Ty Newydd 

Passage Grave - Anglesey

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Panoramas

Infrared


SH 34426 73866 (GPS 25min)
Visited August 2001

Ty Newydd is most probably the remains of a Passage Grave, it had an oval chamber, of which the southern and eastern orthostats are now missing. Also missing is the southern section of the capstone, a fracture plane on the southern edge of the slab (see photo above), shows where it split off. As is normal for Passage Graves, Ty Newydd is built in a commanding position on the summit of a low hill, and the former existence of a characteristic round cairn covering the chamber is hinted at in nineteenth century accounts of the monument.
Today the capstone is stabilised by two modern stone blockwork pillars, one of which occupies much of the original chamber space. It also appeared to us that the remaining orthostats were now set in concrete. A semicircle of diminutive concrete posts encloses the monument on the northern side, we can only suppose that these mark the supposed extent of the original cairn, although no trace exists of this today.
Excavated in 1936, no human bones were found at the site, but the original chamber floor area was delineated by a layer of charcoal. Other finds included Beaker fragments, a barbed and tanged arrowhead, and a small flint chip thought to come from a polished axehead. The pottery and the arrowhead date from the late Neolithic and may be evidence of secondary use of the tomb, although the absence of earlier finds at the site leaves only typological assumptions of an early date for its construction.
No direct evidence of a passage was found at Ty Newydd, since the tomb was constructed on a rock outcrop no stoneholes were evident, but if Ty Newydd was indeed a Passage Grave, then the passage is thought to have entered the chamber at the east. The capstone does tilt up toward this direction, but how much this is due to the obvious reinstatement that the tomb has experienced is unknown.

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