Latest Fieldnotes

Visited 23rd September 2003: This cairn is a bit of a mess, but represents the last survivor of a number that once stood in the area (according to the NMR). There’s a gateway opposite the cairn, but the cairn material isn’t easy to see without taking a closer look.

As a Hill Runner who has raced up Largo Law on several occasions, the Lundin Links stones hold a special place for me.
The site must have held special significance and offered a place of worship toward Largo Law and North Berwick Law at the other side of the Firth of Forth. Isolated hills which oversee the mouth of the firth of forth holding a special place. The shape of the stones was quite awesome with one in particular being gravity defiying – a construction of superb engineering.I hope to get back at sunset in June to see what the impact is.
As the stones are situated on the middle of a fairway at the golf course it is worth asking permission 1st – although we were met with a knowing smile. Two groups as different as golfers and pre-historians sharing something adds to the vibe.

This solitary barrow can no longer be seen on the ground. In fact I know of no one who remembers it being here...but everybody in the area refers to the graveyard and Chapel nearby as Mabel Barrow!
I felt I had to include it as I can see the site when I look up from the computer screen.

The largest of what is becomming an ever growing number of settlements in Pelynt parish. Permission to visit them should be asked at Hall Barton Farm in Pelynt village.

All that remains of this fort is the oval shaped hedge and bank that surrounds a field. It position in the West Looe valley would have made it difficult to attack being on a steep sided promontry. Originally a small round fort at the north end, another circle was added to fill the current space. Eventually the Giants Hedge was built on the east side and this became the main defensive wall.

During the dark ages it was the site of a hermitage and Chapel for St Nunna, the mother of St David. An unspoilt well that bears her name is just to the north.

I had seen this site on the map but until now had never seen or heard anyone talk of it. Last night I was shown an arial photo and within the next couple of weeks I will go and have a look at what has been described as a low bank.
I am amazed at the amount of settlements that we have in this small corner of South East Cornwall. Is it a coincidence that many of them are on the high land above the Giants Hedge?

I have just been shown an ariel photo of the field marked as Barcelona on the OS map. There is a large circle showing slap bang in the middle. According to the local historian (who lives not far from the site) a dig was done a few years ago and a ditch was discovered on the outside of the circle.
Looking at the field today nothing can be seen from the ground. Four fields away to the NW another settlement is marked on the map. Both are inside the area encircled by the Giants Hedge.

Visited 23rd September 2003: The area around Hirfaen Gwyddog is very rural, so I was a bit surprised to find a lorry maintenance depot directly to the south east of the stone. Here I asked about access, and they invited me to park the car in the yard and walk up to the stone over the fields behind them. With Alfie on my back I headed off, expecting more of an uphill slog than I got.

As the hill leveled out we saw the stone, sitting unassumingly below the horizon on a field boundary. Two gates later we were there, and it didn’t seem understated any more. The stone itself was magnificent, lit up by bright sunshine against a troubled sky. The strange diagonal markings near the tip of the stone looked like gills, and the point of the tip was sharp like a shark’s nose. Not a shape I’ve ever seen before, and clearly chosen for the shape by the people who erected it. I was pleased to see that the barbed wire I’d seen looped around the stone in photos was gone (nice new fence as well).

Alfie played while I took photos from every angle I could. It was addictive, and I didn’t want to leave. Every time the clouds moved, the light changed, and I needed to take more! What a fantastic place. Must go back soon!

This barrow (CAU named it), sits just north of the South West Coast Path between Downderry and Portwrinkle. I have passed it but not had a close look. Can also be accessed from the B3247, park near the 141 contour mark.

OK, hands up who’s parked in the car park and walked to The Hurlers and missed this?

Easily done, don’t look much like a barrow I agree. But this my friends is how Minions got its name. On an 1845 map of the area the only thing marked (apart from mines) are the Hurlers and the Minions Barrow.

Nowadays it sits entombed behind a 4ft high granite wall and I can find no record of any dig ever being done on it . Possibly because it had been “explored” by local miners same as the Rillaton Barrow.

Just west of the mound is another tumuli which has definatly been dug into. This is the one that seems to be marked as the Minions Mound on the OS map, belive me it ain’t!

This stone is a possible.

On the upper surface of the stone are a number of depressions that could be heavily eroded cup marks. Anyone who knows the area knows that these are sometimes difficult to distinguish between natural erosion. However the two of us who visited this stone were sufficiently impressed that we thought it should be included here so others can cast judgement in future.

The stone itself, although very large and weighing several tons is clearly out of place, since it now sits in the middle of a small spring bed. It appears to have fallen down the hill and ended up here.

This site appears to be a four poster type grave site. It’s not a stone circle as far as I can see, it sits within the remains of the collapsed burial mound.

Visited 20th September 2003: We visited the barrow on a circular walk, but if you wanted to see it for its own sake access is reasonably good. The nearest road is only half a mile away, and the barrow itself is on a public footpath.

Round barrows are quite unusual in this area (round cairns are much more common), but Gelli is one of a small selection that have survived. There’s a relatively modern hedge bank (minus the hedge) running through the barrow, so from some angles it looks very wrong. The lack of cultivation in the area means that the barrow mound is still quite large, but I have no recollection of seeing a surrounding of ditch.

Not a spectacular site, but a nice enough place to visit if you’re based in the area. The gradient from the road to the barrow is relatively shallow, but the path isn’t good enough to get a wheelchair up without some difficulty.

As an aside, I only realised after our visit that Gelli is visible against the skyline from Banc Bwa-Drain, so now I get to see it on a regular basis (as a tiny lump in the distance).

The thought of a Chambered Cairn may not excite you compared with some of the other places mentioned on this web site but the StockieMuir Chambered Cairn was worth the walk. It sits high up on the side of a Glen that rolls down for miles in a gentle slope to the banks of Loch Lomond. A better view can be had from the unusual rock formation that sits higher up the hill from us called the ‘Whangie’ but by the time we’d battled across the boggy ground to get here our new view seemed more worthwhile. The rocks that form this Cairn undoubtably came from the Whangie but here there is a river nearby and is obviously a good place for settlement. We did debate whether people settled near their dead but wherever it was they didn’t want to travel to far to bury them hence this Cairn. The Chambers have collapsed to form distinct indentations along its length but for all that its is ‘ruined’ it still impressed the hell out of me. How could I have lived in this area all my life and walked the nearby Queens view many times and never known this was here? Its a lot larger than the pictures seem to suggest. Take your directions from Greyweathers postings and don’t do what we did which was to walk ‘as the crow flies’ straight at it. The going is heavy and the heather hides a few nasty surprises such as boggy holes in which to sink your legs knee deep.

Visited 28th August 2003: Robin Hood’s Stone is no longer in its original position, having been moved to accommodate housing development in 1928. It now stands behind railings on the corner where Archerfield Road meets Booker Avenue (the grid reference is less accurate than this description). An accompanying plaque explains the stone’s origins (see below).

The side of the stone that originally faced south now faces south east. It originally stood approximately 60 meters away to the north, presumably inconveniently situated where a nice ‘modern semi detached house was planned (otherwise it would have made a lovely garden feature). The top of the stone is weathered into vertical grooves.

[visited 3/4/4] I’ve been angling to come here for ages ever since I saw The Pikestones and wondered just how they got that far north. Access is good, you can park to within metres of the stones & then through a gate.

So accompanied by loud barking I got to see a very impressive chambered tomb facing almost true west. It used to be 100 odd metres long and had a cresentic forecourt with cobbling! Very similar in style to other outliers of the cotswolds barrows, a vein of which seem to be clinging to the western edge of englands central hills. If this mound was covered in white as per mounds further south, it would have been visible far out into the western plains.

I met a very helpful local who pointed out some stones can be still be seen in the small grove of trees on the way into the site and on the other side of the access road, but most were taken away when the road was metalled. Apparently the stones are named as a result of a wedding being held here in the 1930s, what they were called before then is unrecorded.

[visited 3/4/4] I eyed this up in the car on the way south to Congleton, on the OS map and as I approached the Bridestones, the recomendation by a helpful local was just the icing on the top! Well worth a visit for the views with amazing views in 360 degrees. Access is for the vaguely fit and up a muddy path.

You can literally see for miles from up here, it was too hazy for me but the helpful arrows-pointing-at-things-in-the-distance pointed at stuff 50+ miles away.

To have been buried at the The Bridestones would have been a momentous thing indeed...

[visited 3/4/4] “Unique in england” according to Dyer and I’m sure he’s not wrong about that. Dyer says this is a neolithic chambered cairn at the Northern end with a later southern barrow with connecting bank. The bank was built with two rows of upright limestone slabs and this is visible (I think) leading away from the southern mound. Burials were found in the northern end and cremations along the bank and at the south.

Access is inadequate, you can get to wall of the field it’s half in by car but otherwise its through a stile thing or over a gate.

Well, I didn’t know what to expect with this and left not quite sure whats going on. It is a little gem tucked away but spoilt somewhat by the fence and tank as stubob says. Its been dug into quite a bit as well, so don’t come expecting a show site! That said it is a real enigma and I’m not surprised its been put in as a bank barrow. The connecting mound is large, 2m odd high and 10m across, but the dimensions as a whole are wrong in my opinion for it to be linked with say, Long Bredy bank barrow.

Seen from behind it does resemble a broch with tower slightly more. What is certain to me is that it is nothing like the Ring of Bookan, the ringwork is just that. You can see that how close it would have been to the water’s edge when sea-levels were higher. This time I had a closer look at the part of the site the other side of the farmtrack. Though overall lower than the putative broch side there is evidently a lot more going on in terms of structures, many obvious lumps and bumps. Doesn’t need much of a look to see where a stream passed by the edge of the site, a circumstance that by now feels diagnostic to me of a cliffside broch (those further uphill we presume to have had wells, though we never did find one at The Howe and joked that it lay under the site hut!). There do, though, appear to be a couple of very small bumps the other side of this . It is possible the site continues up to the farm roadside as there are probable structures just below there, either that or a slght relocation in later times.

Visited 27th August 2003: Signposted from the A25, a tiny dead-end road runs past the field where Arragon Moar Circle sits. The road is only really used by farm traffic, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was private. There’s an absence of any signage to tell you where to stop once you’ve left the A25, so a map is very handy.

About 1km along the road it changes direction (turning south) and there’s a gateless gateway into a field straight ahead of you. This is the best place to park and view the circle (and it’s neighbor, Arragon Mooar Burial Cairn) from afar, or get a closer look by continuing on foot. When we visited Arragon Moar the field had recently been ploughed, and everywhere was really dry and dusty in a Holy Land kid of way. We parked up, and tramped through the dust to the circle.

Of course it’s not really a stone circle (there aren’t any true stone circles on Mann), but the site does consist of a close circle of relatively large orthostats sticking up out of a mound. Once this was a burial cairn, but now it may as well be an embanked stone circle, the end result is so darned close.

The views out to sea from Arragon Moar Circle are spectacular, especially looking south west towards Langness. If Arragon Mooar Circle and Arragon Mooar Burial Cairn are related to each another, then the circle must represent the burial of a superior chief/priest because it’s got a much better position (in my humble). High up, overlooking the sea in one direction and the rolling fertile landscape in the other, it’s a potent place to put a tomb. Well worth a visit, but like so many of the sites on Mann, not even slightly wheelchair friendly.

Visited 27th August 2003: Arragon Mooar Burial Cairn isn’t as accessible as Arragon Moar Circle (presumably you’d need the farmer’s permission to visit it). From the road it appears to be smaller and less dramatic. The two sites are intervisible and it seems likely they’re part of the same cemetery. Our ‘visit‘ was more a case of admiring from afar (from the point where the small road to the south of the site bends sharply south). For details of where to park etc see my fieldnotes for Arragon Moar Circle.

A short walk over marshy ground (on raised boardwalk), leads past the cairns. Locally known as Carn of Get, and signposted as such. The cairn is open to the sky, and the floor is concreted, which detracts from the site’s character. More interesting is the surrounding landscape, which demonstrates the continuity of existence in the crofting ‘lowlands beyond the highlands’ (there are no mountains in the far NE of Scotland) – the surroundings abound with scraps of cairn and low stones, to the NNE is Garywhin fort. Continue a short way along the path to reach a sizeable, ruined dam, which probably fed the 19th century corn mill at Whaligeo.

There is parking for one (small) car by the path, or, provided it is done considerately, more space just before the private farm road a short distance further on.

Actually you are unlikely to get to this the easy way as this approach, which starts at a wartime road below Water Board property, requires mounting two gates. Moth & Jane went through Work farm but make sure this is not lambing time. This is a long (h)low mound [153’x40’x6’] with four horns. At the summit a cavity contained slabs set on edge. At the higher end are massive flagstones on edge or on end appear at irregular intervals. They are perpendicular to the axis except for the taller one at the E end which is at a different angle.
Not named on the 1:25,000 is a stretch of the cliffs N of Long Cairn called The Castle, almost a stack

The British Camp has to be one of the first ancient monuments I can remember being taken to see as a child. I have very clear memories of playing with my sister on the side of the ramparts on a hot summer’s day, and can still visualise rolling down the grassy slopes. I think I was pretending to be a medieval archer, as my brain wasn’t able to compute anything much before the 13thC BCE timewise. I do remember feeling that it was an utterly awesome place, and very special. I believe I was about 14 yrs old, and hadn’t yet become obsessed with things megalithic.

I recall wondering why the British camped there when they had the whole of the country to camp in, and wondered how long ago they camped in the place, in what sort of tents, and why would they camp on something with so many banks? Seriously. I was an odd child, but that won’t surprise readers of this site.

Nine years later, I returned for a nostalgic visit, and can well remember approaching the British Camp from the opposite end of the Malverns. I was deeply impressed with it’s size and construction. Through the haze of an August afternoon, in hills covered with banks of rosebay willowherb, the ramparts of this phenomenal fort shimmered into view, huge, impressive, daunting, and glorious at the same time. We didn’t quite make the fort itself on that occasion; but that view on an English summer’s day, with Elgar’s music in my mind (he lived in Great Malvern), will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I’m surprised it hasn’t been covered in fieldnotes before, so do take a day out to visit (probably mid-week, to avoid the crowds), as it is wonderful. Jane, it would be a definite subject for a painting!

It’s a walk of about one mile to Thor’s Cave, either down a dry valley from the village of Wetton or along a cyclepath which runs alongside the River Manifold.

I chose to approach the cave from the cyclepath, crossing the river on a footbridge below the cave. The riverbed is usually dry here, apart from in very wet weather, as the river disappears into swallowholes in the limestone bedrock and travels underground through this part of the valley.

Thor’s Cave is a popular calling point for visitors to the Dovedale area and the path up to the cave has been provided with many steps. The entrance to the cave can be very slippy on the usually wet floor, made smooth by the passage of many feet. An internal fissure allows light into the cave and a torch is required to explore its inner reaches.

Occupied from the end of the ice age, a Bronze Age burial has been found within.