Old Settlement
The ridge contains the evidence of many remains of old settlement. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales reports that a survey in 1993-4 added around 600 sites to the 2 already recorded on the Sites and Monuments Record. According to this record, the earliest evidence of activity was 4 cairns, probably dating back to the Bronze Age, and there was a round hut with adjoining sub-rectangular structures suggesting late prehistoric settlement. Many remains indicated mediaeval occupation, but these were not on the exposed top of the ridge, but generally between the 250m and 350m contours, where the soil was better and there was more shelter.
Most of the later sites have agricultural connections, and in some places traces of earlier field patterns survive. The most substantial remains today are derelict farmhouses, and even two two derelict chapels.
It is possible that some of the buildings on the edges of the marginal land may be hafotai (summer dwellings) rather than permanent dwellings.
Read more about this topic: Cefn Cyfarwydd
Famous quotes containing the word settlement:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“[The Settlement House] must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)