Burry Holmes

Kim, Dan Dylan & I went for a walk this afternoon. We parked the car at Hillend campsite and walked over the dunes to the beach. I then had the great idea of walking to Burry Holmes, the tidal islet at the north end of Rhossili beach. This proved to be a great success, until we had to walk back. how come places are further on the way back?
Anyway, I thought I'd do some research on the Holmes.

It seems that their name derives from Old Norse, holmes, meaning island (thanks "the pigs lip", of http://www.swansea-gower.co.uk/ )


The site was a hill in Mesolithic times, 12 miles from the sea, looking down onto the vale of what is now the bristol channel/severn estuary.

Mesolithic Microliths have been found here, which are the sharpened shards of flint used to line the tips of spears & harpoons. In fact, microliths from this site proved to show signs of Birch Bark Pitch, leading to archeologists from the Museum of Wales discovering how these shards were fixed to the haft.

There is a pretty impressive earthwork running across the middle of the island, as you can see from the above photo, which served as a defense for the inhabitants. It must have taken ages to construct.

There are the remains of a 12th century monastry, Hermitage or oratory, depending on your source, which may or may not lie on the site of an older wooden church. Saint Cennyd, a sixth century monk with or without a withered leg may or may not have lived here.

Cuttings from the net:-

Gathering the jewels

Nine of the many headlands on the south and west Gower coast were defended and occupied during the Iron Age. All the sites are relatively small, and should be thought of more as defended homesteads of perhaps one or two families rather than full-scale villages. Where dating evidence has been found it appears that the sites belong to the late Iron Age, and were even occupied into the Roman period. Two such sites are on the promontories at either end of Rhossili Bay - Burry Holms at the north end, and Worms Head at the south. Burry Holms possesses marvellous natural defences, and at high tide the headland becomes an island, making the site even more impregnable.

BBC wales

Some 9,000 years ago the tidal island of Burry Holms was an inland hill from which hunters could watch herds of game in the plain below (the present day Bristol Channel). The sea was up to 12 miles away, and pine and birch woodland covered the Severn Estuary. Charcoal found on the site suggests that the local population was manipulating this woodland to help them catch their prey.
By burning small patches of forest, hunters were creating new and nutritious plant growth which would encourage deer into the area. Once the new growth gave way to bigger trees, they moved on and burnt somewhere else. Charred remains of hazelnut shells have been found on this islet. Their contents would have been an excellent food resource for this mobile population. Small tools made with flint, wood and bone have also been discovered here, and were probably used for fishing or hunting.
No signs of this Mesolithic population can be seen on Burry Holms today. However Iron Age and Medieval people left visible evidence of their presence in the form of a rampart and ditch and remains of a monastery respectively

The Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust

Medieval extra-parochial area in West Gower. Very rich archaeological sequence from prehistory onwards. Major early ecclesiastical site associated with Llanmadoc (group I Latin-inscribed memorial stone and two Group II cross-slabs). Douglas Hague’s excavations on the associated medieval hermitage site on Burry Holms, with pre-church timber structures, still unpublished. Elizabeth Walker’s recent excavations, which revealed later prehistoric timber structures including roundhouse, may throw fresh light on the nature and date of the early timber features under church.

Extra parochial area probably representing pre-Norman ecclesiastical estate, later passing to Abbey of St Taurin, Evreux (France) and then to All Souls College, Oxford.

COUNCIL FOR BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY

Burry Holms, Swansea 15.09.00 to 13.10.00 (dates) Research excavations will continue at the Early Mesolithic site located on the tidal island of Burry Holms, Llangennith, Gower. Excavation is undertaken between tides for approximately five hours each day. Team members are also expected to undertake sieving and finds processing on a rota basis. Appropriate training will be given. A campsite with cooking facilities is provided and a subsistence payment is available. Applications will only be considered from those able to stay for the duration of the project. Details from Elizabeth Walker, Dept of Archaeology & Numismatics, National Museum & Gallery, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NP, tel 029 2057 3229, email Elizabeth.Walker@nmgw.ac.uk.

the church in wales
On a nice day visit Burry Holms at the north end of Rhossili Bay where we commemorate St. Cenydd's day each summer on the site of a wooden Celtic church oratory, the only one found in Wales.

Llanelli press
On the night of January 22nd, in what appeared to be calm conditions after several stormy days, convoys totalling 19 ships of various sizes crept out of Llanelli, towed by steam tugs. Once clear of the harbour, the tugs cast off and the vessels set sail. But as they rounded Whitford Point, the winds died leaving them becalmed amid mountainous waves. As a contemporary account put it, “Although the wind had gone down, the waves roared and rolled with fearful violence. Some of the ships got into collision and the result was that great destruction of life and property occurred, not however through the collision, but for want of wind.”As this terrifying night wore on, 16 of the ships became total wrecks, their hulls shattered as the immense swell lifted up ship after ship and sent them crashing down onto the sand banks. There are harrowing accounts of sailors desperately calling for help in the wave-lashed darkness as their ships were pounded apart around them. There were lucky escapes. A brigantine, The Brothers, and a schooner, the Roscius, both Llanelli-based, briefly embraced each other after a collision. The Roscius crew saved themselves by leaping onto the deck of The Brothers. The latter vessel managed to break away and beach nearby, the crews surviving the night by clinging to the sides of the lightship in Broughton Bay,.When daylight came, wreckage and dead bodies were found all the way from the Whitford Point to Burry Holms. In all 18 lives were lost. Of the 16 wrecked ships, five were said to have been lost with all hands – the Jeune Celine, the Amethyst, the Waterfly, the Huntress and the Mary Fanny, though there is an account that the cabin boy of the Mary Fanny escaped by jumping into the pilot's boat as it pulled away.


wales past
9,000 years ago one of the most important tools in the search for food were microliths - barbs made of stone that made a big impact on life in the Middle Stone Age.From 9200-4000BC (during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age) people in Wales lived by hunting, fishing and gathering edible plants. Harpoons and spears were common tools and these carried stone barbs (microliths) that could inflict a deep cutting wound on prey. Microliths, were made from flint blades each carefully crafted to make a sharp point. Individually a microlith is too small to do any real damage, but when two rows of these are glued into a spear's shaft they make an effective tool. Between 1923 and 2001 over eighty microliths have been discovered on Burry Holms, today a tidal island on the north-western tip of Gower (a peninsula in south Wales). Here a band of hunter-gatherers spent part of the year hunting red deer, gathering nuts and fishing in the nearby rivers. Recent excavations by the National Museums & Galleries of Wales have demonstrated that the soils at Burry Holms do not preserve the wooden or bone hafts of these hunters' tools, but even so, the microliths that survived have some interesting stories to tell. Several have snapped at their tip, leaving behind a tell-tale scar that may well be evidence of where they struck an animal during a hunt, breaking from the impact. The damaged spear was probably carried back to camp and the broken microlith replaced with a new one. In the case of a second microlith with an impact fracture, it is the tip that has survived. What is more, this tip has a surface pattern that suggests it had once been in a fire. It is possible that this flint microlith had done its work in killing a red deer and that its tip survived in the meat when it was cooked and eaten - perhaps this was the ancient equivalent of finding lead shot in a rabbit pie!

wales past (again)

21st-century science and 11,000-year-old artefacts may seem an unlikely combination, but work at the National Museums & Galleries of Wales continues to show just how much the old can benefit from the new.During the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic (9200-4000BC), harpoons and spears were the tools of choice for hunter-gatherers in Wales. These tools were used to hunt deer and to spear fish, both mainstays in the diet at this time. These harpoons and spears were made of wood, bone or antler, with stone barbs, known as microliths, embedded in rows down their sides. Over the millennia, the wood and bone hafts have decayed leaving only the stone microliths to be found by archaeologists. Hundreds of these microliths have been found in Wales, but none have helped to answer the questions: how were microliths held in their hafts? What stopped them falling out? None, that is, until excavations at Burry Holms on Gower (a peninsula in south Wales) found an example that retained microscopic spots across its surface. This microlith was taken to Cardiff University to be viewed under a scanning electron microscope that allowed these spots to be viewed in detail, and a chemical profile to be produced. The results show that the surface spots are probably birch bark tar, a sticky resin that was once used as a glue. Although the use of birch bark tar is known at Mesolithic sites across Europe, this is the first time it has been recorded in Wales - an insight into the technology of our ancestors that could only have been achieved through the use of modern science.