Tinkinswood Chambered Tomb

PricingFreeFree for all visitors

Free entry for everyone

Entry

Free for everyone

Pricing details

Free entry for everyone; no membership card is needed.

ParkingParking not known

The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.

Parking details

Cadw names a small car park at the entrance to the site on Duffryn Lane, hard standing of lattice concrete either side of the farm gate, which must not be blocked; no charge or free statement is published, so the status is recorded as unknown. Satnavs following the tomb itself overshoot the parking, which is easy to miss. From the kissing gate a field path of about 280 m with gates and no stiles leads down a gentle slope and up to the tomb.

Driving pin: the car park at the site entrance (Cadw's own arrival point), 283 m from its marker on the tomb; the CF5 6TA postcode centres 750 m north. By road: 0.7 miles south of St Nicholas off the A48, 6 miles west-south-west of Cardiff, with brown signs. By rail: Waungron Park, 7.2 km. National Cycle Network route 88 passes 8.2 km away.

About

Tinkinswood Chambered Tomb, Beddrod Siambr Tinkinswood, is a Neolithic long cairn south of St Nicholas topped with one of the largest capstones in Britain: a massive slab 24 feet by 15 feet weighing around 40 tons, as much as an articulated lorry. The cairn, about 40 metres long, opens through a funnel-shaped forecourt into a chamber of huge upright slabs; excavated in 1914, it held the remains of over 50 people with broken pottery and flint tools. Legend says that anyone who spends the night here on the eves of May Day, St John's Day or Midwinter will die, go mad or become a poet. Reviewers pair it with the St Lythans tomb a mile away on a circular walk. Tips from visitors: follow the brown signs off the A48, the small parking area on Duffryn Lane is easy to drive past, then a five-minute walk over the fields through gates with no stiles.

Check today’s timesPick a day for times and prices

Today, Saturday 24 October

Tinkinswood Chambered Tomb10:00 – 16:00last admission 15:30

Free entry

Opening times may change at short notice.

Open 10am to 4pm all year, last admission 30 minutes before closing; closed 24, 25 and 26 December and 1 January. No admission charge, no attendant. Cadw asks visitors to come within these hours and may close monuments at short notice in extreme weather.

Terrain level 3, moderate: an exposed field path that may be slippery or muddy, with grazing animals possible on the neighbouring farmland; the chamber can be entered but the stones must not be climbed. A reviewer found no wheelchair access even for all-terrain chairs. Two information boards and a bench at the tomb; no toilets. Drones are not permitted.

Photo: The massive lichen-covered capstone of Tinkinswood Chambered Tomb over its open chamber, with drystone cairn walling and trees behind. Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tinkinswood_burial_chamber_(4787).jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.