Ben Woolhead visits a CAER Heritage dig in Trelai Park on the outskirts of Cardiff, where excavations have unveiled a 3,500-year-old house among many other items historically significant to our knowledge of Wales’ prehistory.
On the surface, Trelai Park in the Cardiff suburb of Ely might seem like a relatively unremarkable green space, sandwiched between the A48 and residential streets to the north and the A4232 dual carriageway and Leckwith Woods to the south. But dig down a little, as the CAER Heritage Trelai Park dig is doing, and you soon start to uncover its rich history.
Not only was it the location of Ely Racecourse for more than 80 years, but it was also requisitioned for use as an airfield during the Second World War. Perhaps most notably, though, it’s the site of a substantial Roman villa, complete with a bathhouse, that was first discovered in 1894 and excavated nearly three decades later.
Perhaps most notably, that is, until now. In June this year, a team from CAER Heritage led by Dr Oliver Davis of Cardiff University’s School of History, Archaeology and Religion set out to investigate whether the site’s history went even further back. Olly explains:
“We’ve been exploring the hillfort of Caerau, south-west Cardiff, with local communities since 2011 [reported on by this writer at the beginning of the year]. A significant Neolithic causewayed enclosure was revealed in 2014 alongside important Iron Age, Roman and Medieval remains. Recent work, though, has focused on examining the landscape around the hillfort. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the team targeted excavation this summer on a small, rectangular enclosure found during a geophysical survey in Trelai Park around 1,500 metres north-east of Caerau Hillfort.”
They arrived on site with a hypothesis: that this enclosure would date back to the Late Iron Age or Early Roman period, and therefore potentially connect the abandonment of the hillfort in the 1st century AD and the construction of the Roman villa in the early 2nd century. However, the reality proved rather different, and that hypothesis soon had to be consigned to the spoil heap.
“Unexpectedly, the enclosure produced an assemblage of Middle Bronze Age ceramics, including a complete vessel,” explains Olly. “Middle Bronze Age occupation is very rare indeed and so this made this year’s discoveries all the more remarkable. The site is well preserved, and a Bronze Age roundhouse was excavated dating to around 1500BC, the oldest known house – yet – in Cardiff.”
Trench supervisor Anna-Elyse Young admits that, as a flint specialist, her personal favourite finds were an assortment of flint scrapers – but for Olly, it’s impossible to look past that complete pot. “It dates to about 1500BC and has stylistic influences from Devon, Cornwall and south-east England. Pots like this are very rare. It seems to have been placed in the ditch, perhaps as part of an offering when the settlement was abandoned.”
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The four-week-long dig may have unearthed some intriguing evidence and radically shifted theories and perceptions, but it wasn’t without its challenges – not least due to the elements. “Trench 3, in particular, struggled with the rain,” Anna-Elyse recalls, “as it puddled at the bottom and we had to bail out and then sponge up water by hand, leaving the clay to get exceptionally sticky – which is almost impossible to trowel.”
Worse was the hot weather of the final two weeks. Strong sunshine and extreme heat baked the clay rock-hard and made it far more difficult to detect subtle changes in soil colour – a real issue when the archaeological evidence sought was often in the form of the faint outlines of postholes and pits, rather than solid chunks of masonry. Added to that, Anna-Elyse says, was the need to ensure that everyone stayed cool and hydrated: “We had gazebos in the trenches when possible and ice lolly breaks!”
While the excavation was led by professional archaeologists, they were aided by an army of undergraduate students, schoolchildren and enthusiastic local volunteers. As Olly points out, “at its heart [CAER Heritage] is a community project”; Anna-Elyse enjoyed seeing “people of different ages, life experiences and expertise working together to uncover Trelai’s secrets,” adding “the local dog walkers became very knowledgeable as they stopped by the trenches and asked questions about our progress each day!”
An open day was held halfway through the dig, specifically designed to engage the local community through tours of the site and a range of fun activities for kids. Over the course of the four weeks, Olly says, “around 1,500 people were involved in the dig, either visiting or getting their hands dirty.”
Among that number were me and my son – we paid a visit to the site on two separate occasions, seizing the opportunity to help out with sifting through the spoil heap and to work on our trowelling technique under the supervision of Olly, Anna-Elyse, archaeologist/heritage educator Sally Pointer and the welcoming and encouraging CAER Heritage team. (They even let us dip into the biscuit tub…)
The dig wrapped up on 15 July, with the archaeology covered over by a protective layer of soil and the turf carefully relaid ready for the start of the new football season – but in reality, Olly notes, the work is “only just beginning”. CAER Heritage will be “running what are known as ‘post-ex’ activities at our heritage centre – cleaning the finds from the site and processing all the samples we took. The pot and other delicate objects have gone to the university for conservation. We’ll be arranging visits for volunteers to see this in progress.”
In the meantime, conservator Leonie McKenzie – who describes the responsibility as “a privilege and an honour” – has been providing regular social media updates on the excavation’s most prized discovery. The procedure is necessarily painstaking. “I’m cleaning off most of the dirt using paintbrushes, cotton swabs and water. This is a very delicate process, as the pot is a low-fired ceramic – if it gets too wet, it could potentially turn back to clay.”
Already, though, Leonie’s work is yielding positive results. “Through the cleaning, the decoration has been much more defined and easier to see. So far, there seem to be two different patterns, both near the rim of the pot. One is going in diagonal rows and looks to be small regular rectangles. The other is in a wave shape, with some areas raised from the surface, and with what look to be divots/indentations made with a finger or thumb.”
While there remains much to be done in the wake of this summer’s dig, it’s little wonder that this unplanned glimpse of the long-distant past already has Olly dreaming of a return to the site. “We’d like to go back next year, explore the roundhouse more and really work out how it was being used 3,500 years ago!”
Info: caerheritage.org
words BEN WOOLHEAD