The appalling weather that has, so far, made this summer pretty miserable, abated today, just in time for me to visit the impressive Loggerheads Country Parc, right on the edge of Clwyd West and close to Mold. I was there to help celebrate the launch of the three-year Heather and Hillforts (H&H) Project. The £3 million scheme, which has received £1.5 million funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, will preserve the six Iron Age hilltop forts on the Clwydian range and Llantysilio Mountains, together with the heather moorland surrounding them. Among the many strands of the project will be a moorland training programme at Coleg Llysfasi.
The H&H area contains one of the highest concentrations of Iron Age forts in Europe. All await proper excavation. The full extent of the largest, Penycloddiau, was revealed only after a serious heather fire in 2003. Fiona Gale, the county archaeologist, told me that plans are in the pipeline to start excavating it soon.
I was delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund was able to support an important project in one of the most beautiful areas of North Wales. I hope that similar good causes can also be supported; that, after all, is what the Lottery was set up for in 1995. Unfortunately, this Government has increasingly used it as a substitute for general taxation, and the Olympics are also siphoning mountains of money out of the Lottery at the expense of local projects.
Pictured with me (l. to r.) are Helen Mrowiec, project leader; Fiona Gale, Denbighshire County Council Archaeologist (decorated suitably in Iron Age woad); and Michael Griffith CBE, Chairman, Heather and Hillforts Landscape Partnership Board.
At loggerheads
Just like the labour party!!
You are tieless, sorry a tireless worker for you patch Mr Jones!!
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