Cerrig y Gof forum 1 room
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Richard Fenton was a classic antiquarian country gent who loved to take a spade to the middle of a barrow or two. There are some great early 19th century accounts in Archaeologia Cambrensis of him and the society having tea parties at ancient sites, except that the desert would be to uncover an urn or two (of course throwing away all the cremated remains). His book 'A Historical Tour Through Pembrokeshire' (1810) probably has an account of his visit.

Some of the Scottish sites that are kinda similar to this are the Bargrennan tombs. One, near Glentrool just north of Newton Stewart, was investigated last year and is to be resumed later this summer. It is called Cairnderry, and has three large chambers, each with a passage leading to out from the centre, and a mound or cairn probably covered the whole thing. It is kinda egg-shaped. The interim report can be found at:
www.cf.ac.uk/hisar/people/vc/cdy/cairnderry.html

the other tombs are listed on:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=5390

Again, it was robbed out by antiquarians and many of the stones were used in the construction of an estate wall sometime last century. Its still quite interesting though.

Here's a quote from <I>Prehistoric Preseli</I>, by N.P. Figgis:<BLOCKQUOTE>There are a few other tombs of vaguely similar pattern in western Scotland and eastern Ireland, but they are rare and none is really very similar. Fenton, the early nineteenth-century Pembrokeshire antiquarian, explored [Cerrig y Gof] when it was already in much the same state as it is today, and found some black pebbles (unusual - white quartz is common), charcoal and bits of unburned human bone along with what he described as sherds of the 'rudest' pottery, all now sadly lost.</BLOCKQUOTE>Here's more from <I>Neolithic Sites of Cardiganshire Carmarthenshire & Pembrokeshire</I> by G. Children and G. Nash:<BLOCKQUOTE>Cerrig y Gof was excavated in 1811 by Fenton... he believed a central cromlech originally completed the complex. This argument is disputed because the central area is too small to accommodate a chamber of a size similar to the other five.</BLOCKQUOTE>These two books are excellent resources if you're planning a trip to the area.

Kammer x