It's really very nice here. I've put off a visit for a long time because I wasn't sure about the access: it looks like one of those sly long dashes from a footpath, with the potential of shotgun pellets in the rear. However, fear not, because the local farmer(s) make the footpaths very clear, and there is actually a permissive bridleway to the barrow (from ST810532). What nice people.
To me, the obvious thing in the landscape as I sat at the middle of the barrow, was Cley Hill on the sw-ish horizon. Of course, certain modern features do tend to make you look this way (the chestnut trees and the hedge behind you, the field margin to the left all block the view), so it could be irrelevant, but it didn't feel it.
The stones are a soft orangey pink, flat, and pocked with tiny holes on their narrow edges. The Countryside Stewardship notice about the path mentions 'nine stones' but there are certainly more than nine.
I think the atmosphere would make it easy to stay hours here.Looking for more information on the web, I see there's supposed to be a 'geocache' here. Well if I'd known (because the site was beautifully litter free on the surface) I'd have dug it up and blown it to smithereens. So that's something to do next time. Miserable, unappreciative dimwits.
AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY MAKES ME CROSS?? The git who left it there copied MY cheesy phrase from this website.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=07f8c21b-bcc6-4edb-ac19-91a47a85eb80
It makes you want to give up doesn't it. TMA is surely an attempt to make people value their environment and prehistory. What can you do if some people use that information for making a mess of the place? The box apparently contains golf tees and 'dinos' and all sorts of shite. Why do people leave this 21st century detritus at these special places?
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I noticed the large sarsens under the church - I had forgotten they were here, but they're big enough to draw the eye. I had to feel they were useful foundations (the church is a real mismatch of materials and styles - interesting but locked). But at the end of the day, where did they come from? If they were from a circle, incorporating them was making a statement one way or the other. Maybe they weren't and were just lying around - it's not so far to the greywethers. But it's all very interesting.
I assumed from afar that the ones in the boundary (mentioned below) were gravestones and did not look at them properly.
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Well this is really very curious. The mound is much bigger than I expected. My imaginative instinct is to compare it with the huge Wiltshire mounds near water ie Silbury etc. The water's even mentioned in the name of the place. But perhaps I should restrain myself - it's not that big. But it is big, and it is in a direct line with the church. I didn't see any 'venomous vipers' though I can believe they might frequent it. I did spot two (plastic) swords on the mound's summit, so the local children can't be that scared of them.
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If I run down the road a bit from our house, there's a super panoramic view. On a very fine day (or with binoculars), the furthest obvious thing you can see is a very distinctive group of three tree clumps. I've kept seeing them from all sorts of places - lots and lots of people must be familiar with them. There are two closeish together, and then another on the right, slightly further away. Today I was determined to find out where they were. So I jumped in the car and headed off in something like the right direction.
As you can imagine, my driving was a tad erratic, as I kept gawping at the landscape. But finally I arrived safely - and they were at Hackpen Hill, right on the Ridgeway.
It is, as Jane and Moth have said, fantastic up here (if a little chilly), and you can see a long way (the back of Cherhill Down is clear, and beyond that over to the edge of Salisbury Plain, and with binoculars, the mast near Priddy on the Mendip edge. There's lots to the north, but I didn't recognise much). Birds of prey were hovering over the slope, and the shadows of clouds made strange swirls with the patterns of chalk in the fields below.
I sat with the white horse, and on the far side of the road, a black horse stood admiring the view. Something was missing from my horse, so I collected some burnt wood from an old camp fire and made him a nice black eye. He's quite a dainty animal. But he's getting a bit green and may need a bit of a scour?
After walking up to the car park I thought I'd visit one of my tree clumps, so walked along the Ridgeway (serenaded by grasshoppers) to the first one, right by the track. It's mostly beech trees, and you can walk a circular path through them. I spotted my initials carved on one of the trees. You probably would as well, as there are so many.
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I have to agree with Scubi - the elder tree is getting huge and the right hand stone is completely inaccessible behind brambles. I feel like something ought to be done before the whole lot disappears under a mound of vegetation. Not that I want a pristine site devoid of plants, but this is starting to go too far. The big slab is still relatively clear and touchable though, with its lovely pinky colour and soft dips. The size of the stones makes this place really Monumental.
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As I was walking up from Little Sodbury, I suddenly realised what a racket I was making - I came here for a bit of peace, right? - so I made more effort to move quietly. It turned out this was totally futile, as when I found myself in the fort's ditches, all I could hear was the reverberation of shotguns. I snuck along the ditch wondering what would happen if I stuck my head above the banks. Actually it was only some people clay-pigeon shooting inside the fort. But it did made me think about the (prehistoric) advantages of sneaking up invisibly to a hillfort, but the disadvantages of being totally ignorant of what might be waiting inside.
If you only see this fort from the main road, you'd think there was no view at all - but actually the land drops away on the west side, and you can see for miles and miles, out into Wales. Because I've never understood this, I've always thought of it as a 'little fort' but seeing the double banks and ditch made me realise what a mammoth effort went into building this place. Like Moss, this, together with the violence of the guns, made me think about the nice and not so nice things that might have happened here. But (as I ate my crisps) my thoughts turned to more everyday arrangements, like what the inhabitants ate and drank, and what they might have carried their own packed lunch in.
I walked northwards through the camp centre and I wanted to walk back round along the east side - but I could not find the path round the back of the buildings. All signs were mysteriously missing (except the cotswold way ones) and even brandishing my map I didn't fancy an earful from one of the posh house owners. So I gave it a miss - but it's probably easier from other direction.
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Windmill Tump is marked on my road atlas and I got here without an OS map. Since Kammer's visit a smart brown sign has gone up at the gate. It's a small one on a stick like a footpath sign, but it clearly shows the English Heritage symbol and the barrow's name, so if you're looking for it it's enough to make you swerve into the layby.
Well, this is a strange place. It's partly so neat that you wonder what's real - the enclosing drystone wall echoes Stoney Littleton's, but it ends neatly and abruptly every time a tree appears on the margin. On the other hand, the barrow's untidy and rather bumpy and muddley on top - partly the fault of the big beech, ash and oak trees on top, and partly, no doubt, from past excavations.
My favourite bit was the chamber (of which Kammer has taken a photo). It's ever so low and you can see more drystone walling inside. It was spookily thrilling to think of it stuffed with bones. However, it was weird - it was so high up on the mound. I imagined it would be low down like the side chambers at Belas Knap, but no. Weren't bones shuffled about and periodically added to at long barrows? So it couldn't have been just a sealed cist accessed from above? Was it just the end of a once longer passage? I dunno. I do know I kneeled squarely on a nettle when bending down for a look though. But in this position spotted that there are several lovely fossilised cockle-type shells on the rock: a deliberate choice or just local geology?
There's also the two stones at the far end from the gate. I couldn't tell if this was a 'false entrance' like Belas Knap, or another chamber positioned at the back end of the barrow instead (some research required). They were interestingly (naturally) striated and one of them had an excellent pink lichen on its inner face. It was more draughty sat here though, and the noise of the wind in the trees occasionally sounded like voices. As the rain set in it felt like quite a bleak and lonely place. But in sunshine it's probably an ideal picnic spot really.
The barrow is pretty overgrown at the moment - apart from round the chamber and the end pair of stones, which has short turf. There are nettles, brambles, wild strawberry, and pretty but poisonous woody nightshade. There are lots of lovely stripey snail shells in yellow and in pink to look out for, too.
Scrambling over all this I got to the end of the barrow nearest the gate, where it was quite clear and there were lots of flat stones like the ones in the walls. But - hang on a minute - I couldn't believe my eyes. Someone had carefully constructed a cross with them, flat on the ground, about 3 or 4 feet across! It was really carefully done, with the occasional straight edges of the stones deliberately chosen to form the edges of the symbol. It made me really angry - firstly that someone should be moving the stones (even if they had fallen out of a wall, or whatever), but secondly because I instantly presumed the symbol was made by someone trying to christianise this patently unchristian monument. Perhaps they weren't. Perhaps it wasn't even christian in intent. But that's what it looked like and I just set about demolishing their handiwork. Some people have some funny ideas. Not least pretty much illegally interfering with ancient monuments. But also, if that's what it was, trying to confer some kind of christian 'benefit' on people who lived at least 4000 years before christianity was even invented. In comparison with this, the roughly made plaited cornstalk ring I saw left at the entrance was a respectful and undamaging addition to the site.
Pfah. Anyway it was raining in big sheets now sweeping across the field and I had to leave. When I arrived I thought it was a strange location - there's no view at all. But on leaving it occurred to me that maybe that's the point - the barrow totally dominates the area which it is in, a constant reminder of the ancestors of the local inhabitants.
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I walked here along the Cotswold Way from the Bevil Grenville monument: it's a very pleasant walk, though it was extremely hot at the time. You do feel as though you are treading in the footsteps of people of long ago, as you walk along a secluded sunken green lane with water trickling down it. To add to Moss's nature notes, in the summer sunshine the route was full of fluttering butterflies of many different species.
The mounds were overgrown with nettles. It felt like a very domestic or specifically personal spot - the views are quite enclosed and limited really, and you could imagine that the people in the barrows were definitely the farmers of the valley below. The windows of the buildings down there stared up at me and I felt I was intruding. I followed a little path in the grass in an effort to find St. E..'s holy well. I found a circular concrete capped well and assumed that was it (it was nice to think the water was still being used, even if it didn't look as romantic as I'd hoped). In retrospect I may have been looking in the wrong place - there are a lot of springs round here.
As I made back for the car I realised I could see Morgan's Hill from the top of Lansdown - practically Avebury and a long way away.
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Oliver's Castle is truly fantastic. I'd go so far as to say it beats Adam's Grave hands down* (so long as you don't want a longbarrow)..
It need require no uphill walking, which will please some people. If driving here persevere and park at SU 004647 - the track is perfectly flat and navigable though you might initially feel you're heading off into the back of beyond.
Stroll down the path to the end of the fort.. and you will be gobsmacked by the view. Surely you can see the whole world from up here? Well of course you can't really, but it's a manageable size universe, and I think that's why it has such appeal. It looks like all the everything you could require. It might not be the grand vista from a more dramatic mountain, but it's more fertile and comfy.
The barrows couldn't be in a better spot, stuck out right at the end. But the manmade lumps and bumps are utterly overshadowed by their natural counterparts - to the north of the fort are the most amazing undulating intricately folded dry valleys. The light when I visited made them look even nicer. You want to roll down them or something.
The fort is sprinkled with beech trees, with their obligatory bubbled carved writing on the trunks, but they masquerade as scots pines from afar, because they are so wind blown. It is very windy up here. The site is a nature reserve, and is full of lovely plants at the moment - beautiful pink sainfoin, thyme and greater knapweed, and many others. [A few weeks later and it was a botanist's dream].
*Is this sheer exaggeration? You'll have to visit and find out.
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This is a very pleasant spot to stroll round - there is an air of a park about it, as the hill was planted with all sorts of trees at one time. But you can make out the earthworks, admire the view over to the Breiddin Hills, and visit Kynaston's cave with its attendant bats and folklore (Humphrey Kynaston was a bit of a local hero, with his Black Bess- style horse, Beelzebub). If you go out to the northwest tip of the fort, known as Oliver's Point (after Oliver Cromwell? I don't know - he's blamed for a lot of things), there are some strange ballaun-style holes in the rock underfoot. Perhaps you know what they are? Cos I don't.
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After the gradient-related excitement of Porlock Hill you feel on top of the world up here. You can see for miles and miles - back up to the Quantocks and out over the (yesterday, gloriously blue) Severn estuary to Wales. Exmoor ponies nibble around you while you lie back on the heathery/bilberried slope.
Typically I had no idea at the time that this site or the Whit Stones were up here.. but they're in the perfect spot and I can't say I'm surprised (which is why I feel justified in my fieldnote despite not seeing them..)
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I watched the sun go down from here last night (threading its way through the pylon lines. How romantic). It's amazing how different places are in different seasons. The mound itself has been largely cleared of vegetation and is covered in tiny nibbled clumps of grass surrounded by thousands of tiny sheepy footprints. No sheep about this time though, but their trails led up to the mound as though they like this for a place to hang out.
What I was delighted to see were some largish stones at the edges of the mound (the barrow being too overgrown for me to have seen them before): the largest 2-3ft long on the top of the barrow, right at the middle at the far end from the tree. Whether the farmer moved it here deliberately I don't know but it is in the perfect spot. I sat on it and realised that the mound is aligned towards the midwinter sunset. My shadow and that of the big oak tree stretched out behind us in the low light.
It's so noisy here though - the sound of the motorway is so loud and constant. But sat freezing on the barrow I tried to let it wash over me. I tried to think of nothing at all.
I really should do this more often.
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I'm sorry to start like this, but I have discovered it is a fact that some people (some people) from Whitchurch are pure scum. I'd driven up a tiny lane from this suburb of Bristol, up onto the plateau where the fort is, in a lazy attempt to avoid a climb. The views are fantastic - 'panoramic' doesn't even begin to cover it - the Clifton suspension bridge, the Severn crossings, the Welsh mountains behind. But some people don't register this. Some people prefer to sneak up here to dump their rubbish, set fire to bits of cars, and generally behave like complete fwits. What a complete shame - and shame on them. (If they can be bothered to make the effort to dump stuff up here, why don't they exert the same energy and take it to the tip? It's beyond understanding really. I'll probably be writing to the Daily Mail in a minute:). I backed the car up to a large forlorn sarsen blocking the entrance into a field, got out.. and decided that despite it being a quiet midday on a weekday I was too afraid to leave the car alone for fear of the wheels disappearing by the time I got back. So I'm sorry, if you can't handle a steep hill, you'll either have to park here or forget it.
Fuming I drove round to the other side of the hill at Norton Malreward and braced my unfit body for the climb. It's infinitely worth it though. Indeed, what can't you see from up here? I could easily spy the stones of Stanton Drew, looking like cows grazing in their field. Over to the east was Lansdown and Bathampton; straight ahead, Stantonbury; over the back the edge of Salisbury Plain where Bratton Castle is; the strange shape of Cley Hill; and to the south the Mendips and Beacon Batch.
Recovering, I followed the footpath to the Tump. Visiting this just underlines for me the absolute necessity of spending time at a place, not just assuming from a map. The tump (as RichardZ says in his comments on the attached forum post) - when you reach and climb it, the view opens out into 360 degrees. It's fantastic. It's a huge lump of earth and presumably it must have been created for the very purpose of raising you up above everything else to see. The view includes all the places I've mentioned so far, and would also include the line of the Cotswold Hills, if it weren't for some ill-positioned trees. Is it really part of the later Wansdyke, as has been suggested elsewhere here on tma? It feels as though it is older, part of the fort, because you 'need' this extra vantage point for visibility and defence, surely?
It was marvellously relaxing eating my lunch on the tump, with Bristol strangely still and quiet below, and listening to the sounds of insects, hay harvesting and dogs barking. Maes Knoll is directly on the flight path to Bristol Airport and the strangest effect happened when planes went over. The sun was bright and cast a clear shadow of the planes which moved quickly over the ground. It looked to me like a huge bird undulating over the landscape. In fact the whole place was 'birdy' today - there were crowds of crows sitting on the slope below like a van Gogh painting, and I'd surprised a bird of prey out of the hedge as I'd climbed up. More birds sat in a nearby ash tree like big black fruit, watching me, and flocks of pigeons wheeled over my head. It was hot though and there's no shelter (that probably explains a lot eh. But maybe, as I thought much later, they were just the legendary Birds of Rhiannon come to see me, as they might).
You can't walk across the inside of the fort, but you don't need to - the inside of the fort is not the point. Visit - it's so worth the climb.
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I set off optimistically after these stones, hoping that things so sizeable would be easily spotted. I was wrong. It didn't help that I didn't bring the notes below with me.
It would certainly have been a good spot - high on the hill overlooking the river valley below. But now it's a sprawling housing estate which has lost its shine. It was muggy and uncomfortable, and people do give you funny looks when you're staring in their gardens in a cul-de-sac. I suppose I could have asked for help but I could just imagine the blank expressions so didn't have the heart. Perhaps the stones are still here somewhere. If you're ever in Frome please take a look. I want them to be here. I don't want to think that people would get rid of their stones - you'd think they'd make a nice landscaping feature. This was disappointing.
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This is a true 'palimpsest' of a landscape. There are a lot of bumps, and yes, some of them are bronze age barrows. But some of them are actually the remains of a bizarre scheme from WWII: an attempt to recreate the street plan of Bristol on top of a heathy hillside, to lure the bombers away from the city. You can read more on MAGIC's extract from the EH schedule: http://www.magic.gov.uk/rsm/33064.pdf
From up here you can see for miles in practically every direction, and I am sure this is where I could see from the outlying circle at Stanton Drew.
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I popped up here with my sister at the weekend and found that by squinting wildly it was possible to discern the plume of smoke from the cement factory at Westbury - and yes, just to its right, the Westbury White Horse at its hillfort - ie the edge of Salisbury Plain just visible between the landscape of the much closer hills.
Looking in the another direction you can convince yourself you can just see the edge of the Pewsey Downs - but really you'd want a map and compass with you to be sure. With some binoculars I spotted the television transmitter on the edge of the Mendips (near Priddy) which is quite a way.. I am getting more caught up in this 'intervisibility' thing all the time.
The maze is getting a bit overgrown - so get up there and tread it :)
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Also came up here recently as the sun was going down. It is strange that this place is so quiet and peaceful yet is so close to the city. It does wonders for your state of mind. I wouldn't want to be accompanied by half of Bath of course but it is well worth discovering how to get up here.
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Finally we walked to the third circle. I realised what an elevated position this has compared to the other two. The vistas that are revealed are quite different: suddenly you can see out to ( what I now realise is the Blackdown Hills, where Beacon Batch is, and from where you can see Everywhere), and to my astonishment and delight, there was Kelston Round Hill on Lansdown – a marker which I feel more and more certain was acknowledged by our ancestors (but more on this when I can order my thoughts). Also for the first time I realised where the Cove is from this circle – you can see the wall of the Druids Arms garden. It would be so nice to be able to walk in a logical manner towards it from here, instead of back around the village. The church is so close by – superbly located to keep an eye on all three parts of this megalithic complex.
Although I didn't notice it, there is apparently a stone visible in the centre of this small circle. My companions and I were quite interested in the types of stone utilised. According to the EH smr they are 'dolomitic conglomerate' (which must be the red one with bits in), 'sandstone' (we found a clearly sedimentary rock in the main circle) and 'oolitic limestone' (holey, as you would see at Bathampton or the Rollrights), all of which it says could have been collected from within six miles of the site. In our examination of the stones we noticed that there seemed to have been a certain amount of digging around several of them in this small circle. We would liked to have put it down to rabbits, who were obviously in residence, but there was something quite un-rabbitlike in the way great clods of turf had been ripped up. If it was an unscrupulous person, let's hope they get the usual tide of bad luck that attends Messers With Stones, eh.
This circle is secluded (at least in the 21st century) but I felt like we were at the 'top table' of the Wedding. The land seems to drop gradually away in every direction; you seem to be on a little knoll especially chosen for the site. It is elegantly proportioned (though it is quite different with its stones much smaller than the similarly sized NE circle) and seems to fit its location very well.
With the cove becoming (almost) visible I was set to thinking about the functions of the different parts of the complex. Would you have gone to them all in a single visit? What routes would you have taken? It is hard to envisage such things with the village obscuring the possible intervisibility of sites and forcing you to walk the long way round.
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They say size isn't everything. Stanton Drew's Great Circle may have the second largest diameter in the country, but (on this occasion at least) it left me unmoved and I found much more to interest me in the smaller circles and the views of the surrounding landscape.
The large circle and its smaller cousin to the NE are close to the river Chew, at a point where it gets rather sinuous. Ideally I would have liked to start down by the river and walked up to the circles, up along the avenues – this is surely the direction in which the complex was meant to be approached? Not only do the avenues point you this way, but the EH magnetometer survey (linked to by Chris Collyer on the main page) revealed that the original (huge) Neolithic henge had its entrance in this direction.
If you walk as far as the fence will let you by the north east circle, you will realise that the circles are situated on quite a slope. You need to walk uphill (and curiously, not straight uphill, but across the slope to the smaller circle) to process up the avenues to the circles. It would not be easy – in fact, I think it would be impossible in the case of the great circle – to see what was going on in there until you got closer. Maybe this is deliberate. There's much to be said for conducting your affairs with an element of mystery and hiddenness (think Christian rood-screens etc). Imagine the imposing effect when the timber circles stood there (see below).
The small north east circle is (and I mean this) fantastic. Not only has it managed to retain its complete quota of stones (eight), it seems to be the most perfectly and pleasingly proportioned circle I have ever visited. The stones are huge compared to the space they enclose. They create an extremely agreeable space. My distinguished companion Nigel seemed to nurture similar warm thoughts towards these stones.
The EH magnetometer survey showed that there had been four holes in the centre of this circle – were these 'ritual pits' or the sockets for more stones, now disappeared?
{I spotted this particular circle from a plane when flying into land at Bristol airport: something you may also like to try to take your mind off your nausea}
Staring you in the face from this circle is Maes Knoll, a distinctively shaped flat-topped hill and Iron Age fort. On its left end we could see a bump (known as the 'tump'?). How much of the hill's shape is natural and how much man-made I don't know, but it surely drew the eye from Stanton Drew even in the Neolithic. I'd like to think Hautville's Quoit and the hill are in a direct line with the circle, but I fear having looked at the map this isn't true. [However, since this I've read that the the great and NE circles line up with the Cove, and the Great and SW circles line up with the Quoit]. Folklore says the Quoit was thrown from Maes Knoll, which at least connects the sites in local consciousness.
Although I didn't exercise my imagination enough to appreciate it, the main 'arena' of the Great Circle must have looked outrageous in its heyday. Nine concentric circles of pits (up to 95m in diameter) were found by the magnetometer survey. Each pit was 1-2m in diameter and it is thought that at least some of them contained massive wooden posts, as at Woodhenge. Perhaps they formed part of a building, or maybe the area was open to the sky. Whatever, the pit circles are the largest and most numerous found anywhere so far. Later of course the stones were put up at the perimeter of the circle, and that is all we can see today.
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Tootling - nah, whizzing along the cycle path this morning I could see the barrow quite well. Admittedly it looked a bit more like a mound of dirt covered in weeds from this elevated angle. But I still like it. And not only does the fantastic Kelston Round Hill stand out like a beacon on the horizon, but now I could see that in the opposite direction was the distant but distinctive Maes Knoll. It's very flat here down here on the floodplain, so it seems an unusual place for a barrow. But there's no point in trying to compete with such monumental landscape features as the Round Hill by putting a barrow on the hillside. And besides, if the people lived down here on the fertile flat bit, then I suppose that's where their barrow ought to be. And perhaps the confluence of the stream and river has its relevance too.
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It's rather a pocket-sized longbarrow this one, and almost cute with its fluffy (and spiky) summer vegetation. I would have sat down and relaxed - but the plants were so high I wouldn't have been able to see out, so I didn't. I expect it looks smaller than it once was - it is right on the field boundary and cut in two by the hedge, the eastern side being ploughed. The huge oak tree growing out of it lends a certain character to it. To get here you have to drive along little lanes through great open fields - it feels most remote, but there in the background is the drone of the motorway, only yards away really.
Its record on Magic mentions "an additional long barrow survives some 160m to the north-west. Such pairs are rare and give an indication as to the density or length of time during which areas were populated during the Neolithic period." I wasn't aware of this at the time - the other barrow is on the other side of the road, and is not indicated on the OS map. The county boundary follows the road.
As I parked the car and got out a load of cyclists began pedalling past along the long straight road. Why should I care what they thought? There's usually only one reason why someone would be popping behind a hedge in the middle of nowhere. It's probably easier to leave them to their assumptions than explain a strange interest in overgrown mounds in fields.
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This hill, it has a meaning that is very important for me, but it's not rational. It's beautiful, but when you look, there's nothing there. But I'd be a fool if I didn't listen to it.
-- Alan Garner.
..I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn..
-- William Wordsworth.
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