It didn’t look right, even from a distance. There was a forlorn, forgotten feel to the place, even though it is readily accessible and, to judge by the wearing of the mud by the gate, frequently visited. There was something decidedly ‘odd’ about the Presaddfed Neolithic burial chamber, something you could not help but notice as soon as you got to the kissing gate. For a start, the stones looked too big, too closely packed compared to all the other dolmens we have seen. For another thing, many of the stones themselves seemed to be distinctly different from each other and that is unusual in itself. It is not as if they are short of stone around here.

On closer inspection, we found that there are actually two chambered tombs, just a few feet apart. The northern chamber has fallen and is now little more than a jumble of stones. The tomb to the south consists of a really sturdy-looking horseshoe of stones supporting the capstone with the help if a delicate point of stone. The capstone is almost two feet thick and thirteen feet long and looks as if it has its front end missing… deliberately removed? Broken? Or just the shape in which it was found. That too looks odd. As if something is missing.

A lot of things are missing really. When it was documented in the Archaeological Journal in the 19th century, the two chambers were recorded as being surrounded by ‘a great number of small stones’. These are no longer in evidence. Nor is any trace of the mound that would always cover such a chamber, though there is evidence of a flattened mound or earthwork a short distance away that is intriguing in itself.

I have been unable to find any details of excavation reports at the site and little seems to be known about the tombs, other than that a family struck by poverty called them home for some time during the 18th when, it is to be hoped, the second chamber was still standing too. The massive blocks fit close together. The capstone is levelled, quite precisely, with small slivers of stone. The tight construction of the chambers would render them weatherproof, apart from draughts, except at the open end. Not much of a shelter, but far better than nothing at all.

The collapsed northern chamber now has only two of its uprights standing, but the capstone, leaning against them, has a thick layer of crystal running through it. It is possible that the north and south chambers were once enclosed in a single mound. It is a fairly unusual arrangement, although many such tombs have more than one chamber. A similar arrangement is found at the spectacular Trefignath tomb, just outside Treadddur, where archaeologists have been able to investigate and, through artefacts and dating techniques, establish the timeline for its construction. Trefignath was built in stages between 3750 and 3500 BC and it appears that Preseddfed dates to around the same era, although it may be as many as six thousand years old.

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Trefignath. Image by Porius1 (CCL)