Illuminating Anglesey: Echoes of a later prehistoric ritualised landscape at Bedd y Foel

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 414

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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.

An initial phase in September 2020 identified a layer of demolition rubble thought likely to be associated with the tomb, and several large stones (one of which bore a faint cup-mark and a groove) were also observed. The following year, Arwyn Owen and Mike Woods carried out a full-scale excavation to carefully remove the stony deposit, hoping to reveal a possible chamber area, and to expose and record any possible dating evidence. Over the course of five weeks, working with a small army of volunteers, this programme involved opening a 4m by 4m trench immediately west of the capstone, and despite the fragmentary nature of the site, at least one piece of structural evidence other than the capstone appears to have survived partially intact. This was a large, possibly dressed boulder standing 0.37m high, and with a length of 0.60m and a width of 0.46m, which was uncovered within the south-western side of the trench. It had been placed in a small, curvilinear earthen pit, along with a small assemblage of stones that may be the remnants of a packing deposit – a deliberate arrangement that probably represented the base of an upright that would have once supported the nearby capstone.

Further clues emerged from the base of the trench, where the team uncovered a roughly triangular floor surface of compacted clay and stone. Measuring 1.3m north-east to south-west and 2m north-west to south-east, this surface sat above the bedrock, which showed evidence of a process known as ‘fire setting’. This is where the bedrock fractures due to intense and direct burning, and is subsequently quarried out to create a chamber – a form of construction identical to the nearby megalithic site of Lligwy. Within the confines of this chamber, no pottery or human remains were found during our excavation (unsurprisingly, given the acidic local soil) but we did recover several stone objects, including a long, cylindrical, polished stone that tapered at one end. This was found in two pieces, separated by some 0.5m inside the chamber area, and was made of a quartz-rich sandstone that is not native to the summit of the Foel, but appears to have originated from the Yorkshire Pennines. This material would have been too brittle to serve as any type of functional impact tool, but it is possible that this imported artefact had been used in sharpening and honing whetstones, say, during the late Bronze Age or Iron Age.

Immediately to the south, another artefact from the chamber was a granite polishing stone with one end worn flat; comparable examples are reported at other Neolithic tombs in Anglesey, such as nearby Pant y Saer. We also found two worked pieces of black chert within the upper fills, above the clay surface. Although these finds appear meagre, we do stress that the monument proper had been relocated (as recalled by locals) and it is more than probable that ground-truthing technology will, in the future, provide some indication of the whereabouts of a cairn and other features associated within this much-disturbed monument.

The wider landscape

As part of our ongoing research, to complement the fieldwork, we carried out a survey of all available desk-based information for the wider landscape, including information from the national databases Archwilio and Coflein, which both revealed that a number of other archaeological sites were present within the curtilage of the hill. These ranged from traces of historic quarrying operations and evidence of medieval and post-medieval agricultural regimes to two buildings dating to the Second World War – but prehistoric sites were strikingly lacking from both databases. Indeed, prior to our investigations, only a handful of prehistoric sites had been noted on regional or national databases in the immediate area, including several standing stones to the east of Pen y Foel, and a possible section of a capstone with an elaborate engraved surface at Llwydiarth Esgob Farm, some 860m east of Bedd y Foel. This latter stone possibly represents the remains of a capstone from a dolmen-type monument that was probably collected locally by the celebrated antiquarian Thomas Pritchard in the early part of the 20th century – though we hasten to add that it does not come from the monument at Bedd y Foel.

Taking a slightly wider view, further later prehistoric sites documented within the northern Anglesey landscape include two megalithic stone chambered monuments within the western part of the coastal town of Benllech (Pant y Saer and Glyn, which are both intervisible with Bedd y Foel), as well as other examples at Lligwy to the north-east, and the now heavily damaged Cromlech Farm (also known as the Llanfechell Cromlech) to the north-west. Closer to home, the team noted three other sites near Bedd y Foel that merited further investigation: two isolated monoliths on the hillock’s lower slope (possibly prehistoric standing stones) and a large, earth-fast boulder with engraved cup-marks on its upper surface – hints of a larger ritualised landscape on Pen y Foel.

The smaller of the two standing stones is located 75m west of the dolmen. It protrudes 0.9m above the ground, but despite its smooth, rounded taper, the stone appears to have been damaged in the distant past and would originally have been taller than its present appearance. The other lies (literally: it is a recumbent stone) further west still, some 170m from Bedd y Foel. It measures c.3.5m in length, but its north-west end preserves clear evidence that this monolith is not physically connected to the bedrock. Based on its shape and position with the landscape, we argue that it would have originally stood upright – and, assuming that a third of its length would have been embedded into the ground, it would have stood around 2.5m high. Taken together, the standing stones and the dolmen’s chamber form an intriguing alignment that is roughly orientated north-west to south-east, with the dolmen the most south-easterly point.

We believe it is probable that other monuments occupied the land on either side of the dolmen, but these have since been destroyed or absorbed into later constructions – examination of LiDAR imagery has already revealed one small standing stone between Bedd y Foel and the recumbent monolith, now discreetly incorporated into the remains of a field boundary that once ran north–south. Interestingly, and despite its relocation, the dolmen itself also appears to have become incorporated into a fossilised stone and possibly turf boundary that can be seen in LiDAR images.

A connected landscape?

A single cup-mark adorns the upper face of the recumbent stone, around ten more have been observed on the dolmen’s capstone, and a third cluster of such markings form the most visible example of such ancient artwork in the immediate area. This is a group of at least five deeply cut cup-marks located on the eastern edge of a much-weathered stone on the southern flank of the Foel. It is partly embedded into a natural ridge that probably formed part of the boundary of a later prehistoric or Celtic-medieval enclosure whose earthworks and terraced field systems are recorded on LiDAR, and it is possible that further cup-marks are buried beneath the turf covering the northern portion of the stone. 

We suggest that it is more than probable that this panel, the standing stones, and the dolmen are contemporary, collectively forming a Neolithic or Early Bronze Age ritualised landscape that was enclosed within the summit and slopes of Pen y Foel. The make-up of these monuments is striking, too. The natural geology of the locality comprises a gritstone, but the archaeological features are all made of hornblende picrite, an igneous rock that is only found in a few isolated surface outcrops (one being around Llanerchymedd). Despite gritstone being easily available around the summit of Pen y Foel, it appears that monument-builders had been selective in the material they used in construction, perhaps attracted by the colour and lustre of hornblende picrite’s minerality.

So, what is going on? The discovery of Bedd y Foel, the cup-marked stones, the two standing stones, and earthwork features identified through LiDAR and field-walking has revealed the landscape to be a significant and complex multi-phased environment preserving at least 5,000 years of human activity. When we combine these insights with the discovery of numerous prehistoric artefacts (including a fine example of a Neolithic polished stone-axe from Langdale in Cumbria) around nearby Llwydiarth Esgob Farm, and the concentration of monuments within a small area, Pen y Foel is probably one of only three later prehistoric areas on Anglesey that can be labelled as a later prehistoric burial-ritual complex: the others are the landscapes of Bryn Celli Ddu and Llanfechell Cromlech.

The landscape that surrounds this monument cluster appears to be the result of strategic choice, located to take advantage of wide views from the summit of Pen y Foel, encompassing much of the northern landscape of Anglesey, including Mynydd Bodafon within the central part of the island, and the Snowdonia Range further south. The cup-marked menhir on the north-western slopes of Pen y Foel also looks towards the Bronze Age copper mine of Parys Mountain, 7km to the north. This concentration of monuments is intriguing, but their distribution represents only a fragment of an enigmatic ceremonial landscape that was in use some 4,500 to 6,000 years ago.

Further information: You can learn more about the archaeology of prehistoric Anglesey at the Oriel Môn museum in Llangefni: www.orielmon.org/en-gb.