Braich-y-Ddinas

Braich-y-Ddinas was once a large hillfort at the top of Penmaenmawr, a northern peak in the Carneddau range on Wales’s north coast. The fort stood on ground now scarred by quarrying, its stone ramparts and hut circles long erased by blasting and extraction. Early visitors like Thomas Pennant in the 18th century described massive rubble walls up to nine feet high and more than a dozen huts inside. The site also held three Bronze Age cairns and overlooked the Neolithic axe factory at Graig Lwyd nearby. The fort’s remains showed several phases of building and housed people between the outer and middle ramparts, where most finds came from. Excavators recovered Samian pottery, Roman coins of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, and a bronze mount thought to belong to a handled tankard. Two decorated bronze bracelets and a Middle Bronze Age spearhead were also found, alongside a large saddle quern and a sandstone spindle whorl. By the early 20th century the Darbishire family’s quarry had consumed the hilltop. A Royal Commission tried to save what was left, but quarrying took precedence over the ancient site. Commission members recorded the last traces before they vanished, including walls still standing in places and circular hut bases. Today only the memory and scattered reports remain of what once defended the summit of Penmaenmawr.