Latest Fieldnotes

Visited 25.3.16

My 1974 O.S. map (that’s what you get from buying maps from charity shops!) shows 5 barrows in the vicinity of Brockwood Park. The latest E.H. map now sadly only shows one barrow but has nothing to say about it.

The area where the barrow is shown is covered with trees and I am not sure I could see it. There is one obvious small ‘mound’ with a tree growing on top of it but this could just be a mound created by the tree’s roots?

Not one to recommend.

Visited 25.3.16

Unlike UncleRob I couldn’t make out any trace of these barrows. They are either very low or completely ploughed out since UncleRob’s visit?

Visited 25.3.16

It was the first chance I had to get ‘out and about’ this year and I took the chance to knock off a few English Heritage sites in the Winchester / Southampton area. On my way to one such site I had chance for a quick visit to Oliver’s Battery.

Finding the site is easy enough – a road runs right through it – and a handy car park is at its western edge. The whole site is overgrown wth trees and brambles etc. It would have taken a lot longer for a proper visit than I had time for but I was able to spot the curving edge of the bank next to the car park. Although overgrown it is about 0.5m in height and not difficult to spot.

Given the site is so easy to visit I am surprised these are the first field notes?

Worth a look when in the area.

18/03/2016 – Nice round barrow on summit of Firle Beacon (the long barrow is 220m west of the summit). The view is the main reason to visit here, it’s very good. Bit overcast today but the paragliders were enjoying the weather, the sky was full of them.

17/03/2016 – In a landscape full of tumuli, this bowl barrow stands out. Crossing Wilmington Hill from Jevington to Alfriston is a lovely walk. Just west of the top, this barrow is visible from a good distance away. Nice ditch and even though it’s been dug into in the past I loved the shape of the barrow. Great view as well. Completely forgot about the long man whilst there as I was in a bit of a daydream. Be good to go back someday as I would of liked to have seen it. Another fine day out walking and looking at old stuff.

I parked in front of the gate into the next field, it is just big enough, and it is close enough to the stone to be able to run back to the car and move it if necessary.
A very good stone is this one, tall, slim and definitely taken from Orkney, this is the third stolen Stenness stone ive relocated, the other two are in North and South Wales.
After seeing quite a few stones this shape one has to wonder if it has any meaning, after some wondering I’ve decided that it just looked good to the stones erectors, as it does to me, unless the top was really broken off to help make a road, sounds unlikely.
One side of the stone has been splattered with manure, if I was farmer I’d cover it in a tarpaulin before muck spreading, but then I would ‘cause i’m not a twat, or at least not a big one.
There are other stones here, but seeing as they are all far too random to make any sense of them I ignore them return to the car and drive the long drive home, all stoned out.

To the west, and northwest of the fabulously rocky Rough Tor is one of the biggest prehistoric settlements I’ve ever seen. It runs in a north/south strip well over a thousand meters long, and about two hundred and fifty meters wide at it’s widest. There are bronze age cairns to the north, east, south and west, three stone circles to the south and south west, and Time Team dug here proving the settlement to be bronze age too.
I’ve seen hut circle groups before, many times, but not as well preserved as all these, and not even half as many as here. It is a town, or at least a big village.
It is big.

17/03/2016 – Every hill seems to have a tumuli on it round here. This one on Wilmington Hill, ain’t much different looking to the rest but the location is fine and the walk to it is good. A place to stop and just sit by. No need to rush the view.

17/03/2016 – I liked this one. We had a fine walk over from East Dean Hill trigpoint to the south, passing a fair few tumuli along the way. Good view all around from the top and a nice blue sky. We sat for awhile before heading off west to Wilmington Hill.

As you walk north west from Louden stone circle to Stannon stone circle the obvious and natural place to aim for and stop off at on the way is this nice little kerb cairn. The four remaining upright kerb stones are easily spotted coming out of the short grass, they sort of wave at the walker, “Cooee i’m over here, here I am, please do’nt go over to the stone circle, come and look at me, d’oh, they never come to see me, it’s not fair.” Maybe i’m putting words into the cairns mouth, or maybe i’m just anthropomorhising again, but I imagine most folk on this bit of the moor are after stone circles, and that makes me feel sorry for the underdog, I always do.
It’s a nice little kerb cairn too, the four upright stones are the shape of shark fins, circling hungrily round a large flat stone, perhaps an old turtle. There are other fins but they are sinking below the grass, and that turtle, surely that’s an intact cist. The more you look at it the more it all looks intact, it isn’t, but there’s more there to see than you can in a quick past to the stone circle.

Of the three stone circles in the area, Stannon, Fernacre and here at Louden hill, this one is in the poorest condition, and yet, even if the other circles were not here I would still have come just for these stones, perhaps not for six hours, and perhaps not all this way for just one stone circle, but with as many as 36 stones still left you have to come and see it at some time, don’t you?
Despite the high number of stones left in the circle most of them are having a lie down, which proves what I’ve always heard about the Cornish. From the south end of the circle away across the moors to the south I can just make out where King Arthurs hall is, I zoom in on it with my camera and i’m surprised I picked it out of the wilderness so easily. I’m also surprised to see the Hall framed from behind by a low hill, they do that don’t they? Frame a site by a hill when seen from another site, and surprise me.
If you’ve got a list of sites that need to be seen and Louden Hill is on it then you’ll have no choice but to come here, but you should come anyway, list or not.

In February coming down the Evie Road the field containg this was open, so I took the opportunity to see the greater portion close up. Climbing to the top I noticed several metres of what could have outer face of broch tower wall. Couldn’t see if ever so slightly curved or straight but the stones at the edges could be the “stones, several of which, laid on edge, can be seen protruding through the turf” that the record mentions. Actually, going down the southern side, is a definite structure with three built sides visible to perhaps several inches deep by 18 across. I assume this has ‘appeared’ since the 2011 geofizz. Could be a small fish tank or the top of a toilet I guess.

Walking the farm track from Fernacre stone circle east to Louden hill stone circle there are four cairns in two pairs, the first pair are south of and close to the track.
The two cairns are about twenty feet apart and quite different looking, one is just your average stony mostly grass covered cairn, but the other has three sides of a large cist with a few kerb stones still standing, inserted into the north side of the remaining cairn material a small cist has been inserted outside of the kerb stones. I liked it a lot, if a cairn can look cute then this one would be on an internet based show called cairns make you Lol, or something.
Back to the track and about a hundred yards west the other two cairns are about twenty yards north of the track. Again there are two different looking cairns here, the furthest north is another stony grassy mound, whist the other has a big cist in it, the fourth apparently missing side slab is I think broken and half of it is in the cist. I like big cists me.
Onward to another stone circle.

Now there is a big problem getting to this site if you visit the eastern site first. I looked for a path thru the bog and found one. It led straight into a bog. So back to the eastern bank and walk south to the manmade loch. Walk on top of the dam, heading west, as far as possible. A tractor tyre will be seen so take a jump and aim for that. The ground is drier so head towards the fence and climb towards what looks like a small rubbish dump. Climb over the next fence and head towards the track, the nearby croft is called Denside.

Looking west a small wood can be seen which contains the Neolithic flint mine. Several mines exist over quite a large area and once again flint can be found everywhere. Astonishingly these sites were discovered in 1991 and now have achieved ‘show site’ status. Several trenches and hollows can be seen. Nearby ploughed fields are littered with flint.

Now the sensible thing to do would be go back to the track and find the way back to the starting point. Somehow I managed to get lost, jump over burns, climb hills I hadn’t seen and damaged a leg before eventually finding something that looked familiar i.e. the car.

To be fair recent storm weather i.e. the floods have wreaked havoc to the paths making some of them flooded at best and totally gone at their worst. The track to the car park could be best described as a mud bath. This does not detract from the significance of these places. These were a clever people with an eye on trading and they were obviously good at their job. Fantastic site and a must visit. Added adventures are a bonus!!

Visited 22/3/2016.

The Meethill Cairn is situated in a clearing in the Invernettie area of Peterhead, near to the prison. From the A982 follow South Road until the aptly named Monument Crescent. I parked here and walked back a short distance to a tarred track. This track leads up the hill to the Reform Tower.

Sadly during the 1830s the once large cairn was battered and flattened. To make matters worse they built a tower on top of it dedicated to the Whigs, this being built in answer to another building dedicated to the Tories. Fortunately the people of Peterhead have ‘wisened up’!!

All that remains of the cairn now lies under the tower, probably a lot of the stones have been used to built it. However one thing they couldn’t do was remove its location. Superb views all round including south towards the flint mines at the Den Of Boddam.

Visited 22/3/2016.

The Den of Boddam can be found just to the south of Peterhead near the A9. Enter Stirling, the real one in Aberdeenshire, and take the first minor road heading east, signposted Den Of Boddam. The village of Boddam and its power station are to the east. Follow the road west passing Lendrum Terrace and take the first farm track road south. This should lead to a small car park but today it didn’t as the track was flooded so I parked at the first track heading west.

This would mean an alternative and interesting route to the first mines. Basically I followed the top of the eastern valley until I came to a lonely shepherd’s house and headed west to bare slopes. Masts are also to the east.

Flint (chalky, yellow and brown in colour) can be found everywhere. Scrapers finished, unfinished, flakes, wee knife like objects are lying about everywhere. Heading half way down open cast surface mining can be seen and on the valley floor large areas have been worked. Basically the whole area is a large factory covered in hollows. This ridge of high ground runs ten miles inland to Skelmuir Hill near Auchnagatt, home to a standing stone (and in the past a stone circle).

After finding a few nice flints it was time to cross the valley floor or bog to the next flint factory area. Some place!!!

Visited 21/3/2016

A quick note here to say that these stones are in danger of disappearing off the radar altogether. I’ve never quite figured out why they are here in the first place, there being no ecclesiastical site nearby, and just the ogham stone up the road at Knickeen. But they are not looked after in any way, despite there being two stones of seeming great significance.

It’s hard to say when the better time is to visit here – spring-time when the vegetation hasn’t yet thrived but the ground is marshy and muddy or summer/autumn time, when the ground may have dried out a bit, but the plants have taken over.

My favourite of the lot, the one with six basins, is completely submerged – I guess I lucked out that day, 10 years ago when I first came across it. It is still a place that I will always stop by if I’m close.

I went to Stannon stone circle just over five years ago and was a bit disappointed that I didn’t have time to come here, that disappointment was well founded, I missed a good one here.
The best way to approach this stone circle is from high on Rough Tor, sitting out of the wind in some rocky cranny with a great view of the stone circle and the nearby settlement belonging to those that built and used the circle, Brown Willy is over to the left and just out of view to the right two more stone circles. This is the place, and this is the best way to approach a stone circle, from above, descending upon it like a Vimana, or a watcher from the mountains, or a middle aged man with a bad back, take your pick.
After picking my way down off the mountain and through the ghost town I stood next to the circle, right next to it, I couldn’t believe my luck, just two days ago I was limping round work with a suspected broken buttock, now, after showing my car to the problem, I am here in the circle, and even touching the stones if I want, the juxta position of these two experiences separated by just two days always blows my mind.
I didn’t count the stones, there are many, or feel the need to touch every one, they are cold and rough, except where they’re smooth, I just looked, I gave it my Star Wars face, reserved for only the first viewing of such a film, if your still wondering what face, it’s a look of disbelief mixed with one of astonished amazement.
A wandered over to the outlier, wafting gracefully like a tripped out ballet dancer, after picking myself up, it’s not a big stone but it’s obvious as an outlier, what a place, this would be high on my list of favorite Cornish places, should I ever have one.
Best of all, nearly, I’m leaving here not for the dull and depressing drive home but to another stone circle I’ve never been to. Nirvana.

If you had a time machine and wanted to bring a bronze age man to the present, you could do a lot worse than coming here, there was loads of them, women and children too. It’s hard to tell where one settlement starts and another begins, nearly a mile separates one from another but not much seems to separate the two, it’s all as big as a small modern town, are they even separate places at all ?
The ground is covered in lines of stones, long boundaries, big pounds with round houses in them, houses here and there and every where with the odd cairn thrown in just to confuse us, no wonder there’s so many stone circles round here, this was a seething pot of humanity or as Obi Wan would call ” a wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
If these are all bronze age houses and there isnt much reason not to believe so, then it’s a small logical step to presume that Fernacre stone circle barely a hundred yards away was the special place of those who lived here.
The past doesn’t come to life here, it’s all in the mind, but it does.

I’ve known about a few stone circles in the area for ages, ive known about the king of ring cairns on Showery Tor for a smaller age. But it took a TV show to really peak my interest, strangely there are no monsters, aliens or spaceships in this TV show, a common theme for most of my viewing, it’s an archaeology program, I doubt you’ve heard of it, it’s finished now, Time team it was called. This one episode has the team on Bodmin Moor below Rough Tor, investigating what they hope is a Bronze age settlement, and a very weird long curving cairn like thing.
I watch time team a lot, i’m very sad to say that ive even seen the digging up a plane one three times, so you can imagine how many times ive seen the prehistoric ones, it’s comfort watching in it’s purest form, during the many many hours of watching these characters reveal the past I have in my mind elevated them to the high position of gods. Seeing as no one can definitively say what a god is then it’s up to me to satisfy for myself what a god is or isn’t.
So to stand in the very place that the highest god of them all stood in whilst performing his miracles is a blessed thing to be doing, goose bumped and giddy I nearly exploded.
Sadly I couldn’t really tell which round house Goddess Raksha was in, I really would’ve exploded if I had.

In the Time team episode Phil only dug in one place, but he was able to detect the method of construction, the turf was stripped, large kerb stones on the outside, rubble infill with paving at the side and the turfs probably replaced on top, it would have looked very striking. But they didn’t really address the curve to it, they said it was aligned on Rough Tor, how can a curved anything be aligned, if so then only the east end is aligned on Rough Tor the western section is very much aligned on Showery Tor and it’s massive ring cairn, is it multi phase ?
North of the long cairn there are only a few cairns, and a standing stone or two, but on it’s south side it just explodes into a frenzy of things, things? there are more round houses than ive ever seen anywhere, they are everywhere, curving lines of stone cover the hill side, if they were all occupied at the same time there would have been hundreds if not thousands of people here. Bonkers.

It’s not really a long cairn though is it, it’s in an indeterminate class of it’s own, if you know of anything vaguely similar let us know.

Me and Phil Harding occupied the same physical space on earth, and to a lesser extent with Francis Prior.

I tried to come here one evening last summer whilst we were down in Cornwall, tried and failed, no map, no idea, no clue, failed.
I tucked it away into a mental back pocket, not always a good thing, it’s taken a decade to get back to some places, but I really wanted to get up Showery Tor, I really really wanted to see what I have dubbed the king of ring cairns, It would be on the front cover of a book that would be called something like Ring cairns of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, probably written by a man with a beard, anyway he would choose this ring cairn to adorn his cherished accumulation of years of travelling, above all others, it is the king of ring cairns.
Waffle
From the car park the way is clear and obvious, you might want to follow the long silly cairn up the hill, try to pick out the spot where Phil Harding and Francis Prior stood excavating, selfie opportunity. (Shoot me)
I should probably mention that today is the spring equinox and that after a five hour drive under grey skies it was clear that the sun would not be recognising my dedication to duties, but would instead be ignoring my efforts utterly. As expected really.
Anyway, I am on site at the appointed hour, but I have to look at my compass to see which way the sun is coming from, I reckon a sunset would be better, the best vantage viewing points are on the east side.
So, there’s no sun, but everything else is just superb, the ring cairn is massive, more like a henge in size, the rock stack in the middle works on me in more ways than one, on it’s own it’s an impressive little rock stack, made of pretty stones, the broken rock second from bottom....... was it broken when the ring cairn went up?
Why was it chosen for a cairn to go round it, is it just a cool place or did it have some deep meaning for them, bah, pesky mysteries.
Three ponies are sharing the hill top with me, but unlike most that ive come across they are totally unafraid of me, even pausing and posing for photos.
I’ve been here for a while now and it seems that nothing more can be gained from sitting in the wind, of which there is plenty, so after returning to the car for my lighter, I re climb the hill and sit out of the wind on little Rough Tor, a perfect point from which to zoom in a good picture of the south half of the ring cairn, until some dick on a motorbike screams round the hill top, there’s no justice, if there were he would have exploded.
Climbing higher up the side of Rough Tor itself the ring cairn is perhaps now too far away to be seen, but Showery Tor is a Minninglow of Cornwall, an unmistakable shape on the horizon, not as unmistakable as Rough Tor or Brown Willy, but you hopefully get my drift.
But now I must get off for the long legs of my walk, three stone stone circles, a dozen cairns and a hundred round houses beckon me on.

November 1997 – Epiphany

My 24th birthday is looming and G/F and I have been together 6 months. We decide to go away for our first holiday together. The Peak District sounds nice and it’s close and cheap, as well as accessible by bus and train. My Dad lends me a map, a great big double-sided thing at 1/25000.

The cottage in Youlgreave has another huge wall-mounted Ordnance Survey map in it. I love maps and I’m soon scanning it to see what’s around and about. We squelched our way to Robin Hood’s Stride the day before, in rain and mud, noticing but not paying much attention to some “standing stones” across the field from us. Today looks like a better day, and there’s this thing, in antiquity type-face: Arbor Low Henge. Like Stonehenge? Sounds impressive. I wonder what it is? It’s not that far away, 3 miles or so.

The walk along quiet country lanes through Middleton gives way to a busier road, where quarry lorries speed by and there’s no verges. At length we get to a farm turning, with a box to put some money. What are we paying to see? We head across fields towards an undulating bank, which reminds me of hillfort ramparts I’ve seen back in Herefordshire.

But inside, it’s something else entirely. A ring of large stones, lying flat like a giant clockface. This first trip, in failing November light, I don’t really notice the wide views, nor do I notice the big mound of Gib Hill close by. I’m too overwhelmed by the stones to notice much else. I ask G/F what’s it for, what’s it all about? She doesn’t have an answer. I don’t understand at this point that those questions don’t have answers. Or they have too many answers.

After a while we return to the road, the truck-dodging even less pleasant as the short day comes to its end. I don’t realise quite what’s happened today.

Before we leave we revisit the marvellous bookshop in Bakewell, which yields a softback book that catches my eye: A Guide To The Stone Circles Of Britain, Ireland & Brittany by Aubrey Burl. It will be another year before I really wake up to the seed that’s been planted here, in a muddy Derbyshire field. When we return the following November for another birthday, G/F has lugged my birthday present here on the train, hidden in our luggage. It’s a huge hardback book, a piece of art resplendent in orange and blue. It smells wonderful and it’s full of promise and potential.

The journey that has occupied the best part of two decades, taking me to the hills, to west Cornwall, Wiltshire, Scotland and especially to Wales began that day. It’s brought me here, to this website and the wonderful people that contribute to it. It’s eaten my time and my money, but has returned something so much more precious. I don’t think it will stop now, until I do.

Visited: March 17, 2016

I have frequently walked around Loch Kinord, near Dinnet on Deeside and, though I knew full well that there were a number of hut circles in the area, had never bothered to make their acquaintance. But with time on my hands on a warm and sunny March day, I diverted north in the direction of Loch Davan to view the hut circles at Old Kinord. They lie in a small clearing in the birch woodland, 110 metres east of the point where the boundary dyke makes a sudden right-angle turn to the west. The centres of the two larger of the three hut circles are shown on the Google Map below. The coordinates of the first circle are 57.08969°N, 2.91798°W.

These are massively constructed hut circles, the like of which I had never encountered previously. The westernmost circle (the largest) appears as a huge, sunken saucer. Standing at its centre, the surrounding rampart, which is two to three metres in width, rises to eye-level, and must be at least 1½ metres tall. It consists of a mixture of earth, large stones and quite massive boulders. Pacing across the central hollow, I estimated it to be between 10-12 metres in diameter.

The second circle, just a few paces to the east, is equally impressive. Slightly farther east is the third circle, slightly smaller than its fellows, and with a somewhat less impressive surrounding rampart.

If you view the area using Bing Maps, you can zoom in close enough to see the two larger circles quite clearly.

Visited: March 14, 2016

Situated on the Angus coast just north of Boddin, roughly five kilometres south of Montrose, stands an amazing rocky promontory known as Elephant Rock. Very similar in most respects to the Dunnicaer Promontory south of Stonehaven, two wave-worn natural arches through this rock give it a profile reminiscent of an elephant: but there is no record that I can find of Elephant Rock ever being the site of a Fort like Dunnicaer.

From Boddin, head north just before the last house on the left at the end of the public road, behind a whitewashed cottage and some ruined cottages, following the cliff-tops for about half a kilometre till you come to a small, ruined graveyard. Elephant Rock is unmistakable, jutting out to sea from this point.

There is, apparently, a rough path up to the summit of Elephant Rock, but it will take a steadier head then mine to take the risk as the exposure is extreme.

You can read more on the BBC Coast website.