Latest Fieldnotes

Julian is right when he says there is nothing left to be seen of the Folkton barrow – it was only just over 2 feet tall when Canon Greenwell excavated it in the 1880’s. He is also right when he says the site is worth a visit though, not just because of the chalk drums but for the position of the barrow. As you follow the public right of way from the roadside eastwards, the landscape opens out in front of you as a huge natural crossroads between the hills. The barrow would have overlooked what could have been an important junction of 2 trading routes and it left me speculating on the possibility that there could have been some kind of stone marker at the bottom of the valley, although there is no record of one ever standing here.
A word of warning – a sign on a gate warns of a bull in the field – luckily he wasn’t there on the day I visited.

Visited 14th February 2003: This stone is not in its original location, but I don’t know the exact circumstances of the move. I suspect that it was something to do with the creation of the housing estate that now surrounds it. The sign next to the stone says it was re-erected in 1981, but it doesn’t say much else.

Maen Llwyd stands near its original location in a cul-de-sac called Cae Maenllwyd, just off another residential road called Craig Fryn in Machynlleth. It’s situated on a triangular island of grass, with a park bench next to it, and road running around it. You really can’t miss it. Parking is no problem, because the area is extremely quiet.

Didn’t make it to the cist itself, but I did visit the slab in its new home at the museum. IronMan’s photo really captures the lighting where it’s displayed, which highlights the surface texture of the slab and its carvings rather well. I couldn’t help surreptitiously dabbing at the stone with my hand (I felt quite guilty but if it was in a field rather than a museum you’d feel quite differently – must be years of museums instilling Do Not Touch).

The accompanying label states that the slab formed the south side of the cist, and that the cremated bones of an adult and a child were found by the large and small foot carvings near its base. There is something quite affecting about the strange long-toed/fingered carvings.

It also mentioned that parallels are known mainly from Scandinavia, although The Calderstones and a roundbarrow near Alwinton in Northumberland apparently have similar carvings.

We visited this stone back in oct 02 as part of a Scottish megarak sunday jaunt. It’s reached via a path from the village that leads to an old railway bridge. The stone stands 7ft tall in the field on the other side of the bridge. On this visit we opted to stay at the bridge for two good reasons.

1. A couple of locals looking less that friendly at the fact we were ’ Stangers round these parts‘
and
2.More scarey looking than the locals was the possible radio active offspring of dolly the sheep in the next field.

Next time we visit will be under cover of darkness and clad in a radiation suit. A good reason for a return visit would be the eight cup marks at the base of the stone.

From the A932 from Forfar head east, turning right (south) towards Letham at Chapelton. The road cuts back towards Forfar then there is a side-road on the left (south again) towards Letham. The Girdlestane lies on a bend about 100m south of this, in a small enclosed area just off the road. The stone is labelled “The Girdlestane. Early Bronze Age Cup and Ring Carving 3200 – 1500 BC.”

Only my second visit here – last time I came it was in a big group (8 of us in total), and was a nightmare visit from start to finish. The site itself seemed gloomy at the time, and after reading all the horror stories, I thought I’d seen enough of the place. This time we had been staying with friends in Sheffield on Saturday night, and so the four of us visited here after seeing the Andle Stone and Doll Tor. My mind is now totally changed – the site seemed so much bigger. The sky was clear above and so we took the opportunity to sit by the site and take it all in. It was quite peaceful with the distant rumble of traffic barely audible. I’m now definitely a Nine Ladies convert!

This is a truly amazing site – from the moment I entered the site I felt transported. Each turn around the huge boulders offers something new – at times it’s like being on one of the original Star Trek sets. The subtle movement between the natural and the artificial is the most incredible thing here – cave entrances turn out to be man-made, passageways to higher and lower levels of the rocks open up before you. The actual prehistoric rock art on display (what little we could find of it) is just a small part of the attraction here – these rocks seems to have been drawing human attention forever. An incredibly magickal place.

A beautiful place, shame about the barbed wire fencing that criss crosses across the hill...covered with the remains of neolithic minings and 19ct mining evidence. Follow the sheep trails (I always use animal tracks) for the best walk. Many interesting *natural* features make this hill worthy of your time!

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If you’re in Brecon, Powys, well worth a visit. Great example of what you’d expect a hillfort to be.

Commanding the top of a hill, several concentric rings of banks and ditches, a single entrance and to the north a steep drop of over 100 metres.

It is easy to imagine defending the site and watching attackers having to deal which a succession of rising banks before reaching the scrap which in some places is still 5 metres.

Bracken abounds, but now (in February) it has died back but the wind is a bit cutting on the summit of the Crug.

To reach it: B 4520 north out of Brecon. This road rises all the way and as you approach the northern end of Brecon, take a left. As you continue to climb, on your left is a housing estate (Bron Y Crug and Maes Y Fynon), to your right trees followed by open countryside.

Just past a mini-roundabout there is some parking, infact all along this road there are no yellow lines.

I mention this approach because the walk begins at Maen-du Well, an ancient well, the site is now rundown and vandalised, but the spring is still there housed in an 18th century building of local stone. This is the nearest source of fresh water to the hillfort.

Behind the building is a stile, and it is simply a matter of walking up through the middle of the fields heading for the each stile in turn (about 6).

The Cadw guide for the region gives the total defended area as 182m by 134m. Nearby Slwch Tump is easy to spot, just look for the TV Antenae.

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An iron age hillfort that is close to the centre of Brecon, Powys.

It isn’t a sensible idea to try and drive up to it as it is along a mud trackway. The site is pasture, so there shouldn’t be a problem with bracken, but if wet the track to it will be muddy.

A public footpath circles the site, I met a landowner/worker when I was off the path and he was friendly. From the B4602 it is a 15 minute walk to the site (all uphill).

B 4602, just to the north of the hospital is a public footpath on the right.
Take it, and when prompted by a sign for a Youth Hostel, follow that until you pass a TV Relay Station on your left.

Shortly afterwards you will come to a gate and stile, up and across the field is Slwch Tump.

It has a single scarp which the Cadw guide for the region states is between 3 and 4.6 metres high. there is no ditch or counterscrap. It is possible to walk completely around the site on the bank. More recent field boundaries divide the enclosed area of the hillfort.

Cadw guide gives the defended area as 242m by 187m.

The area inside the bank gently rises, there are signs of quarrying. Field entrances give the impression that it has two entrances, but the Cadw guide believes the original one to be the most northerly one.

“...the hill was formerly known as Penginger or Pen Cefn y Gaer, the hilltop ridge with the hillfort“.

23-2-2003.

Lovely feel to this one, in a small wood, which also houses the steep ramparts of a fort.

After here walked to Goatscrags and then on the way back visited the waterfall, in a wonderful dingly-dell. To get to the waterfall, follow the track towards the farm for approx 100m, and there is a well-worn path down beside a stream, follow this down (but watch your footing!) to caves and falls.

There was a yellow VW van parked up and signs of camping in the woods…with a microphone on he dashboard. What’s JC driving these days? :-)

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23-2-2003.
Followed the track up through Routin Linn farm, and it’s on the hill to the west of the crags. The paths are well-used by horse riders so access is relatively easy. There are two outcrops marked on the map, NT973372 and NT971371.

They are worth the trip up, I loved this site!

To the Goatscrags end of the hill, there is a sheltered quarry-type area, which I am sure has a hollow next to it as if it’s been a burial mound there. Lots of geographical reasons why this could be the case?

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I parked at Gefrin and walked back down the hill. The stone is a good seven feet high, and a granitey beast!

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This stone is situated on the entrance road to the Pitreavie Business Park in Dunfermline. It has been set into the boundary of the Bank of Scotland offices and has a bench seat mounted beneath it. The stone has been carved with it’s name.
There are a number of possible large cups across the southern face although these could be natural features, hard to tell.
All in all bit of a sorry sight but at least it survives.

I was going to Boskednan but did’nt have my waders so chickened out and popped over to photo Men Scryfa instead, still very muddy though.

This is easy to find,it’s by the side of the road in the grass.About 13ft tall with quartz lines running through it.Access no problem.There is a descriptive plaque as can be seen in Phil’s photo.

This little group of stones is sublimely placed, as they stand at the end of a tongue of raised land which is surrounded by low lying ground on three sides, and to its north by an ox-bow lake; which is the remnants of the ancient position of the Almond river. It must have been a commanding and secure site in the past. Alignment here is NE-SW for the upright stone, and with the recumbent stone and smaller outlier 50 yds away at edge of present field. Length of upright 51 in, breadth 16in and depth 14in. No cup marks seen. The recumbent stone next to it is very interesting in that it has an X mark on it which appears to be natural white quartz. I would name it the Saltire stone, and who knows what inspiration it has had over the millennia... L 51in, W 28in, H 11in.

I love these stones. The vandalism confounds and disturbs me certainly. I also don’t fuly understand the tree dressing – which is completely anachronistic. Tree dressing comes from wicca, which arrived in the UK Long after the Coldrum Stones were built (Plus you do it around wells not high places). I saw the odd black pentacle hanging aswell, but – whatever.
I now live in the US but make a ‘pilgrimage’ here every time I visit the UK.
PS Has anyone noticed how the church you can see if you face east and look through the ‘doorway’ lines up with the sunrise ? The church must be built on an ancient site.

The middle stone of a group of 3 in this area is 44in high, with a breadth of 18in at base, tapering to 12in at its top. It has been worked to a four-sided shape and aligns to the cardinal points on the compass. Cup marks are all sub-1in in size and the E face has one, while the N face has four in a line. Views to the S and E are extensive and overlook the probable position of the river Almond several thousand years ago. The rivers present position is about a thousand yards to the south.

This is a beautiful concentric circle. I was inspired to come here by a lovely aerial photograph that Stubob sent me of the site. Photography on the ground is difficult due to the size of the circle (30 metres) and the flatness of the site. The inner ring is 5 metres across and is described by Burl as a paved ring cairn. This must have been something to see in it’s hayday.
You can see the factory chimneys of Shap quite clearly from this site which implies that the shap complexes would have been visible back in the day.
There is a stone between the outer and inner rings which forms an alignment with the cairn to the east, the circle and Shap. There are also three aligned boulders to the north of the circle.
In summary, an intriguing site, well worth a visit.

This lovely little cairn circle is just beside the entrance to the village of Oddendale. It is situted on a bridleway and close to the path to Shap. It has the feeling of a small shine possibly to protect the village. As I spent some time here a bloody great buzzard flew overhead and seemed to lazily check me out.
The circle is only 5 metres across with 12 outer stones and 3 inners.
Someone had scrawled a notice on a slate informing any passers-by of the fact that this is a ‘stone circle‘

This site is probably not prehistoric. See Misc post

I’ve been trying to get to this site for some time and have eventually got there. I must say I wasn’t disappointed. You can see the stones profiled on the horizon as you come up the road from the cattle grid. The footpath up the hill is walled on both sides and seems like an extension of the road. The first site you come to is the cairn which is bisected by a stone wall. The cairn is approximately 10 metres in diameter and only has stones on the southern side (10 of ‘em). It makes you wonder about the farmers attitudes to these sites. Why did the farmer of the northerly side remove the stones and the farmer on the southerly side leave them in situ?
Fifty metres south of the cairn along the low limestone scar is the second circle. This is a lovely intimate circle with twelve stones, nine of which are lovely Shap granite and the rest limestone (I think).
The view from the circle is over the massive Hardendale quarry. A truely rural/industrial landscape.
Fifty Metres east of the first cairn is a single large stone that stands at the entrance to another walled corridor between fields.
Weird boundaries they have up here!

I have been visiting this site since I was a bairn. My uncle used to take us camping to the lakes and his favouite stopping off place was the boozer at Eamont Bridge. Me and my cousins were given the obligatory glass of pop and a bag of crisps and left to our own devices for a couple of hours. The henge and the river were our playgrounds.
In recent years I discovered the Mayburgh Henge and neglected King Arthurs Round Table. I decided to make amends on my last visit and stayed away from Mayburgh and devoted myself soley to this henge.
It’s a beautiful place! How could I neglect it ? You can be just yards away from a busy road (A6) and yet emerse yourself to an extent that everything else just fades away.
This is what henges do to me, I’m sure that this is what they are supposed to do. I knew it as a kid and I’m re-learning it now.

The Goggleby Stone is beautiful. No matter how much you read about the Shap complexes, you need to visit the sites to appreciate the scale of the thing. It must have been some place back in it’s day and I was lucky enough to have the stone to myself. I walked from Skellaw Hill, which I would recommend, and saw the stone get larger and more impressive.
The concrete bed is a bit disappointiing but what can you do?
Check out the sheep with the shamanic face markings in the next field!

Mr Cope informs us that this humble bump was once a “splendid sepulchral heap”.
All that remains today is a slight rise in the south eastern corner of the field. The field wall to the south of the hill contains a couple of decent size stones, especially when viewed from the field side.
The Goggleby Stone is visible from the hill with another large, unnamed, stone in between. To get to the Goggleby Stone from Skellaw Hill just walk along the narrow marked corridor between two fields that starts at the crossroads. On this path you will also come a cross another couple of decent sized stones.