Historic Landscape Characterisation
Merthyr Tydfil

033 Garth Fawr Unimproved Common

HLCA 033 Garth Fawr Unimproved Common Potential nationally important relict landscape: relict prehistoric settlement and associated remains; industrial: extractive features (quarry and possible levels)


Click here for a character area map

(Back to map)

Summary

An important relict prehistoric landscape, characterised by late prehistoric settlement, in the form of unenclosed round huts, and also earlier burial cairns.

Historical background

The historic landscape area of Garth Fawr Unimproved Common is a discrete area of relatively recently enclosed land (mid-20th century post and wire fences). The area is set down to semi-improved mountain pasture.

The area is an important relict landscape of late prehistoric (Iron Age/Romano-British date) with earlier funerary features. The relict upstanding features form a discrete group and are a relatively rare, and hence important, landscape within the Merthyr Tydfil Historic Landscape as a whole, in terms of survival/condition, period and group value. These landscape characteristics offer important potential for illustrating the nature of early upland settlement of the area; an opportunity largely lost elsewhere within the historic landscape since the landscape transformations of the industrial period.