Parc le Breos

[1] Other than for deer husbandry, the park received an income from agistment, pannage, and from sales of wild honey, ferns and dead wood.

[2] The park's boundary was originally marked by a wooden fence, or pale, on the top of an earth bank inside a ditch.

[3] Prehistoric finds and an Iron Age enclosure (above Parkmill) show the area of Parc le Breos to have been settled by modern humans since the earliest times.

[5][6] Excavations revealed two tanged points that may date to c. 28,000 years before present (BP), an interglacial period during the Late Pleistocene.

[8][10][11] North-West European lifestyles changed around 6,000 BP, from the nomadic lives of the hunter-gatherer, to a settled life of agricultural farming – the Neolithic Revolution.

However, analysis of the human remains found at the cromlech show the tomb to have been accessed for up to 800 years and that the people interred within it continued to be either hunter-gatherers or herders, rather than agricultural farmers.

A bell-shaped, south-facing forecourt, formed by the wall, leads to a central passageway lined with limestone slabs set on end.

Webley & J. Harvey in 1962 revealed the disarticulated remains (i.e. incomplete skeletons) of six adults and two children, dated to the Early Bronze Age or Beaker culture.

Archaeologists Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki note that this period of occupation may be "significant", with respect to Parc Cwm long cairn, as it is "broadly contemporary with the secondary use of the tomb".

[20] The Act of Union (1536) made the Lordship of Gower part of the historic county of Glamorgan, and the south-western section became the Hundred of Swansea.

Parc Cwm long cairn is maintained by Cadw (to keep), the Welsh Assembly Government's historic environment division.

Cairn in the distance in sunshine, with trees in leaf to its left, right and rear. To its front lies flat ground of short grass. An asphalt path leads from the left past the cromlech. The shaded foreground has a kissing gate, a wooden fence and a Forestry Commission welcome sign in Welsh (first) and English.
Parc le Breos Cwm
from the entrance of Coed y Parc
Limestone outcrop with triagular fissure (widest at the bottom, narrowing to the top). Foliage obscures the stone at either side, away from the cave entrance. Leafless trees stand at the top of the gorge. Foliage is outside the cave, in the foreground,
The Cathole Cave
A short dry-stone wall retains boulders to form a cairn. The wall is missing at the front, right section, where the rubble has tumbled out, leaving a (previously covered) orthostat exposed. The wall forms a courtyard at the tumulus' entrance. Flat ground of short grass surrounds the cairn. The background is of shaded trees, mainly in leaf.
Parc Cwm long cairn forecourt – from the south east