The remains of a windmill on Kilvey Hill, first built more than 340 years ago, are being fenced off and protected as Skyline Swansea builds its gondola and luge attraction on the hill.
Skyline has pictured the site as a grassy mound ringed by temporary fencing, with bare, freshly worked ground around it, under the caption “Protecting the old windmill”.
Kilvey Hill windmill: first built in 1680, a ruin by the 1930s
The windmill was a circular tower with stone and mortar walls, first put up in 1680 by a member of the Mansel family, according to Coflein, Wales’s national record of historic sites.
Coflein lists it as ruined, with an inside diameter of 4.4 metres.
The ruined tower still stood about 20ft high in the 1930s, according to the mill heritage website Windmill World, but by 2011 only a few stones of its wall were left.
Archaeologists monitoring Skyline’s summit works
Work is continuing around an area where “items of archaeological interest, identified during pre-planning assessment” have been uncovered, Skyline says.
Specialists from Archaeology Wales are monitoring the work and recording any findings, according to the company.
It says it is keeping Heneb, the Trust for Welsh Archaeology, informed.
Discussions are ongoing “to determine how features may be preserved while construction activities continue”, it says.
Skyline has not said what else has been uncovered.
Not the only find at the top of the hill
In September, Skyline said diggers had uncovered the remains of a small stone building at the summit during topsoil removal for its restaurant.
Its photos then showed low courses of stone wall and a flagged floor. Skyline has not said whether that building and the windmill are connected, or what the building was.
A hilltop being remade for the £49m attraction
The top of the hill is being reshaped for a gondola station, restaurant and luge tracks, part of the £49m attraction due to open in 2028.
Lower down, bare slopes are being sprayed green to grow a meadow, with native saplings to follow.
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