St Lythans burial chamber

Template:Infobox Megalith

The St Lythans Burial Chamber (Welsh: Siambr Gladdu Lythian Sant) is a single stone Megalithic burial chamber, built around [[5th millennium BC|6,000 BP, ]] as part of a chambered long barrow, during the Neolithic period, in what is now known as the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales.

St Lythans is around one mile (1.5 km) south of Tinkinswood Burial Chamber, a more extensive dolmen that it may once have resembled, constructed during the same period.

The site is on pasture land, but pedestrian access is allowed and is free, with roadside parking available for 2/3 cars about 50 m from the site.

The dolmen, which has never been fully excavated,^[1], is owned and maintained by Cadw (Template:Lang-en) ^[2], the Welsh Historic Environment Agency.

This chambered tomb is a dolmen,^[3], the most common form of megalithic structure in Europe, standing at the eastern end of a flat topped, 27m (87ft) long, 11m (35ft) wide earthen mound, forming a chambered long barrow. It is one of the Severn-Cotswold type, ^[4] and consists of a cove of three upright stones (orthostats), supporting a large, flat, capstone. The mudstone capstone, which slopes downwards from south east to north west (the left side of the entrance towards the back, right), measures 4m (14ft) long, 3m (10ft) wide, and 0.7m (2.5ft) thick. ^[5] The insides of the two facing, rectangular, uprights have been smoothed off and there is a port hole at the top of the triangular, rear stone, similar to some other dolmens, such as at Trethevy Quoit, in Cornwall. The burial chamber has a minimum internal height of 1.8m and is in an east/west allignment, with the entrance facing east. As with most cromlechs, it is likely that originally, the Burial Chamber would have had a forecourt immediately outside the entrance to the chamber and the chamber would have been covered by a mound of earth and smaller stones. This has either been eroded, or removed, over time, leaving only a much lower barrow behind the current structure. However, as the chamber is unusually tall, it is possible that the capstone was never fully covered.ref>[1]www.stonepages.com, accessed August 3, 2008</ref>

From the end of the last ice age, (between 10,000 to 12,000 years BP) mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Central Europe began to migrate to Great Britain. They would have been able to walk between Continental Europe and Great Britain on dry land, prior to the post glacial rise in sea level, up until around 6,000 BP.^[6] However, as the area became heavily wooded and movement would have been restricted, it is more likely that people came to what is now known as Wales by boat. Apparently, from the Iberian Peninsula.^[7] These neolithic colonists integrated with the indigenous people, who gradually changed from being hunter-gatherers to settled farmers. They cleared the forests to establish pasture and to cultivate the land. They built the long barrow at St Lythans around 6,000 years BP. This was about 1,500 years before either Stonehenge or The Egyptian Great Pyramid of Giza was completed. ^[8] There are over 150 other cromlechs all over Wales, such as Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire (Template:Lang-cy) and Bryn Celli Ddu, on Anglesey (Template:Lang-cy), of the same period.

As well as a place to house and honour their dead, these cromlechs may have been communal and ceremonial sites, where people would meet "to socialise, to meet new partners, to acquire fresh livestock and to exchange ceremonial gifts." ref>[2]www.bbc.co.uk, accessed August 5, 2008</ref> The corpses of the dead were probably left exposed, before the bones were moved into the burial chamber.

In common with the people living all over Great Britain, over the following centuries the people living around St Lythans assimilated new imigrants and exchanged ideas of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Celtic cultures. Together with the approximate areas now known as Breckonshire, Monmouthshire and the rest of Glamorgan, St Lythans was settled by a Celtic British tribe called the Silures. Although the Roman occupation left no physical impression on St Lythans, its people embraced the Roman religion of Christianity and dedicated a church to St Bleddian, who had been sent to Britain to stamp out the Pelagian Heresy.[3]www.clanmorgan.net,accessed August 8, 2008</ref> The current Church of St Bleddian, in St Lythans, a listed grade II* building,^[9] known locally as St Lythian's Church, was built about 2/3 mile (about 1 km) to the east of this site and has an ancient yew tree in the churchyard.

The Manor of Worlton, which included St Lythans, was given to Bishop Oudoceous (Template:Lang-cy)^[10] of Llandaf by King Judhail (Template:Lang-cy)^[11] in 640 CE. In the 16th century, the manor was acquired by the Button family, who built the first house about 500 yards, (0.5 km) north west of the cairn. The Manor's name was changed to Dyffryn St Nicholas, and the house rebuilt, in the 18th century, when the estate was purchased by Thomas Pryce. Commenting on St Lythans, Nicholas Carlisle, says "The Resident Population of this Parish, in 1801, was 72. It is 6m. W. S.W. from Caerdiff (sic).", in his A Topographical Dictionary of The Dominion of Wales, London, 1811, and notes that "Here is a Druidical Altar."^[12] (Note the spelling of Cardiff, which corresponds closely to the current local Cardiff pronuciation.) By 1831 the population had grown by neary 50 % ( "Lythan's, St. (St. Lythian), a parish in the hundred of Dinas-Powis, county of Glamorgan, South Wales, 6 miles (W. S. W.) from Cardiff, containing 103 inhabitants.") and Dyffryn House was being used as "a school for all the poor children of this parish". By now, the dolmen had been correctly identified: "There is a cromlech on St. Lythan's common." (From 'A Topographical Dictionary of Wales' by Samuel Lewis, 1833).^[13] Census records show that St Lythans' population fluctuated between 81 (1881) and 136 (1861) over the rest of the 19th century."^[14] In 1939, the Dyffryn Estate was leased to the GlamorganCounty Council for 999 years. ^[15]

St Lythans Burial Chamber is also known as Gwal y Filiast" (Template:Lang-en), the site had been used as an animal shelter in the early 19th century,^[16] and Maes y Felin (Template:Lang-en), apparently from the legend that, each Midsummer's Eve, the capstone spins around three times.^[17] The dolmen stands in a field known as the 'Accursed Field', so called due to its supposed infertility. However, Julian Cope, born about 25 miles (40 km) to the north in Deri, Bargoed, has suggested the name may have derived from 'Field O'Koeur'..^[18]

Few human remains survive from this period, the early Neolithic (c. 6400 BP – 5300 BP). Although, they are comparatively well preserved in the Black Mountains, Gower and theVale of Galmorgan, where up to 50 individuals, of all ages, have been interred - men, women and children - in each cromlech. The St Lythans site has not yet been fully excavated. Minor excavation was carried out by William Collings Lukis in 1875. However his notes are regarded as "poorly-recorded".Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Remains from seven neolithic humans have been excavated from a cave at Goldsland Wood, Wenvoe, near the cromlech at St Lythans, together with pottery and flint blades dating from between 5,000 to 5,600 years BP. Although there is no evidence to show that the bones relate to the site, it is thought that the corpses had been placed there until they had decomposed. The skeletons would then have been removed, to sites such as the St Lythans Burial Chamber,^[19] or the Tinkinswood Burial Chamber. This appears to be the first, and only, site found in Britain, where corpses have been left to rot, prior to placement in communal tombs. Most of the remains recovered were small pieces of jaw, fingers or toes..< ref>[4]http://www.lancsarchsoc.org.uk, accessed August 7, 2008</ref> The Tinkinswood site contained human remains and pottery dating to the early Bronze Age, showing that such sites were used over many generations.

St. Lythans (Template:Lang-cy) is a small rural settlement in the Vale of Glamorgan (Template:Lang-cy), midway between the villages of Wenvoe (Template:Lang-cy) and St Nicholas (Template:Lang-cy), about 4 miles West, South West of Cardiff (Template:Lang-cy). The area is little changed from the mid 19th century, when Llowe's 'A Topographical Dictionary of Wales' (1849) - Lythan's, St., pp. 172-179 said: "There is a cromlech on a farm belonging to the Dyfryn (sic) estate; it is near the road-side, about half a mile west of the church, on the approach to Dyfryn village".^[20] The cromlech stands in a field, often shared by a herd of cows, to the south of St Lythans Road. Roadside parking is available, for 2/3 cars, about 50 m from the site. Access to the field, which slopes gently to the north west, is permitted and is free, is via a kissing gate. There is no wheelchair access, although the site may be seen from the gate.

• Prehistoric Britain
• mesolithic
• Standing Stones
• hunter-gatherers
• Neolithic Europe
• Chamber Tomb
• Barrow
• Long Barrow
• Chambered Long Barrow
• orthostat
• Cove (standing stones)
• Dolmen
• Severn-Cotswold tomb
• Cairn
• Long cairn
• Tumulus
• Cromlech
• Bronze Age
• Iron Age
• Britons (historic)
• Celtic
• Vale of Glamorgan
• Tinkinswood
• Dyffryn Gardens
• List of Cadw (Welsh Heritage) Properties
• Welsh placenames