Latest Fieldnotes

Located near the road, beside a footpath, the stone is about 6ft tall. It’s lichen covered, but like quite a few in north Wales, the view is somewhat marred by pylons, but still a beautiful area.

Apparently there were two Circles here next to each other, I had a look for any other Stones and could only find one that was not related to the Nine Maidens. It is on the other side of the hedge but nearer the cottage and incorporated in the hedge.

I came across a ” fallen ” Stone on the edge of the foot path quite long – maybe 6 to 7 ft long. Interesting. In the middle of the path is a very large flat Stone that looks like a cap stone.No one has mentioned these before.

The day was very humid after violent thunder storms, but that did not diminish the joy of a visit to this wonderful Circle. I had not been here for maybe 8 years and was surprised at the ease of getting here. The foot path from Boscawenoon Farm has been kept clear and is easy to navigate. Shorts, no problem. What a place, Sunday in the middle of summer and I was the only person here, except for my driver of course. There were some offerings under the Gnomen, I left them there as they did not detract from the experience.

A beautiful day after the thunder storms. Thought I would go to Boscawen-un. Took a couple of pics of the triangular Stone next to the parking place.

High Banks and Druids?

Although I am local to High Banks (live in Castle Douglas 10 miles away) until I read ‘Hornel : The Life and Work of E.A. Hornel: Bill Smith: Atelier Books: Edinburgh: 1997, I did not know thay had inspired a painting by Hornel called ‘The Druids: Bringing in the Mistletoe’ – now in the Kelvingrove museum in Glasgow.

Following is the story – for fuller version see my greengalloway blogsite for July 2006 (post inspired by listening to newly discovered early Pink Floyd tracks – Jan 1967 version of Interstellar Overdrive)...

Go back to about 1889. On an outcrop of rock above High Banks farm steading near Kirkcudbright a set of ‘cup and ring’ rock carvings were found. Local (and Glasgow) artist Edward Hornel went to see them and then visited an old man called Sinclair who knew where more of the markings could be found:

Sinclair took from a shelf a small china bowl in which was a small bluish stone. Holding this in his hand, in a few minutes he seemed to go off in a sort of trance, and then began to describe, like a wireless announcer today [i.e. 1939], a vision of a procession of priests with sacred instruments and cattle which somehow were connected with the cup-and ring markings... [from A.S. Hattrick: A Painter’s Pilgrimage Through Fifty Years :1939: 60/61 in Bill Smith: Hornel: 1997: 59]

This inspired E.A. Hornel & George Henry to paint The Druids: Bringing in the Mistletoe – now in the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow. Note : Google image search on “Hornel Druids” brings up several images of painting.

Hornel lived (until his death in 1933) at Broughton House in Kirkcudbright. Here he built up a library of 25 000 local interest books (inc. a huge section on Burns). He also had a cast made of the High Banks cup and ring markings for the Stewartry Museum, also in Kirkcudbright – can still be seen there.

Although clearly not a hillfort (as it’s not on a hill!) this site is typical of a type of monument found in Glen Lyon (and also nearby, see Queen’s View). Variously described as forts, ring forts and homesteads, they are curious sites that certainly appear to be defensive. Massive walls, in this case between 3 and 4 metres thick, and their location below mountain passes into and out of Glen Lyon seem to suggest a defensive use for them originally.

It’s only taken 14 years, but I finally seen the darn thing in the real.

I reckon it was made by the same person who did the one at Dod Law Hillfort.

The heather burning has come within 3m of the panel. Careful with that fire! Burn not the carvings, for they are nice.

[visited 1/7/6] Having never visited an exmoor site before, I had some trepidation as to how much we’d be able to see in high summer. The answer is, pretty much all of it. This is a weird little thing, about the same diameter as (say) Kingston Russell but with stones that struggled to reach my knees. I liked it but couldn’t help thinking, is this all it is? Now, having visited different sites on exmoor in short open grass I can apreciate how powerful this could have looked 4 thousand years ago, stones very much defining a ritual space.

Access is very good, we parked just down the road but there is parking by the gate to the field. Someone had actually parked in the field within 10 metres of the circle and seemingly then gone for a walk. Which was unsightly and spoilt the “we are in a desolate moor” effect, I think the circle was aiming for but never mind. You can find the circle about 20m to the right of the sheep fold as you look from the road.

[visited 1/7/6] This was a strange little beasty and I guess the majority of stone rows about these parts look very similar. We found 6? stones in a double row pointing roughly towards the porlock circle|circle and then another stone on the same alignment about 5 metres closer to the circle. We think it was the row, but its hard to tell, the stones were barely 10cm above the ground and hidden in heather. The two rows were about a metre or so apart, with the stones in each row being about a metre or so apart as well. The row itself was located just off the brow of the hil and off the path to the right.

Access is good, its maybe a 5 minute walk up an open path to where the row is, though you may have to negotiate heather to get to it.

[visited 1/7/6] Getting used to the underwhelming size of the stones took a bit, but having warmed to the task we quite liked this ‘setting’ (apart from the random blood on one of the stones). Apparently people used to think this was the remains of 2 concentric circles and now they think its the remains of two rows. Personally I have no idea. I stood at pretty much every stone we could find and surveyed the weird arrangement of stones, seemingly raised upright at random, but once in a while offering glimpses. A possible curve here, 3 in a row there. So unless a lot of stones were removed which would have made this clear, I suspect the builders were on strong drugs when they put this up.

Access is ok but probably only by foot unless you have one of those fanangally off road wheel chair things. The circle is easily accessible to a moderately fit person, its about 15 minutes walk along tracks through the heather, ferns and peat, from the nearest car parking spot.

[visited 1/7/6] Its a weird thing relative perspective, in a different place & time I’d have called these smallish, but here they are massive. Two gert big chunks of rock leaning to the side, I don’t know whether they were ever standing but tbh they look as if they were. Apparently they were used as medieval forrest boundary stones so I’m unsure about a prehistoric provenance, all complicated by a weird metal thing attached to one of them (see pictures) [edit] its an OS thing apparently (see misc notes) so I didn’t bother putting the extreme closeup up. The views though, oh the views. The moors off to the right and the beautiful devon/somerset cliffy coast to the left.

Access is ok, but difficult for wheels as you need to go up a bank and along a narrow path in the heather. Parking is by the side of the road, or by the clifftop and a little walk.

[visited 2/7/6] Drive towards Two Gates from the A-road, trying to find a setting next to the road, stop randomly to take bearings, realise you’ve gone far too far but are close to some other settings, go to those instead. And it was a real treat to see by accident. My first triangular setting, again no stone higher than my knee, but with two in short grass we really saw the power that these small settings can provide. I kept thinking if I stand in the middle and say the right incantation I’ll be imbued with a mystical power, but sadly no.

Access is good, its about a 5 miunte walk from the car in a straight line or a 15 minute one walking in zigzags. Keep on the path and head down the hill, if you can still see your car, you’re not far enough down.

[visited 2/7/6] If ever a stone was a way marker at the top of a valley, this was it. Its in lovely location and its flat faces point north down the lush green landscape into the valley. The stone is one of the largest we saw over the weekend and possibly the nicest. Head away from the road and bear left down the hill, you should see it about 30 yards away at the head of the valley.

Access is good. About 5 minutes from the road, over open moor with low grass.

I had the opportunity to visit the Mare and Foal on 18 June 2006. Unfortunately the weather was wet and I couldn’t spend as much time there as I would have liked. I noticed that when I stood to the south, the two stones lined up with two gaps in the hills to the north. I would be interested in returning sometime with a good compass and try to determine if the sun would rise between the two of them on a particular date (perhaps lighting the flat rock that lies between them), or asking if there is something particularly important about marking the two gaps from that position.
I’ve taken a photo of the stones slightly off center to show the two gaps where they lined up.

This Crossiecrown is nothing to do with either the Neolithic settlement beyond Ramberry Cairn (now levelled) or the much later site shown on the 1882 map further up this field (whose substantial well is filled in with large masonry, presumably from the dwelling). Between Hatston and Quanterness is a long stretch of convoluted toplogy, rises and hollows and banks (mostly on the downhill side of the main road until it reaches the farm of Quanterness), suspected of harbouring archaeology though nothing is noted.

Everything has a beginning, and this feature starts in the Crossiecrown field. Here between two banks I found an arrangement of stones, a little over five feet across, in a slight circular depression. They look to fall along three lines that meet in the middle, as if you are looking at a raised structure that has fallen inwards, a definite feeling of roof. A few stones outside appear to ring the hollow. The first time I went there I could see a void below the centre and was tempted to remove the big stone that ran into this, when I went in drier condtions there seemed to have been further settling, wedging the stone tight.

Coming into Deerness, at the beginning of the last leg of the A960 before it becomes the B9050, two minor roads at right angles head for the coast, one to the Newark slipway and the other marked as coastal path and geo (also called a goe in Orkney, a deep gap in the cliffs resulting from a cave’s collapse) – ?Muckle Castle. Between the two endpoints was a non-burnt mound WSW of Mussaquoy and beyond the coastal path. Go down the slipway road and turn right and walk a little way to a strangely elongated field containing the site. Even from a distance you could tell it had been excavated, end on looking not unlike a settee in outline if you ignore the grass. The O.S. map of 1882 only shows a narrow stretch of rough land. And I wonder if we now only see part of the rim of what was a much larger structure a long time ago – close by is a feature called Peerie Castle, were they once one?

The entrance to the field was an extraordinarily taut ‘Orkney gate’, thus requiring a push from distance leaning slightly as it could well be risky to attempt from close and straight on. This site is a narrow oval mound with a long rectangular pit taken from the (NNW?) side. Unfortunately a low battery stuck my camera’s zoom on telephoto. Though there were two edge-set slabs at the front of the mound I can see only one, at the northern end. But this may be owing to the time of year. However I see a long stone prostrate beside it. Scraping away the thin grass covering reveals your usual standing stone shape of a few feet long, which is brown in colour like you would see in an old house (there is some in the exposed material too). There are red stones in the vertical section behind this and red fragments in a smaller exposed section at the southern end of the seaward side (ESE?), however this seems to have originally been structural and is in no way burnt. Perhaps this fell in from above when this place was ‘quarried’. However the stones over this mound are a heterogenous lot anyway, differing in size and shape and colour, and including ones similar to the prostrate stone.

To me it looks as if the site could well have been adapted from its original form/purpose even before the quarrying. The earthfast stone pair have been seen as perhaps part of a cist, but equally well fit the original burnt mound theory as resembling the ‘tanks’ of a site such as Hawell. I don’t get a feeling either way and distrust both interpretations here. It is a very curious place, nothing adds up, the individual parts don’t make a recognisable whole.

Having crossed over into Deerness take the B9051 (Kirbust road) up to the Yarpha-Keigar crossroads. Turn left onto the minor road heading to Mirkady, and take this to the point at which the farm road begins. On the left is a ‘drain’, and an old track goes along the far bank to the shore. Here turn left to reach the broch, along the now overgrown track between Braebuster and Mirkady by Eves Loch- if you turn right the next headland along is Hurnip’s Point, with a long cairn and two boat nausts. If walking Eves Howe and the mound will already have been obvious..

I took the harder route up the shore from Sandi Sands. Along the way, near Braebuster is a mound thought to be an urisland church. However the broch excavator talks of its being roughly half-a-mile of the fairybuildings (in Orphir there is Fairy Brae near King’s Ferry Road), there are buildings by the shore but perhaps ? Very close to where the broch is I came across what seemed at first sight to be another black taing, if rather broad. Coming at it the southern end is formed by a line of stones on edge like the top of some drystane walls. Not to say that this part is man-made, or at least not entirely, but this area encloses a rather rectilinear pool. My suspicion is that a natural feature has been adapted to catch fish – they go in at high tide and then the ebb traps them between the ‘walls’ (on the 1882 map what may be this appears at HY5479059- or perhaps HY546058).

So amazed to to finally reach Eves Howe that I put up with the lack of visible masonry. There were no outworks as far as I can’t tell, so for me a small broch tower rather than a nucleated settlement like Lingro or Gurness. Up on top of the mound in the waters I see grassy clumps I take to be the causeway supposedly built not that long before the excavation. Hit upon some stones and cleared the grass off a few without further result. What’s left of several ‘standing stone fences’ all over the place, including a tall one in the northern half of the lochan. Between the latter and the north shore what I took to be the stumps of wooden posts are further stones.

Taking what I’ve seen into account it seems to me the waters have expanded in more modern times rather than shrunk from a greater expanse as presently asserted (nowadays it presents a pinched appearance, on the 1882 map the lochan only goes as far north as the broch, with the curved tip heading towards it). This would put it on a par with the Loch of Tankerness across the Deer Sound. Similarly the land about is very level. In Tankerness a Bronze Age house with a possible settlement was uncovered on the shore when water-levels dropped nearly a metre during a drought. Perhaps Raymond Lab’s putative settlement platform connected with the broch had something to it, though add this to the mix in an Iron Age context instead and you’re back to the Loch of Tankerness again with the Howie of The Manse. None of which is to rule out the mound area specifically as encircled by water, as on the seaward side drain-like zigzags were noted, only to say the lochan itself could likely have been much smaller back then.

Came down carefully as though there were no tussocks visible my feet kept sinking into the tall lush grass. More of the same by the old track, then flat spongy turf squelching underfoot. I think this is where the lochan formerly went to sea. At the seaward side there is still a short length of wall and a few tall stones perpendicular to one another. It is likely that this used to be a field junction (not shown on the 1882 map even) before Eves Loch doubled in size, the mound marking a field boundary even more closely then.

Having crossed over into Deerness take the B9051 (Kirbust road) up to the Yarpha-Keigar crossroads. Turn left onto the minor road heading to Mirkady, and take this to the point at which the farm road begins. On the left is a ‘drain’, and an old track goes along the far bank to the shore. Instead of going left to Eves Howe turn right and the next headland is Hurnip’s Point. If walking Eves Howe the mound will already have been obvious, and the cairn is not many yards distant from the drain end really. Unfortunately I misread the map scale when visiting the broch and so failed to take the opportunity presented to me.

As well as the rock shelter/rock art there were also a couple of cup marked boulders and a marked rock beside some shielings found on the same day.

This site , in a side glen south of Glen Lyon was discovered in April this year . An interesting aspect is that not only are rock shelters with rock art very rare but the area has no recorded prehistory . There are some homesteads in western Glen Lyon but they are medieval.

There are 8 stones in all scattered over a distance of 1.5 Km, lying on either side of Fonlief Hir, a prehistoric trackway that runs up to the ring cairns on the slopes of Moel Goedog.

5 stones, scheduled as ancient monuments, appear on Coflein. From SW to NE these are listed as Fonlief Hir Stone B (Carreg), Stone A (Moel-y-Sensigl), Stone E (Fonlief Hir), Stone C and Stone D. Continuing NE are 2 more stones listed by the Gwynedd Archaeoligical Trust as Moel Goedog Stones 2 and 1. To the east of Stone 2 is a further stone which I have called Moel Goedog Stone 3.

All 8 stones appear on the Megalithic Portal. Fonlief Hir Stones A-E are called Moel Goedog 7,8,1,2 and 6 and Moel Goedog Stones 1-3 are called Moel Goedog 5,3 and 4. The stone listed as Moel Goedog, Merthyr Farm seems to be a duplicate of the stone called Moel Goedog 1, some of the information posted on the latter being incorrect. I will try to contact the author to get it corrected.

Park up the road, retrace your route back down to straight edged new forest. Located on west hand side at the top of the hill near the cow pen, the stones only just protrude above ground except one which is fairly big.

after reading previous fieldnotes i was surprised to find a good parking place ,try harder the stone and the view are worth it

A beautiful peaceful morning ,only bleating lambs , singing birds and running water broke the silence .Park by the many arched bridge and follow the footpath west ,below the rail track over three gates and under the track,turn right over fence and wow what a stone ,over 8 ft tall and covered in quartz seams .A powerful place despite the railway track which is invisible but loud when trains pass