At home with the ancestors

Our regular columnist Alan Crosby takes a trip thousands of years into the past to explore what home life may have been like for our distant ancestors

Wednesday 30 June 2010
Alan Crosby, editor of The Local Historian
Read more from Alan's blog

I'm just back from Pembrokeshire, where I was leading a group on a history study visit. We went to some wonderful sites, places which I’ve been visiting for many years but which for most people were completely new.

Particularly memorable this time was Castell Henllys, between the Prescelli hills and the north coast. It’s an Iron Age hillfort, set in beautiful landscapes of woodland and valleys. Since the 1970s it has been the subject of extended archaeological investigation, not because it’s particularly spectacular but almost the opposite – it’s just one of many such small forts thickly scattered across the hills of south-west Wales, and it might therefore be regarded as typical.

But what makes it quite exceptional is that, for more than 25 years, work has been going on to reconstruct, as authentically as possible, the buildings in the interior of the fort. The project has involved meticulous archaeological investigation, followed by rebuilding houses and other structures on the precise foundations of those that stood there more than 2000 years ago. The authentic materials and construction methods have been replicated, as far as possible (valuable evidence came from Papua New Guinea, where closely similar buildings are still in use).

The guided tour was excellent and helped to bring the place alive. A fire was burning in the dim interior of one hut, even on a hot summer day, scenting the air with wood smoke and kippering the group inside. We were told how originally the reconstruction of the house involved an opening at the top, in the thatch, to let the smoke out … but that produced far too much through draught. It made the place chilly in summer and very cold in winter but, even worse, the updraught carried sparks and burning fragments up into the thatch, with predictable results.

So the hole was closed up (it turned out, exactly as was done in New Guinea). Now the smoke filters through the thatch, staining it dark brown-black and acting as a highly effective preservative – it kills off vermin, prevents infestations of rodents and other pests, helps to waterproof the thatch, and allows meat and fish to be smoked in the rafters.

We all felt that, no matter how beautiful and evocative the ruins of castles, palaces and ancient abbeys, there was something very special about a place which showed the lifestyles and the living conditions of our remote ancestors. Fascinating and thoroughly recommended.