Iron Age During the
British Iron Age, around 600BCE, a large
hillfort was built on the summit of what was to become Dinas Brân by a Celtic tribe named the
Ordovices. An
earthen rampart - probably with a wooden
palisade - surrounded a number of
roundhouses and an extra deep ditch was cut to defend the gentler slopes on the southern side of the hill. This was one of many strongholds belonging to the Ordovices in this part of North Wales. In the west are
Craig Rhiwarth in the
Berwyn Range and
Dinas Emrys near
Beddgelert in Gwynedd. In the east are Castell Dinas Brân itself,
Caer Drewyn,
Caer Euni and
Moel y Gaer near the
Horseshoe Pass. The inhabitants of
Old Oswestry hillfort were either from the tribes of the Ordovices or
Cornovii and Iron Age hillforts in the
Clwydian Range to the north (including
Foel Fenlli and
Moel Arthur) were occupied by the neighbouring
Deceangli. The Ordovices were also neighboured to the north-west by the
Gangani, to the east by the Cornovii, to the south by the
Silures and south-west by the
Demetae. In 1879 the pioneering English geologist
Charles Lapworth named the
Ordovician geological period after the Ordovices as the rock formations he had studied were located in the tribe's former North Welsh domain. • Lapworth wrote (
op. cit., pp. 13 – 14): "North Wales itself – at all events the whole of the great Bala district where
Sedgwick first worked out the physical succession among the rocks of the intermediate or so-called Upper Cambrian or Lower Silurian system; and in all probability much of the Shelve and the Caradoc area, whence
Murchison first published its distinctive fossils – lay within the territory of the Ordovices; ... Here, then, have we the hint for the appropriate title for the central system of the Lower
Palaeozoics. It should be called the Ordovician System, after this old British tribe."
Post-Roman Britain The earliest structure that might have been built at Dinas Brân is believed to have belonged to
Elisedd ap Gwylog during the 8th century. Elisedd, who was a
Romano British ruler during the
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is named on the
Pillar of Eliseg and is considered one of the founders of the
Kingdom of Powys, however, no archaeological evidence for any structure from this period has been found. Whatever structure existed at this site, it would have been a wooden fortification probably consisting of a wooden palisade surrounding a hall and other buildings. Early records attest to this early castle being destroyed by fire. Following the destruction of the wooden castle,
Gruffydd II ap Madog, Lord of Dinas Bran, the son of Madog ap Gruffydd Maelor, rebuilt Dinas Brân in stone sometime in the 1260s. At the time Gruffydd II ap Madog was an ally of Prince
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Prince of Wales, with Powys acting as a
buffer state between Llywelyn's heartland of
Gwynedd and
England. Dinas Brân was one of several castles being built following the signing of the
Treaty of Montgomery which had secured Wales for Llywelyn, free from English interference. The castle at
Dolforwyn Castle near Newtown, which was ordered to be built by Llywelyn around the same time, has some similarities to Dinas Brân and may have been the work of the same master mason. The first archaeological investigation at the castle was carried out in 2017. The Castle Studies Trust funded
Denbighshire County Council to carry out geophysical surveys at the site, encompassing the medieval and Iron Age features. As part of a larger project in the
Dee Valley funded by the
National Lottery Heritage Fund, the
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) conducted a condition survey in 2020 to inform conservation work. This was followed by a CPAT-led excavation in 2021 focusing on the area in and around the gatehouse. ==Layout==