 Previous 50 | Showing 101-129 of 129 posts. Most recent first
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.
=========================================
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
|
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.
|
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?
|
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).
|
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.
|
(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.
|
(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!
|
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)
|
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)
|
|
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.
|
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)
|
(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.
|
(notes beside the last standing stone and on the way home, 3 July 00).
Having seen no reference to this circle anywhere else, I'm not sure this is the right name.
Another circle not listed as even a 'non-gazetteer site' in Modern Antiquarian caught our attention as we looked at the map. Coming up through the woods to the clearing on top of the hill, stones glared down at us, stark against the sky. Recent field clearance stones, as it turned out.
The map makes it look like this circle is surrounded by a U-shape of trees, as indeed it is, but being a crest-of-hill circle the view is above the trees, and only a 30 degree section of the panorama is obscured. This is another one where OS is confusing; if Templand is 'stone circle (rems of)' I don't see how this warrants the full 'stone circle'. All that stands is the metre-high bottom half of a stone that suggests itself as the left flanker. The recumbent, aligned on a level, high horizon (one of only two horizontal parts in the whole panorama) is missing entirely.
A pile of cairnstone-sized rocks lie in the place of the other flanker. Three metres from that lies a fallen circle stone, broken into half a dozen chunks where it fell. Just by that are two other metre-long slabs, seeming like fragments of fallen stones.
Fifteen or twenty metres to the south is a grey granite boulder which, although two metres long, is clearly a fragment of a bigger stone - the north face is a mass of jagged edges. The south face has at least 15 dips that are seemingly cup marks. Some are deep and obvious, some shallow and more questionable. If the marked face of the stone is, as I'm guessing it might be, the top of the recumbent, then it'd be a conservative half of the top, and flat with a rise to the right (perhaps to align on the rise at the right of the south-western level horizon). Knowing that cupmarks are difficult to see in photos we put a yellow gorse petal in each one before taking a picture, facing west out to Knock Hill.
The name 'Knock Hill' is, as Cope points out about another hill of the same name, an English corruption of the Gaelic 'cnoc', meaning hill. This means it's name is simply 'The Hill', the lack of a real name possibly implying it had great significance.
Out to the east a distant peak rises in the lea between Knock Hill and Craigievar. The important south-western aspect is towards Collie Hill and Corse Hill (again, clearly the same root as names like Corrstones, Correen Hills, Cothie-muir). (I only sussed that it was hills with these significant names while mapreading after leaving, so I don't know if its these that make up the horizon). Sadly, the small segment of the view blocked by trees is to the north-east and Mither Tap, but I don't think it'd be visible from the stones, but then again the hills on this landscape play such games (especially Mither Tap) that I wouldn't like to say for certain.
The pile of stones to the north of the stander suggests this area was the inside of the circle. If so, the recumbent stood on the very crest and the smallest stone would've been slightly downhill looking up. The flat north-east face of the standing stone feels like the infacing edge somehow, but it is possible that it's not the flanker and is the backstone. Its NW/SE alignment means it couldn't be any other stone in the circle and it does seem a bit large for a back stone, but as we can't see where the precinct of the circle was we can't say with any certainty. Here, as at the other seriously trashed sites in the area, so much is left to guesswork. And this really is a seriously trashed site; half a standing stone and a load of randomly placed rubble. But the presence of the cup marks contrive to make it an intriguing and really captivating place nonetheless.
|
Well, Stonehead is in horse pasture, but here at Craighead we're in dog pasture. The field is owned by the adjacent Ace Kennels, where you ask and the friendly folk bring the dogs in off the field and let you visit in peace. The kennel owner said the stones are getting two or three lots of visitors a week at the moment.
There's a weird feeling at this mutant four stone circle, perhaps assisted by the ominous industrial chicken sheds at the north end of the field. The stones seem to have been moved and jigged with and all but drained of significance. Two stones are aligned N/S, and one E/W. The fourth stone has the look of a flanker, but if it is then this stone has also been moved, or else the recumbent would have to have been facing south (as at Auchquhorthies nearby).
Certainly, it's an intriguing piece of positioning here, in sight of both the sea and, a mile and a half to the south-west, Hill of Auchlee, which was home to the Cairnwell stone circle. This site may even have been in sight of the Cairnwell stones, but I can't be sure. So much is unknown here, and an air of disjointedness permeates this site.
|
(notes in the evening sunshine looking west to Tap O'Noth, 2 July 00)
These Corrstones stand on the hilltop overlooking the foot of the Tap O'Noth. Although the Silbury aspect is decreased by the revealing of the whole mountain, Tap O'Noth still has a powerful presiding feeling here. Corrstones is certainly a near ruin, but, as at Hawk Hill, the positioning is very arresting. A gentle conical hill surrounded on all sides by farmland, this place has become a monster farm dump. These trees around the stones are shelter not only for so much field clearance stone that only a couple of fallen Corrstones are distinguishable but there's also an assortment of other discarded cack, even an old 1960s-looking car on its side!
Still, the grove, the situation and the view are big enough not to be dominated by it, and a tremendous sense of place affects us, and others too; a small patterned stone had been recently reverentially placed at the recumbent.
Following from the recumbent to the south-western edge of the copse we find that from here six hills in four layers conspire to make a straight-lined horizon! Moving westward round the edge of the trees to face Tap O'Noth, some inquisitive bullocks and the setting sun, the composite horizon is still a straight line but already from this angle it's stopped being level and now slopes down to the left. Corrstones hill, where the Tap O'Noth starts in the valley below and the south-western horizon is horizontal! What must the ancients have made of *that*?
This is a beautifully tranquil place and truly I could stay here for hours, here in the sunshine being sniffed at by bovines, but it's our last full day up here and the call across the valley to Cnoc Cailliche is just too strong.
|
Also known as Wheedlemont Hill, this hill has caught our attention several times, standing out in the landscape or poking up over another hill with a distinctive shape similar to that of The Barmkyn and Barmekin Hill. The interest has been piqued by finding the bit in the Modern Antiquarian that what the OS map calls a 'fort' at the summit is - even according to official HMSO books - not a fort but a ritual causewayed enclosure.
The OS map marks a single standing stone at the foot of the hill, Modern Antiquarian calls it the remains of a circle, but says it was lost in deep crop on the field trip so they left it alone. Today the stones are clear in cropped cattle pasture.
The farmer is (as they've all been) very friendly and absolutely fine about us visiting the stones. I really do like having permission, it frees you to really look around, walk around, poke around in the hedges, get the map and spread it out and generally take your time and get a true vibe of the site. Ones where we've not had permission always give me a background unease, like trying to have a conversation on a car journey when the petrol warning light's been on for 10 minutes.
The stones do indeed appear to be two, and suggest themselves as the remains of a circle, and our initial feeling is one of Modern Antiquarian: 1, OS: nil. The fallen and moved stone lies on top of some small stones 20 or 30 metres from the solitary stander that has the Batman ear shape and NW/SE axis that suggests it as a flanker. The fallen stone is larger and is flat on one side which would suggest it as the recumbent except that it would've only been two foot high, so this seems unlikely. It may even be unrelated field clearance and the OS map is right.
The standing stone has an unweathered look on the 'inside' and a lack of lichens like the side of a flanker that was partially protected from the elements by a recumbent. However, the lack of lichens on the lower inside of a stone may not be due to the protection of a recumbent; it's more likely to be the result of being a favourite rubbing post for itchy-arsed livestock. And indeed in this case further examination shows a certain polishedness on the corners that is clearly the work of extensive buffing by cows arses.
|
|
On the slope of the Hill of Auchlee (topped with a thing called Boswell's Monument) there's dense, thick, sharp gorse a metre and a half high. If there are any standing stones still upright then they're in the gorse and not tall enough to stick up above it. We found a slab over two metres long, possibly a recumbent (or sizeable fragment of it) judging by its shape, and another two stander-sized stones a few metres to the north, one of which was broken into three bits. The dots on the OS map mark four blobs and call it a 'Stone Circle' (not a 'rems of'), which is no guarantee of anything, but does suggest the possibility of there being things hidden in the gorse bushes. It's certainly possible; if, say, the Craigievar circle were here we'd not see a thing.
|
(visited 29 June 00)
Beside a dual carriageway, behind a BP petrol station there's a field containing a 30 metre circular bank and ditch, causewayed to the north and south. On an island in the middle are three stones. It's a puzzling site. The stones are clearly not edge-on like circle stones; perhaps they have been moved, perhaps they are a 'cove'. Difficult to tell how many (if any) stones are missing. One stone has a beautiful Pictish bird-thing carved into it.
I'm told that it was once a circle, and that the pictish stone was moved from its original site in the 19th century and put here for want of anywhere better.
About 100 metres due south in the same field is a single stone. Another 100 metres beyond (over a road and through a hedge into someone's garden) is another stone. Beyond that (as far as I can tell from the map) by another 200 metres is another, but it's in the grounds of Broomend paper mill, a big fuckoff factory.
I'm told that these stones were once part of a long alignment running from the river up to the henge and then beyond, in a manner similar to Shap in the English Lake District (Modern Antiquarian, page 250). Whether the north-south alignment of the causeway and the missing stones is due to the seasons and compass or the north-south alignment of the river is a matter for conjecture.
The mill, road, petrol station, flats and houses around this field are all clearly very recent. The fact that the three outliers are on three separate properties doesn't bode well for their safe upkeep. The way it's been so rapidly surrounded with such overpoweringly intense development, I'll be surprised if the field itself is still a field in twenty years time.
|
(visited 30 June 00)
These were the first Aberdeenshire stones we visited that stand on private land, and we set ourselves a good and decent precedent by knocking first to ask. We found that not only does this invariably lead to a friend granting of permission, but it means that when you're at the stones you can really get into it instead of always looking over your shoulder for the angry farmer coming to hassle you. It also means that the landowner comes to know that people into the stones are considerate and polite, so it'll help future visitors too.
But there was nobody in, so we asked at the house nextdoor, who said that the landowners are fine about visitors as long as they obey the Golden Rule of Walking on Farmland: SHUT THE GATE BEHIND YOU!
We crossed a field of ripening wheat and came into the circular grove of trees that surrounds the circle. The woman down at the Corrieburn house said 'but there's really nothing to see up there'. Ha! This is such a beautiful place, a luscious warmth radiates through the site, and not just because of the lurid glowing pink colour of the stones. On the crest of a small hill, this has a classic stone circle Centre Of The Landscape vibe. Barmekin Hill looms massively down behind the smallest stone, as much a horizon focal point as Mither Tap at East Aquhorthies. Barmekin Hill is a classic sacred hill shape, and has the same shape and name as The Barmkyn, a hill on which Old eig and Druidstones are aligned.
The fallen and broken recumbent stone is a sad sight, but it is still in better condition than most of the RSCs, and with the outer circle of trees and the landscape-central feeling, this is as bright and enchanting a place as you could see anywhere.
(NB In the Modern Antiquarian's gazetteer entry for Sunhoney (page 393), the directions say that by their 1994ce trip Sunhoney Farm had been renamed Corrieburn Farm, but they didn't find out why. In fact, Sunhoney Farm is still Sunhoney Farm, and the sign up the track to Corrieburn is for entry round the back to the new house nextdoor).
|
(notes from the recumbent stone, 2 July 00)
Yet again a slender antiquarian copse leads from the road to the stones, like at New Craig, Dunnydeer and others. These copses appear to be of roughly the same age, too. Who planted them? They seem deliberately planted to protect the stones from farmers like the trees planted on Wiltshire hilltop barrows. As if to prove it, here at Old Keig an arc extends back from the recumbent and flankers in a good approximation of the position of the circle, and no tree stands within the precinct. On the south side there's a gap of forty or fifty metres so the south-western view is unobscured, save for a single stout tree that protects the recumbent from close-up farming! (The present farmer's thrown field clearance boulders between the tree and the standers, a metre from the recumbent).
These copses have the feel of a BBC Sunday evening TV drama Avalonian/Narnia enchanted grove. The excited and expectant roar of thousands of buzzing insects up in the canopy of the trees fed this enchantment as we approached.
And there they stood, the epically proportioned stones. As at Dunnydeer, there's only the recumbent and flankers. And as at Dunnydeer, it's all that's needed to generate a real sense of the scale of this massive circle, and a very potent sense of place. This huge recumbent stone feels so serene, centre of a wide and peaceful 270 degree landscape with the peaks of Bennachie poking up at the north-east and a fort-topped (therefore anciently sacred?) hill of The Barmkyn immediately behind.
We're slowly discovering that the Modern Antiquarian's directions of 'requires an OS map' can mean 'not on a path'. Initially I envisioned that line as meaning three-mile slogs across hill and bog, but it's definitely been used liberally. Old Keig certainly doesn't need one at all. From the B992 take the western road out of Keig, there's a farm on your left after a mile, then 400 metres later a thin line of trees on your left, perpendicular to the road. The stones are 200 metres down from the road in those trees.
Also, The Modern Antiquarian describes as subjective a thing as atmosphere at a site in such 'factual' terms, and I've been sceptical; surely a lot of it's to do with the state of the observer, what you already know/don't know of the area and the history, the weather, the season, the surrounding crops, etc. And yet I've found it to be invariably correct. At Old Keig 'the peace overlooking the valley is as though the world has long stopped,' is precisely and completely right.
|
Being a restored and state-owned show site, Loanhead is very well signposted. But there's also recent signposting for others like Midmar Kirk, with even a brown tourist sign logo. We parked up at about 6pm on a Friday evening, just as a load of Scouts and Guides were being dropped off at the Scout campsite that shares the carpark.
As you take the short uphill path through the woods stones are silhouetted against the sky in a dramatic and exclamatory way. The circle, with its bizarrely lengthways-split recumbent, is made more bizarre by the rubble of cairnstones carefully placed within, and weirder still by the cleared circle at the very centre coated in coarse sand. The official info boards are, like others everywhere, obsessed with physical measurements above all, but like the others in this area the ones here are well above the standard of, say, Silbury or Stonehenge - no 'chief of the clan' hierarchical bollocks, and mention of lunar alignments; trying seriously to be addressing *why* as well as *what*.
There was a little work to be done in 'making a practical offering' to the site; rather than leave flowers or whatever, clear the litter. It gives you a close and binding feel for the site and makes it a better place for the next people who come, encouraging them to treat it with more respect. Quite how the Irn Bru can I pulled out from between the halves of the recumbent came to be smelling of fish is unknown.
I was moved by the (cairn-builder era) cremation site beside the circle - I could really imaging a blazing fire, looking as fire always has and does, cremating a man looking like men still do, right here, this very spot, so long ago that we don't know any real detail of their lives and thoughts, let alone their language. Trees surround the circle on three sides, but you can *really* feel Mither Tap and the sister hills of Bennachie calling and glaring from beyond the recumbent. The blocking of a direct view does detract from the sense of place here, but the site is still very affecting.
The valley to the east looks like the Marlborough Downs, the same brand of rolling fertile land. And half a mile away we could see the recumbent and flankers of New Craig circle, an absolut must-visit.
|
(notes written on the stone in front of the recumbent, 1 July 00)
The Modern Antiquarian said this was an 'obscure' site, difficult to find, but we walked directly up the side of the field from the road, five minutes, straight to it. Here there's only the recumbent and its wobbly flankers but the great thing about RSCs is that's all you really need to get a real sense of what the circle was; it tells you where the rest of the circle was and what it was facing and what scale it was built on. And not only are these all you really need, but because they're the largest in the circle they're the most likely to still be in situ.
Regarding the missing stones, eighty metres beyond me to the south, just over the brow of the hill, is a big pile of mostly small stones. Field clearance? Cairn? There's rather a lot, perhaps enough to be a very old and collapsed building. Even if it is just the latter, it's distinctly possible that it would've been made of broken up circle stones. Halfway up from the road in the field wall twenty metres east of the standing stones there's a wire-fenced gateway, the gateposts being two smallish granite stones. You have to wonder.
The Dunnydeer recumbent is peaked in exactly the shape of the Hill of Christ's Kirk behind it (like that name doesn't give a hefty clue as to its sacred history!). From inside the circle you'd have Hill of Flinder on the right, Dunnideer on the left and the recumbent matching the horizon! Your whole field of vision would be sacred hills and stones with *you* feeling like the focus! Psychological genius at work here!
|
(notes from Balgorkar, 30 June 00)
Balgorkar is easily visible from the road 300 metres away, but at the time of our visit the Modern Antiquarian's friendly cows had been replaced by ripening barley. As we'd have to walk through crops (ie trample someone's livelihood) to see the stones we made a point of finding somebody in the adjacent houses to ask permission. The woman we spoke to told us that she goes up to the trees by the field sometimes, "beautiful clear nights and big moons over the moonstones in the corner of the field". The lunar connection of the stones resonating so deeply with this casual observer that she calls the two outliers 'moonstones'!
The outliers are to the east, and according to the map some 600 metres beyond them (the other side of the Castle Fraser estate) is a solitary standing stone.
We walked up the copse to the north of Balgorkar and crossed through the barley. There are several fallen stones and some missing entirely, but the raised ground inside the circle gives a sudden sense of hovering over the land that makes it a very commanding place. The circle's a metre deep in grasses and weeds, but several cairn stones are still obvious.
On our way back to the road, we found a stone in the copse. It's leaning against a tree, which means it was moved recently (the tree must've been there first). It's not huge, but it is big enough to catch your eye and make you wonder if it was once in the circle.
|
(notes inside the circle, 3 July 00)
Auchquhorthies is a vast circle set on a low hill. The shoulder-to-shoulderness of these stones coupled with the wildly uneven rocky ground inside the circle tell immediately of the savage tinkering that's gone on here. As at Craighead a mile or so away, some stones aren't edge-on aligned in the circle, and the recumbent and one remaining flanker face due south, not south-west. I can't get a handle on this place at all, it's all so higgledy-piggledy. The constant whoosh and roar of the A90 dual carriageway just to the east isn't helping, either. The remains of Auld Bourtreebush lie just beyond, readily visible only 300 metres away, but there's a crop field between us and there and we're on our way home and running late.
|
Like Rudston Monolith in Yorkshire, this circle is actually *in* a churchyard (Christian assimilation of older religions can be so hilariously obvious sometimes). The Gordon District Council have, as at East Aquhorthies, signposted the place and done a decent info board. The board suggests that the stones have been moved (probably during the building of the church at the end of the 18th century), as the stone opposite the recumbent isn't the smallest and (it says) the recumbent and eastern flanker are out of line with the circle as it stands. Unlike East Aquhorthies, the recumbent stone faces downhill.
The Modern Antiquarian mentions the western outlier stone in the field opposite the churchyard gates, but there's also another stone two and half metres high north-north-west of the circle. A pinkish stone like those at Sunhoney, it stands among the strip of trees along the right hand side of the lane as you carry on up the hill past the church, on the crest of the hill about 60 metres from the churchyard. It's leaning at 30 degrees in boggy ground, so who knows how long it'll stand. I'm told it's the last of an alignment of stones that once stood here.
Back in the churchyard, to the north of the stones is the outrageously pagan gravestone of one Anne Rochford - a stone slab fronted by a beautiful stylised tree made of copper-gold wire, with great little details of metal spider, mouse and lizard. Just the woman's name and the years of her birth and death, not a Christian word or symbol in sight. Nice one Anne! Despite being right next to a church, the site does somehow retain a very pagan vibe, and I suspect we're not the only ones who think so - there were discreet decorative ribbons tied on several trees.
(visited 30 June 00)
|
This is the first Recumbent Stone Circle we visited, and with hindsight it's a good choice. Many of them have either lost a lot of the stones or the surroundings or the view, but this one has the lot.
The warm vibe of the site contrasted sharply with the icy evening wind, and in my crippled state I'm always a tad tired and slow, so the cold prevented us abiding by our impulse to stay for ages.
The monstrously sized recumbent stone is imposing to the uninitiated eye, but rather than the stones themselves, my attention was constantly drawn to the dominating shape of Mither Tap mountain. All around us on three sides were gentle fertile rolling downs, but the Mither gave such a startling contrast, all grey, huge and distant in a landscape otherwise green, close and intimate. This, Annwen noted, was the real genius of the siting here; to create a 'false horizon' when looking at the recumbent stone it needed to be looking up the hill and just before the crest, rather like driving up a hill can give the illusion that there's nothing beyond it and you're heading to a cliff edge. And Mither Tap is the only mountain to be clear beyond this place. Walk 100 metres west, even, and peaks next to Mither Tap are visible, but from East Aquhorthies stones it's the one and only.
Circles elsewhere tend to feel like the centre of a landscape. This one feels like it's at the very edge.
|
(notes from inside the circle, 2 July 00)
Finding this circle is pretty easy despite the lack of any path and its being surrounded with a thick wood of pine trees; it's a crest-of-hill circle, so keep heading uphill from whatever direction you come in, and you'll come to the clearing at the top.
The extraordinary thing about Cothiemuir Wood that makes it an essential visit is the shape of the flankers. They're two opposed wedges, one pointing up and one pointing down, with an elliptical recumbent in between. They look like the buttons for a massive megalithic lift (megaliftic?), as if you could press one or the other to go up or down, and the words 'lift coming' would illuminate on the recumbent. The flankers have clearly been tooled with a lot of graft to get them looking this way. Three other stones stand, others lie around where they fell, and there's an intact stone kist at the centre.
To the north of the stones there's only a few trees before recent felling clears the view. Not quite enough to actually see the landscape, but - again, if the trees weren't here - we would definitely see Druidstones a mile or so away. To the north-east we'd see Corrie Hill (clearly the same root word at Cothie-muir, as well as Correen Hills, Corrstones, etc).
Mercifully, despite the dense planting of these woods, the precinct of this large circle has been left clear. If the trees weren't all round the edge this circle would look west to The Barmkyn, though a south-eastern promontory of The Barmkyn would, I think, make Old Keig circle out of sight. Perhaps my mapreading and calculations are wrong and it'd be mindblowingly in sight.
The Barmkyn is, by implication, a sacred hill; it's also clearly the same name as Barmekin Hill away to the south-east, the hill that bears down on Sunhoney circle. Both hills are more or less the same size and shape. I have no idea what the root word of their names means and would be grateful if anyone could shed some light on this. Is it to do with the fact that both hills had ancient forts on top? Or is that fact a sign, as Julian Cope suggests, of earlier reverence as sacred hills and the name is to do with that?
|
Only 5 miles or so west of the Cerne Abbas Giant and east of Eggardun hill, this 'site' is an extraordinary place, being a rare example of a churchyard built on a stone circle outside of North Wales. The village is tiny (population less than 300) and the church is unmissably easy to find.
The church stands on a raised and almost circular piece of level ground, the site of the stone circle. In the 1980s part of the northern wall of the churchyard collapsed and two small standing stones were revealed, having had the wall built around them.
Sadly they were moved to the main gateway of the churchyard and set in concrete (and named Andrew and Peter after the saints of the church), but their presence proves the ancient provenance, and there is a tremendous sense of place here.
The church is left unlocked, and there is a small booklet available detailing its history. It makes no mention of the stones or anything to do with its ancient origins; indeed, it doesn't even put a date on when the church was first built (although the tower was added in 1300, so we are talking seriously old).
Not a great deal to actually *see* here as such, but it is certainly a captivating place to *be*.
(Visited 3 August 2000)
|
This circle is so small that it is entirely sheltered by the branches of the beech tree at its southern edge. Situated right beside the A35 (on the south side), visiting this place requires a precarious walk along the pavementless edge of the trunk road. (As well as the Little Chef to park in, there's a nearer spot at the entrance to an inactive farm, across the road and a little east).
There's several things I found to be slightly at variance with the Modern Antiquarian's impression of this place. Stukeley's drawing (reproduced in The Modern Antiquarian) shows only eight stones, but there are definitely nine (albeit the smallest one barely a foot high and being slowly enveloped by the beech tree's roots). John Aubrey reportedly called the stones 'petrified clumps of flints', but only three stones have this flinty-pebbledash look to them. Tellingly, it's the three largest stones. And although Julian Cope is correct in saying that there are massive differences in the heights of the stones, two nearest the road stand way taller than the rest and provide a gateway effect. Between these two stands a tiny stone, looking to me like an arrowhead shape pointing outwards from the gateway.
Despite the rush and roar of the fast traffic on the adjacent main road, there is a heady peacefulness and a tangible tingle to this place.
(Visited 3 August 2000)
|
Previous 50 | Showing 101-129 of 129 posts. Most recent first |
Merrick hasn't added a profile
|
Log in |
Register
Top of page