Latest Fieldnotes

The rock shelter/cave is located in a low (3m) broken limestone scarp, some 300m in length, overlooking Bonsall Moor and the hill of Blake Low to the south.
Known by CAPRA as DS01 the scarp and shelter are overgrown and difficult to spot from any distance and other smaller shelters can be misleading.
In Rodney Castleden’s ‘Neolithic Britain: New Stone Age Sites of England, Scotland and Wales‘ he mentions that large rocks in front of the shelter were placed there to form an enclosed platform in front of the opening...not sure whether I got this bit or not...it’s rocky ground and looked natural to me.
A number of flint tools have been recovered from the area in and around the shelter. Being such a small hole I’m guessing the place was used as a hunting shelter, rather than for habitation, somewhere to make tools outta the wind and rain

A huge barrow in the grounds of Punchestown race-course, it’s close on 30 metres in diameter. The central mound is quite low but may have been taller in the past as the ditch and bank are of such a large size, the top of the bank being close on 3 metres above the bottom of the ditch in places in the northern arc of the barrow.
Punchestown race-course is popular with dog-walkers and access is through the gate-style at the entrance, opposite the field with the race-course standing stone. I arrived here late in the January evening and there were quite a few people about, but none in the vicinity of this forgotten monument. This could be a showcase part of the grounds with a little bit of tidying, but like so much of our ancient heritage, is now willfully neglected and overgrown.

Two cairns sit on this little visited stretch of Moorland that covers the high ground to the west of the Fowey River. Both have been dug into and now resemble overgrown mounds, the southern most one being covered in Gorse bushes.
I would not recommend making a special trip to see these..not with so much else to see on the moor.

The hotel entrance is directly opposite the bus terminus in Bugibba – cross the road, avoiding the timeshare touts, and head for the tennis courts. From the hotel lobby, head to the rear left (coffee bar) and take the first door to the outside. Go to your right – and the temple is half surrounded by a 1970s accommodation block for the hotel.

An information board proclaims:

Bugibba Temple, which is preserved in the grounds of the hotel, belongs to the same category of prehistoric monuments as Tarxien and Hagar Qim in Malta, and Ggantija in Gozo. These imposing sanctuaries, erected for the worship of a deity which has so far defied a generally acceptable definition, constitute the oustanding achievement of the Maltese Copper Age, its Megalithic architecture. Their development lasted more than a thousand years and spanned almost the whole of the third millennium before Christ.
The features which have survived here are the main entrance roofed over by a single block of stone weighing several tons, some of the upright blocks forming the left front wall, the semi-circular chamber inside the entrance to the left and a thick rubble wall the incongriguity of which speaks for its Bronze Age date when the temple had long fallen into disuse. Two exceptional blocks, now to be seen at the National Museum of Archaeology in Vallette were decorated with relief carvings of spirals, and aptly enough for a temple so near the coast, stylised fishes.

”preserved” – not sure that’s the word I would choose. Random wiring, half destroyed and totally unsafe no doubt, for nocturnal illuminations, fastened to the bottom of the megaliths, and general detritus from hotel guests hiding under boulders .... at least the carvings have been removed and saved.

This temple was already badly damaged when the Corradino Lines, part of the harbour fortifications were built in the 1870s. Excavations were carried out by Vassallo around this time, and again in by Ashby and Peet (1913) but the WWII bombing of this area is though to have destroyed the remains which included a 6 apse structure similar to the central temple at nearby Tarxien.

To the north of Blacknoll hill, I could see two small round barrows covered with gorse and bracken. To the northwest the large bell barrow Old Knowle and its smaller neighbour can be seen on the summit of their hill.

There are two rather low small round barrows close to the O.S. trig marker on the brow of this hill. From here Blacknoll hill can be seen to the north.

A medium sized bowl barrow north of Whitcombe Vale and Blacknoll. There are a scattering of barrows in this area which may be a large cemetery. Some are on high ground and others are on the flats in between.

Six bowl barrows on top of a hill on the Dorset heathland. The largest of the barrows, the most westerly has an O.S. trig point on it. The most easterly is of a similar size and the two in between are smaller. All are in reasonable condition, it looks like a recent fire has burnt off the gorse and bracken which usually covers these barrows. There are some single outlying barrows very close to the set of four, lower and to the west. The four barrows are in the shadow of Winfrith nuclear reactor.

If you plan to visit the Hypogeum, please check out availability long before you travel. I was fortunate to be there in very low season, so next day booking was possible, but at peak times it can be fully booked for over a month in advance. Tickets are €9.32 for adults – there’s probably a child reduction but I wouldn’t really recommend this place to youngsters unless they are really interested.

The building has numerous steps and low passages to negotiate, and is therefore unsuitable for the less mobile, or for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia or is afraid of the dark.

The group I joined were waiting in the entrance hall for our guide, and several times people came in without pre-booking – including a group of lads carrying a small Father Christmas who’d obviously had a couple at lunchtime – and were turned away. The entrance has comfy bench seats and toilets if needed.

There is absolutely no photography allowed and in fact you have to leave all your possessions in a locker – the guide has the key so everything is safe during the tour.

The first part is a visit to an exhibition of finds – most are of course in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, but a few remain here, including a copy of the sleeping lady which you are encouraged to touch. Audio commentary is provided on hand held devices and is available in 5 languages. Then there’s a film to watch about the discovery and excavation of the site, before you can enter the hypogeum itself.

Our guide – Joanne – offered as the whole group was English speaking, to dispense with the hand helds and do it “properly” for us – and happily the group accepted her offer.

The area around Paola experinced massive development in the late 1800s to house dock workers, and the discovery of the hypogeum was reported to the authorities in 1902, but, from the construction of foundations and supports for the new builds, must have been known about for years before. In fact, the area around Hal Saflieni had an ancient name meaning “of the caves”, so the site may have been known about long before that.

The hypogeum was excavated by Fr. Magri initially, with the middle level being opened to the public in 1908, and then T Zammit worked on the upper level after the purchase of the houses built on top of the site (the houses being eventualy demolished in the 1990s). However, it was closed to the public in 1991 as the damage caused by high visitor numbers had been realised, and reopened on 7 July 2000 – with climate control and regulated light levels. The lighting in particular dictates the visitor experience – it’s timed to go with the audio commentary and only the features being described are illuminated. So you have to keep up!

A door from the AV room leads to the upper level; here there is a massive entrance trilithon and side burial chambers. Zammit estimated, by counting the number of patellas amongst the ochre painted bones found, that there were around 7,000 bodies interred here. The path through to the middle level was closed for excavation work, so we all trooped back to the rear of the entrance lobby and down a dimly lit modern spiral staircase.

The middle level has the most interesting features whilst the lower level cannot be visited, just observed from above.

Our guide showed us a section of wall with pick holes in it; no metal tools have been found, so it’s suggested that animal horns were used to create enough of a gap to insert a piece of wood, which when soaked with water would expand, forcing open the natural faults and fissures – with flint, obsidian and stone tools used to complete the rock quarrying. Then we moved through to the oracle chamber with its ochre spiral painted ceiling; the guide encouraged one of the party to speak into the oracle hole, but deemed his tone not deep enough for the full resonant effect.

We passed through another ochre painted chamber – this time with spirals within hexagons – to the trilithon looking down into the lower level and onwards to the “holy of holies”. The lower level has 7 steps leading down to it – but then a 2m drop! There are side chambers at the level of the last step, and the group discussed whether these might have been accessed using a plank as a bridge between them.

The votive or “snake pit” adjacent to the second ochre painted room is thought to be the location where the Sleeping Lady was found. This small (only 12cm long) terracota statuette is the pride of the collection at the National Museum of Archaeology with its exceptional level of craftmanship; the curvaceous female figure is reclining on a couch and is often referred to as the sleeping goddess of fertility. As finds in the pit were discovered whole rather than broken, we discussed the possibility that the pit had been filled with water or perhaps straw to prevent damage to items placed or even thrown in.

The “holy of holies” chamber has a facade that possibly mimics the roof structure of Maltese temples, and has a side chamber of it, a niche (possibly for a statue) and libation holes. This chamber would have significant amounts of natural light from a shaft which runs right down through the hypogeum around the summer solstice.

Then we retraced our steps to look at the main hall, with its trilithon windows through to niches and smaller chambers beyond, and to the holy of holies. The chamber was originally painted with red ochre and some of the pigment is still visible.

Then round past the area where builders confessed to breaking through in 1902, with arches to support the houses above visible, and back to the spiral staircase up and out as the light faded behind us.

A fascinating place! I would have loved to have spent more time in each part, but the light levels are strictly controlled, and as I mentioned, timed to coincide with the audio tour, so it wasn’t an option.

The temples are open 9:00 – 17:00 and entry is €2.33 for adults; there’s a small exhibition of items that have been removed from the site to preserve them and placed in the entranceway, and a selection of books and souvenirs to purchase. There are also public toilets. A new visitors’ centre is expected on the plot to the east of the temples, and excavations have been carried out, but planning difficulties have held up the actual building work.

There are usually guided tours available in English several times a day – unfortunately the guide had called in sick the day I visited, so I was reliant on my notes and the offer by the staff to answer any questions I might have. Much of the carved stone from Tarxien was been moved to the National Museum of Archaeology in 1956, when restoration and reconstruction were also carried out, and the items on display are replicas – but this by no means detracts from the site.

There are actually 4 temple structures on this site.

To the east, furthest away from the entrance, is the oldest, smallest, and least well preserved temple, from the Ggantija phase (3600 – 3000BCE). The stones are low lying, and only the western section of what is believed to have been a 5 apse temple survives. Area 10 on the model.

There are 3 main components – the south, central and east temples. Of these, south and east are older, from the early Tarxien phase 3000 – 2500 BCE, with the central temple having been built at a later date between these two.

Taking a walk round from the main entrance to the site, there are numerous small boulders, possibly used to roll megaliths into place, scattered over the ground to the left, and then a well, before you face the trilithon entrance to the south temple. To the right here you can see the remains of a possible niche (ref 1), with libation holes and a stone bowl in front of it.

The path around the whole site has been improved and the tethering holes just outside the entrance to the south temple (ref 2) now have a perspex covering so you can view them through the path.

The main doorway has been heavily restored with rubble covered concrete; the first apse to the right (ref 3) has the huge statue of a skirted women and the altar with plug stone which contained animal bones and horns, and flint knives. To the left (ref 4) are many spiral carved stones and those decorated with animal friezes; the Mariners’ Stones which stood here have now been moved into the entrance building for protection – they show ship graffiti but the debate is still out on whether this is late Neolithic (believed by Diane Wooler who studied them in 1957 and supported by T Zammit’s notes) or from the Bronze Age (Evans, Trump and various others). A model found in 4 pieces in the northern most room of this temple lead Carlo Ceschi to draw a possible facade for the temple in 1936 (see links).

Moving through to the central temple, there’s a huge stone bowl in area 5 and the walls here show fire damage. The oculus stone was originally in area 6, guarding the entrance to the 2nd pair of apses; there’s a hearth in the centre of this area, and turning to the right, area 7, there’s the bulls and sow chamber, now with a roof to protect the relief carvings.

Just before you leave the central temple, to the right, you can see a round boulder, used possibly for transportation or positioning, under one of the megaliths. Then there’s a set of stairs, which may have led to an upper floor (area 8).

The east, and least decorated, temple, is thought to have been significantly altered for the building of the central temple, and was also reconstructed extensively by Zammit in 1919 – and suffered collapses as recently as 1999.

I had the site almost to myself for the best part of an hour, but then some more tourists appeared, and we started chatting. With only few info boards and no official guide that day, I found myself taking a small tour group round to point out the main features!

This is a small (partial?) panel, a cup with four rings on sandstone, built into the ornamental arch that gives the ruined mansion of Arch Hall it’s name. There are one or two other lines that may indicate some more designs were part of the original composition.

Borg in-Nadur is under the care of Heritage Malta and is not currently open to the public. As well as the temple, there’s the remains of a bronze age settlement to the south west and the possible remains of a room to the south east.

The area immediately in front of the (unusually not concave) facade of the temple is being used for vegetable cultivation and there’s a security hut, similar to those I’d seen at Ta’ Hagrat and Skorba.

The site was noted possibly as early as 1536, but definitely from 1647, with excavations being carried out by Margaret Murray in 1920s.

It’s hard to make out the site apart from its entrance megaliths but aerial photos do show a four apse structure to the south east of the main enclosure. There’s a fair bit of rubble around, from excavations and local field clearance.

Posting this a bit after the event

Visited 21st December 2007 for the Solstice sunrise (ok technically I think we were a day out this year)

Arrived at 7.00am in the pitch black, the sky was clear and Venus was very clear in the sky. We were even treated to a brief meteor shower above Venus.

Some of the stones are roped off at the moment as is the santuary to allow the grass to recover.

Due to the hills don’t trust predictions of local sunrise times, if you actualy want to see the sun as it creeps above the horizon you need to add about 45 minutes to an hour to official sunrise time

That said it was worth being there early as there are some wonderful light & shadow effects on the surrounding hills as the sun rises

We were finally treated to a an amazing sunrise at about 9.15

We spent a full two and a half hours at the circle chatting with others and taking in the majestic views, before finally retiring to the cafe in the car park as you enter Keswick – highly recomended after freezing your nuts off at Castlerigg ;-)

Finally thank you to LivingRocks, who we spent ages chatting with and has kindly posted the photo I requested to remind me of the stunning sunrise

Dolmen hidden in the industrial estate near the disused Hal Far airfield in the south west of Malta. I got lost before I got here, but if I’d followed the signs to the Playmobil factory, I’d probably have found it.

At Bingemma gap, along the Dwejra section of the Victoria Lines, there’s a tiny chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Itria with a Punic tomb underneath it, but if you look to the right of the chapel, there’s a path down to a network of rock cut tombs believed to date back to the Bronze Age but also reused in Punic times, by early Christians, and also as refuge for local farmers during WWII.

I’ve not as yet managed to find any evidence of the exact age of these tombs (the map clearly says prehistoric) but spent a very pleasant hour or so scrambling in and out of them in glorious sunshine.

A collection of three round barrows north of the tiny hamlet of Holworth. The biggest is the most easily accessible as it is next to the road. It’s very scruffy, covered in hawthorn and has a tin box on it for some reason. West of it in the middle of a field is a small scrub covered round barrow. South of this is a low round barrow in the corner of the same field.
These appear to be part of a chain, with the Lord’s barrow and the Five Marys to the east and Moigns down/Poxwell to the west. I will revisit these soon as I was pushed for time and the footpath was a waterlogged mess.

This is a single large bowl type round barrow south of Whitfield farm long barrow. It is tree covered and looks like a clump of foliage in the summer.

I parked with room to spare by the footpath next to Cwm cottage farm. Heading north, amongst the trees was nice, then came the hills proper but with neatly cropped grass, then it got swampy and the gorse and dead bracken really hampered me , I decided to just go to the nearest hill top, I stepped over a low fence and there were the stones, without knowing exactly where it was I had almost unswervingly walked straight to it. Cool.... This is a really nice little stone circle with what looked to me to be an entrance at the north of the circle, The two outer rings are nearly all gone leaving not even an impression of their former selves. Good views to the north when it’s not raining, a nice place to revisit in better weather, like the man Greywether said before easter (but not in the rain)

The hillfort is a lot easier to find than the nearby stone circle and can be seen for miles around. Easy to get to as it is near two lanes to the northwest and the south east but not so easy to get up. It had rained fairly constantly all morning but stopped whilst I was exposed on top of the hill. The main entrance was apparently the most northern of the two with earthworks extending beyond the walls. The southern entrance is however now the most visually impressive with a small room between the entrance and the ditch, the bank and ditch running north from here is also in good condition six feet between ditch botttom and bank top. Coflein hints that it might be an example of a vitrified fort.

This site is only open to the public on Tuesdays from 11:30 – 13:00 – so would tie in nicely with an earlier visit to Ta’ Hagrat if you plan carefully.

The site was noted in 1914 by Themistocles Zammit but not excavated until 1937 by Captain Charles Zammit – with only preliminary work carried out then and further investigations put on hold by the outreak on WWII. A full survey was eventually conducted from 1961 (David Trump) and showed that despite the poor state of preservation, it was indeed a very important site.

There are two temples here – enclosed by a nasty wire fence with a guard portacabin inside but a blue tardis loo outside (cheers!) – and then to the east, behind a low wall, are the remains of two huts.

Skorba has infact given its name to two of the periods of Maltese prehistory – Grey Skorba (4500 – 4400 BCE) with its undecorated grey pottery and finds of hunting implements and obsidian and flint – and then Red Skorba (4400 – 4100 BCE) with its pottery covered with a red clay slip and highly polished; however finds from the site show its use for perhaps 2000 years.

The wire fence only really encloses the better preserved west temple, and cruelly cuts through the ground plan of the east temple, leaving the red skorba huts outside and almost hidden – I’m glad I rechecked my notes and found the huts as they revealed important finds (a group of figurines, pottery and goat skulls) and were suggested (by Trump) to be part of a shrine.

The west temple has a trefoil shape, with only really the back apse and one megalith at the entrance with any height. A noteable feature is a series of libation holes at the entrance – the flooded area when I was there. Libation holes may have been used for liquid offerings, but there’s also some discussion that they were used as a tethering point for animals (for sacrifices).

Skorba is signposted from the road from Mosta/Mdina to Mgarr – watch out for the square to your left after the road climbs uphill as the temples are at the end of this, at the edge of the village.

I parked the car by the bridge to the south, and walked across three soggy fields following the river. As I approached where I thought it would be I just couldn’t see it, But then I saw it above me amongst the trees on private property, it looked to be quite big . I took a couple of photos across the muddy flood water and squelched back to the car.

This site is currently only open to the public on Tuesdays 09:30 – 11:00.

It’s signposted but the easiest way to find it is to head west towards the dome of the church in Mgarr and watch out for a side street to the left about 200m before you reach it.

The site has a low wall but high railings surrounding it, and a security hut and portaloo – and a gate with a big padlock!

The site was excavated by Sir Themistocles Zamit over various periods from 1923 to 1929, and then restored in 1937 by his son, Charles.

There are two buildings here – a main temple with a smaller one to the north.

The main building follows the usual trefoil pattern with apses arranged around a central room, and the floor of this central area is lower than those of the apse rooms. The main facade is concave, and there are 3 large steps from the forecourt through the restored trilithon into the temple.

The small temple has a similar if slightly more irregular shape, but without the impressive entrance stones.

I guess I approached from the easy direction, as I pulled off the main road (Ghargur to Mosta) heading west from San Pawl tat-Targa Cart Ruts just before Mosta fort and with a group of houses to the left, and looked to the right and there was the walled enclosure!

Overlooking St Paul’s Bay, dolmen A is the larger of the two with a capstone 3.6m x 1.7m supported on three (?) stones about 1.4m high; dolmen B is smaller, supported by the edge of the plateau on one side and low stones on the other – its capstone is about 3m long.

The winter greenery made it difficult to work out this site, but it must look fantastic in the summer (I bought “Malta before History” – Miranda publishers – expensive but exquisite – see page 394 – as my holiday souvenir) with ruts running straight across flat ground and bending round and down the slope.

There’s extensive quarrying in the area – almost right up to the edge of the ruts.