Caerau, in mid-Wales (Powys), was an auxiliary fort established in the Flavian period around 75 CE during the Roman conquest of the Silures and Ordovices, and was held into the mid-second century before being abandoned. The site comprises a roughly 2.5-hectare fort suitable for a 500-strong auxiliary unit (cohors quingenaria), together with associated marching and practice camps in its vicinity.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Caerau formed part of the network of forts strung across central Wales linking Caersws, Castell Collen and the upper Wye–Severn corridor, helping to police the Welsh uplands and control movement between the coast and the interior. Its accompanying camps suggest it also served as a training or staging point for troop movements through this strategically awkward terrain.
The fort and several temporary camps have been identified primarily through aerial photography and earthwork survey, with the defences and internal layout traceable as cropmarks; no large-scale modern excavation has been published, so dating relies on limited surface finds and comparison with better-known Welsh auxiliary forts such as Castell Collen and Pen y Gaer.
Caerau, in mid-Wales (Powys), was an auxiliary fort established in the Flavian period around 75 CE during the Roman conquest of the Silures and Ordovices, and was held into the mid-second century before being abandoned. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fort site from the Roman period in Britain.
Caerau is classified as a Roman fort — a military site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Castell Collen (18.3 km), Colwyn (18.7 km), Esgair Perfedd marching camp (19.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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