Gwal-y-filiast Burial Chamber

Gwal-y-filiast Burial Chamber or Dolmen, near Llanboidy in Carmarthenshire.

We can all appreciate the antiquity of prehistoric monuments, and can understand their importance in the historical narrative of our country's past. However, sometimes when you visit them, they can be a disappointment. It could be that the location of a site will hold more drama than the monument itself. An ancient cairn will turn out to be the pile of stones left behind after building a nearby wall, a standing stone will have morphed back into the countryside surrounding it, or a bronze-age settlement will only be the discolouration of  grass in a farmer's field . All of which is understandable considering the centuries of wind, rain and human interference that have passed since they was first erected.

Gwal-y-filiast Burial Chamber. .

This is not the case with Gwal-y-filiast. It was built as a burial chamber for some local grandee in our dim and distant past, and today still looks very much like a burial chamber should. No doubt when it was first erected, on a hillside overlooking the river Taf, near Llanboidy, it would have been clearly seen by everybody, up and down the valley. But today it stands deep in a woodland clearing -  defiant like some small-scale Stonehenge.

Although it was built many centuries before the age of King Arthur, it still has all the hallmarks of Arthurian legend. When you  stand there with the sunlight streaming through the leafy canopy, throwing shadows across the clearing, it is all to easy to imagine the clash of swords, or hear the pounding  hoofs of mounted warriors riding along the woodland track towards you.