Qualla: Bryn Gwyn Stones

Bryn Gwyn Stones: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Keatinge, CC BY-SA 3.0. An account written in 1797 explains it with brisk Welsh contempt: 'ignorant country people supposing money was hid under them tore them up'. The Bryn Gwyn Stones, near Brynsiencyn on Anglesey, were originally a circle of eight massive uprights - the tallest standing stones anywhere in Wales. Today only two remain, one wide slab and one tall pillar, standing in a modern field bank like the last two teeth in an old jaw. The rest were dragged out of the ground by neighbours convinced there must be gold underneath.

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Image: Richard Keatinge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bryn Gwyn Stones: What Henry Rowlands Saw

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Keatinge, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1723 the antiquary Henry Rowlands - a parson and amateur archaeologist born on Anglesey - visited Bryn Gwyn and recorded the site in his book Mona Antiqua Restaurata. He described a 'ruinous circle of eight stones', some of them already toppled, but enough surviving for him to...

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Image: Richard Keatinge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bryn Gwyn Stones: The Cottage in the Circle

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rev E L Barnwell , Editor, Public domain. The two survivors lived on largely because someone built a cottage against the wide slab in the eighteenth century, using it as the building's end wall. Notches cut along its top show where the roof timbers were fitted into the stone. The cottage occupied a patch of ground inside...

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Image: Rev E L Barnwell , Editor | Public domain

Bryn Gwyn Stones: Excavation Confirms Rowlands

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Dunford, CC BY-SA 2.0. Modern archaeology has caught up with the antiquary. In 2008, an excavation found three pits where standing stones had once stood, two of them still containing the broken stumps - consistent with Rowlands's record of a partly ruinous circle. Two years later, further excavations i...

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Image: Dave Dunford | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bryn Gwyn Stones: Castell Bryn Gwyn and the Lost Circle

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Keatinge, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Bryn Gwyn stones do not stand alone. About 280 metres to the north-east is Castell Bryn Gwyn, a substantial earthwork that has been variously interpreted as a Neolithic henge, a Bronze Age enclosure, and an Iron Age fort - it was probably all three at different times. Further...

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Image: Richard Keatinge | CC BY-SA 3.0