82 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
data or the result of poorly consolidated tunnelling 
by Atkinson, in 1968 (MacAvoy, pers. comm., 
2002). Nevertheless, Iolo’s observations are 
certainly worth taking into account in any future 
assessment of the issue. 
Altogether, considering his notoriety in Welsh 
literary history as a forger of pasts and manipulator 
of truths, there is very little in this early letter that 
is demonstrably unreliable or romanticized: Iolo 
can be a good witness, as his observations of local 
customs in his native Glamorgan, or his later 
reports for the Board of Agriculture demonstrate 
(Williams 1956, 35-72, Jones 2001). The date and 
context of the letter are also encouraging for the 
historian. At this point in his career, though already 
keenly interested in the subjects that would come to 
form the keystones of his elaborate bardic vision, 
Iolo’s antiquarianism is relatively receptive and 
fluid. Here, as for the majority of his contem- 
poraries and intellectual predecessors, the stones 
and mounds of the Avebury—Stonehenge area are 
the acknowledged heartland of ‘druidic’ activity (he 
even takes a swipe at the Anglesey antiquary Henry 
Rowlands for his small-minded parochialism). 
Only later, as Iolo’s centre of gravity shifted more 
and more to his own beloved Glamorgan, would the 
importance of the great Wiltshire complex 
gradually fade. 
At this point too, we can be fairly confident 
about his intentions in writing to the London 
farrier Owen Jones (also known as Owain Myfyr). 
As a literary-minded young Welshman in England 
(he had been working as a mason in London and 
Kent over the last three or four years), Iolo was 
attracted to the thriving London Welsh societies, 
whose activities in terms of the publication and 
promotion of Welsh literature were in fact 
considerably livelier than anything happening in 
Wales itself. Amongst the London Welsh, Owain 
Myfyr was a genial and generous supporter, not 
only of contemporary poetry (Iolo had sent him a 
draft poem for comment about a year earlier) but 
above all of attempts to copy, preserve and publish 
the neglected treasures of Wales’s literary past. So 
the young stonecutter heading back to Wales in 
1777 was also establishing literary contacts which 
would bear fruit for decades to come. As a poet, 
historian, antiquary, and, before long, the self- 
appointed preserver of Welsh (or rather Ancient 
British) tradition, Iolo had every reason to take an 
The byway on the line of the Great Bath Road still goes through the heart of Fyfield Down; the Scheduled hollow ways where it 
climbs Overton Hill are visible in the background. © Fon Cannon 2003 
