What is a chambered tomb?

What a chambered tomb is

Two main groups are recognised in England and Wales. Cotswold-Severn tombs have one or more stone chambers inside a long trapezoidal or oval cairn or mound, often with a forecourt at the wider end, and were built during the 4th millennium BC; portal dolmens have a chamber of a few large upright stones carrying a single large capstone. Tombs were often built in stages and used for centuries: Parc le Breos Cwm on Gower held the remains of more than 40 people and was used for burial for over five hundred years. At many tombs the covering mound or cairn has been removed, leaving the chamber stones exposed.

How chambered tombs look on LiDAR

On a bare-earth model the long cairn or mound of a Cotswold-Severn tomb shows as an elongated rise, and a local relief model can show the remains of a forecourt and the areas where the cairn has been robbed. Upright chamber stones and capstones are often removed by the filtering that strips out vegetation and buildings, or are too small to be modelled accurately, so an exposed chamber may show only as a small irregular bump or not at all. Where the cairn has been robbed for stone, its outline may survive as a low spread of material, best seen on a local relief model or with positive openness.

See LiDAR visualisations explained for what each method shows.

What can look like one

Natural boulder clusters, tumbled field walls, clearance cairns and quarry debris can look like a ruined chamber or cairn on the terrain model. Long cairns can also be confused with natural glacial ridges and long heaps of cleared stone.

Protection

Many chambered tombs are scheduled monuments, protected in England by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 and in Wales by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023, and several in Wales, such as Capel Garmon and Parc le Breos Cwm, are in the care of Cadw.

Examples on the LiDAR

Where they are

Counties with the most chambered tombs that have a page here.

More examples