NAR SH28SW11

Three early Bronze Age barrows or cairns were set on low lying ground immediately above the high water mark at the inner end of the Porth Dafarch inlet. Two of these, Barrows II & III, were overlain by a later Prehistoric style settlement occupied into the Roman period, whose remains are still visible (NPRN 56021). They were excavated in 1875-6. Barrow II contained a crouched female inhumation in a central cist with two broken beaker vessels. A fallen monolith, 2.6m log and 1.0m wide, may have been a marker stone. Barrow III was greatly disturbed, showing only the wrecks of its original cists. Extended inhumations, thought to be early medieval, had been inserted into both mounds.
Barrow I crowned a rocky knoll immediately above the reach of the tides. It was opened in 1848 by a farmer in search of stone and little, if anything, remains. It was about 10m in diameter and contained what is thought to have been an early medieval cist grave. Two Bronze Age urns were found. One contained the bones of a woman, bones of a dog, a bronze rivet and an smaller accessory cup lined with braken and containing the incomplete skelton of a child. The second urn was inverted and contained an accessory cup containing ashes.

See NPRN 56021 for references.

John Wiles 08.08.07