The Romano-British coastal settlement or small town of Tai Cochion on the southern shore of the Isle of Anglesey, at a crossing point of the Menai Strait due north from Segontium fort at Caernarfon, was a comparatively recent and unexpected discovery. Although a high-status Romano-British site was suspected from finds made as early as the nineteenth century, the settlement was only confirmed following an extensive programme of geophysical survey and then, during 2010-11, two seasons of excavation by the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust (Hopewell 2016). In a Romano-British landscape of military installations, occasional villas and more numerous `native? defended settlements, this remains an unusual site type in the Welsh landscape. Hopewell (ibid., 105) notes Tai Cochion `?has no parallels throughout most of Wales and [the] western seaboard of Britain. The layout of the settlement is markedly different to that of the military vici in Wales?. One of the few possible comparators is the apparent Romano-British village in the Vale of Glamorgan at St Donats (NPRN 404661), revealed as extensive cropmarks in the drought of 2006; otherwise such discoveries of rural settlements or villages are rare, chiefly because of the difficulty in recognising them.

The settlement at Tai Cochion is characterised by a principal street with short spurs, flanked by a series of small ditched enclosures of about 20m x 40m and clear rectangular anomalies ? interpreted as buildings ? with typical dimensions of around 16m x 8m (ibid.,23-27). Wider-spreading field rectangular systems extend into the hinterland on the north and west sides.

Aerial photography on 13th January 2012 revealed an unploughed field of slight settlement earthworks to the north-west of the main settlement focused at SH 474659 which could represent upstanding vestiges of this important Roman settlement (see NPRN 418920).

T. Driver, RCAHMW.

References:

Hopewell, D., 2011, in Archaeology in Wales 50, pp. 93-94.
Hopewell, D. 2016: `A Roman settlement at Tai Cochion, Llanidan, on Anglesey?, Archaeologia Cambrensis 165, 21?112