Welsh Journals

THE CROMLECHS OF GLAMORGAN GLYN E. DANIEL, M.A., PhD., F.S.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Lecturer in Arch- aeology in the University. Y own interest in megalithic tombs was first aroused by living in the Vale of Glamorgan, going to school at Barry County School, and being taken on an expedition by my headmaster, Major Edgar Jones, to see the cromlechs of Tinkinswood and St. Lythans. I subsequently extended my explorations to see all the megalithic tombs in the Vale, that is to say the Coity cromlech, Tythegston, the Pentyrch cromlech, and then the tombs in the Gower peninsula-Coetan Arthur on Cefn Bryn, Pare le Breos Cwm, and Penmaen Burrows, and the few crom- lechs on the coastal plain of Monmouthshire. The distribution of these Glamorgan and Monmouthshire sites can be seen by consulting Professor W. F. Grimes's Map of South Wales showing the Distribution of Long Barrows ana* Megaliths published by the Ordnance Survey in 1936, the same author's article on The Megalithic Monuments of Wales, published in the same year in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (New Series, Volume II, part I), or the present writer's The Prehistoric Chamber Tombs of England and Wales (1950). It is the first object of this short article to describe these sites. There is never any agreement among field archaeologists about exactly how many megalithic tombs should be marked in on the map of any area studied, and this disagreement, puzzling at first to non -archaeologists, is easy to explain. In the first place the line between a megalithic tomb and a kistvaen or stone cist is a difficult one to draw and there are many stone monuments halfway between the great collective stone tombs we nonnally call megalithic monuments and the individually used stone boxes we normally call stone cists. Then, in the second place, when a megalithic tomb is very ruined it is difficult to be sure whether it is a natural boulder, the remains of a tomb, or a menhir i.e. a single standing stone. Thirdly, some natural boulders or recently used large stones (such as stones used for gateposts or stiles) often simulate megalithic structures. With- out excavation one cannot be sure of the nature of these ruined or dubious sites, and often enough excavation itself, however carefully carried out, cannot give us any certain answer due to the shallow nature of the ground. There are, however, the following megal- ithic tombs in Glamorgan of whose genuine prehistoric funerary nature no one has any doubt. 1. The Tinkinswood Burial Chamber in the parish of St. Nicholas six miles west-south-west of Cardiff. It is a long barrow 130 feet long by 55 to 60 feet broad, set east-west with a cusp- shaped forecourt at its east end giving access to a rectangular chamber roofed by an enormous capstone 23 feet long by 15 feet