Carningli Camp

Mynydd Carningli is small hill being less than 400m in height, though its proximity to the coast causes it to dominate the surrounding countryside and lend the feeling of a much wilder and loftier crag. Steep scree slopes on its southern and eastern flanks climb to a rocky grey summit. A rugged ridge in the Preseli Hills, the area that is the claimed source of the Stonehenge bluestones. It is a prominent landmark and archaelogical evidence indicates Mesolithic (c.5,000BC) presence around the peak, and major neolithic sites like the great Dolmen of Pentre Ifan stand in sight of it.

A sacred hill it is said that Saint Brynach would climb to its summit to find peace; to pray, fast and to "commune with the angels" in the 5th century. In some old texts and maps the mountain is called Carn Yengly or Carnengli, which are probably corruptions of Carn Engylau. Strictly, this would be translated as "the rocky summit of the angels."

Another saintly legends tells that the nearby Lech-Y-Tripedd was hurled to its present position by the Saint Samson, who threw it from the slopes of this mysterious mountain.

Carningli Camp is a rugged hillfort, generally dated to the Iron Age and assumed to be from the first millennium BC, it is located on the summit of Mynydd Carningli. The hill fort covers an area of about 4 hectares, and is about 400m x 150m in extent. The lower slopes of Carningli are covered with traces of Bronze Age settlement (Pearson 2001) and so some features of the hill fort may be even older.

A complex site, incorporating a series of substantial stone embankments, natural rock cliffs and scree slopes which may have been used as natural defences. Inside and outside the embankments there are terraced enclosures, hut circles and rectangles. There are around 25 hut circles at the North East end of the site, and on the other side there are three enclosures separated by embankments. Beneath the scree slope on the eastern flank of the mountain there are two further massive defensive embankments.

Carningli was one of the four sites (and the only location outside of Cornwall) selected for the Dragon Project Trust's ancient sites dreamwork programme, perhaps one of the more bizarre episodes in the history bof dream research. (Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux & Adam Fish, 'The Use of The Staunch Scale to Study Dream Reports fron Sacred Sites in England and Wales", Dreaming, vol.13, No2, June 2003, (pp95-105).

There was once a little "mountain railway" on Carningli, carrying broken stone from a small quarry down to a crushing plant on the Cilgwyn Road. The only traces remaining are the two stone pillars that supported a cable drum - a cable was used to control the descent of the loaded wagons as they rolled downhill, and then to pull the empty ones back up again. This little industry was abandoned between the wars.