Welsh Journals

The entrance to the castle in the final phase of its history was by a gateway through the curtain wall immediately adjoining the tower to the south. The castle entrance must always have been in this area, but the presence of a large mass of fallen masonry, and the dangers inherent in excavating deeply within the tower or in its immediate vicinity made it impracticable to pursue this to the point of proof. Finds from the excavation consisted chiefly of pottery, from which it will be possible to establish a stratified sequence useful for inter- preting finds from elsewhere. Other finds worth noting here were some fragmentary bone chessmen and gaming pieces, dating from the building period of the castle, together with fragments of the box, decorated with incised bone plaques and padded with flax, that probably contained them. Among other finds were numerous strips of gilt-bronze mounting, paralleled at other 12th-century castle sites, which may have decorated the surface of horse-harness or the lid of a wooden box. Also included among the finds were large quantities of kitchen refuse in the form of animal bones, which are expected to yield valuable economic data. A report is in preparation, and will probably appear in Archaeo- logia Cambrensis in due course. J. M. Lewis Neath Castle EXCAVATIONS at Neath Castle (SS 7536 9779) have been conducted by the Neath Antiquarian Society for the past four years. During that period approximately two-thirds of the interior of the Castle has been cleared of material used in the creation of a Garden of Rest and then excavated to a level that appears to represent the last phase of building, which probably occurred during the 14th century. The main plan of Neath Castle consists of a D-shaped ring-wall with a 14th-century gate-house on the north-west corner and a salient tower at the north-east. Clearance of the castle interior reveals that the internal buildings closely follow the line of the D-shaped curtain wall leaving a small central courtyard. Six rooms have been noted along with the gate-