Latest Fieldnotes

The view from the stones to Holyhead Mountain is amazing, it would be worth the journey just for that alone. Add to that a pair of great looking thin stones and it’s easy to spend hours up there.

The fence has now thankfully gone.
Only the Aluminium Plant to go......

You can see this stone from a fair distance, easily 10ft tall and in my opinion one of Anglesey’s best.

No trip to Anglesey seems complete without paying the stones at Pen-yr-Orsedd a visit.
This one is easily seen from the road, and is very tall and wafer thin. With one side often covered in cowshit, and farm machinery laying around it.

‘Viewed over a wall’? Get yourself over the gate IronMan. Then again I was there at 6.30am so everything was quiet.......

The chamber’s a funny old jumble of stones, now inhabited by lambs.

Easy access over a stile at the end of a cul-de-sac in Llanfechell.
Pity about the pylons and overhead lines but they take nowt away from this great stone.

It’s only a short walk up from the road at the SW end of the LLyn Alaw reservoir to the standing stone at Bod Deiniol.

A big stone over 6ft high and getting on for 6ft across.

Holy Island Mountain is visible on the horizon in the West(ish)

This great looking stone was sporting a rather naff pentagram, carved on it’s road side face.
I saw the same looking carving on one of the stones at Mein Hirion. They both looked to be carved into the lichen rather than the stone. It’s still bollocks tho’.....

This a great place to watch the sun go down. I’ve been here before in the daytime. But the place takes on a different atmosphere in the evening with the stones turning all shades of orange.

A bit tricky to find even though it’s in Brynsiencyn itself and it ain’t that bigga place it has to be said.
Although the chambers ruined now, the capstone is still impressive and rests on two stones, I wouldn’t know if the stones have fallen or were just squat anyway.

Disabled Access: There is a gate to the site for wheelchair users.

Disabled access: The road by which you gain access to the site goes through the circle. The site itself is a field on a gentle slope.

How to get there:
A595. Burl (A Guide to Stone Circles...) states that it’s 5 miles N of Millom. What you’re interested in is not the junction where the A5093 goes to Millom, but the unclassified road further to the east (via Lady Hall). At this junction there is a large church.
A little east of it on the other side of the road is a signposted junction for Broad Gate (which you are interested in taking).
Dyer (Discovering Prehistoric England) states “take the road to Crag Hall”. Just keep on keeping on a mile or two (past a small layby/passing point on your left) and you will pass the track (on your left) signposted “Swinside Farm: No unauthorised vehicles”, directly ahead on both sides of the road are grey farm buildings. This is Crag Hall, not so much a hall but a farm house.
Half a mile or so beyond it there is enough space to park a car or two off of the road at a bridge.
After walking back to the track for Swinside Farm, the sign also informs you that it is a public bridleway and that it leads to Swinside Stone Circle.
Follow the track, over two cattlegrids, when it reaches the top of the hill, look over to Swinside Farm and you will see the stone circle in a field close to the farm house.
If you’re feeling cheeky or disabled, there is a patch of bare gravel land just outside the farm house proper boundary wall which appears to have been used as parking space for visitors to the circle. That said there is still one more cattle grid to negotiate to gain access to the circle.

I only found 2 of these cairns (known as Three Pow Raise) as I it was starting to get late and I had a long walk back to the car. The one in the picture is about 2 metres across and half a metre deep and is at NY48282186

I really liked the Cockpit, it was the main reason why I visited Moor Divock and was definitely well worth it. As you walk over the moor from the southeast the small stones of this 30 metre wide circle can be seen from a fair distance on a slightly raised plateau of land. How many stones? I read somewhere that there are 75, I tried counting them but got distracted by the sun as it began to descend between a gap in the stones to the west – are the stones missing here or was this an entrance? There is another possible entrance to the northeast.
The Cockpit is supposed to consist of a pair of concentric rings, in most parts it appears as a single ring of stones although there is a nice double run on the northwestern side. In my notes I had written ‘very nice’ and on a warm, still, spring evening it certainly was.

This is a beauty, a large barrow about 20 metres wide, still over a metres high and containing a open stone slab lined cist. This grave is a metre long and about half a metre wide and deep. James Dyer says it was found to contain a contracted skeleton.
As with other sites on the moor, there are still many of the original stones and small boulders scattered around.

This cairn is badly damaged but still has 1 medium sized stone and 2 smaller stones standing with several other boulders scattered around. The raised area of earth and rock would suggest that it was originally about 6 metres wide with the main area of stones being about 3 metres across.

Indeed a nice little circle of stones. There are 10 or 11 stones, the tallest around half a metre high, that form the 4 metre diameter circle of this ring cairn with many smaller cobbles still scattered around about and in the centre, which has been cleared down about a half metre. Popular with sheep.

As usual I find myself agreeing with Ironman, I had expected the stone to be taller. In Jacquetta Hawkes guide to British Archaeology the Cop Stone looks huge but standing next to it, it is still a respectable 120cm tall. Between it and Moor Divock South are a pair of standing stones about 2 metres apart and the tallest being about a metre high. If they form part of alignment then it is northwest-southeast and points roughly in the direction of The Cockpit

Looking at the OS Map, I was expecting Moor Divock to be a wild and untamed place but it turned out to be fairly flat and easy walking country covered with mainly grasses and patches of low heather and dead bracken. The track up from Pooley Bridge looked to be a bit on the steep side so I opted for the road from Helton and parked on the wide verge near The Cop, from here a track leads northwest past several cairns as the view steadily opens out with Heughscar Hill to your right and the looming hills of Barton Fell to your left. Certainly a nice place for an early evening stroll.

This was a cleanup day around South London, visiting a few sites that I hadn’t before. I had a good day for it and some pleasant company, so the day was an undoubted success. We did a loop from West to East, starting at Diana’s Dyke, then Gally Hills, Croham Hurst and finally attempted to get onto Caesar’s Camp.

Having done my list within the M25 and it was only 3pm, we headed outside to North Kent. First up was Squyerres Park but another nono, so we finished up at Oldbury again which is rapidly becoming a fav of mine.

All in all a nice productive day.

A quick word though, if you intend to do this South London wander, make sure you take in Morden Park at the start and Chislehurst Caves & Winn’s Common at the end. Actually, depending on your start time, you might want to reverse the route as well. That way you can be first in to Chislehurst caves & set up the day nicely.

It is said that a stone circle existed in Sarsgrove wood in 1929 but does not seem to be there now.There is however this line of stones to the right of the church entrance,three or four large stones leading to the old rectory and the stones of the village cross plus the large stones by the old vicarage entrance may be all that remains of the old circle.
This is a lovely village and well worth a visit if you are in the area.

Although there is not a lot to see as most of the fort is on a private estate, its site is interesting as it complements Danebury across the River Test. Were they friends or in competition? It’s worth the short walk up the hill as the site is a classic example of chalk downland and full of the rich diversity of flora and fauna this area is noted for.

Disabled: Car park on other side of road.

On a really bizarre day for the weather, 25C+ in April, I visited this site for the first time for at least 15 years. Slightly put off by all the notices in the car park warning of thieves. Walked up to the Trig Point by the entrance and was struck by the fact that, although it is the highest point in the immediate neighbourhood, if it was meant to dominate the crossing of the River Test it doesn’t as it is too far away. Mind you the other hills nearer the river are more conical in shape and were probably too small to support a hill town of any size.
The earthworks on the SE side outside the main ramparts are very confusing and it’s difficult to see, to my untrained eye, how they could have been cattle enclosures.
Inside the E. entrance, which is a bit “managed” with a wooden walkway, I was struck by the difference from my last visit. The inner bank and much of the interior used to be quite thickly wooded, now apart from a small group of cherries and an isolated tree the centre and inner bank are mostly empty. The trees were felled as they were diseased although the ones on the perimeter seem to be fine. The clearance did, of course, make the extensive excavations possible.
Although the site is on high downland and is managed grazed, the flora has yet to completely recover and compared to Woolbury it is a bit of a desert. The clumps of brambles on the banks seen to have been cleared by flame throwers, unfortunately this has also killed the grass holding the topsoil and there was much evidence of slippage of the surface. There was more erosion on the tops of the banks caused by walkers. What does one do? I am as guilty as most but do you keep to the worn bits or do you tread elsewhere and spread the problem?
It’s still a pretty grand site though and it’s easy to imagine the thousand or so people that lived here for about 500 years leading a mostly settled and prosperous existence.
Disabled: Long slope up from carpark on grass.

...sit with me a moment longer on hillside, just above the head of the White Horse and look down and see Dragon Hill. Wow! What is this massive chalky children’s sandcastle? A landing pad for flying white horses? Certainly a significant ritual place. I think of Mexican temples, Guatemalan ruins at Tikal, Saqqara pyramid in Egypt. What happened here? It feels like a place of sacrifice or death, but not in a morbid way. Perhaps the dead were laid out on platforms up here, to be picked off by crows, or maybe a priest performed sky burials?