Images

Image of St Elvis (Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech) by Kammer

Taken 8th January 2005: The site viewed from the west.

Standing disrespectfully on the capstone are William, Alfie and Louise. Behind them are the extremely friendly ponies in the adjoining field.

Image credit: Simon Marshall

Articles

St Elvis

I've been wanting to come here for at least a decade and i've been trying to find a way down all year long, it took birthday money to do it in the end.

En route by 5am, I saw a standing stone and a couple of hill forts on the way, the way being 160 miles long, but this is the place i'm heading for most. It is one of three burial chambers I want to get to, places I'd had to put off till next time, but next times are nowadays hard to come by, too few and too far inbetween, so every now and then you have to push it, sleep and food must become secondary thoughts.

If only the King had taken a page out of my book.

I will exercise some restraint in further musical related puns.

I parked in the car park that I assume is for the hoards of tourists that must flock here on more sunny days, only old photographs assure me there are more sunny days, as it is I steel myself against the precocious elements and trudge, in a lonely manner, up the hill towards the farm.

The farm track right angles to the right and from here I can see the stones across the field, they are somewhat reassuringly further from the farm house than I thought. The farm track though is another matter, it might double as some kind of slurry canal, collecting it from over several fields and channeling it into a wide reservoir, map says it's a footpath, it looks more like a lake of shit to me. I wade through it, it's not as deep as it seems, the bottom is obviously not visible. I pass by the farm house and walk up to the stones thankfully leaving the farm behind, but not the effluent quagmire, not until i'm in the grassy enclosure with the stones does it get not muddy. This is really one of the worst placed farms i've ever seen, it's like they leave the place in an utter mess on purpose, it's enough to make you die on the toilet.

That's not true, either way.

Firstly I cram myself under the capstone, mostly because it's the done thing but also to escape the stinging sideways rain, incessant is the word, possibly spelled wrong, autospell is an American.

The still standing chamber is interesting enough but the other is more interesting still, I'm not sure it's collapsed, I think it's supposed to look like that, it looks like a recumbent and flankers, but could more likely be a type of boulder burial with two stones kind of containing it. An earth fast burial boulder like at Perthi Duon at Angelsey.

Despite the farm, shite weather and just the shite, everywhere, I stayed too long, I might have to add one of the places on my list to the other list, for next time.

God I'm hungry, deep fried cheeseburger will cure that.

Postman has left the farmyard.

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St Elvis

Visited 8.6.14

Directions:

When you see the sign for St Elvis Farm on the A487 turn down the track to the parking area. From here it is only a 15 minute walk to the burial chambers.

I had wanted to visit this site for a long time (it was ‘always on my mind’) and as I was in Pembrokeshire I knew that it was ‘now or never’.

Karen wasn’t interested (she can be a ‘hard headed woman’ at times) so she waited in the car whilst myself, Dafydd and Sophie headed towards the dolmen which was ‘way down’ the farm track. Despite previous reports the track was dry and free of mud so my ‘blue suede shoes’ didn’t get dirty.

In the distance we could hear a dog barking which left them ‘all shook up’.

I reassured them that it was only an old ‘hound dog’.

Dafydd complained that Sophie was making too much noise and wanted ‘a little less conversation’ but I explained to him that ‘she’s not you’.

On the way we saw a dead young fox which (unsurprisingly) the children took great interest in. Doing what children do they started to poke the poor animal with a stick. I told them to stop and ‘don’t be cruel’.

We arrived at the burial chambers and entered through the wooden gate.

From the outside the wooden fencing made it look like a ‘jailhouse rock’.

A couple of farm workers looked at us with ‘suspicious minds’ and this caused us to do some ‘rubberneckin’ but nothing was said. After all, there is a public right of way.

***

Seriously, this is a great place to visit.

The two capstones are quite large. One was covered in a dark green/black moss whilst the other had a foxglove and a small pretty purple plant growing on its surface. There are quite a few large stones scattered around in the vicinity.

I wonder how many/if any originally came from the dolmen?

If you are heading towards St David’s this is well worth stopping off to see

Thank you very much…………………………..!

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St Elvis

Visited 8th January 2005: Not much to add here except to reiterate Moss' comments about mud. The coastal footpath is supposed to be part of the route to the chamber from the main road (A487), but we ended up walking on the farm track instead (it runs parallel). We'd have lost the boys in the mud if we hadn't!

Parking isn't a problem, but the walk to the stone is about half a mile with an incline towards the beginning. An adventurous wheelchair user might make the distance with some assistance.

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St Elvis

This double chambered cromlech speaks for itself, "wrecked" but still holding on. To quote,

Both chambers at St. Elvis farm are aligned n/w – s/e with capstones dipping towards an inlet of the River Solva.

Geo.Nash/ G.Children, Pembrokshire Monuments

The weather looks good, but gales and horizontal rain happened before the photos. Muddy lanes indistinguishable from muddy farm tracks, and great tankers bearing down high banked lanes are quite scary.

Daniels says of this monument that the southerly chamber may be 'earth fast', with the western end of the capstone resting on the ground and eastern supported by uprights, similar to the double chambered Carn Llidi tombs on St.David.

This may well be so, given the fat 'diamond' shape of the capstone resting on the ground by the fence.

This type of capstone is found at Carn Llidi, Coetan Arthur and the White House tomb further inland, and may point to a particular type of capstone confined to this area.

A mile or so further north near the coastline there are another two lost cromlechs, Llanuwas and Llandruidon. They lie either side of another small inlet valley down to the sea at Nine Wells. One must lie buried in the gorse somewhere in the remnants of the second world war airfield. The walk down to the cove is very atmospheric and captures for a brief moment how the landscape would have been in neolithic times. Again there is an old quarry with stone similar to that of St. Elvis.

The wrecked appearance of St. Elvis is blamed on a farmer, who tried to blow it up in 1798, but was fortunately told to stop.

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St Elvis

I can't believe I'm the first person to list this site. It's in such a megalithically rich region I felt sure other stones tourers would have visited – how can anyone stay away with a name like this?

Indeed, as we started our tour at Mynydd Preseli and are now here, by my calculations that makes it an Elvis-Preseli holiday (rimshot, cymbal, thankyou).

Located on a public footpath through St Elvis Farm, this is an utterly extraordinary site – two cromlechs side by side. Both are damaged, the east side of the eastern cromlech has been drilled to hang a gatepost in the past, and both capstones lie on the floor of the chambers, but enough of the components remain to give a tremendous sense of the monument.

A clear mound of cairnstones rises up around the base. On the presumption that it was originally covered, it must have been by a single mound.

The nearby wall contains stones possibly removed from the cromlech.

Unusually for West Wales cromlechs, the site has no sea view, being on a north-west facing slope just over the crest of the hill from the epic clifftop view south over St Brides Bay a few hundred metres away.

The landowner is now the National Trust, so the cromlech is fenced off to protect it from livestock and has a little info board.

The folklore and power here is strong. According to the present farmer, a few metres away stood the parish church of St Elvis (last wedding 1820, last funeral 1850). Just beyond the site of the church before the farmhouse is an ancient well, supposed to be used by St Elvis to baptise St David. A pagan site usurped by a Christian one, yet the Christians have gone and the older stones remain.

visited 23 Aug 04

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Folklore

St Elvis
Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

"I think the strangest custom must be that of St Elvis Church where there are the remains of St Teilo's Well and Church with a pilgrims graveyard. It is said that the sick were brought here and given the holy water then laid to rest in the shade of a cromlech. If they slept all would be well but if they were visited by Caladruis (a ravenish bird of ill omen) their chances were not good. It seems rather like the stories of old people being bedded down in cold hospital corridors in the hope they would develop pneumonia – did that actually happen?"

Taken from; Burials; cenquest.co.uk/Home.htm

Left to die at a  cromlech? bit like the Inuit's old people who were taken out into the snow to die.

St.Elvis never ceases to amaze......

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Miscellaneous

St Elvis
Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

Apropos the joke about Elvis Preseli that Moss makes, it is interesting to note that Elvis's parents were named Vernon and Gladys – both old Welsh names!

Local actor and author, Dave Ainsworth, recently wrote and performed (at the Pembroke Festival) a funny monologue entitled 'Was Elvis a Welsh Saint?'

Also apropos Moss' comments about the three cromlechs in the Nine Wells area, of which St Elvis's is one, they are near the farm called 'Llandruidion' which is a place name that crops up near several west Wales monuments eg near Rhos y Clegryn.

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Miscellaneous

St Elvis
Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

St. Elvis Farm; J.Hawkes explains the two valleys sitting either side of The Gribin at Lower Solva, as "drowned valleys". Solva sits at the end of one valley with Solva river flowing down to the sea. The other valley has St.Elvis tomb at the head with a small brook running through this valley to the sea below.

Its also interesting to note what she says about this area;

"for the plateau of the old sedentary rocks are broken by abrupt outcrops of much harder rocks spewed up by volcanoes.....each one will be seen to have a little farm, edged up against it.....it is also noted that a very considerable number of dolmens have similarly been built against the volcanic outcrops......perhaps endowed with spirits and local deities"

1951 Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales.

Strumble Head follows this same pattern of tombs, placed on or near rocks. Dust to dust, or maybe bone to bone.

p.s. St.Elvis's may have been St.Ailbe, disciple of St.Patrick... In 1291 was Lanelvech with Llaneilw later and then Elfyw.. (History of Solva – Trevor Bloom).

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Sites within 20km of St Elvis