The ferocious and stubborn tribes of Wales

The seemingly inexorable Roman advance across Southern Britain following Claudius' landing in AD 43 was halted in AD 47 when the armies encountered the uplands and the stubborn, ferocious, and fragmented tribes of Wales. The Romans struggled for thirty years to subdue the Deceangli, Ordovices and Silures, only succeeding in AD 77 when the last Ordivician rebellion was suppressed by the Agricola, the Governor of Roman Britain from AD 77 to 85.

The nature of this bitterly fought and highly mobile campaign can be seen in the remains of the invader's marching camps that survive right across across Wales. Built to accommodate an army on the move, and usually constructed with a single season's campaign in mind, around thirty have so far been identified in Wales. They range considerably in size, from as little as 1.3ha up to almost 20 ha, but are typically square in shape with rounded corners. The defences are usually simple, consisting of a single ditch and rampart, but with an often elaborate entrance arrangement.

First Discoveries

 One of the more spectacular sites is at Y Pigwn on the summit of Trecastle mountain in Breconshire, about 400 metres above sea level. Here, two consecutive camps overlap one another. The earthwork remains of the rampart and ditch of both camps are clearly visible, though one side has been partially destroyed by later quarries for tilestones. Such defences were constructed to enclose a large area for the tents of the military commanders and their troops and all their accoutrements.

The two camps at Y Pigwn were the first to be recorded in Wales, being described by the antiquarian Thomas Rees in the 1850s. They represent different campaigns by the Roman army in southern Wales in the first century AD – camp prefects tended to prefer to build their camps from scratch rather than refortify old ones. The larger, earlier camp encloses 15 hectares and the later, which more or less fits inside it, 10 hectares. A distinctive feature found in both camps is the semicircular arc of ditch guarding each of the entrances, known as a clavicula. These funnelled visitors sideways, exposing their unshielded flanks to the soldiers guarding the gate. Once inside the camp, visitors would have been confronted by rows upon rows of tents, regularly laid out with a unit (contubernium) of eight men sleeping in each tent.

Hidden Remains

The complicated jumble of cropmarks at Walton in eastern Radnorshire demonstrates how many of these camps have revealed themselves. The soil of former ditches is much richer and damper than the surrounding soil, allowing the shapes of buried sites to be picked out in detail. At this single location, overlain a by the circular gyrus of later Roman date, the distinct shape of two square marching camps can be seen which, along with a third close-by and two more about 600m to the north, are an important cluster of such sites that represent a series of campaigns up the Arrow valley into Welsh uplands.

Scapula vs Caratacus

The unusual camp at Twyn-y-briddallt is shaped to conform to the profile of the ridge on which it is sited, above the Rhondda valley in Glamorgan. This ridge would have afforded excellent views of the Aman Valley, Aberdare Valley and Rhondda Fach, and it provides valuable detail about the movement of the Roman army during its attempts to control the Silures, the tribe that controlled the majority of the South Wales Valleys and the Vale of Glamorgan. The Silurian campaign was at its fiercest under the governorship of Scapula (AD 47 - 52), who was pitted against the most romantic of the British resistors, Caratacus. He was ultimately defeated in a battler further to the north, in the territory of the Ordovices, in AD 51.

New Discoveries

Sites continue to be discovered and recorded. The camp at Trefal in Radnorshire, was identified by in 1987 through a combination of aerial photography and ground survey. It survives as a low earthwork on wet ground, partly denoted by later field boundaries. Another recent discovery is the stunning earthwork camp at Pen Plaenau in Denbighshire. The location of this camp indicates a route of march taken by armies in the first century AD and further develops the picture of the campaigns of the Roman army in Wales.

Story contributed by: RCAHMW