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Willow charcoal and Pierre Noire drawing (23 34 cm) of the western of two chambers that once lay inside a broadly rectangular cairn at Dyffryn Ardudwy. The chambers are surrounded with stones from the cairn. I drew this on site standing at an easel and as I roughed out form and tone with my fingers and a stump of charcoal I felt a strange moment of kinship with the folk who built the chamber. (Video added as a comment to show the process).
We’ve lost so many of these sites around here; the ones that didn’t disappear since tractors arrived are nowhere near as impressive as this one. And yet the thought that people managed to move stones of this size and build these tombs is amazing. Some of those places have a strangely comforting air about them. I visited some last year, and there were two where I sat for hours, just because it felt so peaceful. Your drawing captures that so well. Makes me want to see it.
@nellie_m Thanks very much, Nellie. It is a very peaceful spot. And yes, it’s a shame when such places are lost. I wonder how much of the stone that covered this cairn now makes up the stone walls and houses that now surround it. Thinking of the weight of capstone and its enclosure, I wonder too how much these tombs stem from an ancestral memory of life in caves. We do, on the whole, what others did.