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The comprehensive gazetteer and bibliography of the medieval castles, fortifications and palaces of England, Wales, the Islands.

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Cefnllys Town Defences

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Keventhlis

In the community of Penybont.
In the historic county of Radnorshire.
Modern authority of Powys.
Preserved county of Powys.

OS Map Grid Reference: SO089614
Latitude 52.24366° Longitude -3.33540°

Cefnllys Town Defences has been described as a probable Urban Defence.

There are earthwork remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.

Description

Cefnllys is recorded as a small borough, of about 20 burgesses, in the late C13 and C14. This was most probably in the Iron Age hill fort which functioned as the castle's outer bailey, although the parish church is outside the hill fort on low ground near a bridge over the Ithon.

Surrounding the old church of Cefnllys are a series of hollow ways, field banks with ridge and furrow, and, on the east, well preserved rectangular house platforms ranged around trackways and hollow ways. The earthworks may represent the settlement of the historic borough of Cefnllys, centred on the castle to the east. The earthworks are grass-covered and used for low density stock grazing. (Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust HER)

Comments

The parish church is a complete late C19 rebuild and its predecessor may represent a post-medieval move of a, by then, village to a more convenient location. However the earthworks by the church reported in the HER (scheduled monument RD150) suggesting this location had some antiquity and it may be a settlement, at this location, predated the castle and the town within the castle bailey was a failed English borough whilst the Welsh village survived somewhat longer.

Links to archaeological and architectural databases, mapping and other online resources

Data >	Coflein	County HER	Scheduling
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	Historic Wales	V. O. B.	Geology	LIDAR
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio

Sources of information, references and further reading

The CADW scheduled monument record number is RD008.
The National Monument Record (Coflein) number(s) for this site is/are 96530.
The County Historic Environment Record (formerly Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) for this site is/are 23648.

Books
- Creighton, O.H. and Higham, R.A., 2005, Medieval Town Walls (Stroud: Tempus) p. 82, 217, 273
  Bond, C.J., 1987, 'Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Defences' in Schofield, J. and Leech, R. (eds), Urban Archaeology in Britain (CBA Research Report 61) p. 92-116 online copy
  Soulsby, Ian, 1983, The Towns of Medieval Wales (Phillimore; Chichester) p. 105-6
  Beresford, M., 1967, New Towns of the Middle Ages (London) p. 570-1
Periodical Articles
- Creighton, Oliver, 2006, ''Castles of Communities': Medieval Town Defences in England; Wales and Gascony' Château Gaillard Vol. 22 p. 75-86
  Brown, A.E., 1972, 'The castle, borough and park of Cefnllys' Transactions of the Radnorshire Society Vol. 42 p. 11-22 online copy

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales, the four welsh archaeological trusts and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain Designated Historic Asset Descriptive Information from The Welsh Historic Environment Service (Cadw), licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown.
Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Lidar coverage in the UK is not complete. The button above will give an idea of the area of coverage. Higher resolution lidar images in both DSM and DTM form may be available from Lle A geo-Portal for Wales (click the preview tag to bring up a map and then select format byclicking on the small blue diamond in the top right corner of the map.)

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This record last updated 04/07/2016 11:19:58

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