Latest Fieldnotes

This was a long, arduous trek, began at Raheenakit and along the Wicklow Way. The forest tracks are fine, but the last 80 metres ascent through the heather, gorse and tumbledown mess nearly did me in.

The cairn is being reclaimed by mother nature, with it’s lower sections covered in peat. It’s very roughly 20 metres in diameter with cairn rubble showing in a few places at its top.

The gorgeous views on a sunny mid-September evening made the trek worthwhile: south-west to the Blackstairs, north to Keadeen and Lybagh, and south-east into Wexford. I could see the sea off Gorey. Directly west you can see forever.

I was able to pick out the wedge tomb at Moylisha to the south-east. Descending down through the ruined pine plantation I went arse over tit and nearly broke me wrist.

If there is a standing stone here it’s buried deep in impenetrable pine woods.

A stone may have once stood on Cullentragh mountain, but alas no more. There were one or two candidates for the former standing stone but I could scarcely be bothered after the hike and the disappointment. In fact, I’m really very doubtful that there ever was a standing stone here. However, the views up here are stunning.

This is a substantial barrow, which is almost hidden in the undergrowth of a small copse, I walked past it twice with a map in my hand. It is on an east to west axis and is about 60 feet long (actually 58 metres as I have since discovered) and 10 – 12 feet high. It’s near neighbour at Chettle house is a better bet to visit, you can see it for a start. The survival of this barrow between two heavily ploughed fields must be down to it’s large size.

It’s really very nice here. I’ve put off a visit for a long time because I wasn’t sure about the access: it looks like one of those sly long dashes from a footpath, with the potential of shotgun pellets in the rear. However, fear not, because the local farmer(s) make the footpaths very clear, and there is actually a permissive bridleway to the barrow (from ST810532). What nice people.

To me, the obvious thing in the landscape as I sat at the middle of the barrow, was Cley Hill on the sw-ish horizon. Of course, certain modern features do tend to make you look this way (the chestnut trees and the hedge behind you, the field margin to the left all block the view), so it could be irrelevant, but it didn’t feel it.

The stones are a soft orangey pink, flat, and pocked with tiny holes on their narrow edges. The Countryside Stewardship notice about the path mentions ‘nine stones’ but there are certainly more than nine.

I think the atmosphere would make it easy to stay hours here.

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Looking for more information on the web, I see there’s supposed to be a ‘geocache’ here. Well if I’d known (because the site was beautifully litter free on the surface) I’d have dug it up and blown it to smithereens. So that’s something to do next time. Miserable, unappreciative dimwits.

AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY MAKES ME CROSS?? The git who left it there copied MY cheesy phrase from this website.
geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=07f8c21b-bcc6-4edb-ac19-91a47a85eb80
It makes you want to give up doesn’t it. TMA is surely an attempt to make people value their environment and prehistory. What can you do if some people use that information for making a mess of the place? The box apparently contains golf tees and ‘dinos’ and all sorts of shite. Why do people leave this 21st century detritus at these special places?

Finally I have found the time to visit this Devon hillfort. It’s a bit odd in it’s design as it seems to be split into two parts. The northern two thirds is a conventional enclosure, i.e. ramparts and ditches surrounding a large open interior on the ridge of a hill. The unusual part is the southern third which runs down the western facing slope of the hill, the east rampart runs along the crest of the hill and turns down the hill.
Another curious feature is at the north end and appears to be two large mounds, a bit like long barrows, which are separate from the main ditches and banks. Unfortunately they were so covered in gorse and bracken they could not be properly investigated, this gives me the excuse to go back in the winter for another look.

I really like this interesting little hillfort, I decided to visit it again because it looked similar in size and shape to Mistleberry fort which I had been to yesterday. This is in good condition and complete, unlike Mistleberry which is really knocked about and I believe incomplete.
The southern entrance is a great feature and I have included two photos of it from this visit.
Since Pure joy visited, this is now well sign posted from all directions, well done Devon council, I wish Dorset would do the same.

Incorrectly marked on the other side of the road (or maybe there is another panel there which I failed to locate), this large stone sits in a field beside a large B&B (’The Milestone’) and can be seen from the road and the large standing stone that now sits in the garden of the B&B.

It has been suggested that the stone once stood upright and on first sight it does look like a fallen menhir. Another smaller stone lies a few paces away so it may have made a two-stone row, another possibility is the other large standing stones close by all formed part of a longer stone row that would have been very impressive.

The stone is arrow shaped and most of the markings are near the broad end with just a single cup and ring near the point. The stone is about 4-5m in length, 2m wide and 1.5m high as it presently sits.

If the carvings were done while or before the stone stood, the radiating grooves and gutters (parrallel with each other) would have run across rather than up or down the stone which seems ‘wrong’. As the stone now sits, they run down the sloping surface from the cup and rings which are mostly along the top ridge and part of the way down the slope.

A small round univallate hillfort in woodland to the north of Sixpenny Handley. This is little known and I suspect little visited, it’s in dense deciduous woodland. The tree roots are damaging the banks and a large amount of badger setts aren’t helping either.
This fort is only about three quarters complete and appears to be unfinished originally. The missing ditch and rampart is mostly on the west side. On this side the ditch can be seen as a series of round pits, lessening in depth as they move south. It looks like the spoil from these holes would have been thrown up to make the rampart, which peters out at this point also. This looks like Ladle hill in Hampshire but only in it’s partial incompleteness on the west side.
Although quite remote it is easy to visit as it is next to an R.S.P.B. nature reserve with a good car park and is well served with footpaths. There are many other sites of interest very close to this site.

This is a large long barrow in the small village of Chettle. It is to the south east of another long barrow which O.S. calls Chettle long barrow.
This one is about a hundred metres long and about 3 – 4 metres high. It looks to be in good condition, but once on top of it’s northern end there is a large hole, which appears to be damage done in an old excavation. I will visit the other one in the near future, I ran out of time today.

Having spent best part of a week in the village, I got a few opportunities to examine the various chunks of oolitic stone dotted about the village. It’s difficult to avoid thoughts that these could so easily have once been part of something Rollrighty.

The larger stones forming the kerb of the church looked to me as if they were once fewer, larger stones that had been split to be the right size for the kerb. There are definite feather marks, and the more angular edges Jane mentions seemed to me to be the bits where larger stones had been split. Some of the others in the kerb are just as gnarly as the Rollrights themselves, making it easy to imagine them as part of a monument.

There are also a couple of the roadside stones that bore slight circular depressions that if they appeared on fell sandstone in Northumberland, I would have no hesitation in declaring them cupmarks. But as these Churchill stones are oolitic, its not so easy to say. Though the presence of the possible cups in Salford might lend a tiny sliver of credence to the possibility that they are artificial, and not just statistically inevitable natural cup-like formations.

Overall, I’m in agreement that these stones really do look like they could have been part of the circle that Hamish says was once down the way at Sarsgrove wood.

A set of three round barrows, the first of which is about 200 yards to the east of Abbotsbury castle. The western most is in poor condition and has been dug into, it is next to a second world war royal observer corp bunker. The middle one of the group is a nice medium sized bowl barrow overlooking St Catherine’s chapel and the fleet lagoon behind Chesil beach. The third, most easterly is similar to the central one and is about a quarter of a mile from the White hill barrow cemetery to the east.

A small, low, rather scruffy looking bowl barrow looking out over the channel. It has been badly excavated, at least once in the past. It is on national trust land near the village of Burton Bradstock.

A large low bowl barrow on the top of a 90 metre hill. Maiden castle is a mile to the west and in plain sight. The barrow is covered with trees and has two small round barrows either side of it.

A low lying, mainly univallate hillfort at a fork in the roads from Shaftesbury to the villages of Donhead St Mary and Semley. It appears to be on private property as no footpaths are shown on O.S. maps. At some points it appears to have an outer bank with an inner ditch enclosing a further bank inside. The outer rampart is tree lined and there were sheep within the ramparts. The only way to see it is to pull in to small farm entrances and look through gaps in the hedge.

This is an unspoilt univallate hillfort above the chalk cut first world war military badges, south of the village of Fovant. It is a simple circular enclosure consisting of a single outer ditch and inner rampart. The interior is an uncut flower meadow full of ground nesting birds.
There are long distance all round views and on the day I visited I was completely alone. It looks like quite a steep climb up to it, but the footpath crosses the hill at 45 degrees and is a gentle climb. Well worth a visit for it’s simplicity and the views of the surrounding country side.

Came here as part of the Half Life event.

blogged about it here.

This is a bit of a disapointment to visit, as the major northern pair of ditches and banks are fenced off on private property. Also it’s heavily wooded. However it is of significance in terms of it’s location on a prominence above a river, this is unusual in Dorset. It consists of two sets of ramparts and ditches on the north and west sides, the southern edge has only a small bank as the drop to the river Stour is very steep at this point. The interior of the hillfort now houses various buildings owned the girl guides, and used as a campsite.

Some boisterous bullocks prevented me getting further than the gate but the stones are wonderfully skylined from the crossroads.

A headstone commemorates three friars killed by Cromwellian soldiers in 1651 near this spot, the stones were regularly whitewashed like many stones but perhaps with more resonance here.

Lived around here for a number of years and never spotted this one!! Not actually marked on the ordnance survey but as you turn off the A391 out of St Austell, following the signs to the Recycling Depot up Menear Rd (bit of a give away I know!), there is a field entrance on the right just before gate to the depot. Overlooked by radio/booster mast on the opposite side.

Slightly overcast day, and tho’ the photo doesn’t show it, there seemed to be a fresh late crop starting so I was reluctant to trample too far into the field to get a better shot. Will try again when the harvest allows.

Stunning views over Prideaux woods and the hillfort there, down into the Eden Project and off as far as Caradon Hill and the Cheesewring way off on the horizon.

Situated in a truly beautiful place, after a long drive down a single lane road which goes higher and higher up into the corner of the valley, we left the car and walked through the field and over the small river and there it was by a gate in a field boundary, tall and broad but thin longwise. As we photographed the stone a lady farmer on a quad bike came over and told us we were on private property. We apologised and said we’d just come to see the stone, but then she proceeded to tell us it wasn’t ancient it was just some old farmers stone, but a minute later it was just a stone that had come down the mountain and just happened to land upright in the ground. She didn’t want people coming on her land. She seemed almost horrified that the stone was marked on the map where anyone could see it then she told us she would be talking to the mapping commision people to get it taken off the maps.
Probably not worth the journey up the small road, when if you ask for permission it’s not granted .

Best approached from the S.W but me and Day Vole came from the S.E and got soaked from the knees down. Not the tallest of stones, but it was very white and was noticeable from quite a distance from the south so was maybe a marker stone through the mountains. Probably not really worth the trip unless your hardcore and in the vacinity due to long walk out through squelchy marshy ground.

I noticed the large sarsens under the church – I had forgotten they were here, but they’re big enough to draw the eye. I had to feel they were useful foundations (the church is a real mismatch of materials and styles – interesting but locked). But at the end of the day, where did they come from? If they were from a circle, incorporating them was making a statement one way or the other. Maybe they weren’t and were just lying around – it’s not so far to the greywethers. But it’s all very interesting.

I assumed from afar that the ones in the boundary (mentioned below) were gravestones and did not look at them properly.

Well this is really very curious. The mound is much bigger than I expected. My imaginative instinct is to compare it with the huge Wiltshire mounds near water ie Silbury etc. The water’s even mentioned in the name of the place. But perhaps I should restrain myself – it’s not that big. But it is big, and it is in a direct line with the church. I didn’t see any ‘venomous vipers’ though I can believe they might frequent it. I did spot two (plastic) swords on the mound’s summit, so the local children can’t be that scared of them.

If I run down the road a bit from our house, there’s a super panoramic view. On a very fine day (or with binoculars), the furthest obvious thing you can see is a very distinctive group of three tree clumps. I’ve kept seeing them from all sorts of places – lots and lots of people must be familiar with them. There are two closeish together, and then another on the right, slightly further away. Today I was determined to find out where they were. So I jumped in the car and headed off in something like the right direction.

As you can imagine, my driving was a tad erratic, as I kept gawping at the landscape. But finally I arrived safely – and they were at Hackpen Hill, right on the Ridgeway.

It is, as Jane and Moth have said, fantastic up here (if a little chilly), and you can see a long way (the back of Cherhill Down is clear, and beyond that over to the edge of Salisbury Plain, and with binoculars, the mast near Priddy on the Mendip edge. There’s lots to the north, but I didn’t recognise much). Birds of prey were hovering over the slope, and the shadows of clouds made strange swirls with the patterns of chalk in the fields below.

I sat with the white horse, and on the far side of the road, a black horse stood admiring the view. Something was missing from my horse, so I collected some burnt wood from an old camp fire and made him a nice black eye. He’s quite a dainty animal. But he’s getting a bit green and may need a bit of a scour?

After walking up to the car park I thought I’d visit one of my tree clumps, so walked along the Ridgeway (serenaded by grasshoppers) to the first one, right by the track. It’s mostly beech trees, and you can walk a circular path through them. I spotted my initials carved on one of the trees. You probably would as well, as there are so many.