Caerau Gaer is a multivallate - many walled - later Prehistoric type settlement enclosure occupying the brow of a prominent south-west facing hill spur overlooking the Moylgrove valley. Several slab-lined graves were discovered here in the nineteenth century and the site was subject to partial geophysical survey in 1989.The enclosure is defined by three roughly concentric rings of greatly degraded ramparts, now mostly reduced to scarps, with 10-30m intervals. The inner encloses an area of 0.7ha and the outermost 2.3ha. There are some indications of a south-west facing entrance. The geophysical survey identified the ramparts as 5.0-5.5m wide bands with only slight indications of ditches. It seems likely that these were massive drystone walls.

Undated long-cist graves were reportedly found throughout the 19th century between the ramparts of the hillfort. Long-cist burials are characteristic of the late Roman to early Medieval period and suggest the re-use of an earlier settlement site. Finds of `hammers? and `cutlesses? indicate that the cemetery may have been in use from the Iron Age onwards. The grave reported in 1864 lay between the second and third rampart on the east side. The earlier finds appear to have been made to the north, south and east of this spot. Two field names containing the word `eglwys? are associated with the site, indicating that the site may have developed as a church site (although reuse of such a large contour fort is not typical in south-west Wales). The proximity of a field known as `Yr Hen Fynachlog? reinforces the theory that this may have been the original site of the monastery of Llandudoch, predecessor of St Dogmaels Abbey (NPRN 94164), some 3.8km to the north-east.

Sources incude:
Cambria Archaeology, 2003, Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Sites Project, Pembrokeshire gazetteer
Mytum & Webster 'Geophysical Surveys at Defended Enclosures ...' (2003) - unpublished report
Vincent in Archaeologia Cambrensis 3rd series 10 (1864), 299-306

John Wiles 20.02.08