The most famous of all, Gyrn, Caernarfon
Cwm Anafon, Carneddau, N Wales
Winter Hope
Fridd Isaf
On the island of St Kilda
Location not known
Cwm Caseg, Brecon Beacons
Moel Wnion
It's interesting what a range of styles there are, controlled to some degree by terrain and stone type and availability, the size and management style of local flocks, and maybe even the breeds of sheep and their ability to jump...........
Many of these sheepfold complexes, with multiple cells, are free standing out on the common, but others have guide walls.
According to Coflein, some of the Welsh examples incorporate prehistoric walls -- but most appear to have been built in the 1700s and 1800s.
PS. Thanks to various readers for drawing my attention to "banjo enclosures" -- found in many areas of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement. More here:
According to the Historic England report, these were initially interpreted as features built for stock management -- but are now thought to be the settlement sites of high-status individuals. Hmmm -- the evidence for that seems a bit thin, and if these are NOT related to the movement and management of sheep, pigs, cattle etc, where are these features in the landscape? Once domestication and the large-scale keeping of animals occurred across vast swathes of the countryside, animals had to be managed and protected -- and stockades, guide walls, folds and small pens must have been essential features of the landscape. All very interesting......
Banjo Enclosures, Iron Age mostly late Iron Age as described in the linked EH report, the timeline graphic in the report is misleading it shows in red Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age relating to Banjo Enclosures, they are mostly from after 100BC. Lots of Enclosures in the Neolithic and BA but not Banjos. As part of the BA field systems on Salisbury plain and elsewhere there are many interlinked enclosures which could be for stock. Banjo Enclosures are often part of systems of linear boundaries and enclosures around them which would be for stock management. Larger Banjos have a number of various sized round houses in them, the smaller ones just the one large house this and finds indicate high status.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful sheepfolds though.
Thanks Peter -- useful info. So all the banjo features are Iron Age? Why the weird patterns? Are the winding walls windbreaks, or early attempts to create a street pattern?
ReplyDeleteThe Moel Wnion one at the bottom of your page is the same one on Y Gyrn, at the top (I think), which as you say, is magnificent and still used today. The one in Cwm Caseg is very close. These are all spectacular sheepfolds because the Carneddau mountains are mainly common ground, shared by lots of farmers for grazing - more farmers means the sheepfolds have to have more pens to hold them when they have been separated. There is another one very similar to Cwm Caseg on the other side of the Carneddau mountains at Cwm Dulyn.
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