Latest Fieldnotes

Visited 28th March 2004: We asked at the farm about access to the tomb and were directed to the house with the orange garage door, a little way up the lane. Here I eventually found the landowner who was happy for us to go and take a look.

In the field where the tomb stands were two very inquisitive ponies who immediately came up to us, then escorted us to the stones. The boys were fascinated by them, but also a bit scared (especially Alfie). The tomb is charmingly dilapidated, with a very off-kilter capstone. There are orthostats still in place, and a number of stones that aren’t so easy to place (one almost buried to the north of the chamber). Gaer Llwyd is relatively substantial though. I’d assumed that the stones would be small, but this is a fair sized cromlech.

The stones, the ponies and the sunset made for a very pleasant visit. Also, the farmer and the landowner were very friendly. I was left wondering why Gaer Llwyd hasn’t had more visitors. This is well worth seeing if you’re in the area. Incidentally you can see the tomb from the lane, but not so clearly from the main road because the hedge is in the way.

I popped up here with my sister at the weekend and found that by squinting wildly it was possible to discern the plume of smoke from the cement factory at Westbury – and yes, just to its right, the Westbury White Horse at its hillfort – ie the edge of Salisbury Plain just visible between the landscape of the much closer hills.

Looking in the another direction you can convince yourself you can just see the edge of the Pewsey Downs – but really you’d want a map and compass with you to be sure. With some binoculars I spotted the television transmitter on the edge of the Mendips (near Priddy) which is quite a way.. I am getting more caught up in this ‘intervisibility’ thing all the time.

The maze is getting a bit overgrown – so get up there and tread it :)

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Also came up here recently as the sun was going down. It is strange that this place is so quiet and peaceful yet is so close to the city. It does wonders for your state of mind. I wouldn’t want to be accompanied by half of Bath of course but it is well worth discovering how to get up here.

Visited 28th March 2004: On the down side this stone is slap bang next to a busy road, but on up side access to the stone is extremely good. In fact you could view the stone from your car if you wanted. I opted to get out, leaving the others to watch from a distance. There’s a slender hard shoulder so parking isn’t too dangerous.

The forestry immediately to the north of the Long Stone has recently been felled, opening up views of the stone that haven’t been accessible for a long time. Having said that, there are some large tree stumps very close to the stone, and photos of it before the clear felling make me think it must have looked rather nice shaded by trees.

Friday 6/8/04
This cairn sits in the middle of this moor and scrubland with the tail end of the Pentland Hills to the east and Tinto to the southeast. A grassy mound rises from the moor to a height of approximately 1 m, but what makes this cairn particularly interesting is the short cist still in place in the middle of the mound. The cist is aligned NE/SW and is 1 m long by 33 cm wide by 58 cm deep. There are only four stones remaining- the cist is open at the SW end with no capstone either, but a large stone lies just to the east which may have been one of the uprights.

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And only 200 metres from Wester Yardhouses cairn on a small hillock rising from the moor is this denuded cairn. A modern cairn has been built on top of the remains of the original cairn. Although this hillock is only 295 m high it still commands a great 360 degrees view from Tinto, Lanarkshire and the Pentlands. The cairn itself is about 20 m in diameter by around 1 m high (the modern cairn rises from this to a height of 1.2 m). On the S and E edge there are still some kerb stones in place- up to 75 cm to 1 m long by around 40 cm wide. Just 1 m N of the modern cairn there are two pits and also around the N edge many small stones protrude through the grass.

Friday 6/8/04
Approximately 130 m WSW of the Giants Stones there are two, now recumbent, stones lying behind a row of trees next to the road. The largest is lying NE/SW and is 2 m long by 1.1 m wide by about 40 cm thick. There is more moss and lichen growth on the NE end of this huge stones- was this originally the top? Just 10 cm away, but now completely covered in moss and grass (and I only found it after stubbing my boot on it!) is another large stones- this one is approximately 1.6 m square. Just 4 m to the S of this pair, another smaller stone lies- 95 cm by 87 cm by 20 cm. There is no mention of three stones in either the Royal Commission or OS reports from 1956 to 1972. Could there possibly have stood another trio of standing stones just S of the Giants Stones?

Friday 6/8/04
I almost couldn’t find this obvious stone- there was a car parked next to the cattle grid where this stands and as it’s only 86 cm high I just couldn’t see it til the last minute before I was just about to get back in the car! This stone is now a boundary marker and marks the boundary between Selkirkshire and Peebleshire. As is the case with many boundary stones this was probably a re-used monolith. It’s now aligned NE/SW and there is some carving on the W face-the only word I can make out is ‘Tweed’ (as in the river, not the cloth!).

Friday 6/8/04
I cross a field of sheep in the direction of a small forest built upon a hillock only 274 m high, but still offering a defensive position as much of the land around is flat and falls away to the W. I find a gate through the electric fence (thankfully!) and scrabble through dense undergrowth and many felled trees. Unfortunately the remains of this broch are just that- much destroyed. There are remains of a moss covered wall section at the NNE and four very large stones on the NW side, some as large as 1.5 m long. But this site is covered in long grass and has also been forested and then harvested without clearing, so it’s very difficult to get an overview of this site.

I’ve been struggling for ages now to know how to convey what I felt about Brodgar.

I have deep emotional attachments to two sites which have built up over years of repeated visits: Uffington White Horse and the Rollright stones. I am moved everytime I see them.

And though I am frequently ‘wowed’ by new places, rarely do I feel ‘love at first sight’ for a place. But Brodgar... whatever I say will not be enough. It is wild, carefree, astonishingly beautiful, rugged and -in the truest sense of the word- awesome.

The effort to get here is immediately rewarded and the length of the journey 100% worth it. It’s situation on a ribbon of land between two lochs is a master stroke of dramatic genius from whoever decided to build it here. Each stone is gnarled, weather beaten and beautiful like the face of a beloved grandfather. And the angle of tilt of the henge reminded me of the angle of the tilt of the Earth itself.

In a matter of a few minutes we saw Brodgar in all weather conditions, the most stunning good fortune, however, was the appearance of rainbow, which turned this most magical of places into The Sublime.

We returned to Brodgar every day of our week on Orkney.

Visited 28th March 2004: After spending some time at Raglan Castle we headed east to the village of Trellech to see Harold’s Stones. We parked to the south west where a track leads west off the B4293, and walked up the roadside to the stones (spotting a mole on the way).

The stones themselves are excellent great things (certainly reminiscent of something rude Jane). Very photogenic, but most of the photos I took are the same as those already posted. Not as atmospheric as I’d anticipated though.

I’d have thought that the name ‘Trellech’ would mean ‘three stones’ rather than ‘Settlement of the Stones’. The word tre means three and llech means stones (it’s that simple).

On August 10th I had arrived at Mine Howe as the diggers were coming back from lunch and finally saw in trench E the ovoid structure found at the end of last year’s dig, the neat blocks of an arc of wall at the ‘back’ and a few upright slabs dividing the ‘front’. This was mostly used for the working of copper and copper alloy, with a hearth and a rather small furnce, and may never have stood any higher. It is behind the wall, fairly high up, that the flags were found that lay over the female skeleton.
A new area of the dig alongside being opened up is a long wedge, several metres long and several feet deep at its far end, in which there were only a few stones as yet. I later found out that this was a sounding that had revealed a former slope between the Mine Howe ditch and the site huts which had been filled with a midden consisting of bones and pottery fragments. Carinated pot on the site has pushed the date back to the end of the Early Iron Age.
The next day, having taken my camera this time, they were still having their lunch in front of the site huts. As I headed towards the diggings an officious woman strode out of the custodian’s office and demanded to know what I was doing. Orcadian I thought, but definitely not a native or a blender. So I explained that I wasn’t going onto the excavation, merely taking photos. Did I have permission she asked. Do I need it I said. This stumped her. Re-phrased my query twice and still no answer. So I turned to the diggers and asked them (bellowed rather, I must admit !). Either they couldn’t understand me or they were simply flummoxed. From my two seasons on a dig I do know that there isn’t usually a problem with taking photos except that sometimes technically copyright belongs with the excavators. Finished sites under ownership may have such a policy but it will be prominently displayed. Took my pictures but felt they would have been better the previous day, somehow an incorrect perspective to represent the structure’s features fully. When I went back on the open day Jane Downes informed me that photograph taking is allowed but I am not allowed to post them to the Web.
At the top of the mound, away from the exposed ditch, to the right of the Mine Howe ‘entrance’ and a little beyond the main current excavation, is a smaa digging where I see many little round white pegs in a low square box of stone that looks like a metalworking hearth from the deposits inside – this is another rarity for the site, a miniature iron smelting furnace. It is a very fine structure that I hope you will eventually see on The Orcadian and Orkneyjar sites.
Fine recording of the dig will basically come to a full stop on Thursday, with mostly clearing up the next day.

Friday 6/8/04
Driving way up a tiny country road (and I use the word ‘road’ in its loosest possible meaning- put it this way there’s grass growing up trhough the remains of the red tar in the middle of it!) I meet a friendly old man out for his walk in his wellies. I stop to ask him about the souterrain of Wester Yardhouses and if it is okay for me to visit and take some pictures, ‘aye, nae bother’! Turns out this guy is a font of local knowledge regarding antiquarian sites. He tells me about Scottish Water doing some work up on the hill next to one of the cairns and unearthing a massive stone but not really realising what they were doing! He also tells me of an old friend of his who stayed nearby, now long gone, who, every year, used to clean 13 old boundary stones that crossed the Pentlands. We make our separate ways and I head across to the corner of a lonely field of Lanarkshire. Under a dry stane syke, a hole. A muddy entrance 86 cm wide by 1 m high. However, this wouldn’t have been the original entrance as an unroofed section runs about 2.75 m EW before this. I put my hard hat and boiler suit on and crawl inside. The mud floor of the souterrain rises up for about 2.5 m and then falls away, but it has been deliberately blocked only about 4.5 metres from the present entrance. At the very end are a couple of piles of rabbit bones and skulls. There are still some massive lintels to be seen in the short passageway, one being about 1 m wide by 1.5 m long. I take some pictures, write these notes and head back to the car under a grey sky with nothing but the cry of buzzards overhead.

We’d been told that the access had been improved since last we were here, and indeed the path is much easier to get a buggy up, but why go through all that bother and leave the manky old metal kissing gate? Thus not making it any more accessible? World Heritage Site rules and regs I guess.

There were folks doing the ‘stoneage soundtracks’ thing, humming and ohmming etc. And from my postion at the time, in the ‘courtyard’ down on the deck, looking at the textures, it did seem to have a definite effect. Mucho resonance etc. The hummers then spoiled this by making gyets of themselves, but it’s West Kennet, it attracts all types. At least they didn’t damage anything in the name of being reverent.

Really smooth polisher on the inside, to the right. Not noticed it before reading this website.

No fences/stiles to climb from the carpark! Hoorah! Fairly easy to get the buggy up to the top.

Slightly perplexed by the amount of chalk and stuff being excavated by the wildlife, but hey, I guess this place has put up with a lot of that over the years. Mildly intigued by the horseshoe shaped patches of darker colour in the grass, mycelial? Or archaeological? There are numerous wee hollows, maybe traces of old stuff? Some are big enough to hide from the wind.

Not very quiet on a summer afternoon, due to the near constant thrum of ‘copters and microlites photographing the inevitable crop circles below the scarp. Combine this with the noise from Salisbury Plain, and it may be better to visit a it later in the day if you want to let your mind drift and ponder in peace.

If you are in a car, and heading up this way, it’s not as bad a climb as it looks from the road. We managed to get the three-wheeler buggy up there, but had to lift it over a couple of stiles.

The mound and the view are as amazing as is related below, as is the whopping great sense of place, though I think the mound is an essential part of this. I found it to have a sentinel-like air to it. As if it were monitoring those who pass from the Vale of Pewsy, whilst keeping an eye on Salisbury Plain. It felt to me like there should have been biiiig music. If you plan to spend time here, take some sounds, maybe something soaring...

Ahem. ‘Nuff blurble. The thing that really got me about this place is the little earthworks at the sides, and the (presumably quarried) bit to the NE. Perfectly ambiguous, what are they for? Ae they contemporary with the mound? Have they anything to do with the mostly dissappeared stones of the facade? Speaking of which, have a root about and they can still be seen. They looked a bit like limestone, possibly brought a distance, making the place even more special.

Mrs Wild Wooder and I visited Rempstone yesterday Sunday 15th August. I can report that there doesn’t seem to be an excess of rubbish trimmings from the forestry operations any more. One stone is visible by driving past it but I’m not sure whether any casual passer-by in a car would notice it. I did because I was looking for the stones. Many thanks to Texlahome for the tip on looking for the footpath to Nine Barrows, otherwise a site which is far from easy to find. The stone by the road is impressive in that although well worn at the top, the base is quite clearly as near as dammit a perfect square and must have been dressed by a skilled mason quite a few thousand years ago.
Placed my hand on the stone and felt quite humble.

The site is still very peaceful although not all the stones are obvious. There is a very interesting website with a useful plan of the stone by Phillip Dunn at freespace.virgin.net/philip.dunn/sites/rempstone.htm

Worth a look for further info.

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Sorry, just noticed this link is already at the bottom of this string. Anyway, it’s still worth looking at.

Finally we walked to the third circle. I realised what an elevated position this has compared to the other two. The vistas that are revealed are quite different: suddenly you can see out to ( what I now realise is the Blackdown Hills, where Beacon Batch is, and from where you can see Everywhere), and to my astonishment and delight, there was Kelston Round Hill on Lansdown – a marker which I feel more and more certain was acknowledged by our ancestors (but more on this when I can order my thoughts). Also for the first time I realised where the Cove is from this circle – you can see the wall of the Druids Arms garden. It would be so nice to be able to walk in a logical manner towards it from here, instead of back around the village. The church is so close by – superbly located to keep an eye on all three parts of this megalithic complex.

Although I didn’t notice it, there is apparently a stone visible in the centre of this small circle. My companions and I were quite interested in the types of stone utilised. According to the EH smr they are ‘dolomitic conglomerate’ (which must be the red one with bits in), ‘sandstone’ (we found a clearly sedimentary rock in the main circle) and ‘oolitic limestone’ (holey, as you would see at Bathampton or the Rollrights), all of which it says could have been collected from within six miles of the site. In our examination of the stones we noticed that there seemed to have been a certain amount of digging around several of them in this small circle. We would liked to have put it down to rabbits, who were obviously in residence, but there was something quite un-rabbitlike in the way great clods of turf had been ripped up. If it was an unscrupulous person, let’s hope they get the usual tide of bad luck that attends Messers With Stones, eh.

This circle is secluded (at least in the 21st century) but I felt like we were at the ‘top table’ of the Wedding. The land seems to drop gradually away in every direction; you seem to be on a little knoll especially chosen for the site. It is elegantly proportioned (though it is quite different with its stones much smaller than the similarly sized NE circle) and seems to fit its location very well.

With the cove becoming (almost) visible I was set to thinking about the functions of the different parts of the complex. Would you have gone to them all in a single visit? What routes would you have taken? It is hard to envisage such things with the village obscuring the possible intervisibility of sites and forcing you to walk the long way round.

They say size isn’t everything. Stanton Drew’s Great Circle may have the second largest diameter in the country, but (on this occasion at least) it left me unmoved and I found much more to interest me in the smaller circles and the views of the surrounding landscape.

The large circle and its smaller cousin to the NE are close to the river Chew, at a point where it gets rather sinuous. Ideally I would have liked to start down by the river and walked up to the circles, up along the avenues – this is surely the direction in which the complex was meant to be approached? Not only do the avenues point you this way, but the EH magnetometer survey (linked to by Chris Collyer on the main page) revealed that the original (huge) Neolithic henge had its entrance in this direction.

If you walk as far as the fence will let you by the north east circle, you will realise that the circles are situated on quite a slope. You need to walk uphill (and curiously, not straight uphill, but across the slope to the smaller circle) to process up the avenues to the circles. It would not be easy – in fact, I think it would be impossible in the case of the great circle – to see what was going on in there until you got closer. Maybe this is deliberate. There’s much to be said for conducting your affairs with an element of mystery and hiddenness (think Christian rood-screens etc). Imagine the imposing effect when the timber circles stood there (see below).

The small north east circle is (and I mean this) fantastic. Not only has it managed to retain its complete quota of stones (eight), it seems to be the most perfectly and pleasingly proportioned circle I have ever visited. The stones are huge compared to the space they enclose. They create an extremely agreeable space. My distinguished companion Nigel seemed to nurture similar warm thoughts towards these stones.
The EH magnetometer survey showed that there had been four holes in the centre of this circle – were these ‘ritual pits’ or the sockets for more stones, now disappeared?
{I spotted this particular circle from a plane when flying into land at Bristol airport: something you may also like to try to take your mind off your nausea}

Staring you in the face from this circle is Maes Knoll, a distinctively shaped flat-topped hill and Iron Age fort. On its left end we could see a bump (known as the ‘tump’?). How much of the hill’s shape is natural and how much man-made I don’t know, but it surely drew the eye from Stanton Drew even in the Neolithic. I’d like to think Hautville’s Quoit and the hill are in a direct line with the circle, but I fear having looked at the map this isn’t true. [However, since this I’ve read that the the great and NE circles line up with the Cove, and the Great and SW circles line up with the Quoit]. Folklore says the Quoit was thrown from Maes Knoll, which at least connects the sites in local consciousness.

Although I didn’t exercise my imagination enough to appreciate it, the main ‘arena’ of the Great Circle must have looked outrageous in its heyday. Nine concentric circles of pits (up to 95m in diameter) were found by the magnetometer survey. Each pit was 1-2m in diameter and it is thought that at least some of them contained massive wooden posts, as at Woodhenge. Perhaps they formed part of a building, or maybe the area was open to the sky. Whatever, the pit circles are the largest and most numerous found anywhere so far. Later of course the stones were put up at the perimeter of the circle, and that is all we can see today.

This site is located within sight and slightly uphill of the Caperby circle. It’s is a strange one. Ring Cairn or Circle? I’m not sure which so I’ll steer on the side of caution and call it a ring cairn.
Dimensionally it is 18m N-S 16m E-W and is composed of lots of stones large and small in what once may have been a rubble bank. It’s very difficult to interpret the site from what remains. There appears to mave been a cairn in the south west quadrant as signified by a large stone and a number of smaller stones around it.
There could be an outlier 50m to the north east and a possible row running north east from this stone.
There is a low earthwork running from the south western edge of the cairn across the plain to the edge of Haw Bank.
All in all a very strange area, with plenty going on.

I walked up to this circle via Woodhall. You could try the direct approach from the carpark at Haw Bank but I wouldn’t recommend it.
The walk from Woodhall takes you up a metalled path and then round to the ford maked on the OS map. There is no easy way past here and the stream was a raging torrent when I was there.
After the ford it’s all plain sailing. Between Haw Bank and the Ox Close Scar is a long broad plain. There has been extensive lead mining operations here and the lead mines themselves are outrageous. A huge rock face honeycombed with small tunnels.
The circle itself is on a rise just beyond these workings.
According to Burl “At Caperby near Ayresgarth in West Yorkshire are the weathered stones of an embanked oval 28 X 23.8m, its pillars of local gritstone up to 1.2m long. They lie on an overgrown bank. There is a low disturbed mound at the centre.”

I’ve not too much to add to Burl’s description. The central mound appears to have been a cairn and is 6m in diameter.

Just before you arrive at the circle you may notice a low earthwork running north to south across the terrace. The earthwork is quite a subtle feature and appears to be composed of earth & stones.There is another earthwork of a similar nature and also running north to south and terminating at the nearby ring cairn. These earthworks seem to be some form of boundary and there are a few low-lying possible cairns within this area. Possibly a prehistoric cemetary boundary?.

This rock is down near the valley floor of Osmonds Gill. The best way to approach it is to carefully scamble down the Gill from the south, you’ll see it amongst a bunch of boulders to your left.
This rock is No.68 in Beckensall & Lauries “Prehistoric Rock Art of County Durham, Swaledale & Wensleydale”.

My GPS says NZ056407969 but if you looking for this circle you shouldn’t need a gps and it lays beside a well-worn footpath and at the head of Osmonds Gill (marked Osmiril Gill on the OS maps).
When you arrive at the circle, park your arse down and look north, then you’ll understand why it’s there. First thing you’ll see is the mysterious deep dry valley of Osmonds Gill and beyond that stretching across the northern horizon, County Durham. The view is breathtaking.
The circle is approximately 12m in diameter and is composed of 7 sandstone blocks all of which look like they’ve been toppled. The two largest stones are in the north & south. There is a possible outlying stone to the west. The area has suffered from a degree of subsidence leaving the circle on uneven ground. One of the stones has another stone alongside of it covering a deep hole, if you tap this stone it gives a satisfying ring like some deep megalithic bass drum. Some of the stones are cupmarked although there are also ‘erosion cups’. One of the stones has a faintly carved cross upon it. Christianise this place – fat chance.

Quelle horeure! Chambered cairn meets Gardeners’ World.

Just for the record, what we have here are the W and N stones of a E facing chamber. Of curiosity value only but, depending on where you park, you’ll pass it on the way to The MacLeod Stone.

Visited 30 July 2004

This cupmarked cairn lies close to the footpath to on the higher ground at the head of Osmonds Gill and just south of the stone circle. The cairn is appox 8m in diameter and has a cupmarked rock on the south side.

I parked up at beside the cattle grid at NZ069066 and took the path that follows the field wall through the water meadow. In his book “The Prehistoric Rock Art of County Durham, Swaledale and Wensledale” Stan Beckensall and Tim Laurie write that, ’ It is a grouse preserve and an import consevation area for ground-nesting birds during spring & early summer, when disturbance is not advised”.
I would like to add to this that in August all this preservation comes to an end when gangs of armed men roam the moors and blast the birds to buggery.
As I crossed the Frankinshaw Well I could see lines of flag waving beaters moving across the moor in front of me. Driving the grouse to their fate.
I didn’t really want to catch the beaters up so I lingered a while around the eroded beck sides and was rewarded with a couple of worked flints.
On the rise,and beside the footpath, just up from the beck is the cairn. It’s a low grassy knoll about 9m in diameter with a number of stones poking through the turf. At least two of these stones are cupmarked. One stone on the east of the cairn has a number of cups another stone on the north side has a large single cup and a ‘dumbell’ of two cups linked by a wide channel.