WHAT DID THE ROMANS DO FOR WALES, THEN?

Roman rule in Wales, lasting for nearly four centuries until Roman naval vessels carried soldiers, administrators, settlers and their families away after AD 410, keeps coming to the surface to surprise us. Just in the past few years we have learnt of a previously undiscovered road network – admittedly unmetalled – in Pembrokeshire, and the site of a Roman fort in the same county by Oxford academic, Mark Merrony.1 In early 2026 another remarkable discovery was made in West Wales – two lead ingots coming to the surface as a result of the work of detectorists in Ceredigion.

The Roman gold mines in Dolaucothi in Carmarthenshire, a National Trust site where visitors can still pan for tiny specks of gold, have been well known for centuries. The latest discovery of lead working confirms the Romans were well aware of the wider mineral riches buried beneath the surface in this farthest western outpost of an empire extending from West Wales and Scotland to modern Iraq, Arabia, and Syria. Lead smelting, it would seem, was taking place in west Wales within decades of the Romans’ arrival.

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