As you walk through the antlered gate of the hillfort at Castell Henllys you are stepping back into the past. This is no mere historical curiosity, nor ‘just’ an educational museum… it is a real and ancient settlement,  painstakingly recreated and brought once more to vivid life.

There are posts marking some of the placements where the supporting frames of the roundhouses were found during excavations. There are places where you can go and see the stone footings of similar buildings. Indeed, we would see some that very afternoon. But here, there are not just posts. There are roundhouses.

Over a period of twenty six years, archaeologists explored the site. The roundhouses are built on the original foundations of the Iron Age settlement, standing exactly where they would have stood over two thousand years ago. The site provides a time machine for us to see how our ancestors lived. For the archaeologists, it is something more… a unique opportunity to study the practical issues of living in such a settlement; to see how things would have had to be constructed… and learn how they worked.

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