For a site that was first discovered in 1867 and partially excavated in 1869, it took a long time for the full significance of the Llangorse Crannog to be recognised by archaeologists. This small wooded island, roughly rectilinear and measuring some 40m by 30m, lies close to the north shore of Llangorse Lake (Llyn Syfaddan in Welsh), the largest natural body of water in south Wales. The lake lies in a basin east of Brecon, with the sandstone scarps and ridges of the Brecon Beacons rising to the south and west, and the Black Mountains to the east.
In a report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science published in 1870, Henry Dumbleton stated that ‘until two years ago, no idea was entertained that this [island] had anything remarkable about it’, but the summer of 1868 had been exceptionally dry, and the lake level very low, and oak planks had been observed in the lake close to the water surface. Henry and his brother Edgar also recognised that the rocks making up the base of the island were not laid in natural bedding planes, and were quite different in composition from those of the nearby lake shore. Moreover, when they removed some oak piles, they found tool marks and pointed tips. In their lectures and brief published papers, the two brothers compared the island to ‘the remains of habitations raised on piles, as well as upon artificial islands [that] have been found in several of the lakes of Switzerland and Italy’. This identification was vindicated by John Lee, the local Monmouthshire antiquary, who translated Keller’s classic Swiss Lake Villages volume into English, though in the absence of dated artefacts he warned against assuming that Llangorse was as old as the Continental sites.
Based on Dumbleton’s account, Robert Munro, author of The Lake-Dwellings of Europe (1890), accepted the Llangorse Crannog as genuine, ‘constructed after the manner of the Scottish and Irish crannogs’. He interpreted Llangorse as older than the Scottish or Irish examples because of his belief that lake dwellings were introduced into Britain from Europe by ‘the Celts’ who, having been ‘displaced by later invading Belgae, retreated to Scotland and Ireland and continued their crannog-building traditions’.
