Situated on a dry knoll at 293m OD are the earthwork remains of a large structure 50m long by 14.5m wide. This building was divided in two, a large unit 33m long on the north and a second smaller unit 17m long at the southern end, where the remains may suggest a collapsed chimney stack. Attached to the south east corner of the building is a small square annexe 5.6m by 5m, accessed externally. The walls measure some 4.7m in width and there is a centrally placed entrance in the eastern wall and the possibility of a second entrance in the north wall, where traces of an earthwork running north from the north eastern corner of the structure, may well have guided animals into and out of the structure via this entrance. A shallow cutting into the hillside, 55m to the east of the structure (NPRN: 405548), represents the remains of a quarry which seems the likely source of building material for the structure; timber would have been available from the sort of young, relatively straight oaks visible today not far away, on the steep slopes beside the river Teifi.

This sheer scale of this structure suggests that it would have been put up by a large estate, and thus it is likely to have been associated with the monastic estate of the Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida, some 2km to the west. This area formed part of the `home' grange of Penardd, a large block of upland grazing land which stretched from the upper Teifi valley to the edge of the upper Wye. The most obvious use of this structure is a sheep house (sheepcote), used for over-wintering sheep and storing the necessary hay or other fodder, with the smaller unit possibly a shepherds cottage. These structures are also often called by their latin name bercaria which often means by extension a whole sheep-keeping unit, both the building and its associated pasture. Large scale sheep ranching was one of the main economic activities of the Cistercians granges although as Gerald of Wales noted, Strata Florida `was in due course of time enriched far more abundantly with oxen, studs of horses, herds of cattle' as well as flocks of sheep, and thus we must not exclude the possibility that the barn may have functioned as a vaccary (cattle ranch).

The structure remains relatively well preserved, the walls standing to some 0.3m high; most of the stone blocks in the interior seem to have originated from the recent stone clearance of adjacent fields, though there is also some evidence for stone-digging along the walls. Its relatively intact nature suggests it may well have continued in use into the post-medieval period, most likely as a sheep pen attached to one of the nearby farms (NPRNs: 405537, 405538, 405539, 40540).

A detailed survey of this structure was carried out by RCAHMW in 2006 as part of a wider study of the Troed y Rhiw area (NPRN 405578).

Louise Barker, RCAHMW, March 2007

Sources:
Fleming, A. & Barker, L. 2008 Monks and Local Communities: The Late-medieval Landscape of Troed y Rhiw, Caron Uwch Clawdd, Ceredigion. Medieval Archaeology 52, 261-290