48. Entrance to Dolmen, in Tumulus, Plas Newydd.
Another and even more interesting example of this class has recently been brought to light by the Hon. W. O. Stanley, at Plas Newydd, not far from the great dolmen represented on woodcut No. 50.[193] It is a chamber or cist, 3 feet 3 inches wide by about 7 feet long, and covered by two slabs. Before being disturbed, the supporting slabs must have formed nearly perfect walls, thus distinguishing the cist from those standing on widely-spaced legs. Its principal point of interest, however, is the widely-splayed avenue of stones leading up to it, showing that it was always intended to be visited; and still more curious are the two holes that were pierced in the slab that closed the entrance. The upper part of this slab is now broken off, but so much remains that it is easy to see that they were originally circular and about 10 inches in diameter. Such holed stones are very frequent in Eastern dolmens, and are also common in Cornwall and elsewhere;[194] but what their purpose may have been has not yet been explained. Further on it may be attempted. At present it is the relation of this form of chambered tumuli to external dolmens that principally interests us.
49. Dolmen at Pentre Ifan. From 'Archæologia Cambrensis.'
Almost all the so-called dolmens in the Channel Islands are of this class. One has already been given ([woodcut No. 11]), and it may safely be asserted that all chambers which were wainscoted with slabs, so as to form nearly perfect walls, and all that had complicated quasi-vaulted roofs were, or were intended to be, covered with mounds—more especially those that had covered passages leading to them. There is, however, a very wide distinction between these sepulchral chambers and such a monument as this at Pentre Ifan, in Pembrokeshire.[195] The top stone is so large that it is said five persons on horseback have found shelter under it from a shower of rain. Even allowing that the horses were only Welsh ponies, men do not raise such masses and poise them on their points for the sake of hiding them again. Besides that, the supports do not and could not form a chamber. The earth would have fallen in on all sides, and the connexion between the roof and the floor been cut off entirely, even before the whole was completed. Or, to take another example, that at Plas Newydd, on the shore of the Menai Strait. Here the cap stone is an enormous block, squared by art, supported on four stone legs, but with no pretence of forming a chamber. If the cap stone were merely intended as a roofing stone, one a third or fourth of its weight would have been equally serviceable and equally effective in an architectural point of view, if buried. The mode of architectural expression which these Stone men best understood was the power of mass. At Stonehenge, at Avebury, and everywhere, as here, they sought to give dignity and expression by using the largest blocks they could transport or raise—and they were right; for, in spite of their rudeness, they impress us now; but had they buried them in mounds, they neither would have impressed us nor their contemporaries.
