Qualla: Bryn Celli Ddu

Bryn Celli Ddu: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. On the morning of the summer solstice, just before sunrise, people walk in the dark across a wet field on the Welsh island of Anglesey and crowd around the entrance to a low stone passage. They wait. The sun rises somewhere over the Berwyn Mountains to the east, and for about fifteen minutes - if the cloud cooperates - a narrow beam of light threads through the passage of Bryn Celli Ddu, crosses the burial chamber, and strikes the quartz-rich stone at the back. The mound was built around 5,000 years ago. Whoever did the engineering knew exactly what they were doing.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Bryn Celli Ddu: The Mound in the Dark Grove

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Bryn Celli Ddu means 'the mound in the dark grove', and the name still fits. The site sits in a slight hollow near the village of Llanddaniel Fab, surrounded by farmland that the trees have repeatedly taken back. The mound is small compared to its Irish cousins at Newgrange and K...

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Image: Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Bryn Celli Ddu: The Sun and the Stone

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ijanderson977, Public domain. The midsummer alignment is the most studied feature of the site. Steve Burrow, formerly curator of Neolithic archaeology at the National Museum of Wales, has argued in detail that the passage is oriented to catch the rising sun on the longest day of the year, and that the light i...

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Image: Ijanderson977 | Public domain

Bryn Celli Ddu: Older Than the Tomb

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0. What you see now is only the most spectacular phase. Underneath the mound, archaeologists found postholes for a row of five timber uprights that radiocarbon-date to around 4000 BC - a thousand years before the passage tomb was built, at the very end of the Mesolithic. The site wa...

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Image: Paul Allison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bryn Celli Ddu: The 2019 Surprise

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robin Drayton, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 2019, fieldwork around the site uncovered a second burial cairn fifty metres south of the main mound, large and circular and previously leveled to the point of invisibility. Radiocarbon dating put it at around 1900 BC - more than a thousand years later than the passage tomb. T...

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Image: Robin Drayton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bryn Celli Ddu: Still Sacred

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Anglesey Druid Order uses Bryn Celli Ddu for ceremonies marking the eight festivals of the modern pagan wheel of the year, including both solstices. Cadw keeps it open to the public, free, with no booking required. The chamber smells of damp stone and wet wool. On a quiet wee...

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Image: Wolfgang Sauber | CC BY-SA 3.0