Qualla: Din Lligwy

Din Lligwy: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sometime in the early 4th century, while the Roman Empire was still nominally running Britain, a small community on the east coast of Anglesey built itself a defended settlement of stone houses, sturdy enough that you can still walk through its doorways today. Din Lligwy is the kind of site that should not survive: a small late-Roman British village far from any great city, on land that has been farmed continuously for sixteen centuries. Almost everywhere else, sites like this have been ploughed flat. Here the outer wall is still substantially intact - reduced in height, but in plan unchanged. The foundations of the roundhouses still stand. The rectangular buildings beside them - barns, workshops, almost certainly an iron-smithing forge - are visible enough that you can see exactly how the village was organised.

Read more: Din Lligwy on Qualla

Image: Paul Allison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Din Lligwy: Excavated, Not Cleared

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Greig, CC BY-SA 2.0. The site was excavated between 1905 and 1907 by archaeologists who knew enough to leave its visible structures standing. Their finds tell the story: hundreds of fragments of Roman-period pottery from the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, many of them mended in antiquity with little iron ...

Read more: Din Lligwy on Qualla

Image: Ian Greig | CC BY-SA 2.0

Din Lligwy: Older Than the Pottery

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John S Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. Despite the dominance of 3rd and 4th century finds, the site is almost certainly older than its Roman-period material suggests. The basic layout - a defended enclosure on a hill with good visibility and a reliable freshwater source - belongs to the Iron Age tradition that long pr...

Read more: Din Lligwy on Qualla

Image: John S Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Din Lligwy: What You See Now

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John S Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cadw, the Welsh historical monuments service, looks after the site and visiting is free. A short footpath leads up from the road through a small wood - the hill is overgrown today with sycamore and ash, though when the village was occupied the slopes would have been cleared for s...

Read more: Din Lligwy on Qualla

Image: John S Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0