No-one knows exactly why stone circles were built but thousands of years later they continue to fascinate.
Stonehenge – of which the oldest stones come from Pembrokeshire – attracts more than a million visitors a year. But on Midsummer’s day, dozens also went to Gors Fawr, a far less well-known site found in the Preseli Mountains.
And Wales is particularly rich in these stone monuments, something Gwilym Hughes, chief inspector of ancient monuments at Cadw , says could be down to “the nature of the landscape and the availability of large stones to create these monuments”.
“They cover a long period of time from about 3,500BC to about 1,500BC,” said Mr Hughes.
“So they cover a span of about 2,000 years and they are found throughout the country.”
Before stone circles came cromlechs, often called burial chambers. These are the earliest of these monuments and date from the very first farmers.
“They are associated with the arrival of farming economies and things like pottery making,” said Mr Hughes.
“Cromlechs are found in a number of different forms. They appear to be quite different in different parts of Wales.
“In Pembrokeshire you have quite similar box-like structures called portal dolmens. Some are massive like Pentre Ifan, which has a massive great capstone.”
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When they have been excavated, human remains, but not whole bodies, have been found.
“A lot of archaeologists believe they are not places of burial but places of veneration of ancestors,” Mr Hughes said.
“It seems rituals were carried out within the tombs and access might have been given to spiritual leaders or shamans.
“They were acting possibly as a way of communication between farms and the ancestors – that is generally the belief.
“These are the earliest people to farm sheep, pigs, cattle and have ancient farms of wheat and barley. They depended on the seasons and rainfall and dry weather.”
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Between 2,500BC and 2,600BC monuments became more circular than square.
“Stone circles are not associated with burials but with rituals,” Mr Hughes said.
“The most famous of these is Stonehenge, which dates from the same period, but there are stone circles all over Wales.
“They might be smaller but they are just as fascinating. They tend to be isolated like Gors Fawr in the Preselis. Nearby are a pair of standing stones in what was a highly sacred landscape.
“They illustrate the importance of the landscape to the neoliths and Bronze Age communities.”
Preseli bluestones were used at Stonehenge.
“The majority of archaeologists believe that they were moved deliberately from quarries and taken to Wiltshire, a distance of some 700 miles. They would probably have moved them by water,” Mr Hughes said.
Single megaliths are also scattered around Wales, sometimes in pairs and sometimes several together. Where they have been excavated they are sometimes associated with human remains, though Mr Hughes says they are “more likely markers in the landscape indicating pathways or rituals”.
Chris Martin, of Clwyd- Powys Archeological Trust, said cromlechs were more common in places like Gwynedd and Pembrokeshire than elsewhere in Wales.
“They may pertain to a particular family or tribe. It appears people were put in not as corpses but as skeletons – we do not really know why,” he said.
“They are not really laid out as a body but as a collection of bones that have been put in with some reference to ceremony. These gave way with the coming of the Bronze Age in about 1,800BC.”
He said stone circles could be meeting places or places of worship and there are also theories about their astronomical use.
Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis, and Stenness, on the Isle of Orkney, were built in 3,000BC and predate Stonehenge by about 500 years.
They were built in line with movements of the sun and moon, according to research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Stone circles may have had a place in agriculture, “or it could be much more dark and sinister, because we have no idea what their religions were,” Chris said.
“They are a fascinating glimpse of the past and past cultures. People want to know why these things are like they are.
“Since the Romans people have lived in houses or settlements and so on. Society is much the same since that period. But prehistory is different. And the only things we have got from that period are standing stones and stone circles and cromlechs. I find them fascinating and I wish we knew more about them.
“There must be more to learn about the lifestyle and the domestic arrangements of these people. They didn’t leave any real trace.”
Archaeology Wales project manager Phil Poucher said it was “likely there would be some kind of ritual” connected with cromlechs.
“Some of the more elaborate sites are aligned with sunrises and that kind of thing,” he said.
“Pentre Ifan is a classic. That would originally have been covered in a mound. That is all gone and that’s left the big stones that created the main chamber.”
The stone circles of Wales
1. Bryn Cader Faner
Dubbed one of the wonders of prehistoric Wales.
In remote moorland, it is a combination of burial mound and stone circle. At the centre is a cairn, 28ft across and three feet high. Outside the cairn are 15 slender stone slabs. Each about 6ft high, they lean outwards like bristling spears.
2. Bryn Celli Ddu
Building work on the monument began around 5,000 years ago. It consisted of a bank, now lost, around an inner ditch. That enclosed a circle of upright stones.
The ditch was 21m in diameter. The outer edge can still be seen. Several stones from the inner stone circle survive.
3. Pentre Ifan
A cromlech built around 3,500BC. The name means Ivan’s Village. It’s made up of three upright stones which support a capstone thought to weigh 16 tonnes. Excavations have shown the burial chamber was set within a shallow pit and covered by a mound of stone and turf stretching more than 100ft.
4. Tinkinswood
One of the best-preserved cromlechs in Britain. It is topped with a 40-tonne capstone that measures 15ft by 24ft. Inside were found bones from at least 50 people buried during the Neolithic period.
5. Harold’s Stones
Said to commemorate a victory over the Britons by King Harold. But they actually date to the early Bronze Age. They are in a field near the B4293, between Monmouth and Chepstow . Trellech village takes its name form the stones. The Welsh for ‘town’ is ‘tre’ and ‘llech’ translates as ‘stone’.
6. Bedd Arthur
Consists of 13 upright stones and two fallen ones in the Preseli mountains. Each stone is around two feet high and bears similarities to the earliest form of Stonehenge. The name means ‘Arthur’s grave’ – legend has it that it is his final resting place.
7. Capel Garmon
Built around 2,000BC. It has two false entrances but the real tomb is entered from the south. The false openings may have been created not to deceive grave robbers but to create places for ceremonial observances.
8. Gors Fawr
It’s 70ft in diameter and made up of 16 stones. Nearby are two larger aligned standing stones.
Near the Preseli Mountains, half the stones are bluestones, while the other stones moved to the area by glacier.
Gors Fawr could be a ceremonial site, marking the route taken to transport bluestones to Stonehenge.
9. Druid’s Circle
It’s 80ft wide and made up of 30 stones. In Penmaenmawr, Gwynedd, it is within sight of Circle 275.
Excavations in 1957 found evidence of cremation. In the centre of the circle was a burial cist – a kind of coffin – with the cremated remains of a child inside an urn. Nearby was a pit containing another urn with the cremated remains of a child.
10. Moel Ty Uchaf
A stone circle consisting of 41 stones and a cist in the middle. It is 12m in diameter it is named after the hill where it is located.
11. Circle 275
It could be the smallest in Britain. It has five stones and is on the headland above Penmaenmawr, near Conwy . The circle probably dates to the Bronze Age, and it stands on a much-travelled trading route between eastern England and Ireland.
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