This is an intact cromlech in a beautiful and enchanting place.
Although built as a Preseli dolmen in the Carreg Samson style (smallish, enormous fat capstone), because of its location this feels unlike any other site I've been to. Megalithic sites tend to have such a grand sense of place, so clearly built into their landscape with the horizons and far contours in mind. This place, though, is secluded, standing near the top of a steep riverbank above the Afon Taf.
The sense of intimacy is not just to do with the relatively confined landscape, but in a large part it's the woods too. It stands in a small clearing among old mixed woodland, in a possibly deliberate perfect circle of beech trees.
The builders worked among trees like those around it today, and all the construction and usage took place to a soundtrack of the riverflow, continuous from before they first came until after we leave.
This setting profoundly triggers the imagination because so many ancient monuments must have been built in woodland. West Kennett longbarrow was built in an oak forest, not the monoculture agri-desert we know today.
For so many Preseli cromlechs to be built with a seaward orientation, it's got to be the river that is the focus of this one. The apparent entrance faces SSW down to the river.
The three side uprights are about 4 and a half feet high, the fourth, at the back, is smaller but even with the extra width of the capstone at that point there's still a clear uptilt to the entrance.
A single outlier stone, presumably displaced from the cromlech, stands 3 ft high and 5 ft long about 5m to the north.
According to Children & Nash (1997), in 1872 Barnwell wrote that the chamber and capstone were still covered by a mound and at least 32 outer kerbstones were visible. However, given the scarcity of covered barrows in the region and the serious work that would've had to have taken place in the last 130 years to get it to its present bare state, I'm tempted to suggest Barnwell was either exaggerating or confused in his description.
This really is a beautiful mesmerising site, do make the effort to visit.
visited 17 Aug 04
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Coming north from our starting point of Hendy-Gwyn/Whitland, we crested the hill and Mynydd Preseli comes into view. On this landscape, megalithically speaking it's all about those mountains and it's at this point on the journey that the density of monuments kicks in.
Marked as 'Standing Stone' on the current OS map, according to Barber & Williams (Ancient Stones of Wales, 1989) it was marked as 'Burial Chamber' on the 1952 edition. Indeed, there are clearly two stones, and a very probable third one lies fallen.
The stones stand in the hedge at the back of the garden of a new-ish house called Maes-yr-Haf, utterly covered in ivy so that we were 2 feet away and didn't spot them until coming past a second time. They're a grey-white colour, one about 6ft tall, the one immediately adjacent about 4 ft tall. The fallen one lies about 15ft west under a tree in the garden.
All three lie at the perimeter of the back garden, with the two standing ones accessible from the field behind.
It's so overgrown, and now down to two stones, that it was difficult to get any clear orientation or vibe for the place, save for the way Mynydd Preseli dominated the horizon to the north.
Barber & Williams (1989) say the site is listed in the Welsh archaeological journal Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1865 (page 91) and again in 1871 (page 133-136 with illustration on page 152). It would be interesting to see if the cromlech was in a better state of repair in that illustration.
The alternative name of Arthur's Table is a straight translation of Bwrdd Arthur, (reference to the flat top look of a cromlech?), and 'Bwardd Arthur' is presumably a mis-spelling that's passed into use.
Visited 17 Aug 04
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Requiring an OS map and a good deal of poking around among the gorse and bracken to find it, this small chambered round barrow is presumably like what many others are under their earthen mounds, or what the ruined ones were before desecration.
But this one was intact until an excavation in 1984, and it stands today with all its stones in place.
I've never seen a round barrow in this state before. Imagine if there were no West Kennett or Wayland's Smithy and all we had were covered mounds or stacks of slabs to fuel our imagination.
This great state of preservation gives a strong feeling of connection, the sense of what these barrows were is immense, I have never been so struck by a later Bronze Age monument. It almost feels like the builders could turn up any time with the remaines to be interred.
Well worth the trek!
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Despite being merely marked on our OS map as 'tumulous', this site was a superb long barrow, at the foot of the hill that has Merry Maidens circle on one side and the Pipers menhirs on the other, with the Gun Rith menhir just metres away to the north.
Quite incredibly, the construction of the road in 1840 decided not to go straight through this long chambered barrow nor to leave it intact, but to bend so as to obliterate half of it!
Covered in turf before 1840, the remaining half stands as bare stones. The largest of the capstones is thought to be a displaced menhir, and the others to have been moved from other parts of the monument.
There are madly large and deep cup marks on one of the entrance stones which appears to be made of very unusual rock. Which is indeed true, it's concrete as the original stone is in Truro County Museum.
Inside, an Iron girder supports the rear stone. And all the while traffic zooms by at speed.
And yet despite all of this, and the total loss of the northern half of the barrow, it still has strong presence and it is a very small task to imagine it in its original splendour.
Uniquely on this landscape, the monument has an explanatory plaque.
I strongly recommend Ian Cooke's 'Merry Maidens Stone Circle and other nearby ancient sites' pamphlet, available from local tourist info places, which provides a map, a suggest walking route and loads of history on this rich megalithic landscape.
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From Avebury, the gentle rise of Windmill Hill is so slight as to barely catch your eye. And indeed, when there's so much razzle-dazzle in the great henge, this place is usually overlooked.
But it was here that the first henge was dug on the Avebury landscape. And, all these thousands of years later, if you want to find it you can still trace the three concentric rings of ditches, marking out the ritual areas.
The trick is to think BIG - the outer one is simply enormous, almost clipping the trees on the western slope.
A lovely feature that messes with the modern mind is the cetring of the areas. It's slightly off-centre, going down the north side. Despite what Cursuswalker's notes suggest, this cannot have been an accident. The ancients weren't stupid, and they could feel gravity just as well as we can.
No, like the siting of long barrows and other monuments of the earlier part of megalitihic times, this is from a time before we were needing to bo the biggest, highest, grandest.
And although the hill looks like nothing from Avebury, once up here the view is a commanding one out to the henge and Silbury.
There are two massive Bronze Age barrows on the eastern side, and a bit further out, just outside of the National Trust land, two more are under the plough and getting smaller every year.
The lump on the northern side that looks like a barrow with a tree growing out of it is actually a mini reservoir.
Visiting this and proplerly figuring it out for the first time has given it a place in my understanding that East Kennett long barrow has just acquired. Both looked so trivial from the viewpoints I'd seen them from before, but once you've walked round the other side, and once you've been up here and seen the view from the top, its place on the landscape becomes paramount.
Try walkin the Ridgeway south past East Kennett long barrow. Try walking the path west out of Winterbourne Monkton and see how Windmill Hill looms and broods at everything.
Going out to West Kennett, Windmill Hill just covers the backdrop of the view. Getting up in the morning when camping at Avenue Farm I will always look for a moment at the earthworks up here.
Incidentally, what a shame Cursuswalker hasn't put more posts up on this site - the notes for Windmill Hill are superb; historical, intuitive, personal, informative.
(visited 5 April 02)
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How strange that a stone circle only 500 metres from the great henge at Avebury should be so unnoticed.
Every day dozens of people walk down the West Kennett Avenue, unaware that this circle was ever here, let alone that a stone still stands.
The OS map marks it as 'Stone Circle (rems of)', with a single black dot to indicate the remaining stone.
If you come down the Avenue from Avebury, look across the road to your left. About 200 metres along the tree line in the field you'll see the stone. If you go to the end of the stones (as they stand today), cross over and follow the hedge/fence.
At a bend in the tree line there's a gap in the hedge for access between the fields. This access runs right through the site of Falkner's Circle. A small wooden sign is nailed to the fence post to mark the spot, and several large sarsens lie around. The one remaining stone is wider than it is tall, being about 6 feet by 4 feet. Sadly, it lies just on the north side of the field boundary, i.e. just outside the National Trust owned land, and so vulnerable to farming mistreatment.
And what a strange spot. Right on the valley floor, the squat stone suits the snug location.
But what was this place? Some two hundred metres off-route for the Avenue to Avebury lacking the commanding and/or central feeling that is so common in other stone circles.
In 'The Avebury Cycle', Michael Dames suggests that it is perhaps to do with the midsummer sunrise. The sunrise would come over the eastern horizon (directly between two Bronze Age barrows), and a line could come through this circle, the stone in the Avenue known as 35N (uniquely not set flat-side inwards, but at a right angle to the others with a pointing edge to the east), across Waden Hill and to the summit of Silbury.
To me, this place is another discovery that makes me believe I really will never be fully familiar with all the monuments and features of the Avebury landscape, let alone divine their purpose.
(visited 4 April 02)
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notes from the stones, 4 April 02:
Rarely referred to, yet obviously once an integral part of the Avebury complex of monuments, Little Avebury stone circle stood on Cow Down at the base of Furze Hill, at the point of two beautiful narrow sheltered valleys.
What a confounding and enigmatic monument in such a beautiful setting. Heading from the Sanctuary through East Kennett we took the Ridgeway south. The views back to the imposing East Kennett long barrow and Silbury gave a whole new spin on my understanding of the layout of the Avebury landscape.
After a mile or so we arrived at Cow Down (no cows, but plenty of sheep). The Modern Antiquarian marks this as the site of a stone circle 'destroyed'. Having visited the 'destroyed' Falkner's Circle earlier today and found the site clearly marked and a stone still standing, and having previously been to several 'destroyed' stone circles in Aberdeenshire that are still readily identifiable, I had no idea what to expect of Little Avebury.
The OS map did a great job of pinpointing Falkner's Circle for us, but it marks nothing here.
There's a rough circle of about 8 recumbent and broken stones - with three more heading out in a line to the south - on the valley floor at 118654, between the Ridgeway and Furze Hill.
At the end of Furze Hill there's a *really* weird thing - a modern 12 foot tall pillar of rough white marble with a horse's head carved in the top. About 30 metres north of that is a bit of rough ground, littered with large sarsen boulders, some fifteen of which are in a neat north-south line. If I didn't know better I'd say it was a ruined barrow, but the lack of any MA reference and the valley-floor siting means it can't be.
Ten metres west is another small rough circle of small recumbent sarsens.
What confuses me is none of these three sites make sense as field clearance stones. A farmer would move stone to the edge of tillable land; the side of a field or the start of a steep slope. I can see no reason why any of these stones would have been cleared to their present positions, yet none of this is an obvious circle.
Does anyone know when it was destroyed? Or of any other clues to the exact siting? Can Stukeley perhaps help us out on this one?
Still, for all this confusion I'm calmed by this hazy heat and the beautiful steep green curved valleys here.Stones or no, this place has a rich magical air.
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The three-mile walk from the Sanctuary to Adam's Grave is an essential thing for anyone wanting to get a handle on the geography of the Avebury landscape.
The Ridgeway - although all the books give it as ending at the Sanctuary - goes south past Overton Hill and carries on south, coming out of the magical rolling chalk hills between the 2 MA sites of Knap Hill and Adam's Grave into the Vale of Pewsey, seeming to end at the foot of Woodborough Hill.
As you come into the village of East Kennett, the tree covered long barrow on the hill looms large and forboding. It had always seemed such a speck when seen from West Kennett, but from the east and south it shows itself as the big monstrous mother it really is.
Passing the site of the destroyed Little Avebury stone circle on Cow Down, you come up the hill to the Wansdyke, and out to a spectacular view of Adam's Grave and Knap Hill. on the horizon in front.
The climb is tough but short, and the view from the top is incredible. Up here is another one of those places that makes you glad you brought the tombstone-esque bulk of the Modern Antiquarian, for only when here can the true accuracy of Julian Cope's poetic writing really come clear. You do glimpse forever.
The plain in front drops away, and it's one of those places like the top of Glastonbury Tor where you feel like you are looking at the whole world.
Such a magnificent place compels you to stay for hours.
The view stays wonderful if you walk the hilltop path to the west, along to Tan Hill, a site of Lammas celebrations in sight of Silbury from time immemorial until 1932.
The edge of the Avebury landscape up here, and somehow also the heart of everything.
visited 4 April 02
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There's so much to see on the Avebury landscape that you really shouldn't make do with the OS Landranger map. Splash out on Explorer 157. It's twice the scale, so you can easily find everything, and they've coincidentally put Avebury in the centre. If you have this map you'll find otherwise fiddly things like the Mother's Jam really easily.
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Head east out of Avebury on the trackway that was, until 200 years ago, the main London to Bath road. It takes you over the Ridgeway, across the top of the hill, and then you cross a mad horse track and go downhill, with the trees of Delling Copse on your left.
And as you go down, you see them on your right. recumbent sarsens, littered across the ground. At the valley floor turn right and walk along. And there it is, the vast oracle stone of the Mother's Jam. The hill to the west is bare, except for it's cleft with a trickle of stones leading to the biggest of all at the bottom. The slope to the east is covered in sarsen. It is totally weird. You cannot believe this is natural, it feels so arranged, so ordained.
The few bushes and trees that grow there are weird to, all intense and twisty.
This would be worth visiting just to see the place where the Avebury stones came from. But it would also be worth visiting even if it were not. The weird crackling magic is tangible here, every time you visit.
Truly, the strangest and most intense place in all the natural world I have ever seen.
The centre - the big stone - is at grid ref 135708
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Notes from the stones, 31 Aug 00
Harold's Stones or The Three Stones stand just south of the village of Trellech. While it's common for towns in Wales to have two spellings (or two different names) to relflect the two common languages used there, on the six mile road from Monmouth to Trellech we saw the roadsigns spelling the town's name four different ways! Local historians say there are eighteen spellings. The Modern Antiquarian says the name means 'three stones', but 'tre/tri' means 'place of' as well as 'three' (as in Treherbert, etc). Either way, the village is clearly named after the standing stones.
The stones are in ascending order of height and stand in a line about 5 metres apart, very close together for an alignment. The small one is a 'normal' standing stone - it stands perpendicular to the ground and has a wide edge and a narrow edge. The narrow edge faces the other two.
The other two are squared, having no obvious edge-face and flat-face. As I stand here with my back against the smallest one, the middle one is leaning out to the right at an angle of about 75 or 80 degrees, and the far one leans to the left at about 60 degrees. It doesn't feel like especially boggy ground or a field that gets waterlogged much (it stands above the adjacent road), so it seems doubtful that the stones have tipped, and quite possible that they were placed at these crazy angles.
The base of the almost laughably phallic tall stone doesn't lean at the same angle as the rest of the stone; even if this first metre and a half were at 90 degrees, the main part of the stone ould still be leaning at 70 degrees or so. This one has clearly been designed to be leaning, which suggests that the middle one was too.
The puddingstone they're made of is pebbles held together with a natural cement. The amount of pebbles in each stone varies; The small one looks like sandstone with the occasional pebble, there are far more in the middle stone. The tall one has so many that it looks like a 1970s council pebbledashing job.
It's been suggested that the stones are aligned with the winter solstice on the holy mountain of The Skirrid.
The church in Trellech is also a curious place. There's a sundial at the back by the vestry (an indoor sundial?!) whose base is a lot older than the sundial part on top. Three sides of the base are carved. One side has the three stones and the legend 'Maior Saxis hic fuit victor Harald'. A second side is carved with a circular dip representing The Virtuous Well, an ancient holy well just east of the village. On a third side is carved a rounded lump and 'magna mole', representing Tump Terret, 300 metres south of the church along the ancient trackway that is still a public footpath. Coming from the stones, it's just over the road and behind the cattleshed of the farm. The Modern Antiquarian says it is a 'likely prehistoric mound', but given its dimensions, I'm inclined to agree with local historians that it is a Norman motte.
Even the embroidered prayer cushions in the church are interesting - featured designs include a Celtic cross, and on another the Three Stones.
The red stone cross in the churchyard is also extraordinary. The church itself dates from the 13th (or possibly early 14th) century, but there was a wooden church on the site since at least the 7th century. Church historians confidently speculate that the stone cross predates even the oldest church building here, and write, 'romantics may picture priests of the Celtic church (continuous in this area right from Roman times) ringing their handbells to summon the faithful to open-air worship inside the holy enclosure'. Beside the base of the cross is an ancient altar carved with Celtic crosses.
The base of the cross is five concentric layers of stone blocks ascending in a pyramid. The cross and the base stones contain white rocks, like the standing stones. Clearly this place was still of great religious significance, because the Christians made it such a constant focal point.
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Notes from the stone, 30 Aug 00
The rocking stone does indeed still rock, although you have to stand on top and bob up and down to make it happen. The stone is heavily carved with initials and names. The bench I'm sat on has a plaque in front of it quoting from the Book of Psalms saying how great the Christian God is.
The 'fine rushing stream' of the Modern Antiquarian's gazeteer is now some slightly damp rock, but the poetic power and pagan significance of the presence of a stream next to such a remarkable stone that looks out over a place where two rivers meet and valleys run off in four directions is great. It is not difficult to mentally erase the dual carriageway whoosing below and the town and see the tremendous natural magificence of this place.
And there's more to this place than the Rocking Stone. Pontypridd Common, which the stone is on, has numerous stones the same kind of size, shape and colour as the rocking stone, huge table/altar-like boulders that really draw the eye and grab the imagination.
Some 200 metres away, following the path northwards along the edge of the hillside towards an obelisk monument, you come to a football pitch sized area of mown grass. Just at the start of this on your right is a stone circle about 15 metres across. When this dates from I've no idea; circles are still being built in Wales, and indeed there's a recent one around the rocking stone. But the stones at this circle feel somewhat older; there are stones missing, and lichens growing on those that remain. They stand only half way up my shin at the largest, and several look broken off.
In the centre is an open cist about a metre deep and two metres long. It's slightly tapered to the south, with a rounded boulder at the north end of pinkish grey granite-type stone.
This doesn't feel like a recent thing to me; recent stone circles are in good condition, and wouldn't be made with missing stones, damaged stones and an opened cist. In fact although I know of many modern stone circles, I've never heard of anyone making a small simple cist. This place doesn't have enough posing to it to be really modern. Anyone know any facts about this circle?
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Notes from the stones, 26 August 00
Maen Mawr is a really unusual standing stone, having no 'edge-on' aspect, the sides being of pretty much equal size. It's also not much taller than it is wide, reminding me of pictures of Calanais stones before the peat was cut away. The odd dimensions also apply when it's compared to the circle; this outlier is bigger than all the circle stones combined! ('Maen Mawr' is Welsh for 'Big Stone').
The OS map marks this as a 'stone circle and avenue'. There are the tiny stones of the circle with the enormous almost cuboid lump of Maen Mawr beside it; beyond Maen Mawr there are two tiny stones like the ones that form the circle. This is stretching the definition of 'avenue' somewhat. There are grey boulders that suggest an avenue, but there are similar stones all around.
The standing stones in the circle are the smallest I've ever seen, some not even above ground level (presumably eroded/broken off, although they can't have been very big to start with). The tallest only come up to my knees. The ground is very boggy, and one stone stands so wobbily in the ground that I'm sure it could be just lifted out.
One stone is clearly very recently added in the circle; it stands at the north western side, and is very thin (5cm or so), no weathering or lichens, and lozenge shaped.
This is a really magical place, on a flat plateau halfway up the side of the valley. Looking around me now I can't see anywhere else in the valley with a level spot like this. The view looks down amzingly to the south, layer upon layer of hills for what on a clear day must be 15 miles. It is an extraordinary site, giving a sense of being isolated in the centre of the landscape.
According to the OS map there's a single standing stone about half a mile north, but we didn't check it out.
DIRECTIONS
Maen Mawr can be reached without an OS map. From Abercraf/Abercrave take the A4067 north. Three or four miles north you see a pub called Tafarn Y Garreg (literally 'Stones Inn') on your right (with its car park on your left). Take the left hand road towards Trecastell/Trecastle opposite the pub. After two miles-ish the river runs right next to you on the left and you see a dark lump on the level promontary halfway up the valley on your left; that's Maen Mawr. The river's easily crossed right now (although it gets faster and wider in the winter so you'll need wellies).
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Notes from the stone, 26 Aug 00
Visible on the skyline for quite some distance when approached from the South, Maen Llia is an imposing and isolated stone.
Despite it being, as Julian Cope's poem would have it, miles from anywhere, there's a stile over the fence and a well-worn path to the stone, which has been slightly vandalised by people carving their names into it (one appears to be dated 1860).
The stone stands facing the valley sides and its edges align with the valley. Although the predominant stone of the area is grey, Maen Llia is a deep wine-red, and very pitted and pock marked. The stone is huge - some four metres tall - and surrounded on three sides by upward slopes; getting it from wherever such rare stone was found to here was a mighty task.
The top is gently rounded and comes to a point. One side of the point is very straight indeed. I don't know how to tell if it's tooled or not, but either way it's an odd shape.
The sense of position is really weird; as you look down the valley toward Ystradfellte there are impressive layers of hills, but that is true of pretty much anywhere round here. If the stone were 500m north there'd be the same view down the valley, but it'd also look down another valley too. The stone was clearly not positioned with a wish for the most impressive position on the landscape.
To the northeast of Maen Llia there's a notably anomalous mound on the landscape that goes halfway up to the horizon, not overly dramatic but unusual for the shape of the land round here. It's kind of like a squashed Silbury (but is too big to be the work of humans). To extend the comparison with Silbury, the mound here also has a Roman road running directly beside it, Sarn Helen. This implies that the hill may have had some significance.
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(notes from inside the circle, 2 July 00)
Intrigued by the OS map marking a circle not even credited in the Modern Antiquarian's list of 'non-gazetteer sites', we wilfully sought this one out. On the OS map the track up from Towmill looks best, but it's actually overgrown in grass a metre and a half high, and anyway it's uphill from there. So we came to the next turnoff to the north. It was marked Druidstone Croft. Druidstones! At last we had a name for this circle! We looked it up in the Modern Antiquarian index and it gets a quick mention in a list of sites unvisited in 1994. Very mysterious.
A household called Rashiewells is nearest the road, and the entrance to the field with the stones is straight in front (*not* down the track to the right). Through the entrance to the field we found that a generous gap of fifteen or twenty metres had been left between the edge of the crop and the edge of the field. We walked along this, soon cresting the hill and seeing the two small copses in the field, the nearest of which was around the stones. We walked down a tractor wheel-run to the trees and stones. Behind them is an abandoned house with some trees beside it.
The OS map optimistically shows four blobs for this stone circle. There are two stones standing, one is at the north-west, two and a half metres tall, a metre across each side and grey. The other's opposite, a tiny metre-high thing, and at the south-west there's a jumble of large rubble, surely the remains of the recumbent and/or flankers. Five trees grow in the circle among knee-deep grass.
Despite the two standing stones this feels like a truly ruined circle, the destruction here has a feeling of absoluteness, somehow. The dead tree in the circle and the abandoned house beyond the don't generate the creepy vibe you'd expect, in fact there's seemingly nothing of such potency here.
That said, the sense of place is amazing. To the south-east Corrie Hill slopes down to allow a clear line of sight on Cothiemuir Wood and beyond to a far horizon of the Corrennie Moor peaks. The south-west aspect looks over Brindy Hill and, behind and left, the two peaks of The Barmkyn. To go straight over the absent recumbent would take you through the lea of The Barmkyn peaks and directly down to the recumbent of Old Keig! Druidstones circle is in sight of Cothiemuir Wood, yet this is on a slope and the circle at Cothiemuir Wood is on a summit. If Druidstones were on a summit then The Barmkyn would no longer be the far horizon. I'm thinking this really suggests The Barmkyn as a sacred hill.
The positioning of this circle is superb, and for me this is a must-visit.
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(notes on top of the hill, 2 July 00)
Having read of Julian Cope's bullock barricade blocking his visit to Hawk Hill, we were dismayed to see a field full of horned male and female cattle as we came up the track, but the friendly man at Loanend said they were young and harmless. However, thirty cows running makes a frighteningly thunderous noise and we were nervous enough to bunk into the adjacent field for as much of the climb as possible.
Eventually we reached the summit and climbed the wire fence by the monstrous freestanding recumbent and the cows stayed back. And there we saw for the first clear time *that* view. The last five metres brings Dunnideer into view to the north alongside its two sister hills, and then to the west, after three days of it hiding in mist and cloud, we saw the distant Silbury shape of Tap O'Noth!
This hill that looked so weedy and low from the road at its foot feels so very high and central up here, deceiving me into feeling above the Dunnideer triplets! The recumbent is absolutely HUGE and appearing to be contoured to align with the south-western horizon. The breeze comes through the hilltop pine trees making a sound like the sea and the sun is shouting down at us to love this place.
Don't let the OS map's 'Stone Circle (rems of)' or the Modern Antiquarian's 'destroyed stone circle' denotation put you off coming here, this is such a site, as big a buzzy mindblower as we've seen anywhere on this whole Aberdeenshire trip!
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There are two ways to approach this site, either from the road that runs north out of Daviot, or from the New Craig Farm to the east. We chose the latter in order to ask permission. Unfortunately we didn't know that New Craig Farm was running a farm-scale GM test, and our visit resulted in us being interrogated and searched by the police, but that's a whole different story.
Approaching from the Daviot road side, you crest the hill and are presented with the mighty recumbent and flankers, now set into a field wall. The picture in Modern Antiquarian of the broken recumbent set in the wall really doesn't do the place justice, indeed no photograph could. When you're there it is the most magical place, I've *never* buzzed so strongly at a standing stones site! It faces, as RSCs do, south-west, but from here that's straight to the Mither Tap, 'the mother's tit', the mountain that's a clear focus for so many of these sites.
And then it also looks south to the mighty Loanhead circle, and then looking out west we saw our first sight of Dunnideer, instantly recognisable from its Glastonbury Tor-style ruined tower on the summit. These things alone would've amazed us, but from here Dunnideer and its two sister hills, Hill of Christ's Kirk and Hill of Flinder, formed a triple-pyramid design. Turning back to Mither Tap, the Bennachie Hills behind it formed a startlingly similar triple pyramid! Whoah, with Loanhead to the south and the rich rolling land behind this was the most amazing place! Most circles elsewhere feel like they're at the centre of the landscape, but this place feels like it's at the centre of *everything*!
Out to the west beyond Dunnideer, beyond our vision on this misty evening, are the mountains of Tap O'Noth and Hill O'Noth, the looming big mountains that start the landscape's climb out of rolling fertility and into Cairngorm hostility.
And here on the site, behind the massive recumbent and flankers among this mad faerie copse are two large stones, one standing and one on its side, but it's difficult to see either as part of the circle. The latter is the one called the New Craig Flyer in the Modern Antiquarian, and Cope says it predates the standing stones as the original focus here. It has a big dip in it, which Cope suggests was imitated in the dip of the recumbent stone (which initially looked to us like a chunk had been broken off and was missing).
The circle has gone, the recumbent is cracked and built into a wall, but all the same, this place feels like the control panel of the whole landscape.
(visited 30 June 00)
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The Modern Antiquarian's mindbender map of the Aberdeenshire landscape (pages 100 & 101) marks Old Rayne as a 'destroyed' stone circle, but the OS map marks it as just 'Stone Circle' (without the '(rems of)' suffix they give destroyed ones). As we drove out from the village a single upright stone appeared in the raised field on our left. When we got to the fence the mighty but toppled stones became visible.
There's a field boundary of wire fence running through the remains of the circle, separating the single remaining upright and one fallen stone from the rest. The OS map marks five dots, and these denote the stander, three fallen and a pile that includes the easily discernible recumbent and flankers, several small stones and a pile of stones that could be cairn remains or could be just farmers field clearance. The stones are pretty large, not quite as big as Loanhead, but perhaps a bit bigger than Sunhoney. The fallen recumbent sticks up at 40 degrees, making it seem absolutely huge. As you stand in the circle facing south, the left flanker's fallen to the left, the right has fallen inwards and broken in two, and the recumbent has fallen inwards too. The flankers are grey granite, but the flat topped and bottomed recumbent is brown. The recumbent faces a flat horizon of hilltops, and if your eye follows it to the east then it drops down to reveal Mither Tap behind.
To the west the top of Dunnideer is clearly visible with another similar shaped peak to the left making as fine a pair of taps as can be. Modern Antiquarian says Tap O'Noth is visible from here, but it's not a clear day today and I don't think we can see that far. I think the other peak might be Hill of Christ's Kirk. Still, the fact that Tap O'Noth is generally visible from here means this site is phenomenally positioned on the landscape.
The ground inside the circle slopes up to the recumbent, as at Balgorkar, but whether this is part of the original design, or the result of cairn building and/or field clearance is not obvious to me. Either way, the effect is dramatic, accentuating the belittling feeling of standing at the smallest stone (or rather the site of the smallest stone). The poking up of Mither Tap and Dunnideer to the same degree as each other coupled with the flat horizon at the south-west gives this RSC a feeling of perfection.
(visited 1 July 00)
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Back towards Tap O'Noth by 500 metres from the Cnoc Cailliche stones, and the stones here at Templand appear tiny in their field until we realise that the grass isn't grass, it's knee-deep young wheat that prevents us getting right up to the stones. Modern Antiquarian says two stones, OS map says remains of a stone circle. From here Tap O'Noth is again a peak only, and, as Cope say, a pretty precise Dunnideer shape, in fact. When you think how familiar the builders were with this landscape and the shapes of the hills on it, and their obvious reverence for Dunnideer, the positioning of these stones must surely have been to deliberately to give this effect.
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Despite this being a small six stone circle, the B947 manages to run through the middle, and this novelty is what initially attracted our visit as a detour on our route home to England from Aberdeenshire.
Two stones stand each side of the road, and one more in each of the adjoining fields. The two stones beside the north side of the road have been turned to be flat-on parallel with the road, and the stone in the southern field has been broken and brutally repaired with iron bars being concreted up its length. Still, despite all that and the road through it, this is still a gobsmacking site. Probably *because* of the road hurtling through it, but also for a great sense of place and a fabulous gnarly horizon.
(visited 3 July 00)
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(notes at the real standing stones, 2 July 00)
As you turn off the road up the track to Whitehaugh House and the farm, the stones are up a slope on your left. There's a big cattle shed at the bottom of the slope that's so new it's not on the OS map. We parked in the concrete yard at the front, beside the offices of the cattle shed. The farmer was very friendly and pointed out the two small stones just the other side of the fence from the yard. These were erected for the hell of it after being dug up during the construction of the shed. The farmer said they were half-expecting a preservation order to be put on the new stones! The digging of the foundations had also uncovered remains of large fires, about a foot below present ground level.
Up in the field, the two real standing stones are Batman-ear shaped like flankers. However, they face south and are not in line with each other, so it's generally thought that they don't stand in their original position. The view south-west is towards Laggadlie Hill, with, I think, Scar Hill poking up beyond topped with a distinctive transmitter acting as a modern day Dunnideer/Glastonbury Tor tower, and the peak of Craiglea as a sister to the right, with a flat south-western horizon running between. To the east is Mither Tap. Friendly heifers are now so close behind me that I can hear them breathing.
The farmer and friends had a Millennium Eve party by the standing stones and the circle of their fire is still scorched earth a full six months later. Let this remind people who light fires at sites - indeed, anywhere - of how much damage it does to the earth. Seemingly (if the present position of the stones is thought to be more or less the original) this is another crest-of-hill circle.
A hundred metres along the hill to the east is an area of semi-buried large granite boulders. Nothing large enough to be a megalith, and in a straight line like a wall then widely scattered, so no clear pattern but certainly not ancient. From down on the track this looked like an area of embedded toppled stones a la Balgorkar, but I'm now in it and it's obviously field clearance rubble.
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