Image of Henblas (Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech) by Rhiannon

[The owner’s gardener] accompanied us over the fields to the object we came in search of. We here found three immense stones two of them above fifteen feet high and nearly the same in width standing upright in the ground, another of a flatter form leant against them.

I cannot imagine there is anything artificial in the arrangements of these ponderous bodies but that their position is one they were placed in by the hand of nature. Whether they ever were or were not employed by the Druids I do not pretend to determine. And here we may observe the word cromlech is applied by the Welsh indiscriminately to stones either natural or artificial if they are only found inclining in such a direction that there is a hollow underneath.


From the Rev. John Skinner’s ‘Ten Days’ Tour through the Isle of Anglesey’ (1804).

Image credit: sketch by John Skinner