14 April 2009
Caerphilly county borough council is appealing for local people to help piece together the history of one of the area's most important tourist attractions.
Llancaiach Fawr Manor House in Nelson is holding a special Archaeological Finds Afternoon on Sunday 19th April 2009 and it is hoped the event will reveal more about the rich history of the site.
Llancaiach Fawr has received funding from the Rural Development Project Fund as part of the 'Caerffilli Cwm y Mynedd' programme to support rural areas in the county borough.
The grant of £150,000, spread over the next three years, will be used to fund investigations into increasing public access to areas of the Manor, the old stables and the mill by the river, as well as developing designs for more sympathetic lighting and heating systems for the interpretation of the Manor in its 17th century state.
Importantly, the grant will also be used to fund historical and archaeological research to discover more about the immediate area surrounding Llancaiach Fawr, in particular, the history of the site before the current Manor House was built c.1530.
To help build up a more complete picture, Diane Walker, the General Manager at Llancaiach Fawr, is appealing for local people who have done any metal detecting in and around the site to bring their finds to a specially arranged afternoon in the Education Centre at the Manor on Sunday 19th April, from 2-5pm.
"Although we can find out a huge amount about the past from the remains of buildings, the small, often insignificant looking objects, can tell us so much more about the people themselves, what work they did, what they wore and other fascinating details about their lives. I hope that anyone who has found any objects in the area whilst metal detecting or just out and about in the fields, will let us have a look at the finds so that we can identify and record them and plot them on a map to build up a fuller picture of the past in this area".
Mark Lodwick, the Portable Antiquities Scheme Officer, from the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, and Mike Anthony from the Council for British Archaeology ( Wales) will be on hand to identify objects and record details of where they were found, so that the information can be plotted on to a map to reveal where people were living in the past.
The research team hope to be able to create settlement and activity maps for the area from prehistory, the Roman period, through the so called 'Dark Ages' or Early Medieval Period before the Normans came, the later Medieval era through to the Tudor and Stuart periods right through to the modern day.
For more information contact Diane Walker at Llancaiach Fawr Manor on 01443 414010 or e-mail walked1@caerphilly.gov.uk
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