I recently went out walking with a friend of mine who’s a Doctor of Archaeology. She’s always getting out her OS map and making us walk to a Cairn or some sort of ruin.
This time we decided to head to Brecon Gaer Roman Fort which is a CADW site, though you would never believe in when you turn up on this poor man’s farm. The actual site is the size of a football pitch with lots of the external walls still remaining in relatively good condition. As I stood at one of the entrances and looked down at the river I realised that I sadly new very little about Wales’ ancient history. I live near a Roman Road but where does it go to? I also thought that the Roman’s didn’t get very far in Wales!
Here was this huge ruin close to my home town that I had never heard of. Taking another look at the map you realise that there are hundreds of sites across Wales. While most probably aren’t much to look at they tell an important story of our history. I have since started looking into the history of my own village and what history lies buried on my doorstop, I’ve been told Ystradfellte was once home to it’s own prince and there sure is some castle ruins. I want to know more.
Ideas:
I think it about time Wales’s ancient history was explored once more on TV, and not just by going to look at all the well known sites and castles across Wales. We need to find a way to look at the celts and the romans and our past in an exciting new way, maybe by taking some archaeological digging in the style of Time Team and mixing it with fun animated sequences like in Horrible History and creating online interactive maps of different periods of Wales’ history that people can add to and leave the stories that have been passed down about where they live and what happened there.
Its not even an idea at the moment so any thoughts about what I could do would be much appreciated.
