A dramatic new digital reconstruction of one of Pembrokeshire’s most vulnerable prehistoric coastal forts has just been completed, vividly bringing to life the Iron Age and Roman defended village in photo-realistic detail.

The Caerfai coastal promontory fort near St Davids, which is owned by the National Trust, is threatened with coastal erosion and cliff loss.

Increased storminess and intense rainfall, coupled with predicted rises in sea-level due to climate change, are steadily eroding the fragile archaeology at both these sites.

As a result, the EU-funded CHERISH Project has been working closely with a team of artists in Wessex Archaeology together with a range of stakeholders and experts, to accurately reconstruct how the site would have looked in its prehistoric heyday.

"The image is among the most vivid recreations of prehistoric and Roman life that we have for the whole of Wales,” commented Dr Toby Driver of the Royal Commission.

“It certainly fires the imagination and will hopefully help the people of Pembrokeshire and indeed the whole of Wales to imagine what life was like at the coast edge 2,000 years ago".

The Caerfai reconstruction shows how the defended settlement would have looked around 50BC.

Strong defensive ramparts, deep ditches and towered gateways once protected this Iron Age village with the interior being made up of roundhouses and workshops with copper ore being mined from the sea clilffs below. 

The design has been completed following extensive surveys and excavations by the CHERISH Project and DigVentures, working with the National Trust and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority. 

A similar coastal fort has been digitally reconstructed at Dinas Dinlle, near Caernarfon in Gwynedd.

Both forts are owned by the National Trust and have seen several years of community excavation and landscape research by the EU-funded CHERISH Project combining the expertise of the Royal Commission and Aberystwyth University, working with the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, DigVentures and Cadw.

The reconstructions are destined for new interpretation panels and online resources, to help visitors to the sites visualise the prehistoric and Roman past.