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Cors-y-Gedol Burial Chamber is a prehistoric chambered long cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under the reference ME038. The monument sits upon bedrock of Lower Cambrian age, where alternating beds of sandstone and conglomerate provide a hard, well-drained foundation. This Early Cambrian geology, laid down over 500 million years ago, has helped preserve the site through millennia.
The burial chamber forms part of the Neolithic tradition of communal tomb construction that flourished across Wales and Britain from around 4000 BCE. Long cairns of this type typically incorporated a stone burial chamber within a mound of rubble and earth, often aligned along a distinctive elongated plan. They served as focal points for the deposition of the dead, sometimes used across many generations, and represented significant investments of labour by early farming communities establishing themselves on the Welsh landscape.
Cors-y-Gedol's survival to the present day reflects both the robustness of its original construction and the protective qualities of its rocky foundation. The monument remains an important witness to the beliefs and practices of Wales's earliest farming populations, demonstrating how Neolithic communities adapted to local geological and topographical conditions to create monuments of enduring significance.
Cors-y-Gedol Burial Chamber is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference ME038. View the official record →
Cors-y-Gedol Burial Chamber is a prehistoric chambered long cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under the reference ME038.
Cors-y-Gedol Burial Chamber dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a chambered long cairn. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Cors-y-Gedol 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 ME038.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Llwyn du Parc cairn (3.4 km), Bwlch y Rhiwgyr, cairn 350m to SW of (3.9 km), Deserted Rural Settlement South of Ffridd Olchfa (4.4 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Cors-y-Gedol 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.
Cors-y-Gedol Burial Chamber stands on Lower Cambrian Rocks (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Early Cambrian. The rock here is sandstone and conglomerate, interbedded.