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Y Garn Ring Cairn is a prehistoric ring cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under reference CM229. Ring cairns of this type date to the Bronze Age and were typically constructed as ceremonial or funerary monuments, their distinctive circular stone arrangements serving ritual purposes across upland Britain. The monument sits upon bedrock formed from Ashgill rocks—a sequence of mudstone, siltstone and sandstone deposited during the Ashgill period of the Ordovician. This geology would have provided the stone materials readily available to prehistoric communities constructing the cairn, the local bedrock naturally fragmenting into pieces suitable for building such monuments.
The landscape setting typical of ring cairns places Y Garn within the pattern of Bronze Age activity in upland Wales, where such monuments cluster in areas with sufficient stone and water sources. The Ashgill geology underlying the site would have created moorland terrain broadly suited to pastoral use and ceremonial gatherings. Though the specific archaeological history of Y Garn Ring Cairn remains to be fully documented, its survival as a recognisable monument has allowed Cadw to extend statutory protection, ensuring this Bronze Age structure endures as evidence of prehistoric settlement and belief systems in the Welsh uplands.
Y Garn Ring Cairn is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference CM229. View the official record →
Y Garn Ring Cairn is a prehistoric ring cairn located in Wales and protected by Cadw under reference CM229.
Y Garn Ring Cairn dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a ring cairn. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Y Garn Ring 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 CM229.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Carreg Castell-y-Gwynt Burial Chamber (1 km), Dyffryn Camp (4.8 km), Llech Ciste Standing Stone (5.4 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Y Garn Ring 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.
Y Garn Ring Cairn stands on Ashgill Rocks (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Ashgill. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone and sandstone.