Ty Newydd

An embarrassed cromlech found hiding itself in the corner of field splattered in an extraordinary amount of sheep turds. It cowers behind a 'protective' screen of short and squat concrete bollards; from which I'm sure at one time fluttered yellow and black 'police crime scene' tape!

Ty Newydd was excavated in 1936, but the meagre finds were not particularly useful for finding a date for the site. They included a flint arrowhead of the early Bronze Age and fragments of beaker pottery. The overall form of the tomb, a nineteenth-century account of the monument indicates that it was probably once covered by a round cairn, suggests that it was initially constructed during the Neolithic.

The giant capstone is helped in achieving its elevated position by the unsympathetic support of two brick walls, it hardly touches the stones anciently positioned to support its great bulk. Perhaps it would be better to allow this monument to fall and crumble, to allow it overtime to return to the earth from which it once came. Or perhaps it could be loaded onto the back of a truck and taken to Switzerland where it may achieve a sense of dignity in its final decline.

At least it wasn't raining.