was underneath it. It’s a real beauty.
The farmer told him that the field was full of slate and stone. “That suggests there’s a lot of material under the ground,” Merrony said. “That’s because there’s obviously several collapsed buildings here. The slates are left, the timbers have rotted.” Merrony said that its features ticked “all the boxes”. It has a characteristic “playing-card” form with rounded corners and is surrounded by a huge ditch with an outer bank or counterscarp and inner bank , “which was almost certainly the base for the rampart”: “The fort is strategically placed on sloping ground with an excellent vista overlooking a river valley, as was often the case. Its water supply drew upon two nearby springs.
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