Mynydd-y-Gaer

Mynydd-y-Gaer is a 314-meter hill in Neath Port Talbot covered by open grasslands and fields divided by traditional dry stone walls. The landscape features gentle slopes and is ringed by woodland in the lower areas.

This hill was home to several fortified settlements during the Iron Age, including the Buarth-y-Gaer enclosure and Gaer Fawr, which document early settlement in the region. In more recent times, around the early 20th century, two coal mines operated in the surrounding areas.

This hill has been a place of human settlement for many centuries, and its landscape still bears the marks of that long use. The dry stone walls and open grasslands show how people have shaped this space over time.

The hill can be reached via minor roads that pass below the summit, with woodland paths in the lower areas providing good starting points. Careful navigation is needed since formal paths to the top itself do not exist.

Scattered across the summit are Bronze Age burial cairns that once served as burial sites for early inhabitants. The concentration of these archaeological remains shows how important this location was to settlers across different periods.