Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)

Nearest town:
Caernarfon (9km NNE)
OS reference:
SH445542
OS sheets:
115, 123
Latitude:
53° 3' 43.21 N
Longitude:
4° 19' 14.9 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd) (Standing Stone / Menhir) by hamish

I did’nt venture into this field, it is after all a private estate.Also I didn’t want to be lacerated on the wire.

Image credit: Mike Murray
hamish
hamish Aug 21, 2006

Articles

Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)

C
CARL Sep 17, 2012

Visited 7.9.12

The stone is easy to visit as long as you are prepared to walk a little way up a private drive. (On the right)
You can easily park for two minutes as the entrance of said drive.

The stone is behind a barbed wire fence but is very easily seen.
I would estimate the stone is 7ft tall x 2ft across

Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)

blossom
blossom Jul 12, 2011

I would suggest that if you are coming down the A499 from the Caernarfon direction you will see the huge gates for the Glynllifon park on your left. Just after this is are the metal gates of the Park Newydd house. The next left is the road to Pen y Groes.

Take this turning. Immediately on your left are the metal gates of a gatehouse. Park by the roadside here.

You can see the stone in the field from these gates. I asked the owner of this house and she was happy to let me go into the field to look at the stone.

I loved this Stone. Lovely textures and colours. A huge Stone with real presence. It felt majestic.

A layer of calcined bone mixed with charred wood and fragments of a burial urn (early Bronze Age) was found 1m east of the stone.

Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)

postman
postman Dec 19, 2009

A really good stone this one, very shapely and gnarled it reminded me of Adam (or eve) to the west of Avebury. About eight feet tall with good views over towards the city of the giants (what a cool name)

Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)

R
rdavymed Sep 8, 2003

Travelling North on the A499, turn into the driveway of a large mansion type house immediately after the right turn signposted “Penygroes”. The stone is in a field beyond a fence on your right.

Folklore

Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)
Standing Stone / Menhir
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Mar 30, 2009

According to a letter in Archaeologia Cambrensis (Oct. 1875), this stone was “traditionally said to mark the grave of ‘Gwydion ab Don’.” Gwydion ab Don (as Evans-Wentz tells us) was the king of the Tylwyth Teg – the fairies. Caer Gwydion (the Milky Way) is named after his castle, don’t you know.

The author of the letter and his friend Mr Wynn had a dig around the stone – they found the remnants of an urn and the cremation it held on the eastern side. Unimaginatively they put this down to the Romans.

More imaginatively, Mr Wynn rejected the idea that the stone marked Gwydion’s grave. But then attributed it to someone in the medieval ‘Englynion y Beddau’ (stanzas of the graves), to his friend’s dismay.

Sites within 20km of Maen Llwyd (Plas Newydd)

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