
Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 2
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
What the sources say
Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 2 is a megalithic mound in Powys, United Kingdom. Its entries are Wikidata item Q125481360; the position in the catalogue is 51.8136° N, 3.5642° W.
Built from structured records, not from an articleSources 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.
The full article
About Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 2
This kind of monument hereSources 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. Further down this page, About this kind of monument gives the whole of “British barrows”.
DatingSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
The Atlas shows 4000 BCE to 800 BCE for this site, but that is a regional estimate for this kind of monument, not a date for this particular megalithic mound. No excavation, radiocarbon sample or other measurement is recorded for it, so the real age could fall anywhere within the range, or outside it.
The range rests on this regional background (source: the Wikipedia article “Tumulus”): 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.
Landscape and neighbours
The catalogue lists 8 other sites within 1 km, 45 within 5 km and 228 within 10 km; 204 of them are also classed as megalithic mound. That puts it inside a dense cluster of monuments. It is one of 1,506 megalithic mound records among the 1,738 sites catalogued in Powys, United Kingdom.
The closest catalogued sites are Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 1 (0.0 km south-west, megalithic mound); Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 3 (0.1 km north-west, megalithic mound); Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 2 (0.4 km north, megalithic mound); Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 1 (0.5 km north, megalithic mound). The catalogue is assembled from open records and is not complete, so unrecorded monuments may lie closer.
Records and protectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
Wikidata lists the site with the heritage status National Monument of Wales. The open records for it are Wikidata (Q125481360), where corrections and further identifiers can be added. Sites of this kind often lie on farmland or other private ground, so check local access rules before visiting and leave the monument as you found it.
How this page was madeSources for this section
Sources for this section
Nothing on this page was written by an AI model: it is assembled by program from Wikidata (CC0), the heritage register named above and the regional article “British barrows”, written for the Atlas from the Wikipedia articles it cites (CC BY-SA 4.0), with distances and counts calculated from the catalogue coordinates.
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°48′49″ N, 3°33′51″ WFor a GPS or map app: 51.81359, -3.56417
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.
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 14000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 34000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 24000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 14000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carnau Gwynion, Clearance Cairn4000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carnau Gwynion, Saucer Barrow4000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 34000–800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carnau Gwynion, Small Cairn4000–800 BCE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q125481360wikidata.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
- Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 1<0.1 km SW
- Ysgubor-Wen, Cairn 3<0.1 km NW
- Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 20.4 km N
- Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 10.5 km N
- Carnau Gwynion, Clearance Cairn0.5 km NW
- Carnau Gwynion, Saucer Barrow0.6 km N
- Carnau Gwynion, Cairn 30.7 km NW
- Carnau Gwynion, Small Cairn0.8 km NW
- Plas-y-Gors, Excavated Cairn1.0 km NW
- Pen-y-Gorof, Round Barrow1.1 km E
Credit
Text, licence and sources
This page is assembled from open records (Wikidata, CC0; OpenStreetMap, ODbL) and a tradition article paraphrasing Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). No article exists for this site, and nothing here is written by a model.
- Wikidata Q125481360CC0
- 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