a. A circular enclosure, with an internal diameter of 13m, a denuded wall, or bank, 2.5-3.5m wide and 0.6m high internally with interior facing slabs visible, and having a SES entrance, is interpreted as a roundhouse. Springing from the house's circuit to the E and SW are ruined stone walls which curve awat to the SE to define a sector of a putative enclosure c.100m in diameter.
A rectilinear building in this situation would be interpreted as a hafod or lluest.
(source Os495card; SS48NW4)
j.Wiles 01.07.02

b. A 'cashel'-like enclosure and three sided annexe 0.5-0.6ha in extent located at between 107m and 114m O.D. on the gentle eastern slopes of the Down. The site was surveyed by A.H. Ward in January and March 1986. Measuring approximately 22m N-S by 19m the oval structure or cashel is bounded by vegetation covered banks of tumbled stone up to 3m wide. The survival of some facing stones, especially in the western quadrat, suggests that originally the wall consisted of rubble between two lines of conglomerate slabs, 2m apart. There is no evidence of internal structures. The entrance in the southern quadrat is described by the R.C.A.H.M as a simple gap 2m in width (1976 Vol 1 (II) p71 No 707) but Ward suggests that the south western terminal of the bank overlaps the eastern terminal with a 1m gap inbetween (1987 forthcoming). The National Trust surveyors found that the evidence for overlap is not as clear as indicated on Ward's plan.
The circular structure or cashel is located at the northern end of a three sided enclosure formed of a lynchet to the east and a stone bank to the west. Neither actually abut the circular structure as two tracks run through the site at these points meeting in the middle of the enclosure. The lynchet is at most 2m wide and between 0.5 and 0.8m high and fades out towards the southern extremity. The stone bank is vegetation-covered and runs 60m in a south-west direction before turning south for another 36m. On average 2m wide the bank is between 0.4 and 0.5m high. Stone facing was noted on the bank and the lynchet.
There was no evidence of a linear feature completeing the southern side of the annexe but an overgrown cairn 0.5m high and approximately 3m in diameter lies on the line between the ends of the bank and the lynchet.
A cashel is a stone-walled, circular, enclosed homestead usually dated to the eary medieval period. This type of site and its earth bank equivalent (rath) are particularily common in Ireland but several examples have been noted in West Wales. There are three possible sites on the Gower; the other two located on or near Burry Holmes. Ward, however, suggests that the Rhossili Down example is "an element in a spectrum of stone walled enclosures often associated with apparently open-sided annexes in the south Wales uplands" (1987 forthcoming). Ward suggests that the feature may indicate agriculatural exploitation of Rhossili Down at an unknown but early date and that cultivation may have been carried out in the plot marked by the wall and lynchet.
John Latham RCAHMW 1 Sept 2015
(from NT Report "Rhossili" E Plunkett Dillon)