What a coincidence! I was going to post here, but now I can reply, as it is about this very thing!!

I managed my second visit to Cumbria in the Easter break today (dragging my poor mother along who is up for a visit!) and we managed to "do" the Druid's Circle near Ulverston, Sunkenkirk (everyone was right, Sunkenkirk is now officially my favourite stone circle) Blakeley Raise, Castlerigg and Mayburgh Henge.

Whilst at a horrendously busy Castlerigg (complete with random wilting tulips abandoned within the circle and monstrous children climbing all over the stones and shouting at the top of their voices) a guide arrived with a few walkers and proceeded to hold forth about the circle. Leaning against a stone and just "being", I couldn't help but overhear what he was saying. Nothing particularly new until he started talking about this recent theory that stone circles might have been painted white because of analyses of the soil in various places (now I reckon he had read the afforementioned article.)

This was the first I had heard of the stones being painted white, though I had read about gypsum being put inside circles and cairns and the like, and I wanted to know what people here thought about it. Personally, although I can imagine the gypsum being spread inside the circle for one reason or another, I couldn't imagine the stones themselves being painted white. It just seemd such an alien idea. Of course castles, churches and cathedrals would have been painted, and unlike the natural stone they are today, but stone circles?

BeakerUK