Nearest town: Swansea
Nearest village: Rhyd-y-Fro
Map reference: SN 697063
The 25 stones of this unusual
circle lean slightly outwards
(74Kb)
Carn Llechart is one of the largest ring cairns in Wales. It is an unusual circle of 25 stones leaning slightly outwards and surrounding a central burial cist. Aubrey Burl in his "The Stone Circles of British Isles" wrote that such rings were thought to be the first stage of development of stone circles, but that these cairns, however, are almost certainly too late to provide such an ancestry. The reverse seems likely, that the existence of stone circles elsewhere impelled people to place tall stones around the bases of their own round cairns, a fusion of traditions resulting in monuments like spiky coronets. Such cairns may be seen on North and South Uist, and in Wales at Carn Llechart and Bryn Cader Faner.
The circle is 12m (40ft) in diameter, and the central cist has its east side stone and capstone missing. It seems that there is no entry to the circle and no trace of covering mound. A possible date for the site is the 2nd millenium BC.
In the area there are also a Neolithic burial chamber and some Bronze Age cairns.
The 25 stones of this unusual
circle lean slightly outwards
(74Kb)
