Day 1 at the Plas Brynkir Site

Brynkir Lower House from the back. Photographed by Antonia Dewhurst, 2012

Here we are on the first day of twenty-eight in total at the archaeological site of Plas Brynkir! It was a long journey from Cardiff and with an added perk of visiting Cornelia, the owner of Plas Teg who was good enough to give us a cup of tea and a tour of her home. We arrived last night and were eventually greeted by our lovely volunteers and also finds of pottery right away from the old Midden including bits of Pottery from the Huddart family!

Finds from day 1!

Plas Brynkir is an important site which Love My Wales is working on, it is an abandoned medieval Welsh Estate in Dolbenmaen, Gwynedd and shows strong evidence that it was once a Deer Park for the native Welsh Princes. With the help of eight students from Cardiff University and various volunteers who will pop up this month, we will be undergoing a geophysical survey as well as an archaeological excavation which we are hoping will prove this theory. Today the students had their inductions to the Cwm Pennant Hostel, where we are staying including a health and safety brief from Luke, the manager as well as project brief from Mark, who is leading the event. The students also had their first glimpse of the site during their walk. They were also fortunate enough to have our volunteer, Emrys, who specialises in natural conservation. He spoke to them of various species which live on the site including Badgers, Wren, Blackbirds and different Amphibians. He also spoke of the consequences of various types of conservation on the environment and the importance to maintain the natural habitat as well as the conservation of the ruins themselves. Later on in the day, we were visited by a lovely artist called Liz Bolloten who has produced some beautiful paintings of Brynkir which I will upload on another blog post when they are updated (www.lizbolloten.co.uk) and also the amazing Ceri Leeder who is painting artist reconstructions of the ruins at Brynkir.

One of Ceri Leeder's reconstruction pieces of the Lower House