Carnedd gron Cefn Mawr

Carnedd gron Cefn Mawr stands on a ridge above the Vale of Neath in Neath Port Talbot. It is a round cairn built at the end of the Stone Age and the start of the Bronze Age. The site lies in the community of Pelenna, marked on maps at grid reference SS840985. Its purpose was probably part of burial rituals and religious ceremonies for the dead. Unlike ring cairns, which have a different shape, this cairn is a simple mound of stones. Cadw has listed the cairn as an ancient monument and given it the SAM number GM581. The same Neolithic and Bronze Age people who raised this cairn also built chambered tombs, burial mounds, stone circles, hill forts, Irish huts and standing stones elsewhere. These remains show how widely they spread across the landscape. Visitors reach the cairn by following a track that climbs through open moorland. The mound itself is grass-covered, about ten metres wide, with a shallow hollow in the centre. From the ridge there are wide views over the Vale of Neath and the surrounding hills. The quiet setting makes it easy to imagine the ceremonies that once took place here.