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Benllech Megalithic Goosehouse; Drws-y-Nant Discredited Burial Chamber

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NPRN302679
Map ReferenceSH58SW
Grid ReferenceSH5191082667
Unitary (Local) AuthorityIsle of Anglesey
Old CountyAnglesey
CommunityLlanfair-mathafarn-eithaf
Type Of SiteGOOSE PEN
PeriodUnknown
Description
At the Benllech Megalithic Goosehouse a massive slab covers a small, low chamber 0.5-0.6m high. This has drystone walls with two orthostatic stones and is open to the east. A smaller, but otherwise similar chamber, again open to the east, adjoins on the south. These were set against a field wall in a field of rough ground, now a bungalow garden, above the confluence of two streams.

The site was excavated as a Neolithic tomb chamber in 1965 shortly after its discovery or recognition. It is now thought to be comparatively recent and is dated by the fragments of a medicine found beneath the chamber's lowest stone. It has been identified as an agricultural structure of some kind, a goosehouse, corn drier or root store, or even as a rather bashful folly. There are, however, problems with all of these interpretations. Despite all this the monument has retained its scheduled status, its very ambiguity cancelling out its apparent modernity.

Sources: Lynch in Archaeologia Cambrensis 115 (1966), 11-26
'Prehistoric Anglesey' (1970), 55, fig 54
CADW Field Wardens Report for AN094 (1993)

John Wiles 10.09.07