Mwdwl Eithin Round Barrows

Mwdwl Eithin Round Barrows stand on a low ridge above the village of Eglwysbach in Conwy county. These circular mounds were raised by Bronze Age people some four thousand years ago as burial places or ritual sites. Cadw keeps the site on its list of protected monuments under number DE046. Almost four hundred such round barrows appear in the national record, more than any other ancient type. The barrows mark a long tradition that began around 3000 BC and lasted until the close of the Bronze Age about 600 BC. Most were built between 2400 and 1500 BC, when communities across Wales raised them for their dead. The mounds sit quietly now, but once they formed part of a wider landscape of chambered tombs and standing stones. A visitor walks among low grassy hummocks that rise gently above the heather. The largest mound reaches about a metre in height and thirty metres across. From the ridge there are wide views over the Conwy valley and the Clwydian hills. The air is still, broken only by the calls of skylarks above the moor.