According to 'The Old Stones of the Cotswolds and the Forest of Dean' by Danny Sullivan (1999), the Twizzle Stone is at this grid reference. It's ages since I've seen the book so can't describe it further - the stone is not on Magic and (seemingly mistakenly) I always assumed this and the Tingle Stone were one and the same - similar names I guess.
Mr Grinsell is describing stone that turn round, when he says "We may perhaps also compare the Twizzle Stone in the Cotswolds, which, I would suggest, may have twizzled round when it heard the cock crow." Ah the world of speculative folklore, I love it.
Tom Graves has a more concrete story. He is talking about different bands of alternately 'charged' areas on certain standing stones and other sites.
The [bands from the fourth up] connect up with other energies, or networks of energies, above ground; and in the case of the fifth and seventh bands, this connection, as far as many dowsers are concerned, produces some interesting side-effects.
The effect of the fifth band on the dowser may have given a standing stone in Gloucestershire its name: the Twizzle Stone. When a dowser leans against the level of the fifth band on a stone or buttress, the band somehow affects the dowser's balance, producing an effect which feels like a slow and gentle push to one side or the other.
According to the skill of the dowser (and, it must be admitted, more subjective factors like a sense of showmanship), this sense of 'being pushed' can be increased until it looks as if the dowser has been thrown to one side by the stone.
Well if you can find it maybe you can check for me.
No sign of any stones, Twizzley or otherwise. Visited 12.4.09 after a trip to The Giant's Stone. Approached from the north along a footpath, the first sign of the barrow is a knot of trees in the corner of the field.
The barrow itself, as described by Lesley Grinsell, is a collection of humps and hollows, currently used to store assorted farming equipment and chopped wood. Still, at least it's here at all - Tim Darvill refers to its "total destruction".
As far as I could tell, the barrow is aligned roughly north-south and as ever with Cotswold long barrows it sits off the top of the hill. A nearby limestone scatter could be from the barrow but could just as easily be part of the drystone field boundary.
From here I took the footpath off Limekiln Lane towards Avenis long barrow. One of the stiles along the path at SO913048 was constructed of a nicely squared and weathered cist capstone-ish piece of limestone. Wouldn't surprise me if this was robbed from something megalithic.
A whole mass of contradictory information here. There is a supposed standing stone called The Twizzle Stone, which as Rhiannon says is given the map ref SO910053 in "Old Stones of the Cotswolds and Forest of Dean" - D.P. Sullivan (1999 Reardon). Sullivan speculates about the name, suggesting it could have been a boundary stone or could even have come from the local family name Twissel or Twyssell.
There is also a long barrow at SO914051, marked on the OS 1:25000 map. In "Long Barrows of the Cotswolds" (2004 Tempus) the usually reliable Tim Darvill states that there was a "small scale antiquarian excavation in 1863 prior to its total destruction". On the other hand, Lesley Grisell visited in 1959, recording that the site "consists of large hummocks and hollows, really now unrecognisable as a barrow".
None of the accounts of the barrow refer to the Twizzle Stone itself though, so whether it was actually anything to do with the barrow or not I can't work out.
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