Welsh Journals

THE COTTRELL PARK STANDING STONE, ST. NICHOLAS, GLAMORGAN. By W. F. GRIMES, M.A., F.S.A. The Cottrell Park stone is a slab of limestone about 61 ft. long above ground, 8 ft. 9 ins. wide at the base, and of an average thickness of 2 ft. Its widest faces look roughly east-and-west, and down to the beginning of the present year it was inclined (at an angle of about 50° to the horizontal) in the former direction. The stone stands in the field directly opposite the entrance to Cottrell (O.S. 6 inch sheet Glam. 46NE), beside the Cow- bridge road, from which it can clearly be seen. Its nearness to a road which has been in use for centuries has resulted in its not infrequent appearance in the writings of earlier travellers and antiquaries. These writings are the only external evidence which we possess for the condition of the stone in the past, and while none of them goes back more than 160 years, it will be of interest to see to what extent, if at all, its appearance has changed in that time. It should be noted that the Ordnance map marks the stone as a cromlech "-a term which pre- sumably indicates a burial-chamber of the type which still exists less than a mile away at Tinkinswood, and formerly did exist (though now almost completely destroyed) much nearer at hand; and it will be well to consider this external evidence, before turning to the main purpose of these notes, which is to record the results of the removal of the stone, to facilitate road-widening, from its original position to a spot some 30 yards south-east, where it has been set up anew. The following references are probably not complete, but they will be sufficient for our present purpose. The earliest mention of the stone which I have been able to find occurs in O. S. Brereton's account, published in Archaeologia in 1775 (p. 116) of his tour through Wales a few years earlier. Having referred briefly to the cromlechs at Tinkinswood and Maes y felin, he goes on to say that A