Latest Fieldnotes

This fine old barrow is near Newport and can actually be seen as you pass junction 28 on the right.
If you come off at junction 28 take the A48 towards Cardiff,at the next roundabout turn right to Cleppa Park estate.As you enter the estate there is a roundabout,go straght ahead on the left is a lane.Find somewhere here to park and walk up the lane.After you cross the motorway there is a gap in the fence on the left.Go down the field through the trees and up the hill where you will see the stones.Well worth the effort.

...a piece of cake to find, thank God. Isolated on the edge of a field, it’s gorsey mound forcing the ground up slightly, we reached it as dusk fell and the hand of starvation threatened to force me to murder Moth and consume his flesh in some debauched food ritual.

A very impressive chamber about 8 metres long and high enough to force me to have to reach up to feel the stones overhead. I was intrigued by its isolation. Every other fogou we had visited had some sign of settlement very close or nearby. This has nothing now. Perhaps it once did.

It’ s clearly marked on the roadmap, but a reet bugger to find the access to. All the access roads to the Trelowarren estate said “No Entry” and we were on the verge of giving up when we stumbled across the main entrance back at the Garras end. Halligye fogou is clearly signposted once you’re in. But we were to be disappointed. It was already dusk and although we found the fogou, a padlocked metal gate barred our entry to the main passageway. But the approach itself is impressive: great keyhole-shaped slit in the earth, (Moth said he thought it looked like something specific to women, but I can’t repeat what here!) recently shored up with new walling and steps. But the fogou’s locked chastity belt prohibited us from further investigation.

Allowing our eyes to become accustomed to the blackness, we could just make our the creep at the end of the passage. I fear we missed something special here :-(

It was wonderful to see a fogou within the context of an ancient village and to muse upon what it might have been for. It was here that it became obvious to me that this fogou was a place to store the excess goodies; the community’s ‘bank’, ‘saving’s account’ or ‘life insurance’ policy, if you like. It’s construction is quite amazing, especially the internal beehive chamber, leading off from the main passageway – a masterpiece of engineering, 3 metres tall reaching up to ground level and 5 metres diameter.

The village is wonderful to walk around and easy to imagine a small community of farmers making a living from their land. As you stand in the ruins of their roundhouses you can almost smell the woodsmoke, hear the children playing, the grain being pounded, feel their tie to this land.

It was pouring with rain outside, so the shelter of Boleigh’s gaping dark mouth, moustached by moss and ferns and liverworts seemed rather attractive. The fogou is tall, 7 or 8 feet in places and about 9 metres long, perhaps more and beautifully corbelled. The creep leads off immediately to the left as you enter the fogou. I could just squeeze my child-bearing hips through the crack and I found the creep not only almost doubles back on itself, but rises to virtually ground level.

I loved it here! I felt so protected and quite happy. Not freaked at all.

To reach the entrance of the fogou you must wade in ankle deep slurry and shooo a splendid yet shitty herd of friesians to one side of the farmyard.

Moth’s maglite firmly gripped in hand, I stepped out of the slippy shit and into the darkness. The chamber has a narrow entrance and a steep drop. The height never allows you to stand up, so I walked along, hunchbacked, as far as I could go. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I realised that the fogou was Y-shaped, with another exquisitely corbelled passageway leading off to the left, just as long as the one I’d just come down – about 7 metres. And from the point where the two main chambers meet, down at the bottom, a little square hole no more than 18 inches high. This is the creep. Squatting down in the mud I shone my torch through the hole to view a rock-cut passageway, again perhaps 7 metres long. For a moment, I felt like Howard Carter! It was only the mud that pervented me squeezing through, though this was no bar for Moth who disappeared through it like a small boy up a chimney. We loved this fogou!

Friday 12 March 2004
The bank (in the same field but ‘opposite corner’ to Brane Barrow) does have quite a long-barrowy look. Not altogether convinced, but possible! Worth a look if you’re at Brane Barrow.

(Wish I’d taken a photie now!)

MARCH 15th: Just back from Tankerness again (to take 2 photos of the Grieves Cottage stone’s placement) and the presence of two swans in the loch I took as a sign to go there again. Slabs are still visible, though no obvious structures. Stepping back I was surprised to see an apparent small oval structure abutting one of the large flags. Not a simple slab outline but I couldn’t help wondering if this was what Raymond Lamb had seen – maybe after the drought of 1980 the loch never recovered its former level and indeed receded further?

Perhaps in Mesolithic times this wasn’t even a lochan. When I stepped back up the hill the ‘structure’ seemed to merge into other stones about so it went unphotographed. One very peculiar feature to report was that one ‘corner’ was a red stone ball about six inches across. Actually it is completely and minutely speckled with minerals.

The cairns are well preserved but overgrown with gorse so getting in is nigh-on impossible. There are some signs of field clearance- a pile of stones 200m N/NE from the castle and a field wall that can be seen running parallel to the path in one of my images.

Take the B4235 towards Usk, at Gaer Llwyd there is a cross roads by a church. In the field opposite there is this magnificent old burial chamber. I tried to find someone to ask permission to enter the field but no luck so I climbed the wooden fence and went to have a look. If you are going this way have a look it is well worth it.

Not entirely easy to find the entrance to this fogou faces seaward in the top edge of a field just off to the left of a track that exits the village at the north.

It was thrilling to find, but disappointing after Pendeen, for this fogou allows you in for the first six feet only before you meet a barrier. It’s been walled-up. Cheers National Trust! Fortunately, NT have not trashed the double entrances and despite the walling-up, it remains a delight to see a fogou lurking in the corner of a forgotten field.

On the eastern edge of St Mary’s, walking south between Innisidgen and Porth Hellick Downs the path passes over Gap Point towards Deep Point where Moth and I spotted five further chambered cairns in varying stages of ruin, peeping out from the carpet of heathers, gorse and moss.

Along the southern end of St Mary’s, Salakee Downs is peppered with chambered cairns, but the gorse and bramble was impenetrable at times. Fortunately for us, there had been a bit of fire which revealed some of the cairns marked on the map. We found one about 7ms in diameter with a virtually complete kerb, with maybe only two of the stones now fallen.

My first Scillonian chambered cairn – and what a place to start! Much restored, this lovely kerbed, stepped cairn nestles into a wall, facing east at the northern end of the island, overlooking Tresco. The four capstones are all exposed and the chamber is about 5 metres in length. There are a lot of stones lying about which were once part of it, but never properly replaced after its early 20th century excavation and rebuild. Nevertheless, this is a real beauty and very evocative.

I sat and marvelled at it in the sparkling light and found myself, Francis of Assisi-like – surrounded by birds: song thrushes, mistle thrushes and to my sheer delight, a male stonechat swooped and sang.

‘I’ve steadfastly never been anywhere near Sellafield for health reasons and I let that guard down to go to Greycroft stone circle beside it. We walked across the edge of a golf course to get to it. Just short of it I took a photo so as to capture the cows in the centre of the circle before we scared them off then we continued walking to the fence to climb over. This golfer comes over saying “excuse me, did I see you taking a photograph!” (the power station wasn’t even in the shot!); “its illegal to take photos of nuclear installations”; “I work for Sellafield” (he had it emblazoned on his top. he’s so up for a fight, you can see it in the way he walks and talks); “I’m going to report you”.

Its such a lovely circle. Large stones, magnificent mountains behind. But a cow feeder in the middle; a herd of cows congregated in the thick muddy interior, not moving.
And Sellafield NPS beside it and all the outrage that provokes in me, of all places that sat, polluting us in such an insipid way.
We leave so angered. What a horrid experience. A lovely stone circle so clothed in reasons not to be there.‘

- October 2003

Walk south just beyond the ‘show’ site, the much-restored Great Tomb on Porth Hellick Down, and you stumble across more lovely chambered cairns in various states of disrepair and size. Moth and me found another four without even trying, though it helped that the gorse and heather was not high. The cairns up here are clear to see along the ridge of the Downs from the vantage point of Salakee Downs, a few 100 metres to the west.

‘Reminiscant of Gamelands. A fairly large circle/oval of rounded stones layn in grass. A clump of stones together have possibly been moved from elsewhere. 10 stones or sets of stones; an additional 3 have just their stump level with the ground. Most stones aren’t large but 2 are much larger than the others.
180 degrees of vista is fantastic hills: some angular lakeland drama (Skiddaw); the rest of the view this lovely Cumbrian moorland of rounded peaks and troughs.
Very open on those sides; a place to sit and look.
The 3 stones buried in the grass are likely as big as those above ground.‘

- October 2003

‘Ruinous remains of what on the map is called a ‘cairn circle’. 35 paces across; various clumps of stones dotted around it, one fallen stone about 3.5’ long; one pile of stones larger than anything else at its southern end; a distinctively sized stone at its centre; enother, oblong, fallen stone travelling clockwise from there about 2’ long; another small but distinctive clump a little further round again; a clump of stones at the centre. The whole thing is perhaps embanked.‘

- 28 February 2004

‘9 mis-shapen stones (one of which much smaller than the rest) made of this mixture with flint nodules embedded throughout. An unimpressive rebuilt oval, all stones layn on the ground. Completely surrounded intimately tightly by fences; so just stuck in a corner. Ginette says she’ll have a word with someone about that. Ginette also suspects the slightly raised area that extendes out from the circle is a causewayed enclosure.‘

- 8th November 2003

‘A long elipse of fairly large stones right beside the road that feels in some disarray on account of the uneven earth and there being a wood growing throughout but its easy to make out eight stones stood and fallen, cloaked in green moss. Five of them are close together at one end, the stone at the apex being perhaps the largest of them all.

The cup marks people speak of in the stone closest to the road appear to have been made by the sea. The carving also mentioned on TMA is an OS symbol.‘

- twenty something of December 2003

‘A large-ish, long, bulbous, fallen stone. Huge round holes carved out of it by the sea. On a rising piece of land.

At the left hand side of the A352 at a turn-off for Little Mayne Farm, where there’s room to park and a gate to climb over.‘

- twentysomething of December 2003

‘7’ tall, couple of feet wide and deep standing stone. A flat face with a globular sea-worn back to it. On sloped ground heading down toward a stream/river. Situated in a wide hedge surrounding a stream running down the hill betwixt barbed wire and electric fence.
A lovely stone. Big. Nooks and crannies to explore with the fingers. Just inside the hedge itself but its enough of a hedge that you can walk around the stone.‘

- twentysomethingth of December 2004

‘A ridge of land with precariously steep sides. Valleys either side and other ridges parallel. An elongated slightly raised earth area with a ring of stones atop. Most just above the height of the grass but just-about a complete circle/oval. One side taller, hairy (with lychen) stones, the tallest perhaps 2’ tall rising to a tip. All appear to be craggy flint stone.
At one end of the raised area, just below the rising earth, 3 large stones, as tho an entrance-way.
Along the middle of the ridge, perhaps 40’ from the circle, potential and faint remains of a long narrow earthwork, perhaps only the remains of a hedge or wall, but two large stones (one broken in two, it seems) some distance apart. Around the further one (the broken one) a number of small stones.
A good view thru a gap in adjacent ridges to the sea. We can’t see anything more thru the mist today, tho that began to clear just as we left, everything so much crisper after I’d taken my photographs and we’re moving on.

Travelling north on the A353 toward Poxwell, there’s parking space beside the footpath on the right hand side of the road. Walk a little way up the path and the sites just off to the left away from the path up over the lip of the ridge‘

- twenty somethingth of December 2003

One of the best sites of all those I visited in Dorset

a very beautiful walk, with stones of interesting sizes and shapes. this place is also within walking distance of the hellstone and hampton down stone cicle, all of which can be walked between easily if you park in the layby next to the farm in between the hellstone and hampton down stone circle. when we were there the weather changed between snow and bright sunshine and the stones seemed to change dramatically with the light.

an interesting stone just a few minutes from where i live. the new housing around the stone doesn’t really help to appreciate the stone itself, it almost feels like it was placed under the tree as an afterthought of a housing developer. Although it’s great that the stone remains there for all to see.