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Garnedd Wen Cairn is a prehistoric round cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under reference ME254. The monument sits upon bedrock of Ordovician felsic tuff, formed as extrusive volcanic rock during the Ordovician period over 450 million years ago. This ancient geological foundation provided the stone-working communities of prehistory with accessible material for construction.
Round cairns of this type were typically built during the Bronze Age as burial monuments, though some may date to the late Neolithic period. The cairn would have been constructed by stacking stones gathered from the surrounding landscape, creating a mound that served as a marker for interred remains and a focal point for ritual activity. The local tuff bedrock exposed at the surface would have supplied much of the building stone.
Today Garnedd Wen Cairn remains a visible element of Wales's prehistoric heritage, testament to the cairn-building traditions that characterized upland communities across Britain and Ireland during the second millennium BC. Its protection by Cadw reflects the monument's significance as evidence of Bronze Age funerary practices and land use in this region of Wales.
Garnedd Wen Cairn is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference ME254. View the official record →
Garnedd Wen Cairn is a prehistoric round cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under reference ME254.
Garnedd Wen Cairn dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a round cairn. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Garnedd Wen Cairn 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 ME254.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Carnedd y Filiast Cairn (3.2 km), Ffridd-y-Fedw Platform House (5.6 km), Arenig Fawr Cairn (6.1 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Garnedd Wen Cairn'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.
Garnedd Wen Cairn stands on Unnamed Extrusive Rocks, Ordovician, bedrock that formed in the Ordovician. The rock here is felsic tuff.