The Roundhouse is based on the dwellings of Neolithic and Iron Age Britain. In Snowdonia there are many places marked on the map as ?hut circles?.

Usually they are rings of fallen stone overgrown with brambles and bracken. Once they were stone walled round huts with conical thatched roofs, the thatch made from water reed (fragmites), heather, rushes or even bracken. The Cae Mabon Roundhouse is a reconstruction of one of these pre-historic roundhouses, with the addition of a rather spectacular porch.

It's about six megalithic yards in diameter, the most common size for a Celtic roundhouse. Each roundhouse was a home for a family, providing space for cooking, weaving, storing food, sleeping and meeting.

The first Roundhouse (Mark 1) took four years to build: three years on the stone wall (about one week per summer) then five weeks in the summer of 1994 on the roof. It had a dry stone wall, an earth floor and a rather loosely thatched roof that allowed the smoke to permeate through.

The second Roundhouse (Mark 2) was built within two months of the first one burning down.It has a lime-pointed and rendered wall, a slate floor and a well-thatched roof. The rafters are spruce thinnings, the ring beams hazel and the thatch is fragmites water reed. It should last at least 20 to 30 years before needing replacing.

In many ways Mark 2 is an improvement on the first Roundhouse. However we did such a good job on the thatching (using steel rods and screw ties) that it wasn't as permeable to smoke as Mark 1. We've had to make a smoke hole at the top and do a fair bit of fiddling around to get the draw right and minimise smokiness. But still, like Mark 1, it's a great place for "the crack" - songs, stories and conversation - around the fire.