You’re standing at the bottom of the north-east corner of the hillfort which towers above you. Caerau Hillfort is triangular in shape and encloses around 5 hectares which makes it the largest hillfort in south-east Wales.

The hillfort’s ramparts and much of the lower slopes are covered by beautiful semi-ancient oak woodland. The main tree species are oak, ash and beech with hazel coppice understory. The woodland has a lush floor of ferns and mosses, and in the spring time wildflowers such as bluebells, wood anemone, celandine and wild garlic make up a beautiful woodland carpet. Celandine roots were eaten in prehistory (the leaves are high in vitamin C) while the flowers have been used to cure eye diseases.

This is one of the ancient routes up the hill and leads to the western hillfort entrance. There are a number of water channels dug into the slope – there is a natural springline on the hillside which may have made the hill special in prehistory, but the channels have been dug in the last 100 years or so to drain the top field. The hill is made of clay and so drainage has always been a problem!

Three ramparts wrap around the hill. They must have taken a lot of labour to build and helped to mark out this hill as the home of a special community. There is a gap in them at this point which is one of four entrances into the hillfort. Each faces into different parts of the surrounding landscape and may have marked routeways that different communities took when they met on the hill.

The path here runs along the top of the outer hillfort rampart. It looks more like a terrace today, but excavations have shown it was a sizeable bank and ditch. The three ramparts run concentrically around the hilltop for around 1 km. Excavations showed that the inner rampart was built first with the middle and outer ones added later, probably around the same time. The inner rampart was fronted by a timber revetment or fence, but the others were likely just banks of greenish clay dug from the hill.

This entrance leads down ‘Spiller’s Hill’ to the valley which locals call the ‘5-miler’ that runs from Caerau to Dinas Powys. Just below the entrance is where Caerau House once stood – this large house was constructed at the turn of the 20th century by Sir Edward S. Hill, one time MP for Bristol South and managing director of Cardiff’s Hill’s Dry Dock. Much of the woodland covering the hillfort ramparts formed part of the house estate and many of the paths probably originated around this time. In the mid 20th century the house was the nurses’ residence for the old Cardiff Isolation Hospital which was situated where the houses of Heritage Drive now stand.

The hillfort interior is a flat plateau. Today it is a grassy field, but in the Iron Age it would have been muddy and dirty. A population of around 200 people lived here in timber roundhouses. The Iron Age inhabitants kept cattle, sheep and pigs, grew crops like wheat and barley, and made and used iron and stone tools. Excavations have also shown that there are the remains of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure on the top of the hill. It represents one of the rarest and earliest enclosures of open space in Wales – only two others are confirmed in the country. It was built around 3500 BC (some 600 years earlier than Stonehenge) by digging short ditch segments concentrically around the hilltop to define possible ‘sacred’ spaces. It wasn’t for settlement, but for seasonal gatherings where objects could be exchanged, marriages arranged, funerals organised, and big decisions made. It was clearly a very important place, and the first-time people had gathered in big numbers in entire Cardiff region.

Next to the modern track are the remains of Church Farm. This is an 18th century farmhouse whose inhabitants farmed the top of the hill until the late 1800s. It is located on a flat area just inside the hillfort’s eastern entrance. This is the most elaborate entrance into the hillfort where the ramparts curve around to create a ‘corridor-type’ approach. In the Iron Age there would presumably have been a timber gate at both ends of the ‘corridor’.

St. Mary’s church is today a ruin. There are records of it from around AD 1260, but it may have earlier origins. It was the parish church of Caerau until the 1960s, but has been in steady decline since then. Many older local people remember attending services at the church, and also the so-called ‘Whitsun Treat’ in the 1960s and 1970s when families would come up to the field next to the church on Whit Monday for a celebration including picnic food, races and coconut shies!

There is a circular earthwork known as a ‘ringwork’ in the north-east angle of the hillfort built just above the fourth hillfort entrance. A ringwork is a medieval earth and timber castle and the one at Caerau is probably contemporary with St. Mary’s church. It was likely part of the Anglo-Norman attempt to control the Cardiff region in the 12th century AD. Geophysical survey suggests a large timber hall was sited within the ringwork, perhaps the grand hall and residence of a Norman lord. There is a superb view from here of northern and western Cardiff. On a fine day you can see the Bronze Age burial mounds on Y Garth, Castell Coch, Llandaff Cathedral and in the far distance the hillfort of Twmbarlwm. You can also see from here the green playing fields of Trelai Park where the remains of a Bronze Age settlement and Roman villa have been found.