Showing 1-20 of 443 links. Most recent first | Next 20 
Interpretation panels and information from the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust.
|
This doesn't look too promising when you initially open it, but scroll down and you'll see a collection of documents that relate to the site. You'll see that in 1880 a Mr Jolly found lots of the grave slabs here were covered in cup marks. There are detailed drawings.
Could they be real or was he having one of those over-enthusiastic moments? And to add to the mystery, a visitor in 1965 couldn't find any of the slabs at all, let alone the cupmarks. Are they under the grass or taken away somewhere, were they not looking properly and the slabs there but the cups imagined? There are seemingly quite good descriptions of the location of the stones for anyone who wants to visit and search.
The current site record on the RCAHMS webpages mentions two bronze age axes that were found buried at the site, over a foot deep. Which is quite interesting.
And there are also two bits of stoney folklore associated with the site - a medieval stone 'coffin' that ne'erdowells had to lie in while someone stuck a lid on the top for a few hours, and an 18 stone? granite ball, used for showing off your strength (these are described at the end of the document).
|
At the bottom of the page there is an aerial photo of the fort.
|
Photos of the stone on Turton Moor.
|
M Campbell has taken a photo of the stone for Geograph - it shows the fancy graffiti towards its foot.
|
An illustrated chapter that talks about the four stones*, in "Old stone crosses of the vale of Clwyd and neighbouring parishes" by the Rev. Elias Owen (1886).
*possibly in an imaginative fashion of course, but who knows :)
|
Pictures of the barrow, with links to more pictures and information in the menu on the left.
There's a special talk on Wednesday 28th March to commemorate 100 years since the barrow's opening. The museum opens properly for the summer at the beginning of May.
|
W F Grime's article about the excavation and resiting of the stone, in 'Reports and Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists Society' (v67, 1934).
|
Advice for visiting the cave (inc map) from 'Gower' magazine, v13 (1960).
|
A map of 1784 (printed in 'Gower' magazine, v13) shows three stones in a line near the standing Knelston stone.
|
In the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London for 1899-1900, there's a report about a cupmarked stone near Gignese with a drawing. Other stones are mentioned too, with the amusing detail that rubbings took nine sheets of the Daily Telegraph, and papier mache casts made with sheets of the Guardian. No penny dreadfuls for this sort of work, naturally. Or indeed local Italian papers.
|
Volume 3 of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (1847) has engravings of various megalithic remains on the island, along with a tall story that one stone tomb had a giant's skull with teeth as big as a man's fist.
|
History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, volume 9 (1879-81) - has a list of "The named Stones of Northumberland; being a list of huge stones, single and in groups, in situ and detached, to which local names have been given in the County." by G. A. Lebour.
|
This page has drawing of the 'Upper' and 'Lower' stones at Cuddesdon, which seem to have been at SP604024 and SP607020. "Local inhabitants have stated that the stones were removed sometime in the 1980s." But I wonder where they were removed to - it's possible they might be lying in the hedge I suppose. The writer of the website sounds hopeful they won't have disappeared without trace.
|
A page from the 'Fifth Report and Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in Galloway' (1914) that shows the curious carvings (one is surely an alien?) and the fort's reputed vitrifiedness.
|
A whole little booklet about the stone, written in 1907 by F J Bennett.
|
'A cup-marked stone in the Roman town of Corstopitum' - a short article by R H Walton in the 1962 edition of the History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club.
"Only the other day, gang after gang of Irish labourers was dismissed rather than agree to put an air-port runway across some thorn trees which they considered to be free from interference - even in the cause of "Progress." Perhaps the British workmen thought the same thing, in 200AD."
|
Introduction and a link to James Gossip's paper (click on 'downloads) which describes the fogou and its rediscovery.
|
From the London Review, 1863. You wouldn't believe what the riff-raff are getting up to at St Catherine's Hill on 'Tap-Up Sunday'. Four hundred of Guildford's 'lowest inhabitants' were there causing havoc apparently.
The 1898 edition of Brewer's 'Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' points at why:
The Sunday preceding the fair held on the 2nd October, on St. Catherine's Hill, near Guildford, and so called because any person, with or without a licence, may open a "tap," or sell beer on the hill for that one day.
Lots more information about the fair (held since the middle ages) can be found in Matthew Alexander's article on the St Catherine's Village website.
|
'Tumboracos' sent a letter to The Gentleman's Magazine in 1789 in response to Bere's. He sounds very (too?) level headed and he pushes for the date of the barrow to be accepted as pre-Roman. He doesn't believe Bere's story about an eight-foot skeleton either, and tells a little anecdote about breathlessly running to see a skeleton found in a barrow dug by three soldiers, who claimed it was that of 'a prodigious giant'. But actually when he held the femur up to one of them they had to concede it was of ordinary size (it made him feel better to have a little rant). And I guess it's true that people have "a natural promptness to magnify casual discoveries into the marvellous" as he says. Though that's quite nice sometimes.
|
Showing 1-20 of 443 links. Most recent first | Next 20 |
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.
|
Log in |
Register
Top of page