This summer, an assemblage of Iron Age metalwork went on display at Oriel Ynys Môn, the Isle of Anglesey’s principal museum and gallery, for the first time since its discovery 70 years ago. Shortly to return to its home at the National Museum, Cardiff, the find consists of a mix of animal bones and the remains of some 180 separate items of metalwork, including bronze swords, spears and shield boss, bronze horns, cauldrons, slave-gang chains, iron ‘currency bars’, and chariot parts. Because it was found over a period of weeks during 1942 and 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, the find made little impact at the time, but over the intervening period it has come to be recognised as a discovery of immense importance for understanding Iron Age Wales and its people.
Wartime reconnaissance
Ironically, the best record we have of the events that led to the finding of the Llyn Cerrig Bach assemblage comes in the form of an aerial photo- graph taken at the time by the Luftwaffe. Germany’s air force began covert aerial reconnaissance over Britain’s coast in 1935, compiling photographs that were intended to help bombers identify targets, but have since served archaeologists and historians very well. In this case, a photograph taken in 1940 shows a new RAF base under construction on the west coast of Anglesey. Briefly called RAF Rhosneigr, the airfield that is now known as RAF Valley shows up on the aerial photograph as an extensive tract of bare sand amid the grass- and gorse-covered dunes of Tywyn Trewan.
This bleak and windswept site played a key role in the Battle of the Atlantic, when German U-boats and the Luftwaffe tried to prevent supplies from North America reaching Liverpool. Convoys of merchant ships that had made it across the Atlantic, protected by the British and Canadian navies and air forces, faced a final onslaught as they headed into the port, as German bombers from bases in Occupied France flew over the Irish Sea looking for targets. When they did so, they were met by some 500 British, Czech, Polish, Australian, and Belgian airmen based at RAF Valley, who played a vital role in patrolling the Irish Sea and attacking enemy aircraft. Once the United States joined the war, RAF Valley also served as the terminal for receiving large American bombers, such as the Boeing B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’, which would go on from here to other bases around the UK.
Retro Zoomers