Llorfa

Nearest town:
Ammanford (16km WSW)
OS reference:
SN785149
OS sheet:
160
Latitude:
51° 49' 8.39 N
Longitude:
3° 45' 46.68 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Looking west across the stone. I’ve no idea if it’s naturally placed or otherwise, but it really is a Very Lovely Thing. Pole gives an idea of scale.

Image credit: A. Brookes (27.9.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Dec 4, 2013
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Looking south across the beautiful slab. Be-cairned Mynydd Allt-y-grug is on the skyline left of centre.

Image credit: A. Brookes (27.9.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Dec 4, 2013
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Lovely quartz-veined stone amongst the visible material of the cairn.

Image credit: A. Brookes (27.9.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Dec 4, 2013
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Looking NW across Llorfa cairn. There is a further cairn on the ridge beyond and I think the higher ridge far right is where Carn Fadog is located (?).

Image credit: A. Brookes (27.9.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Dec 4, 2013
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by thesweetcheat

Llorfa cairn, looking towards the southern aspect of Y Mynydd Du. The stone circle is beyond, somewhat left of centre, but not visible due to the small stones used.

Image credit: A. Brookes (27.9.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Dec 4, 2013
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

Naturally occurring or placed by man. I think the latter... but what do you think? Fan Hir lives up to its name beyond.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Oct 18, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

Whether a capstone or not, it’s a beautiful slab of stone.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

A little beyond... and to the left of the ‘stone row’ (when approaching uphill)... lies this large, apparently shaped slab.... looking very much like a capstone. There is a cavity beneath.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

Another angle of the ‘stone row’.... if it is not prehistoric, what is it?

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

And other vertical orthostat within the ‘stone row’..........

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

One of the (much) smaller stones of the ‘stone row’..... clearly artificially placed.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

A little way ‘uphill’ from the stone circle I came across this – for want of a better description – ‘stone row’. Coflein does not record it, however. The central peaks of Y Mynydd Du live up to their collective name, beyond.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011
Image of Llorfa (Cairn(s)) by GLADMAN

A much mutilated cairn a little downhill from the stone circle. Once thing’s for certain.... it wasn’t placed here by walkers.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 19, 2011

Articles

Folklore

Llorfa
Cairn(s)
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Mar 22, 2006

According to Coflein this cairn, on the part of the mountain called the Llorfa, is nine metres in diameter.

A man who lived at Ystradgynlais, in Brecknockshire, going out one day to look after his cattle and sheep on the mountain, disappeared. In about three weeks, after search had been made in vain for him and his wife had given him up for dead, he came home. His wife asked him where he had been for the past three weeks. “Three weeks! Is it three weeks you call three hours?” said he. Pressed to say where he had been, he told her he had been playing on his flute (which he usually took with him on the mountain) at the Llorfa, a spot near the Van Pool, when he was surrounded at a distance by little beings like men, who closed nearer and nearer to him until they became a very small circle. They sang and danced, and so affected him that he quite lost himself. They offered him some small cakes to eat, of which he partook; and he had never enjoyed himself so well in his life.

This is from ‘The Science of Fairy Tales’ by Edwin Sidney Hartland
(1891), now online at the Sacred Texts Archive. sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sft/sft08.htm
I can’t spot ‘the Van Pool’ using the map (and the possibly similar sounding Fan Foel is a long way off).

Sites within 20km of Llorfa