© Mapbox · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Boundary data © Cadw
Tarren y Bwlch is a prehistoric round cairn situated in Wales. The monument consists of a mound of stones typical of Bronze Age funerary monuments built across Britain and Ireland during the second millennium BCE. Such cairns served as communal or individual burial markers, often containing cremated remains or inhumations within internal stone settings or cists.
The cairn is constructed upon bedrock belonging to the Pennine and South Wales Middle Coal Measures Formation, a foundation of mudstone, siltstone and sandstone interbedded with coal and ironstone seams that formed during the Moscovian period of the Carboniferous. This coal-bearing landscape of South Wales would later become significant to industrial development, but in prehistory provided a relatively stable base for monument construction.
The site is protected by Cadw, the Welsh heritage monuments authority, under reference GM565. Round cairns of this period and region offer valuable archaeological evidence of prehistoric settlement patterns, burial practices and ritual beliefs among Bronze Age communities in Wales, contributing to our understanding of how early populations organised their landscape and commemorated their dead.
Tarren y Bwlch round cairn is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference GM565. View the official record →
Tarren y Bwlch is a prehistoric round cairn situated in Wales. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Cadw under reference GM565.
Tarren y Bwlch round 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.
Tarren y Bwlch round 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 GM565.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Tarren Maerdy cairn (E) (7.1 km), Mynydd Maendy Hillfort (7.9 km), Earthwork 360m NNE of Crug yr Avan (8 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Tarren y Bwlch round 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.
Tarren y Bwlch round cairn stands on Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation And South Wales Middle Coal Measures Formation (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Moscovian. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone, sandstone, coal, ironstone and ferricrete.