NOTE: There is no public access to this site which lies on a military training area.

A Roman marching camp on the north-west part of the Sennybridge Training Area, first identified on Welsh Government LiDAR in 2023 by T. Driver, RCAHMW. The camp is sited at 330m O.D. and is sited on the undulating summit of a northeast-southwest spur between the Afon Dulas and Afon Llwyfan, named Gardiners Hill by the military. The camp is aligned NNE/SSW and measures 520m east-west x 385m north-south, enclosing 19.7 hectares. On the basis of Davies’ and Jones’ (2006, 41) preferred calculation of 480 men per hectare, the camp could have accommodated upwards of 9, 456 men. There is an external annexe, potentially for cavalry, on the SE side measuring 168 m x 90m.

The camp survives as a low earthwork, which has been further clarified through Local Relief Modelling of the LiDAR by Mark Walters, Heneb: Clwyd. The LiDAR shows extensive evidence of historic cultivation crossing most of the ridge which the camp occupies, which has clearly denuded the earthwork. The camp was visited on the ground by Toby Driver with Range staff on 14th August 2024.

The south-east corner and parts of the annexe survive almost intact as well-defined 0.3-0.5m high earthworks of a rampart with a counterscarp and outer ditch. The south-west corner is partly overlain by later field boundaries but still survives as a well-defined earthwork. Elsewhere the Roman rampart has been spread and denuded by historic plough cultivation; the camp has been further slighted with the planting – and recent felling – of a forestry block in the southeast quadrant while the northwest corner is partly slighted by forestry. A recent military road and part of a series of shooting butts have also been built through the camp.

One good internal clavicula gateway survives midway along the west side, at the high point of the spur, just south of a modern flagstaff. Views from the summit of the camp are excellent in all directions. The curving 0.3-0.4m high earthwork survives in grazed pasture, and is centrally cut by modern military slit trench: this helps to locate it in the present landscape.

A rectangular earthwork enclosure appears to underlie the Roman rampart in the southwest quadrant but lacks the characteristic rounded corners of a Roman military earthwork; it is almost certainly earlier than the Roman camp.

The camp lies 500m due south of the hitherto ‘possible’ Caerau, Tirabad Roman fort (NPRN 415953) which can now be confirmed as an actual Roman fort. It is notable that the Gardiners Hill camp has an external cavalry annexe similar to that at Arosfa Garreg (NPRN 84422), 15km to the south. Arosfa Garreg is also almost exactly the same size (488m x 365m) as this newly-discovered camp and may imply the same cohort on manoeuvres.

T. Driver, RCAHMW, 24 July 2023. Updated 8 August 2024

Reference:

Davies, J.L. and Jones, R.H. 2006. Roman Camps in Wales and the Marches. University of Wales Press: Cardiff

Site Record

Gardiners Hill Roman marching camp, Tirabad, Sennybridge Training Area