Glamorgan

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Glamorgan or, sometimes, Glamorganshire (Welsh: Morgannwg) is one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales and a former administrative county of Wales. It was originally an early medieval petty kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing until taken over by the Normans as a lordship. Glamorgan is latterly represented by the three preserved counties of Mid Glamorgan,South Glamorgan and West Glamorgan. The name also survives in that of Vale of Glamorgan, a county borough.

Until the Roman conquest of Britain, the area that would become known as Glamorgan was part of the territory of the Silures – a Celtic British tribe that flourished in the Iron Age – whose territory also included the areas that would become known as Breconshire and Monmouthshire. The Silures had hill forts throughout the area – and cliff castles along the Glamorgan coast. Excavations at one – Dunraven hill fort – revealed the remains of twenty-one roundhouses.

Many other settlements of the Silures were neither hill forts nor castles. For example, the 3.2-hectare (8-acre) fort established by the Romans near the mouth of the River Taff in 75 CE, in what would become Cardiff, was built over an extensive settlement established by the Silures in the 50s CE.