The Foel Camp is situated on the summit of a commanding eminence, of a conoid form, close in the rear of the village. The internal area covers nearly two acres; its shape following, as most ancient camps do, the conformation of the ground. It has all the marks of a British post. The lines of defence around it partake more of the character of terraces than ditches, (but there are traces in two places of parts having been sunken), and make up one spiral road of access to the great arena.
The sides of the hill, excepting one, are very steep, and this steepness would be a great defence. The entrance is at the east end, where the sides are more approachable. There are no historical records concerning this, but tradition relates that there have been terrible combats about the foot of the mountain.
The spot on top of the Foel is called by the people “Soldiers’ Mount,” and it is said that the soldiers shot at each other from the Ffridd, (an opposite hill to the west), to the Foel, and from the Foel to the Ffridd, with bows and arrows.
It is of a spiral form, and has three ditches winding spirally one above the other. Some say that it was Caradog (Caractacus) ab Bran Fendigaid who encamped his left wing here while defending his country against the invasion of the Romans under Publius Ostorius, about the year of our Lord 51, his centre being on the Brewer. But all is conjectural.
Sul y Pys, or Pea Sunday (the Fourth* Sunday in Lent).
A custom prevailed among the old inhabitants of this parish of roasting peas or wheat grains, and then taking them to the top of the Foel, there to be eaten with very great ceremony, and drinking water out of the well on the Foel. This was done near the spot where the church was to have been built.
It is probable also that our forefathers sent presents to each other on this day, for it was an old saying with our mothers when asked for a gift, “You shall have it on Pea Sunday.”
The custom of eating peas was part of the Lent fasting, and the old people believed that they would be choked if they ate peas before Lent!
*Actually the fifth Sunday? This pea-eating event is known as Carlin Sunday in the north of England.
The Church stands on a piece of ground above the village, from which a fine view may be had of the vale below. Our ancestors delighted in building their temples on slightly elevated ground, that they might worship their God according to the fashion of their forefathers, the Druids, “in the face of the sun and the eye of light,” and this feeling was so strong in them that they had determined (so tradition relates), to build their temple on the Foel, on the opposite side of the hill facing the village; but neither peace nor prosperity attended the work, for all done during the day was removed in the night to the spot where the church now stands; therefore the church was built on its present site, because it was believed to be the spot where God desired to be worshipped.
Formerly the rejected site on the Foel was distinguished by a yew tree which grew there. This yew tree was accidentally burnt at the roasting of a kid on celebrating the jubilee of George the Third’s accession, and it is worth mentioning that the kid was taken out of a herd of goats that were depasturing on the side of the Ffridd.
In ‘A History of the Parish of Llansantffraid-Yn-Mechain’ by Thomas Griffiths Jones, in ‘Collections, historical and archaeological, relating to Montgomeryshire’ (1868).
