Latest Fieldnotes

This great monument of enormous megaliths comprises what is left of a whopping burial chamber, aligned, Joan thought, on the winter solstice. Carefully selected, shaped sarsens stand in a line 10 to 15 metres across making up the portal stones and main interior chamber which is all that is left now, but these are incredibly impressive. It remined me of Pentre Ifan, but without the cuttlefish topping. I liked the glistening of them in the drizzly rain and the way the peppermint-green lichens shone out of the surface of the stones. The idly strewn capstones, which must weigh 15 tons or more each lie at the back of the stones which still stand. What a fabulous thing to have in your back garden! What a huge responsibility! Fortunately for us all, they’re in the safe hands of Joan Bygrave. Learn from her, ploughmen.

Lying about 0.4 km SSE of Cairn K is this ruined cruciform chamber open to the NE.

This is an undifferentiated passage tomb with curved passage and a sill separating the chamber from the passage.

This is the odd one out amongst the Carrowkeel cairns as it is the only long cairn.

It has been classified as a court cairn because of the unusual features at its S end.

However the excavators in 1911 found a transepted (cruciform) chamber at the N end so it appears to have some passage grave features as well. This is now the most visible feature at the site.

Only two days were spent excavating the cairn so some important detail may have been missed.

These two cairns lie 50m apart in the hills to the N of the access road to the Carrowkeel cemetery about 0.6 km W of cairn G.

Both are ruined. The 1911 excavations suggest that C had the cruciform chamber seen at other Carrowkeel sites and D had traces of a passage leading to a cist within the cairn.

Unlike just about everyone else on TMA, I declined to park on the A4 verge due to the madness of various daredevil drivers. Instead, we headed for the car park at SU159699, and I took a longer, leisurely walk along the bridleway at the opposite corner to the entrance to the car park.

The bridleway is bounded on the left by a white topped, electrified fence. I didn’t test to see if it was on, but after about 500 yards or so, the Den appeared on the near horizon. It seemed a long way away, and following the fence, I wasn’t sure if I’d actually be able to get access, but the fence and bridleway headed left eventually, and down into the dale. A gate at the bottom of the hill led to the overgrown footpath, about 500 yards away from the barbed wire ‘stile’ near the stones. This last stretch was muddy, and I’d imagine could be quite overgrown in high season, unlike the lush grass track I’d taken thus far. The round trip took me an hour, and I’m not as fit as Moth, so it’s probably a comparable distance, with no difficulty parking.

The location itself is stunning, but I kept asking myself, ‘why here?’ Surrounded by hills on all sides, there is no obvious view or alignment for the ‘barrow’. The stones lie on a distintive mound, but I suspect most of this is field clearance, as the restoration is is quite obvious, and the concrete was, for me, quite off-putting. I’ll be back though, if only for the views from the approach.

Easily found, following the map, and the NW outlier at the junction tells you you’ve arrived. We pulled into the No Through Road on the left, and parked on the verge (the pull-in that Moth mentioned was gated, and very muddy).

A real mystery, this one. I scaled the ladder stile and entered the field, to find 5 stones in a parabola, suggesting an ovoid ‘circle’. And unusually, a central stone. Plus of course, the two outliers. None still standing, and the possibility that this wasn’t the original location of the stones anyway. Lots of questions and very few answers. I could get no real feeling of what was what, so had to leave somewhat unsatisfied.

I was amazed I’d not seen this before given how close it actually is to the road. On return to the car, I found that the remaining stone of the circle can actually be seen from the road. I’d expected it to be much further up the hill toward the Ridgeway for some reason.

I’d parked at the end of West Kennet Avenue and just followed the new signpost to “Falkner’s Circle 1/4 mile”.

On the way I saw the hedgerow stone pictured by stubob, but devoid of the vegetation in his photo (see my picture). Oh, and there was a crop circle just to the south, but it looked a bit ‘amateurish’ to my eye, kind of incomplete...

Brooding.

The weather was wet. Raining and misty all at the same time. We parked outside the church, and like a div, I still hadn’t spotted the barrow.

When I did spot it, looming large next to the church, covered in trees, it was like , Wow!

It’s big, and the immediate impression I got was of darkness, as if it resented the church being there. Maybe that’s why the children mentioned in Rhiannon’s Folklore entry avoided the place?

Visited 25th August 2003: The Ballaharra Stones, like Tynwald Hill have been coiffured and made into something quite un-prehistoric looking. They sit alongside the road in a rose garden, in the shadow of the Royal Chapel of St. John, looking a bit like a badly thought out garden feature. I was a bit melancholic visiting what remains of this tomb, but I guess it’s a blessing that anything remains at all.

Visited 25th August 2003: Tynwald Hill is smaller than I’d expected. It doesn’t look like a prehistoric mound, largely because of the terracing that runs up it, and the staircase built into the eastern side. Is it prehistoric? I’m not sure that this particullar site it is, but perhaps the parliamentary customs that surround it started off at a similar Bronze Age mound nearby (a cist was discovered).

As well as the hill, it’s worth visiting the Royal Chapel of St. John (which is very modern) and Ballaharra Stones, just opposite.

A celtic enclosed settlement visible from the roadside. Still an imposing set of earthworks. Judging by the weather, the banks may be for protection from the wind rather than defensive, as they only defend from two sides. There is a quarry at the back so other banks may now be ruined.
Dave 28th December 2003

Part of a cruciform gallery of this court tomb is visible in the peat. It can be seen as part of a visit to the Ceide Fields visitor centre.

I visited this site 10 years ago and agree it is a wonderful monument and it is a pity that it has been so neglected.

I’ve posted some images to show what it would look like if the vegetation were cleared again.

Six wrecked portal tombs stand in a 90m line running E/W. The westernmost tomb is the best preserved.

A superb partly reconstructed court tomb E of Malin More on the minor road.

Its total length is 40m including an oval court 14m long. The entrance to the court is in the E and on either side of the entrance are two chambers built into the cairn each of which has a decorated orthostat.

At the W end of the court are two parallel galleries.

Visited here on a cold winter’s day today. The stone stands next to the shop and café of the Auchingarrich wildlife centre, on an obvious round mound which looks like it could be artificial, or at least an artificially-enhanced natural knoll. Some large stones, which may actually be bedrock, can be seen poking through the grass at the side.

The stone itself is huge at 8’ 7” tall, and is certainly an impressive specimen, rising from the centre of the mound. It commands good views of the surrounding area, and stands at a height of 450 feet above sea level.

I visited here today, and met the horses that Mr Brand mention below. They behaved themselves with me though – I asked them to stand in the top corner of the field so that they wouldn’t be in any of my photos, and they duly obliged. A lovely pair of horses!

But back to the stone. It stands on a very slight mound, and what appears to be a few packing stones can be seen at it’s base poking through the grass. Fred Coles described this in 1910 as the last remaining stone of a stone circle, although he didn’t offer any reasons as to why he thought there were more stones originally.

This was definitely a circle rather than a pair. Four stones were originally marked on the old OS map, and when Fred Coles visited in 1911, he was told that up until around 17 years previously, three stones had still been standing. The third then fell, and the farmer dragged it away.

The site now consists of the two remaining stones standing approximately 6m apart on the circumference of a circle that appears to have been cleared – the surrounding land is rough and overgrown with long yellow grass, while within this circle is smooth ground, with short green grass.

Situated close to its much better known portal namesake, the best surviving part of the court tomb is the 6m long gallery running W from two entrance jambs to a backstone – all 1.8m high. The side stones are lower.

Two lintels survive – one, slightly displaced, across the gallery and the other fallen and lying in front of the entrance jambs.

Two stones from the NE arm of the court adjoin the N entrance jamb.

Visited here today on a bitterly cold day. The Roman Stone – the big one, as Mr Brand mentions below – leans at an alarming angle over it’s smaller neighbours. The cup-marks on the flat stone are quite shallow, but very obvious nonetheless.

The name Roman Stone presumably comes from the fact that in the field nearby was a Roman camp.

Historic Scotland lists this as the remains of a stone circle, but as Fred Coles pointed out in 1911, there is a lack of any evidence to suggest that these stones ever formed part of a circle.

Using footpath directions noted upto Ringstone Edge Cairn Circle, follow footpath and wall from it’s right-hand corner down to a gate, climb over the wall hear and continue down until just before a small quarry is a robbed out barrow. It is right up against the wall.
Dave 28th December 2003

Walk up a concrete bridleway and past a dilapidated farm building. When you reach the gate climb over and follow the wall on the right. Be careful as this field is used for radio controlled aeroplanes. Upon reaching the right-hand corner of the wall, the ring-cairn is off to the left over a brow of the hill. The run way is just before you get to it.
The cairn itself is in the middle of a cultivated grass field but the interior is unblemished. It has a low rubble bank, around 27 yards in diametre enclosing a large 4 foot prostrate stone near the centre and there are other big stones.
Other sources suggest that this is the remains of a stone circle that was desturbed by the building of a reservoir very nearby.
The cairn is visible fom a long way off and can be seen from the road at the south end of the reservoir.

Dave 28th December 2003

This is a very, very sad site. As if a stone circle being reduced to a single remaining standing stone wasn’t bad enough, a tip and quarry have sprung up beside it.

The site originally consisted of a large natural mound o sand and gravel, on top of which, at the western edge (ie closest to the road), was a circle of stones. When the mound was excavated for gravel, several cists containing human remains were found, and also a stone hammer which is now in the National Museum. This quarrying has left little of the mound, the remains of which stand at the top of the bank which rises beside the main road.

CANMORE describes the standing stone as surmounting the summit of the ridge, which should make it just visible from the road, or at the very least from halfway up the bank. CANMORE also mentions that the ridge had been quarried away to within 2m of the stone – that was in 1975. The stone has now fallen, and is half-buried by sand and mud. The remains of the mound seem to be even smaller than described by CANMORE, and it’s surely only a matter of time before the mound is destroyed altogether, and the stone thrown to one side. I will be contacting the RCAHMS about this site, in a bid to stop any further damage to the site.

Excavations at this site have provided the oldest datable evidence for early (Mesolithic) settlers on the Isle of Man.