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Monday 28 December 2015

Bayvil Farm gatepost



Bayvil Farm is located about 2 km from Nevern, just on the north side of the Nevern-Glanrhyd Road.  This stone -- one of a pair at the farm entrance -- is around 2m tall above the ground surface, and maybe 3m long in total.  It's made of quite distinctive spotted dolerite, with large and widely separated creamy white spots.  The other stone is smaller, and is made of unspotted dolerite. 

This stone is very irregular in shape, and it has lost a big chunk off its flank and has suffered a lot of other damage as well -- some of it associated with the drilling of three holes.  But it is of course basically a pillar.

This is a rather mysterious stone, because the top two holes are too high up to be of any use for hanging a gate, and are not aligned on the same vertical line.  The lowest hole is even more of an enigma, since it is drilled through the stone in quite a different direction.

There is a good weathering crust on this stone, and so it might be a glacial erratic.  But I have my doubts about that, given that this is about 8 km north of Carn Goedog or Cerrig Marchogion -- the two most likely source outcrops for this particular pillar.  It is most likely to have been taken from one or other of these localities in the 1800's ...........with a surface that was already well weathered.   Or could it have been previously used as a standing stone somewhere near its present position?  These "northern" gateposts are more and more intriguing......

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