Four Crosses

Four Crosses is where the Vyrnwy joins the Severn, on the flattest ground in Powys, a mile from the English border. It is not obviously historic country and it is one of the most important prehistoric landscapes in Wales.

The cemetery

Between 1981 and 1985 a series of excavations ahead of gravel extraction and pipeline work investigated a group of Bronze Age round barrows on the river terrace.

What came out was a full sequence: Neolithic activity, a cemetery of barrows built and remodelled over centuries, cremations, inhumations, and evidence of how the monuments were used and reused across a very long period.

Because the work was thorough and comprehensively published, Four Crosses is one of the reference sites for Bronze Age funerary practice in Wales. It is cited constantly in the literature and almost nobody outside archaeology has heard of it.

There is essentially nothing to see. The barrows were ploughed flat long ago and the excavated ones are gone.

That is the point worth taking away. This ground looks like ordinary farmland, and it held a monument complex used for the best part of a thousand years. The visible prehistory of Powys is on the uplands because that is where the plough did not reach, not because that is where people were.

Why here

The confluence. Two navigable rivers meeting on good light soil in a wide valley, with routes running in every direction.

The Romans used the same corridor — a road runs through the parish — and the Montgomery Canal came through in the 1790s, and the railway followed. Every transport system that has crossed this country has used the same few miles of flat ground.

The village

Largely modern in appearance, strung along the A483 with newer housing. The canal runs through and is navigable here, with moorings.

Llandysilio church, at the eastern end, sits in a circular churchyard, which is the signature of an early Welsh church enclosure and the oldest visible feature in the parish.

Around

Llanymynech is two miles north, with its quarried hill, Roman copper workings and Hoffmann kiln. Welshpool is seven miles south. Offa's Dyke runs a short distance to the east.