Wayland's Smithy II

The entrance to the stone-lined chamber © English HeritageBuilt between about 3,460 and 3,400 BC, this trapezoidal mound had a kerb, façade and stone-lined transepted chamber. It absorbed the older mound altogether.

Of the six façade stones, three stood on either side of the entrance. Today only four remain, found lying in front of the monument and restored in 1962. The chamber itself consists of a narrow and partially constricted passage, leading to a pair of transepted chambers aligned east-west. By the time the chambers were examined in 1920 they had been ransacked, but they still contained the jumbled remains of several people. The barrow is thought to have remained in used for burials for less than 100 years. The impressive façade stones.© English Heritage 

New radiocarbon dating at Wayland’s Smithy II has shown this monument to be a strikingly late phenomenon compared to other long barrows. The tomb was constructed in the style of older monuments such as the West Kennet long barrow, built 200 years earlier. The builders might have felt the need to create a sense of history and to claim a long ancestral connection to this place.