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Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses is a prehistoric cairnfield located in Wales, comprising scattered stone cairns and the remains of platform houses built into the hillside. The monument sits on bedrock of the South Wales Upper Coal Measures Formation, a Westphalian-age deposit composed of mudstone, siltstone, sandstone, coal, ironstone and ferricrete. This underlying geology shaped the landscape available to prehistoric communities, with the ferricrete providing naturally indurated stone suitable for cairn construction.
The cairnfield represents a settlement pattern typical of upland Bronze Age and Iron Age communities, where stone monuments served both funerary and territorial functions. The platform houses indicate domestic occupation, with terraced building platforms cut into the sloping ground to level habitable surfaces. Such settlements exploited marginal upland terrain where pastoral farming and seasonal movement would have characterised subsistence.
The site is protected by Cadw, the Welsh heritage monuments authority, under reference GM323, reflecting its archaeological and historical significance as evidence of prehistoric land use and settlement hierarchy in the Welsh landscape.
Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference GM323. View the official record →
Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses is a prehistoric cairnfield located in Wales, comprising scattered stone cairns and the remains of platform houses built into the hillside. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Cadw under reference GM323.
Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a cairnfield. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Cadw — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Wales. The official designation reference is GM323.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Ventilation Furnace, Trehafod (3.2 km), Hetty Pit (4.2 km), Pontypridd Bridge (5.9 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Carn-y-Wiwer Cairnfield & Platform Houses stands on South Wales Upper Coal Measures Formation, bedrock that formed in the Westphalian. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone, sandstone, coal, ironstone and ferricrete.