Latest Fieldnotes

We visited this on Sunday 9th Sept ‘02. It was very busy, a long line of visitors were streaming from Men-an-tol as we arrived we met two German tourists who joked about the stones as a fertility object and said we had to pass through several times, we then amazingly had the stones to ourselves for 15 mins. There has been a camp fire built here recently but the stones were in great shape.

I dunno what it is but don’t they just make you feel Good to visit?

Great week in Cornwall wish I’d seen a Fougou though.

I remember the first time I came here, it was in the early ‘50s. There were TV cameras, a lot of mud and a lot of people. Sir Mortimer Wheeler was doing the dig. I later saw the program on the BBC, there was no ITV in those dim and distant days.

The next time I went it was clean and the wonderful place it is today, I go there a lot to re-vitalize.

this stone is found off the B840 Loch Awe road a couple of miles from the A816.The top part is broken off so it looks like a pointing finger.

If you don’t know exactly where to look this site can be hard to find. It’s on private land but the farmer but the farmer was quite willing for us to go photograph the site. It still seems to be use from the amount of candle wax on the rocks below the stone and the remnants of tealights :o(.
The rocks surrounding the main stone are covered in carvings most of which are quite hard to discern. Some of it does seem to be graffitti though.

When we first visited the site the area had suffered from a fire (always an advantage for stone hunters). Tis tricky to locate.

(visited 13/9/02)
This was my second visit to these two sites, but my first at night. Parking & walking safely remains a challenge, though I think I solved it to Kit’s Coty. Heading away from Aylesford go past the strange dual carriageway & park in a weird layby type thing just up the hill.
Now go though the hedge into the field behind, walk round the edge of the field clockwise (it has a crop so be careful) , to the third side you reach and then find a gap in the hedge onto the public footpath. On the other side of the footpath is the field the dolmen is in.

Anyhow, at night this site is very peaceful. Town lights are visible on the horizon in two directions and light up the scene by reflecting off the low cloud that unfortunately decided to move in as I got there. I walked round the fence twice before locating the ‘gate’ and got up close to this amazing dolmen.
Unfortunately others had taken this opportunity to chalk graffiti on most of the stones, in a curious similarity to the victorian carved graffiti on what was presumably the inside of the longbarrow.
Other than that, its now a home to huge spiders; I counted at least 3 different varieties living in the holes in the rocks. Best not get too close at night if you don’t like them...

And so onto the Countless Stones. Its walkable from Kits Coty but I drove back down the hill and parked in the layby on the road/track that goes past the field the stones are in. Leaving my car with trepidation, nestled next to the burnt out remains of someone elses car, I set off across the field (the crop had been harvested). The huge pylons that run next to the stones made my hair stand on end and my teeth feel slightly funny, which was nice.
The stones are ungraffitied, which struck my as ironic given the ease of access to them. They lie in a no real order but were presumably like Coldrum originally facing to the east, now marked by a line of traffic lights along a ridge...
I stayed with the stones for 20 minutes, the incessant traffic & humming of electricity, eventually driving me home.

Visited 26th August 2002: Having dragged everyone around the countryside looking for non-existent standing stones, I had Bedd Taliesin tucked up my sleeve as the grande finale of the day. I had never visited the site before, but I knew the stones were small (smaller than they look in some photos). I warned everyone not to expect too much ‘mega’ in their lithic.

When we arrived at the cairn, everyone including me was surprised at how small the stones are! The cist is really diddy, and it made me chuckle when I thought about Rhiannon’s story about spending a night in the chamber. I think you might well go mad if you managed to squeeze yourself into such a tight space, but you’d get cramp first.

The cairn is beautifully situated, with views of the Dyfi Estuary and Aberdyfi. The weather was also excellent, but it was all a bit marred by a big stack of smelly silage that the farmer had stacked in the next door field. Well worth a visit though.

I have been interested in this area recently. The circle is rather odd, the position seems strange by most local examples, it is rather pushed away low down by steep ground that falls away into the nearby beck. What could be rather more interesting is the earthworks close by. It seem to encompass the circle. The question is are the two related? There are other examples in the Peak District of monuments being in proximity to earthworks. This seems to be an open area for investigation. Is this another area like Gardoms Edge?

This is rather a plesant area to investigate, it is a lot more open than further north. I was reliably informed by one of the locals that the three stones identified on the map for a kind of right angle. Any investigation shows that this is a rather more complex story. The stones have survived rather well plenty of backing stones are visible on the ground around the large stones. One thing that must be remembered is that there were once many more people living in this area than presently, the stones survived that.

I have been told this stone is everything from fallen, moved to a hedge, used a gatepost and only a stump remains. I recently found a photo of the stone from 1919 so its time to search the hedgerows.

The earthwork is getting on for a mile long running roughly East/West, burials have only been found on the circle side.

Although quite large 27m across it’s very hard to find the rubble ring of this robbed cairn...lost amongst the heather in summer.

An earthwork of an unknown date.
The section of the dyke sandwiched between the roads is the most impressive part.
There is an area called Smallfield 200m or so Southeast; a Bronze age/Romano-British Field system.
The whole has been badly disturbed by roads and walls, there is a rubble ring of a possible robbed cairn (Bar Dyke Ring )but it’s hard to pick out amongst the heather and a fence and track cut through it.
Worth a look if your between Ash Cabin and the circle at Ewden Beck.

Whereas Normanton Down is a vast sprawling complex of barrows, Winterbourne Stoke is much smaller and more compact. Park in the lay-by on the A303 that is just east of the roundabout junction with the A360 and wander through the trees to the barrows. The first large bell barrow after the woods gives a good vantage point of the western half of the site which include a nice pair of disc barrows as well as bowl, bell, pond and saucer barrows. Right next to the roundabout is a well preserved long barrow aligned along a northeast – southwest axis, most of the rest of the barrows follow this northeast axis.

Visited 8th September 2002: This Bronze Age standing stone is very easy to find, because someone has conveniently built a churchyard around it!

We entered the churchyard through an iron gate, and I began scouring the area for a sign of the stone. Louise was a bit more canny than me, and spotted it right there by the gate! To be fair, it’s not what we were expecting, because someone has concreted a sundial to the top of the stone! This is one of the weirdest adaptations of a megalith that I’ve seen so far.

St Tyssilio’s church is an early Celtic Christian site, with the compulsory holy well (nearby) and round churchyard. Judging by the standing stone, it was a ceremonial site long before it was Christianised. There’s a notice near the churchyard gate that explains some of the history of the church, and according to this a second megalith was discovered during the 1890s during work on the church itself. This stone was so big that they left it in place and built over it!

The Slei Gill vein at Booze has a large number of interesting mineworkings, some of which are ancient, many of the later works covering other earlier workings.

Not a lot to see, that’s for sure – but hugely important nonetheless. The best time to see the white blobs that represent the post holes is early in the morning, not sure what time the carpark opens, but I got there before 9.30am when the ‘henge opens for business. Just a quarter of an hour later and you risk getting run over by tourist coaches. The place shuts at 6.00pm(?), after that you’ll have to ask the security guard nicely – don’t know if he will let you wander round ‘his’ carpark though…

Visited 2nd Sept 2002-09-09
A nice set of barrows between Stonehenge and the roundabout that leads off to Durrington and Woodhenge. The first time travelling west I completely missed them, then on the way back east they loomed out of the trees to the left of the road causing me to pull up sharply (not recommended on this road!). The barrows extend northwards as far as The Avenue while the Old Kings barrows continue on the other side of it.
While I was there I met a couple with their kids looking for a good place to watch the sun go down beyond ‘thee stones’. Hope they enjoyed it, I know I did.

A relatively small, well preserved circle on a raised mound of smaller stones, lacking the recumbent of the usual Aberdeenshire circles.
Not sure what excavation/restoration has been carried out, although it seems possible that some or all of the stones have been repositioned or at least re-erected over the years. One of the stones is heavily cup-marked (see photo) and the circle stands on a hillside with views of the sea to the North, and Ben Achie (obscured by trees) to the South.

Just a short distance from the hustle and bustle of Stonehenge is the barrow cemetery of Normanton down. Although you can see the stones and the tourists in the distance, if you come here you’ll probably have the place to yourself – the only other person I saw was looking for a crop circle and the only thing to spoil the peace and quiet was the distant hum of military transport planes.
As for the barrows, there’s long barrows, bowl, bell, disc and saucer barrows including the famous Bush Barrow excavated in 1808 by Sir Richard Colt Hoare.

Made it to this one at last, what a treat(if you survive the road) No feelings of unease for me , the sheltering trees
helping to forget the road and traffic.
Imagine this Dorset landscape without the roads and new(ish) trees .The ridgeway close by and the multitude and variety of barrows. We travelled down to the nine stones from a vist to the Cerne Giant ,a wonderfull ancient landscape!!

This takes some finding but is a treasure not to be missed.
When i arrived a marquee was being erected in the same field to celebrate a 60th birthday party.What a venue.
The lentil hovers at over 45 degrees as if it is about to crash down to earth at any moment.Lets hope it doesn’t because it is a wonderful sight and must not be missed.

Visited on o foggy morning 30/8/02/. I’m sure it looked more impressive than on any picture I have seen. In my opinion this is definitely the remains of a stone circle. Climbed through the hole and I now feel invigorated.

I visited this wonderful circle on a sunny afternoon 28/8/02.I first tried the approach via the stile but got lost so drove up to the farm.The farmer was very helpful & gave me directions.The walk serves to build up your antiscipation and you are not disappointed when the stones suddenly appear through the bushes.The only disappointment was how overgrown the site is so you do not get an overall view of the circle.The sun was shining brilliantly on the quartz stone and the shadow from the centre stone stretched half way towards 1 o’clock when facing east.So remote so undisturbed,a magical place.

A unique site in the Peak, the bank is over 200m long with bulges at the northern and southern end. These bulges look like barrows added to each end but are just part of the bank.
On average the bank is about 1.5m high but is higher and wider to the north.

Pity about the drystone wall that runs its length and the small silage tank on the southern bulge. But it’s still well worth checking out.......