Gwynedd Archaeological
Trust Regional Historic Environment Record
Ty Newydd Burial Chamber, Llanfaelog
Primary Reference Number (PRN) : 3030 Trust : Gwynedd Community : Llanfaelog Unitary authority : Ynys Mon NGR : SH34427386 Site Type (preferred type first) : NEOLITHIC CHAMBERED TOMB Status : National Trust
Description : Ty Newydd burial chamber comprising a cracked capstone 12 3/4ft by 5 1/4ft, resting on three uprights, one of which is broken. A second and larger chamber forming part of the monument was destroyed. There is no visible evidence of the original mound.
The chamber was excavated in 1935. A two inch thick deposit of black earth, containing much charcoal, 110 pieces of broken white quartz, 5 flint flakes, and part of a barbed and tanged arrowhead badly burnt, a chip from a polished flint axe and fragments of pottery, almost certainly Beaker, were found. Part of the dry stone walling of chamber and passage were also found in position and the site of a fire at the entrance of the chamber. Most of the charcoal fragments were of hazel wood. (RCAHMW, 1937)
Burial chamber is as described by the Royal Commission. <2>
Ty Newydd. Apparently a Neolithic passage grave re-used in the Beaker period. <3>
The Beaker - of the 'all over cord group' - is in the National Museum of Wales. <4>
Field in which monument stands regularly ploughed leaving chamber on a slightly raised platform - with a bed of concrete covering much of it. Early references to the site may indicate the previous existence of a second chamber close by. <6> <7>
There are well defined cup marks on the remaining portion of the capstone. (Crew, 1981)
As previously described. Of the well defined cupmarks only 2 are fairly certainly man-made the rest seem to be natural solution holes. The monument lies on a gentle rise but not actually on its summit and it is not a real ridge as Lynch suggests, i.e. it is not a topographically defined position. The layout of the 3 remaining uprights suggests the chamber opened to the SE - directly towards the Llanberis Pass and Snowdon - perhaps this is deliberate. (Smith, 2003)
The capstone is 15 ft. long by 6 ft. wide by 3 ft. 6 ins. thick (Unnamed reviewer, 1902)
Ty Newydd. — This is in a field on the right-hand side of the road leading to Bodedern from Ty Croes Station. It is said to have been formerly a double cromlech. Mr. J. E. Griffith suggests, with reason, that possibly the two cromlechs were the remains of a large sculptured mound with a passage leading into it, similar to that of Bryn Celli Ddu. Here again we apparently have a cromlech of no ordinary or simple type (Anwyl, 1908).
The capstone is 15 ft. long by 6 ft. wide by 3 ft. 6 ins. Thick (Griffith, 1900).
“The cap stone is rather of an oblong shape and measured sixteen feet long, six wide, and three thick. It only rested upon three supporters each about three feet high although there were four placed in the ground. Near the cromlech were lying two large stones, the one seventeen feet long and three thick.” (Skinner, 1802) (Sketch on p. 46).
