Qualla: Barclodiad y Gawres

Barclodiad y Gawres: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Allen Karsina, Public domain. The name translates as 'the apronful of the giantess', and the legend explains the mound's shape - a giant striding from Ireland is said to have dropped her load of stones here, leaving a low grassy hump above Porth Trecastell. The truth is stranger than the folktale. What sits beneath the turf is a Neolithic passage grave built around 5,000 years ago, one of only a handful of decorated tombs in Britain, and the closest cousins to its carved stones lie not in Wales but across the Irish Sea in the Boyne Valley.

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Image: Allen Karsina | Public domain

Barclodiad y Gawres: Across the Water

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand on the headland above Porth Trecastell and look west. On a clear day the Wicklow Mountains rise faintly across sixty miles of grey water. That sightline is the key to Barclodiad y Gawres. Its cruciform plan - a central chamber with side cells branching off like a stubby cro...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Barclodiad y Gawres: The Last Meal

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. When archaeologists reached the heart of the chamber they found the remains of a fire, and on the fire, the remains of a stew. The ingredients tell their own story: wrasse and eel from the sea, frog and toad and grass snake from the marshes, mouse and shrew and hare from the fiel...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Barclodiad y Gawres: Concrete and Turf

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Greig, CC BY-SA 2.0. What you see today is partly a reconstruction. After the 1952-53 dig the chamber was re-roofed in concrete and covered with fresh turf to roughly resemble the original mound. Without that intervention the carved stones would now be exposed to Atlantic weather, and the chamber wou...

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Image: Ian Greig | CC BY-SA 2.0

Barclodiad y Gawres: Where Land Meets Sea

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Talsarnau Times, CC BY-SA 3.0. The setting is half the story. The mound sits a few paces back from a sheer drop above Cymyran Bay, on the Anglesey Coastal Path between Aberffraw and Rhosneigr. Surfers ride the breaks in Porth Trecastell directly below. Westerly gales come in unbroken from the open Atlantic, an...

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Image: Talsarnau Times | CC BY-SA 3.0

Barclodiad y Gawres: Sister Sites in the Dark

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Barr, CC BY-SA 2.0. Decorated Neolithic monuments are vanishingly rare in Britain. Outside Orkney's Maeshowe, Barclodiad y Gawres and nearby Bryn Celli Ddu are the only mainland examples with significant abstract art. Together they make Anglesey the western edge of a cultural province that runs from...

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Image: Peter Barr | CC BY-SA 2.0