
Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Moel Trigarn
DatedEst. 4000–800 BCE
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
Moel Trigarn is a megalithic mound in Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom. It lies at 51.9703° N, 4.6829° W.
Catalogue recordSources and licences
Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
Moel Trigarn
ContextSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Round barrows are among the commonest prehistoric monuments in Britain. A round barrow is a hemispherical mound of earth or stone raised over one or more burials, often ringed by a ditch or a bank. In Britain most were built between about 2200 and 1100 BCE, from the Late Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age. Antiquarians sorted them into bowl, bell, saucer and disc forms according to the shape of the mound and the ditch, and the types still appear on archaeological maps. Under the mound there may be a cist, a pit grave, or cremated bone in a pottery vessel; later graves were often cut into older mounds, sometimes thousands of years after the first burial. The regional background, “British barrows”, is given below.
DatingSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
No scientific date has been published for this site. Monuments of this type in United Kingdom are generally dated 4000 BCE to 800 BCE; the site itself may fall inside or outside that range.
British barrows of many types were in use from the late Neolithic until the end of the Bronze Age (2900-800 BC); megalithic construction in England is placed at c. 4000 BC.
Setting
90 other recorded monuments lie within 10 km (3 within 1 km, 21 within 5 km), 41 of them of the same type. The site belongs to a dense concentration of monuments. In Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom, 103 of the 228 recorded monuments are of this type.
The nearest recorded monuments are Foel Trigarn, Central Cairn (0.0 km west, megalithic mound); Foel Trigarn, West Cairn (0.1 km south-west, megalithic mound); Carn Ferched (0.8 km south-west, megalithic mound); Crug-yr-Hwch Burial Chamber (1.1 km south-east, chambered cairn).
ProtectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
Heritage status: National Monument of Wales.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
British barrows
Round barrows are among the commonest prehistoric monuments in Britain. A round barrow is a hemispherical mound of earth or stone raised over one or more burials, often ringed by a ditch or a bank. In Britain most were built between about 2200 and 1100 BCE, from the Late Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age. Antiquarians sorted them into bowl, bell, saucer and disc forms according to the shape of the mound and the ditch, and the types still appear on archaeological maps. Under the mound there may be a cist, a pit grave, or cremated bone in a pottery vessel; later graves were often cut into older mounds, sometimes thousands of years after the first burial.
Barrows are dated by radiocarbon dating, by pottery and by metalwork. The best-known group lies around Stonehenge. At Bush Barrow, about one kilometre south-west of the stones, William Cunnington opened the mound in 1808 and found a lozenge-shaped sheet of gold, a gold belt plate and three bronze daggers; it belongs to the early Bronze Age Wessex culture of about 1950 BCE, and the Normanton Down cemetery has some forty barrows along one ridge. Round barrows were also built, or reused, later: at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, an Anglo-Saxon ship burial of the sixth to seventh centuries CE lay in a cemetery of mounds.
When visiting, look for the ring of the surrounding ditch, which is often easier to see in low light, for barrows sited on false crests and ridge lines, and for groups strung out along a ridge, as at Normanton Down.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Round barrow, Wikipedia: Bowl barrow, Wikipedia: Bush Barrow, Wikipedia: Wessex culture, Wikipedia: Sutton Hoo, Wikipedia: Tumulus · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.

The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 4000–800 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for megalithic mounds in United Kingdom; this site has not been dated itself. British barrows of many types were in use from the late Neolithic until the end of the Bronze Age (2900-800 BC); megalithic construction in England is placed at c. 4000 BC.Source for this date
Where it stands
United Kingdom
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 51°58′13″ N, 4°40′59″ WFor a GPS or map app: 51.97032, -4.68293
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Foel Trigarn, Central Cairn4000–800 BCE
Foel Trigarn, West Cairn4000–800 BCE
Carn Ferched4000–800 BCE- Chambered cairnCrug-yr-Hwch Burial Chamber4000–2500 BCE
Carn Gwr, Southern Cairn4000–800 BCE- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carn Gwr, Northern Cairn4000–800 BCE
Carn Menyn chambered cairn4000–2500 BCE- Menhir (standing stone)Waun Lwyd Standing Stones2800–1800 BCE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q125489686wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Report a correctionWrong date, name, photograph or source? Tell us and it will be put right.
Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
- Foel Trigarn, Central Cairn<0.1 km W
- Foel Trigarn, West Cairn<0.1 km SW
- Carn Ferched0.8 km SW
- Crug-yr-Hwch Burial Chamber1.1 km SE
- Carn Gwr, Southern Cairn1.9 km SW
- Carn Gwr, Northern Cairn1.9 km SW
- Carn Menyn chambered cairn2.0 km SW
- Waun Lwyd Standing Stones2.3 km S
- Bedd Arthur3.0 km SW
- Standing Stone 600m E of Dolau-Newydd3.0 km S
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Compiled from open records (Wikidata, CC0; OpenStreetMap, ODbL) and a regional background article based on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Wikidata Q125489686CC0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0