Qualla: Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles

Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeff Buck, CC BY-SA 2.0. In Welsh they are called Cytiau'r Gwyddelod - the huts of the Irish - a name from a later folk tradition that imagined Irish raiders settling the hill. The reality is older and Welsh. On a level terrace at the southwestern foot of Holyhead Mountain, twenty stone hut circles still stand where they were built, thick-walled, dry-stone, the bases of houses that supported conical thatched or turf roofs propped on poles. Originally there were fifty. The first systematic excavation took place in the 1860s, when William Owen Stanley of Penrhos worked the site with help from Augustus Lane Fox - later better known as the archaeologist Pitt Rivers. Stanley's findings appeared in the 1869 volume of Archaeologia Cambrensis and have anchored the interpretation of the site ever since.

Image: Jeff Buck | CC BY-SA 2.0

Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles: What Survives, and How

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ray West, CC BY-SA 2.0. Twenty huts of the original fifty are still legible on the ground. Most are circular - the homesteads, the places where families lived - with thick stone walls, hearths set in the floor, alcoves cut into the masonry, and in one case a stone trough still in place. Some huts are ov...

Image: Ray West | CC BY-SA 2.0

Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles: Dating an Inhabited Place

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Monsyn, CC BY-SA 4.0. The site's chronology is more complicated than 'Iron Age' suggests. Excavators in the early twentieth century found Roman coin hoards and Roman pottery and concluded the huts were Roman-era buildings. Then radiocarbon dating pushed the picture back: the settlement was occupied fr...

Image: Monsyn | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles: Stanley, Pitt Rivers, and the Victorian Spade

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cls14, CC BY-SA 3.0. William Owen Stanley was the son of John Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley of Alderley, and inherited Penrhos on the eastern side of Holy Island in 1850. He spent decades digging into Anglesey's prehistoric sites, often with neighbours and visiting antiquarians. Augustus Lane Fox helped...

Image: Cls14 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles: Walking the Terrace Today

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit k.dowdell, CC BY-SA 3.0. The site is in the care of Cadw, the Welsh government's heritage agency. It is open year-round - free to enter, no booking required - except for the three days of Christmas and New Year's Day. Access is up a stone stile over a wall. Stand on the terrace and you have Holyhead Moun...

Image: k.dowdell | CC BY-SA 3.0