Site Record

Footings of a likely medieval longhouse set at right-angles to the slope, here caused by construction of the longhouse into a pre-existing field lynchet. The building measures 13m x 6.5m and was surveyed by John Evans' team in the 1980s and published as Site 47 in Evans 1990, p. 265, Fig. 18. Evans describes it thus;

'Rectangular stone-walled enclosure in the corner of a field defined by similarly constructed walls. The dilapidated walling suggests antiquity, but the walls are contiguous with the recent boundaries. They overlie a sinuous lynchet of the prehistoric system.'

Re-analysis of the 2011 0.5m resolution LiDAR suggests that the longhouse does straddle the earlier lynchet, but then is definitely crossed by the low east-west wall footings of the historic field wall and is therefore earlier than the most recent post-medieval episode of wall building. The lynchet was sectioned in 2017 (NPRN 421994) some 50m west of the longhouse and this produced twelfth century AD dates suggesting medieval cultivation in the South Stream settlement. This building may have been constructed partly on top of the field lynchet during or after the episode of medieval cultivation. In its character and survival it would seem to be a medieval building.

T. Driver, Oct 2019

Reference:
Evans, J. G. 1990. An archaeological survey of Skomer, Dyfed. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 56, 247-67.