Latest Fieldnotes

Visited these on May 10th 2003, a bit rainy and we had a bit of trouble with the directions at first even though there was a sign and everything, it’s simple when you know how. There were other visitors – a couple reading in a car enjoying the stones, and a family turned up as we left.

It is an enjoyable view from the stones and has that familiar feel that you get at other sites, is it almost a Deja Vu thing? Who knows, who cares, nice wine this...

It rained a bit but cleared wonderfully later on, wish I had stayed a couple of hours now, what a waste.

Anyway, it is another good site, and worth visiting Hay on Wye afterwards (the town of books).

If you follow the track that leads west from the Haystack rock and then swing round to the south you pass the partly reconstructed Backstone Beck Enclosure. Between the arc of drystone walling and the path, and northwest of the hut are 3 carved rocks nestling in the heather and almost in a northwest line.. The last time I was here I completely failed to find them, even though I must have walked within a couple of feet of one of them – this time as I approached from the south and had a better idea where they were I had more luck. Stone 1 is at SE12824619 and measures 180x130cm with around 45 cups, a couple of unfinished rings or arcs and several grooves – it lies just to the east of the path. Stone 2 is a little further southeast at SE12844617, it has about a dozen cups, 2 of which are quite deep, and measures 170x130cm. Stone 3 is the one I really wanted to find and when I located it a little further south at SE12834615 I couldn’t help letting out a Marc Riley stylee “Oh Yeessshh”. The stone is known as the Second Idol Stone and it’s easy to see why – a 130x80cm low stone with 24 cups and 5 deep grooves. Nine of the cups are zoned within a groove at the northeastern end and a further 6 run in a line between the edge of that groove and another that runs nearly the entire length of the stone. This rock is very similar to the Idol Stone 500 metres to the southeast – I wonder if they were carved by the same person?

Ashtead Common Earthwork – 11.5.2003

The obvious place to start is the Epsom Common car park at TQ183611, which is clearly shown on the OS map but isn’t signposted from the road. I then took a path south where you will come to a ‘path junction’ with three choices. Take the one to the south-west towards a large Corporation Of London sign / info board, which marks the start of Ashtead Common. The Corporation Of London owns and manages 200 hectares of Ashtead Common, which was declared a National Nature Reserve in 1995. The bridleway then skirts the privately owned Newton Wood and a lovely herd of Jersey cows were grazing the farmland to the North. Someone has rightly questioned one of the Newton Wood signs that say ‘Private – No Right of Way’ by adding ‘why not?’ on it – it seems strange that this wood is private when all around is open access. Soon you’ll come to another info board, which marked the start of my epic attempt to find the earthwork and two other things that looked like barrows on the OS map.

The common is pretty dense woodland and very confusing. There are a lot more paths than are marked on the map and although I think I found everything I was trying to find I honestly couldn’t say accurately how I found them or how to get to them! After taking the path south from the info board at TQ178606 to try to find the earthworks, and finding it difficult to find, I would actually suggest that an easier way might be to take the path from TQ176605, which should lead directly to the edge of the earthwork and close to the two possible barrows.

I’m pretty sure I found the earthwork (which incidentally is a scheduled Ancient Monument) in the jumble of paths and woodland. Well I certainly found a large area of land at the brow of the hill with irregular banks and ditches around it. I would love to know more about it. Incidentally a notice at one of the info boards previously mentioned said that they would be clearing trees on an around the earthwork in September 2003 – call 01372 279083 for more info.

There are two ‘star’ symbols on the OS map just north of the earthwork that usually signify barrows, but the usual word ‘tumuli’ isn’t present. Anyway I did find two things that look like barrows but I’m hesitant to post details up because when I got home I couldn’t find any reference on the internet and I found a large scale map of the common on the Corporation Of London website, which makes no mention of the barrows, but does place the site of a Roman Villa in the area…..hmmm?

Anyway, a very lovely walk in a beautiful, if dis-orientating, place!

Horsell Common Barrows – 11.5.2003

If you are approaching this from the south, drive slowly over the charming canal bridge (with bright white pillars and jet black railings) just after the railway bridge because the only car park in the area is immediately on your right after the canal bridge and is not signposted (it’s just opposite ‘Britannia Wharf’). I missed it and had to drive up to the large roundabout and return – there was no parking off the road elsewhere.

I think the easterly barrow is just to the right of the car park entrance. I parked, looked ahead and there was this large mound complete with classic hollowed top, trees and litter! It’s hard to tell the size of it due to the trees and brambles, but I’d guess about 20 m diameter and 1- 1.5m high.

The westerly barrow is reached by crossing the road and following a path for about 200 metres through woodland until you come to a clearing and the enormous bowl barrow is slap bang in front of you (the path actually goes up and over it). It’s a pretty dramatic setting, in this clearing surrounded by pine and birch trees.

I reckon it’s about 35-40 m in diameter and 1.5-2 m high. It is an excellent example of a bowl barrow, especially so close to London; the outer ditch and bank can clearly be seen all the way around, rising to a maximum of about 60cm high for the bank and about 30cm deep for the ditch. When I visited the bracken had been totally burnt off. I’d guess it wasn’t deliberate environmental management because the trees to the west (mainly young silver birch’s) were also burnt, as were some of the trees to the east (i.e. back towards the main road)

Pyrford Stone – 11.5.2003

Yep, the grid ref is spot on Rhiannon. However the grass verge where the stone lies is actually directly opposite Upshott Lane. And yes that verge is part of the ridiculously Big Brother-ish entrance to ‘Pyrford Court’, littered with signs saying ‘Private Property – No Turning – No Parking’ and warned you of CCTV cameras. To put it politely, fuck that! No Turning? Umm, why? What harm does that do? And do they fail to see the irony of what the stone’s plaque says about it being “on this corner since time immemorial”?

The stone is tiny (85cm x 40cm) and eerily smooth with a sharp-ish edge on its east side. It is extremely small to be a possible ancient standing stone, however the top is flat as if maybe it was larger before and had been broken?

The plaque reads “This boundary stone dates from before the Norman Conquest and is possibly a prehistoric standing stone. Situated on this corner since time immemorial, it was moved to its present position during road widening. This plaque was donated by local residents in 1976”

Wisley Common Bowl Barrow – 11.5.2003

From the Wisley Common Bell Barrow, the barrow is just 300 m west. Walk back up the woodland road for 100 m towards where it bends sharply and there is a metal barrier. Either walk straight ahead, up a woodland track, where the mound can be seen on the edge of the clearing to your right, or pass past the metal barrier, walk 40 metres up the sandy path and look across the clearing, where you will see the mound 100 metres or so to the west.

The barrow is called a ‘mound’ on the map, but the info on English Heritage’s record of scheduled monuments (see link below) says it is a bowl barrow. The mound is not particularly high but from the top you can clearly see that there is nothing else like it in the vicinity. The mound is mainly covered in woodland ferns (tinder dry when I was there) but several trees are scattered around it towards the outside of the mound, especially at the south and west edges.

Just to the west of the mound there is an interesting circle / ditch on the ground about 10m in diameter. It is totally clear of vegetation, unlike everything around it and looks strangely like a small bell barrow without the middle barrow part.

Wisley Common Barrow – 11.5.2003

The easiest way to get to the Cockcrow Hill area of Wisley Common, where the barrow and mound are, is to start at the car park / visitors centre for Wisley and Oakham Commons (840 acres in all!) at TQ079587. The visitor’s centre consists of toilets, a small shop and a little local info (nothing about the ancient sites though). You can’t turn in towards the car park if you are coming from the south-west (i.e. if driving towards London) – you have to go up the M25 junction and return.

Just to the right of the visitors centre, take a path (marked ‘Horse Riders’) up and over Curries Clump, which is strewn with condom wrappers and tissues. I guess this area is a perfect woodland cruising spot or something, being so close to the junction of the A3/M25? As you come down the clump the footbridge over the huge A3 is on your left. As you get to the other side you are now in Wisley Common, where some maps and info are pined up on a board and say that both the mound and barrow are Scheduled Ancient Monuments.

The easiest way to get to the barrow is to follow the woodland road around to its end, close to the A3. The huge barrow is then on your left, about 40 metres in diameter and 5 – 6m high I’d guess. There are lots of smaller mounds around the area, but I presume it’s this big beastie that is the barrow.

This is a wonderful setting consisting of a cairn circle and a stone row.

The circle itself is around 13m in diameter and has 11 stones. It was re-erected in 1909 and some of the stones may not be original.

The row is 530m long and consists of a double line of stones although some have been lost making it a single row in parts.

Excavation of stone rows on Dartmoor has shown that they were normally built in woodland clearings that had previously been used for agriculture.

Although the trees surrounding Fernworthy are part of a modern plantation and not native species, it may well be that this row is more representative of how they may have looked originally.

Just around the corner from the village church, this was idyllic on a sunny Sunday morning. Villagers were cutting the lawn and gossiping over the hedge, giving a wonderful picture of rural village life.

The stone sits next to a memorial oak on a small green at a junction off the main High Street through the village. The information sign could do with a good clean (see photo), and the stone looks as if it’s had a bit knocked off the top. It looks for all the world like a piece of modern sculpture in its shape. Interesting texture and well worth seeing if you’re in the area.

Popped along to take a look at this today, and also its continuation in St Albans, Beech Bottom Dyke.

It’s an impressive defensive ditch, but I’d be inclined to just walk along to the end and attack at that point!

Of course, it’s very overgrown now, with bluebells in abundance, as well as the usual detritus of 21st century living: broken cycles, botles, syringes etc. Apart from that, it’d be a nice short woodland walk alongside the housing estate.

This earthwork is in a poor condition, and very overgrown but there is a walkway along the top from which the depth of the original dyke can be appreciated. The sides are very sheer in places, and seem to drop away to a depth of around 50-60 feet.

The earthwork is thought to have originally joined up with the Devil’s Dyke to create a defensive earthwork running from the River Lea to the River Ver.

I found the best viewpoint was from the alleyway running between the houses on Beech Road, near the junction with Marshall Avenue.

You can’t miss this large rock as it stands next to a main track and is 5.5 metres long, 3 metres wide and stands nearly 2 meters tall. It can also be seen from some distance from many points around the area and is useful as a navigation aid on the northeastern part of the moor. I had visited this rock before and noticed a few cups and a worn ring but other than that had not given it much consideration, this time I gave it a closer look as I had read that it had many more cups and it turned out to be a revelation. I counted at least 60 cups and there could well be more as the southern face is heavily eroded and it is difficult to tell what’s man made and what’s natural. Some of the cups form a line along the ridge that separates the north and south faces and there are 5 rings along the top and I counted a further 4 on the north face. There is also a cup with a gutter and penanular that has been carved along a natural crack almost giving it the appearance of a human form or an ankh as well as a line of deep cups that follow a fold in the rock and whose purpose must surely be just decorative?
Just to the west is a small rock with 3 cups on a vertical surface that faces the Haystack.

SE12964639 I was a bit disappointed with this stone – with such an evocative name as The Planets and with a dozen cups and 9 rings as well as linking grooves it promised to be interesting rock. In reality, in turned out to be badly worn with the rings and grooves shallow and difficult to make out, although it didn’t help that it was a dull day. It measures about 180x160cm and stands on a small outcrop of rock north of the track that leads past the Haystack rock and just before the land drops away towards the Cow and Calf rocks and carpark 500 metres to the northeast. There are also a few rocks close by that have possible cups – they could just be natural though.

Our last site visit of this trip and not a bit disappointing. This really is a treat – every bit as good as I’d hoped for, and then some. The views from here are tremendous, and the decision to come here last worked out brilliantly, as by now I felt familiar with the surrounding landscape. We arrived in glorious sunshine and lay soaking up the warmth for a good while, before lazily strolling back to civilisation.

On our way back from staying in Mousehole, we decided to make one last trip round the coastal road and stop off at Cape Cornwall to see this monument and the cliffs, before heading to Chûn Quoit, and then back up to Bristol.

The size of this place is impressive, and the view even more so – taking in Land’s End at a distance where the horrible theme park is almost invisible. The waves below these here cliffs are quite something, and must have had quite an impact on the minds of the ancients.

Another site which I’ve been wanting to visit for quite some time, and I’m not in the least bit disappointed by it. We had the place to ourselves, and once we were sat down within the circle, surrounded by the thick gorse, felt completely away from civilisation. Perfect!

This place really is tiny! I rather ignorantly decided to consult my copy of The Modern Antiquarian after arriving at the site, and so only realised then that I was actually in danger of being chased off the land, so I hurriedly took a few snaps then beat a retreat. I will do my research more thoroughly in future.

After visiting Boleigh Fogou we decided to come here next, in order to compare the experience. This didn’t have quite the same impact, but did have one or two surprises in store for us – the phosphorescent moss on the walls of the corbelled chamber impressed us most. We decided that Boleigh’s magic must have a lot to do with it’s ‘living’ nature – this felt much more like the sites I’m used to, and so much less alive. A tour group arrived after 20 minutes or so, thus signalling our departure. On the way back we wandered a few metres down the track marked ‘pottery’ to visit the little well there.

We’d arrived at the site unannounced, not remembering (must do my research properly) it was necessary to make an appointment before hand. Jo May’s daughter was just on her way out as we drove down the track leading to the house, and so she asked if she could help us. We told her we intended to visit the fogou, and she let us know (in the nicest possible way) that we should really have booked in advance. She said it’d be okay this time though, as there was no activity taking place in the Caer centre, and proceeded to lead us to the fog

Sat before the entrance, I fixed my gaze on it’s depths and struggled to see far into the passage at all – the darkness has to be seen to be believed. Life teemed all around the mouth of this ‘cave’, bees and butterflies fluttered round the bluebells growing on it’s banks. Up above in the trees was the noisiest display of ravens I’ve ever heard. It was pretty easy to start to imagine this was all part of the magick of this site.

This is a real class site, and has made me totally reassess not only fogous, but my entire psychological relationship with all sacred sites. Fantastic.

It’s a real shame that this site is partially submerged beneath the road, as I reckon it would have been another ‘perfect’ site had it not been (see the Merry Maidens for a definition of ‘perfect’). Like Holy says, not a great place for meditation, though on a very busy day, from within the chamber perhaps the traffic noise above could give the same feeling as listening to Sunn O))), who knows? Traffic meditation, now there’s a new idea! :-)

The word ‘perfect’ gets used a lot for this circle, so it was no surprise that Ursula and myself both uttered the word in unison as we approached. An incredible place, which from certain angles achieves total symmetry. I took a few shots trying to frame this perfect symmetry, then we sat on a wall nearby gazing at this wonderful place, before moving on to Tregiffian.

As we approached this site, on our way walking to Land’s End, we were greeted with the site of heavy industrial equipment, hauling salvage from a ship run aground below the cliffs. I took a few shots and had a quick look at the site, before getting away from this ugly scene!

We walked here from Men-An-Tol and were immediately impressed by the small barrow just above the main circle. Both sites are so obviously in reverence to Carn Galver, it just dominates the landscape.

We approached this site with eager anticipation having seen and read so much about it before. Ironically, this exposure meant that once we arrived at the site we were a little disappointed. Needless to say, it is a great site, and the surrounding landscape wonderful, but it didn’t really have any surprises left to offer us. It was exactly as I’d expected it to be, nothing more, nothing less. We hung around for a while, and took the obligatory shots, then left as a dogwalker approached the site.