The Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Môn) has a long history of human activity known to extend back to the latter part of the Late Upper Palaeolithic. Its most visible monuments, though, are the stone chambered burial-ritual sites and associated monoliths of the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. Indeed, Anglesey’s later prehistory boasts one of the most concentrated areas of ritual monuments in Wales, with up to 16 chambered monuments, mainly occupying the island’s coastal fringes, and a further 13 examples recorded as having been destroyed or doubtful. These are accompanied by (based on the regional Historic Environment Record) at least 65 standing stones and menhirs representing individual uprights and stone rows, as well as scattered examples of engraved rock art contemporary with this imposing monumentality.
The resulting impression is of a busy ritualised landscape, but it is probable that there were originally many more monuments, long since destroyed to accommodate evolving agricultural practices over the last 250 years. Just one account of this activity comes from the diary of Reverend John Skinner, an antiquarian who undertook a ten-day tour of Anglesey in 1802: he notes that he had witnessed the dismantling of at least six monuments during his stay. Other antiquarian records tell the same story. Once protected by folkloric associations, in the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ these mighty constructions had begun to lose their power, and during the 18th and 19th centuries many chambered monuments were reduced to nothing more than quarries for the construction of buildings, field boundaries, and roads. Today, many of Anglesey’s surviving burial-ritual monuments are incomplete, victims of this savage dismantling, and Bedd y Foel, the site that we will explore in this article, is no exception – but there is still much that we can learn from such landscapes.
Documenting a dolmen
Close to the town of Llanerchymedd stands Pen y Foel, a small hillock that, despite its modest scale, enjoys commanding views across much of northern Anglesey. It overlooks a landscape that would have been littered with standing stones (six are recorded in OS mapping and HER data), probably acting as processional markers to guide communities between chambered funerary monuments. The potential remains of one such megalithic tomb-type, known as a dolmen, have been identified on its western slope at Bedd y Foel, but its capstone was not in its original position, having been reportedly relocated several metres eastwards sometime during the mid-1940s. It was decided that an excavation should be undertaken next to this enormous stone, with a view to uncovering a possible chamber area and identifying the monument’s original footprint.
