Latest Fieldnotes

In terms of actually visiting the site, I should point out that it’s in a private paddock, part of a large estate, I believe, at the back of the church. When I visited, the paddock was shared by a Shetland pony and a beautifully pristine white goat (ideal for sacrifice?).

To reach the stones: there is a wooden gate on the main B3095 just before the church if you are coming from Longbridge Deverill. Go through the gate into a small area of scrub land (I assume this is private, so obviously tread lightly), through which various paths meander up to the fence around the paddock containing the stones. That’s where I took the picture from.

There is also a more distant view of the stones from just along the side road to Maiden Bradley, and a private lane that goes to the large house.

I’ve been searching for these sarsen stones for some time...

The story in the area (see Folklore) is that these marked the place where King Alfred addressed his forces before the Battle of Edington.

They are believed to be the remains of a chambered mound, with the back and cap stones assumed to have been nabbed by a farmer. And on that theme, a Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine of 1877 states “certain large stones were examined: they are called ‘Egbert’s Stones’ or ‘King’s Stones’ and are spoken of by the Saxon Chroniclers; they were brought by a farmer from King’s Court Hill, where King Egbert is traditionally said to have held court…”

(’Kingston’ may mean ‘King’s stone’, or may not.)

Terence Meaden (albeit a controversial figure) has been campaigning for the stones to be returned to Court Hill (ST835368), where he believes the original chambered mound lay. (The area is rich in long barrows and tumuli.)

Look up at Quanterness Farm and the site is at the sub-rectangular plantation off a corner of the house just to its left (a plantation that I mistook for pasture when I looked on CANMORE the morn). The way I went was up a track before the farmtrack itself and then turning right at the modern little house. The plantation gates are scrappy and if it had not been attached to the big house a looksee might have been in order. But I figured there would be nothing to see under all those trees and left. Retracing my steps as I went round the corner I took a last look back and thought I saw the mound peeping through the trees at me. So if you’re desperate to notch this one on your belt you can.

Strictly speaking, this is a pair of stones not a menhir but who cares – it’s the one that’s still standing which is going to get the attention.

And why not? Its full 5m and curving shape means it looks great from any angle.

Easy to visit. Park by the beach, walk up the road and cross by the helpful stile.

Combine it with your Machrie Moor trip.

Visited 11th October 2003: Easy to find and relatively easy to get at. We asked about the stone at the museum, and although they couldn’t help at the time I got some information from them through the post (currently ‘misplaced’). Not exactly a megalithic wonder, but if you’re in the Peterborough area then you’re not spoilt for choice.

I had spotted this wee stone in the fiels just east of Dunrobin Castle on the drive north, but didn’t stop at that time. Managed to park in the field entrance on the way back down the road and went to investigate (can’t find anything at all about this stone in Canmore). It has the right feel to it, though (i.e. not a rubbing stone), but is sadly neglected. The stone itself is mainly propped up now by pieces which have been knocked off, as can be seen in the photographs. Some of those pieces are very newly knocked off too, and the care taken by the farmer can be seen in the way the crops grow right up against the stone. I have to confess to not having walked very carefully on the way back from this stone, I was so annoyed.

I suspect that this is part of the Duke of Sutherland’s estate, being so close to Dunrobin. Fairly typical of the care for the people and landscape that these scum have shown down the years. The landscape above Golspie is dominated by a monstrous statue of the cretin responsible for the Clearances. One of these fine days we may be able to treat this excresence to a proper and fitting end, just the way that they treated the land and people. It’s even visible in one of the photographs, it can be seen from so far away!

These stones lie just north of the track to Achnagarron farm, on a small prominence with a lot of other stones lying around. I couldn’t discern any real pattern in the other stones, but had the feeling all the time I looked around that these were part of a larger complex. Maybe not, maybe it’s just me!

Two fairly solid stones, about 1.5m tall, and orientated roughly NE-SW.

This is so disrupted as to be barely worth bothering with, I only included it out of completeness. Set just back off the road, and now enclosed by deer-proof fencing, it has been recently planted round with trees so should enjoy a little more protection, though as I said there’s not much left.

I tried to get into this one, but I’m a big lad, and was well happed up (bitterly cold day) and just couldn’t squeeze down the steps whether trying to go forward or backwards, so had to content myself with a couple of photographs of the steps disappearing downwards. From what Martin says, this one sounds like a job for small skinny people clad in wet-suits!

Yet another chambered cairn where most of the stones have disappeared over the years and the central chamber stones are most of what remains. This is quite a big one, though, and almost resembles a small stone circle. It’s set back around 100m in from the road on a small prominence, and is easily spotted and visited.

Another ruined chambered cairn right beside the road, which makes for relatively easy access. Again, much of the cairn itself has disappeared, but the main stones of the central chamber remain.

Lying beside the road on the north side of Loch Assynt, the remains of the cairn are on a small hill just beside the ruins of Ardvreck Castle. It’s a beautiful place to stop, however, as the views are great. Just a bit further along the road we stopped below some crags to spend 20 minutes watching a golden eagle float silently above us.

A couple of the photographs of the cairn are a bit streaky, I’m not sure why this happened. The central chamber is still partially intact.

Very disrupted and ruinous, this chambered cairn lies at the roadside on the shores of Loch Borralan. There isn’t much to see, in all honesty.

Stuck in fairly boggy ground, this broch, so I didn’t manage to get very close to it.

As Lianachan correctly points out, this is in fact the remains of the broch and not a cairn! I couldn’t get across the river to this one, so had to content myself with a couple of photographs. In dry weather it may be possible to ford the Loth, but not after the rain there had been some days I was up there! Don’t make the same mistake I did and assume the sheep-fold just north of this as the broch....

A nice wee pair of stones sited just above the bridge where Glen Sletdale meets Glen Loth – a fairly classic confluence siting. Neither are very tall, about 1m in height, and running approximately E-W. They stand beside a fairly abrupt drop down into Sletdale, and care should be taken up here! It’s quite a long fall down into the burn...

Hamish is right about the distance this one is away from the road, the climb back up, through heather and bog, is pretty sapping. Having said that, it’s well worth the effort – this stone is a good 11 feet tall. Strange surface, pitted with dozens of tiny little holes (visible in one of the close-up photographs) and one possible cup mark, which I also photographed. A bright, cold May day when I had a look at this one, with a brisk northerly wind which discouraged lingering to enjoy the view back down the glen.

There are many burial cairns scattered about The Ord. The remains of the cairn tombs are the most obvious neolthic remains, but there are other burial cairns, a burnt mound and innumerable hut circles. I have attached a photograph of one of the burial cairns.

hi Paulus and friends,
well just a wee amendment to the travel details to the sight.coming from glasgow or from the west , there are parking spaces right beside the quarry entrance on both sides of the road 50 meters from the quarry entrance.Or, you can check with the guy at the weighbridge beside the entrance and drive up.The roads not perfect but any car will make it fine.Otherwise its a 30 minute hike all the way up.As Paulus said, the site is right at the top of the hill and is noted as an iron age fortification.Like many such sites though , it has been used by all peoples from many epochs.
Now, I have to admit that in my excitement to go see, i presumed that the carvings were on one particular boulder .So, I spent all day hunting for the elusive markings but on reflection I was standing on the darned thing looking for what was beneath my feet.So,sorry..I cant post anything interesting.Its actually the whole east facing outcrop which is pretty much overgrown.Its only when I came back and reviewed the data that I realised what a chump i had been.Anyway, shall be going back in the next few days to do some proper investigation.
cheers for now
macmegalith

According to the RSM, this is a 0.7m tall stone, roughly square in section, with grooves on the top, with modern graffitti on the SE side.

A charter of 1238 refers to the stone as ‘The great standing stone on the height’. It’s always seemed odd to me that a stone described as such could be the same one that’s also described as being 70cm tall. There are titchy standing stones in Northumberland, but they rarely get described as ‘great’. The discrepancy here is presumably due to a data entry error or somesuch, as the stone at Bunkerhill looks more like 1.7m tall rather than 0.7m. So still not great in terms of size, but a nice stone nonetheless.

It’s just inside a patch of trees on a very exposed hill with a fantastic view of Hunterheugh, Beanley Moor and Cheviot.

The remains of a tatty old wooden fence, (the kind that normally gets put up to protect stones from being used as rubbing posts) has luckily protected the stone from the top of a fallen pine tree whacking into it.

It’s a fair hike from the entrance to Hulne Park, and permission should be sought before visiting, as access to the northern tracks in the park is restricted.

The easiest way to access this site is to park up at SE527939 and follow the footpath up onto the ridge, the Ridge runs between Parci Gill to the east and Arns Gill to the west.
Once you pass the small conifer plantation to your left you will start to notice the small cairns and low walls poking through the heather. I was quite fortunate when I visited the site as the gamekeepers had burned-back a substantial amount of heather thus exposing large amounts of the site.
There are no sheep on this part of the moor, so the only company I had was a solitary snipe who followed me around the moor singing out her shrill warning to no-one in particular that there was a stranger on the moor.
As you move up the ridge, the freqency of cairns and low walls increases until you find yourself in an area that I can only describe as ‘cairn chaos’. There are alignments everywhere -irregularly regular comes to mind. The local name for this place is ‘Stone Folds‘
My 21st century head tells me that there should be fields with cairns on the margins but this just isn’t the case here. There are wall enclosing cairns and walls leading from one cairn to another. Despite the huge efforts of creating the cairns, the ground around them remains very stoney.
I can’t make head nor tail of whats going on.
There is one well defined recto-linear ‘field’ but every thing else is chaos. My mind is flooded with questions.
Why so many cairns? over 300 of them.
Why did they create so many small cairns as opposed to a number of large cairns?
What was the purpose of the walling ?
A huge effort has gone into creating these cairns yet there are only two hut circles visible on the ridge and these are only about 10m in diameter. Did the creators of the cairnfield live here?

If the purpose of this site was for agriculture, I very much doubt that it would have been a place for growing crops, the ground is just too stoney, therefore it would have had to have been a place where animals were kept possibly a prehistoric stock yard. The ridge is known as ‘Cow Ridge’ But I’m still not convinced, the place is just TOO busy.

There have been a number of Mesolithic flints found on the western side of the ridge so this place was visited by the earliest of the North York Moors peoples. Could it be that this place is more than a mundane agricultural site?

Another reason to mooch up here is the views. To the south east you have the two great whalebacks of Hawnby Hill and Easterside Hill with the Tabular Hills beyond. To the south you have the imposing massif of Arden ( Arden – Wolves or Eagles Valley) Great Moor which terminates in the south west at Black Hambleton. To the east, west and north you have the vast expanse of the North York moors with it’s ridges and valleys stretching to the horizon.

All in all I would recommend that you check this place out. It will probably confuse the crap out of you, but there’s nowt wrong with that.

I was up at this site yesterday with Steve Grey.
It’s a nightmare to interpret.
I have searched the books and have only been able to come up with one reference to these stones (see misc).
Basically what you have is two pairs of standing stones aligned to the cardinal points. Steve has some very credible theories as to how a circle could have been constructed around these stones and why the other stones have been removed.
On further investigation we found a number of large stones, on the other side of the stone wall in the plantation, some of which showed evidence that they had once been upright.
The moor itself is a megalithic jumble, there are other stones that have obviously been stood up, one intersting group forms part of a linear earthwork running across the contour at approx SE473955 and is similar in nature to the cross ridge dykes found on other parts of the moors.
One thing you can’t ignore with this site is it’s setting. It is in the shadow of Black Hambleton and close to the prehistoric ridgeway of Hambleton Street and the views across the northern part of the Vale of York to the Pennines beyond.
Black Hambleton is a beautiful hill that can be seen from many sites across the moors as well as from the Pennines and the Vale of York.
The vibe of this site is very similar to that of the High Bridestones – we know something was going on here but we’re not sure what. A possible circle/row in the shadow of an impressive hill close to a major prehistoric trade route.

I’m gonna be cautious and call this a hut circle. It’s a circular embanked earthwork approx 8m in diameter with no obvious entrance. It sits on a promontary above the popular picnic spot of Sheepwash. I would love to call it a ring cairn but due to the wrecked nature of the site I can’t quite bring myself to do it.

Back up there yesterday.
The easiest way to get up to the site is to follow the footpath at SE56729750. The footpath sign is currently buried in a mass of trees by the roadside but it’s still there.

For access, see Drannandow.

Very ruined stone circle which once was 26m in diameter. This width and the absence of stones (five remain standing) make it difficult to photograph.

Also difficult to know that you are “there” with so many other stones in the area. An 8-figure grid reference (NX39997099) and a GPS may give some confidence.

Visited 2 May 2004