The Excavation of Stone Circles near Penmaenmawr North Wales

Abstract

The moorland south of Penmaenmawr in Caernarvonshire, extending from the great outcrop of Penmaenmawr-Graig Lwyd rock, well-known for its group of stone-axe factories, as far south as Foel Lwyd and Tal-y-fan, and averaging 1,200–1,400 feet in height above O.D., bears a rich concentration of prehistoric monuments. The best known of these is probably the stone circle known as the Druids' Circle, but nearby are many other circles and cairns (fig. 1) which will be referred to in this text by the serial numbers used in the Caernarvonshire Inventory of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. In the present paper an account will be given of the excavation of the Druids' Circle (no. 277) and also of a tiny ring of five large stones (no. 275) to the north-east and of a small embanked circle (no. 278) to the south-west. Apart from other circles (nos. 271a and 279) and cairns (nos. 271b and c, 273 and 274) there is a large mound of stones with an encircling ditch and bank (no. 425), approximating in form to the Wessex bell-barrows. To the south of these, on the summit of Moelfre, is another small cairn (no. 419), and in the featureless moor-land south of Moelfre, known as Bryniau Bugeilydd, is a large cairn cemetery including at least two examples (nos. 418 and 429a) of flat barrows with stone kerbs and central cists, suggesting a Highland Zone version of the Wessex disc-barrow.

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