Qualla: Lligwy Burial Chamber

Lligwy Burial Chamber: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0. The capstone weighs about 25 tonnes. It is 5.5 metres long and 4.5 metres wide, a single slab of local limestone roughly a metre thick, balanced on eight uprights so squat they look almost decorative until you realise that half of each upright lies buried in the earth. Beneath this monumental shelter, archaeologists in 1909 found the bones of between fifteen and thirty people - men, women and children of the Late Neolithic - laid alongside the shells of mussels and limpets and the bones of animals their mourners had eaten. The pottery they left behind was Grooved Ware, which dates the earliest burials to roughly four-and-a-half millennia ago. Later, Beaker people of the early Bronze Age returned and used the chamber again. The structure stands a few metres from a narrow road on the east coast of Anglesey, near the small village of Moelfre, with room for a single car at the verge.

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Image: Paul Allison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lligwy Burial Chamber: How the Stones Got Here

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John S Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. Neolithic builders chose a limestone outcrop near the surface, levered up a slab the size of a small bedroom, and worked it onto the tops of eight uprights they had already set in the ground. Three of the uprights take all the weight; the other five barely touch the stone above t...

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Image: John S Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lligwy Burial Chamber: The People Inside

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John S Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. The 1909 excavation found the chamber's contents stacked in two layers, the lower older than the upper. Bones from up to thirty people lay among the pottery. There were also mussels, limpets and a quantity of animal bone. These are domestic items - the residue of meals - found al...

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Image: John S Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lligwy Burial Chamber: What Remains

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Today the burial chamber is a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of Cadw, Wales's historic environment service. The site is open free of charge throughout the year, closed only on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. There are no interpretation boards ...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lligwy Burial Chamber: Lligwy's Neighbours

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Beep boop beep, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three quarters of a mile north of Llanallgo, Lligwy lies within Moelfre Community, which holds more scheduled ancient monuments than any other community on Anglesey - fourteen in total. Within a short walk of the burial chamber sit Din Lligwy, a Romano-British stone-built settlem...

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Image: Beep boop beep | CC BY-SA 4.0