The discovery of a previously unknown Roman fort in Pembrokeshire, Wells, has overturned assumptions that the area’s indigenous Celtic tribes maintained peaceful relations with Roman invaders.
The site, which has excited archaeologists, has until now been hidden beneath a huge overgrown field. This explains why farming the land was unsuccessful: farmers kept hammering away at the stones.
The discovery was made by Dr Mark Meroni, a leading Roman expert and tutor at the University of Oxford, who said: “This is a massive fortress and an incredible find of national importance.”
He was even more excited because it was right next to the Roman road he had first discovered.
The fort is thought to date from the first to third centuries AD, when the Celtic Demetai tribe inhabited the southwestern region of modern Wales.
They were considered pro-Roman, which meant that a large military presence was not needed to quell local resistance.
Meloni said the fort showed that this area of Wales was much more militarized than previously thought: “I now think they were not pro-Roman at all, but the Romans were striking the area with an iron fist.”
He noted that it was similar in form and scale to the only known Roman fort in Pembrokeshire, unearthed in 2013 at Weston, near Haverford West. connected to the Roman road network.
As a “Pembrokeshire man”, Meroni often walked along a particularly straight road – wondering if it was Roman – and, when he was looking at satellite images recently, his eye was drawn to a block of dimensions that might have been Roman Attracted by the grounds of the fort.
He drove to the field. “Protruding from the ground was a triangular fragment that looked like the slates of a Roman roof. “Surely not,” I thought. ” I pulled it up and lo and behold, it was a typical Roman roof slate, an absolute peach. Flip it over and you can see the diagonal grooves below it to fit the grooves underneath it. It’s really A kind of beauty.
He added: “This is the diagnostic evidence I’ve been looking for, which is a miracle because it’s a huge site.”
Taking his computer, he knocked on the door of a local farmer: “I said: ‘I think you’re in the middle of a Roman fort.'”
The farmer told him that the fields were full of slates and stones. “This shows that there is a lot of material underground,” Meroni said. “Because there are obviously several collapsed buildings here. The stone slabs are left and the wood is rotten.
He said some of the roof slates were stained with nail rust and showed gouges and cuts that would have accommodated slates above or below: “These are diagnostically consistent with other slates in Roman British architecture.”
The fort is about 185 meters long and 155 meters wide. In the 19th century, councils “fossilized” their footprints by enclosing large tracts of public land in the area through riverbanks, hedges and walls.
Meroni said its functionality ticked “all the boxes.” It has the typical rounded “playing card” shape and is surrounded by a huge ditch with an outer bank or counter-scripp and an inner bank (escarpment), which “almost certainly served as the basis for the city wall”: “The fortress was strategic The meaning is situated on sloping ground with excellent views over the river valley and, as is often the case, its water supply comes from two nearby springs.
Meloni is the founding editor of Antiqvvs, a quarterly magazine dedicated to archeology, ancient art and history, where he will publish his latest research in August.
His two previously discovered Roman villas were at Fords in Pembrokeshire and Cattersloe in Oxfordshire, discovered in 2002 and 2016 respectively. He also identified a Roman road along the southern shoulder of Preselis in 2022, overturning the assumption that the Romans did not venture as far into Wells.
To protect the new discovery, its location cannot be revealed at this time. Meroni said a geophysical survey was needed: “This requires funding and, given the extensive nature of this extraordinary find, it would be best to involve regional archaeological trusts.”
He hoped to find evidence of a neighboring “vicus”, a typical civilian settlement that developed along the fortress. He believed it was a Roman auxiliary fort, probably designed for a force of about 500 soldiers.
He believes the site will be declared a scheduled monument: “It’s an absolute classic.”
