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Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber is a prehistoric chambered round cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under reference CN002. The monument sits upon bedrock of Neoproterozoic igneous origin, a felsic rock formation laid down over 540 million years ago. This ancient geological foundation would have been exposed or near-surface when the chamber was constructed during the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age, forming part of the natural landscape that Neolithic communities selected for their burial place.
Chambered cairns of this type were built to serve as collective burial monuments, typically containing a stone-built chamber accessed through a passage and surrounded by a mound of stone and earth. The use of locally available stone was essential to their construction, and the felsic igneous bedrock at Cefnamwlch would have provided suitable material for building the chamber walls and capstones. Such monuments served both as burial vaults and as territorial markers, visible across the Welsh landscape for thousands of years.
The survival of Cefnamwlch as a protected monument allows investigation into prehistoric funerary practices and settlement patterns in Wales. The combination of its architectural form, geological setting, and position within the broader distribution of chambered cairns across the region contributes to understanding how Neolithic and Bronze Age communities organised their sacred and burial spaces.
Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference CN002. View the official record →
Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber is a prehistoric chambered round cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under reference CN002.
Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a chambered round cairn. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber 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 CN002.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Sarn Meyllteyrn churchyard standing stone (1.9 km), Llangwnadl Standing Stone (2.9 km), Mynydd Rhiw Stone Axe Factory (4.7 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber'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.
Cefnamwlch Burial Chamber stands on Unnamed Igneous Intrusion, Neoproterozoic, bedrock that formed in the Neoproterozoic. The rock here is felsic-rock.