A Neolithic passage tomb on Anglesey, built so the midsummer sunrise shines straight down the passage into the burial chamber
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Standing remainssubstantial fabric survives to stand in front of
Bryn Celli Ddu is one of the finest prehistoric tombs in Wales, its name meaning roughly “the mound in the dark grove”. People built it around 5,000 years ago in the New Stone Age, or Neolithic, when the first farmers were raising monuments across Britain. A low grassy mound covers a stone passage that leads to a small burial chamber at the heart of it, the kind of tomb archaeologists call a passage grave. You can duck along the passage and stand inside, which few sites let you do. The clever part is the alignment: at midsummer the rising sun shines down the passage and lights the back of the chamber, so whoever built it was watching the sky closely. A carved standing stone stood in the chamber, marked with wandering spiral patterns; the one there now is a copy, with the original kept safe elsewhere. Cadw looks after the site and it is free to visit, reached by a short walk across the fields from a lane. It sits well inland on Anglesey, and there are other tombs to string together nearby, among them Bodowyr Chambered Tomb to the south-west.
