Latest Fieldnotes

The rubble remains of a huge cairn made all the more moody on this visit by the wind, rain and sheep skull decoration somebody had chosen to leave.

A low and broad circle, hard to spot amid the grass. If this were anywhere else it would be for the fanatical only but as part of the whole Tal-Y-Fan experience it is a must.

We took an alternate route to the ones suggested in the books. We drove from Rowen to the Rhiw Youth Hostel. From here we walked to the Bwlch-y-Ddeufan stones taking in the other monuments on the way. Walking this way, and the same way back there is never more than 10 minutes between sites. Perfect.

Here the stones are in competition with the ridiculous pylons. They win hands down.

The highlight of an excellent set of monuments below the top of Tal-Y-Fan.

This ‘circle’ is a ring cairn lying 150 metres or so up the track from the Druid’s Circle. The site is a confusing jumble of stones but is worth checking out.

A great end to a day spent visiting a lot of sites in the area. The lashing rain and howling wind didn’t put us off at all but made photography a very rushed affair. A lovely site with fantastic views, the small Irish Five-Stone ring (Circle 275) on the track leading up offers a great view of the Druid’s Circle and is lovely itself. Another on the summer visit list I think.

we were out at cothiemuir wood at the weekend. what a wonderful place. deep, thick fog blowing amongst the trees added to the whole atomephere.
this is an observation and question. there seemed to have been quite a bit of work having gone in and around the site. all the small treelings have been chopped, the area between the kist and recumbant has0 .0.be0.e00.n 0..0.dug up and the sods replced, and the whole area looked like it had been cleared quite recntly (3-6months?) i don’t think this was just the sparse time of year (march), though i could be wrong. maybe someone had been survaying it? does anyone know of anything that’s gone on there recently?

Whilst trying to circumnavigate the adjoining field, in order to avoid 20 angry looking bulls (not such an iron man today), I came across a large outcrop of rocks and boulders spoilt only by a small television mast on the top. These stones seemed just as charged as the Doublers, one imparticular had a very sexual appearance.

The Doublers themselves were everything I’d hoped for, so I spent a while sat by the largest rock eating some lunch and resting after the walk from Ilkley via White Wells. Meanwhile the bulls moved on to the side of the outcrop I’d been admiring earlier where the farmer was waiting to feed them allowing me to return to the path without any fear!

I returned to the Badger Stone on 16/3/2. This time it was in the late afternoon, so the sun was in a different position from the last time I was here (early morning). The aspects of the stone that had excited me so much last time were now more difficult to make out despite the strong sunshine. Markings I could hardly make out the previous time were however brought into sharper focus.

If you intend to visit the Badger Stone it is worth many repeat visits – only then will you be sure to see it in all of it’s glory. I intend to visit here at night with a decent set of flash lights in order to attempt illuminate it from all angles.

Very strange place. The fall of boulders is covered in huge natural cup marks. One huge stone stands upended, covered in pits and tracks, like a giant nature hewn version of the Badger Stone.

Didn’t have time to get close to the site but got some reasonable photies from the roadside.

I see on the map there is a footpath that runs directly besides the wood so may be worth a visit in the future.

The whole area is made up of gorgeous rolling fields, woods and scattered farms.

Even a non-drood would enjoy a walk here!

“Car” or “Caer” in Cornish is a place name from the Celtic “ker” meaning fort. You will also find Caer place names in Wales. In Brittany they use the spelling “Ker”

Caer Dane has no public access but you can get a reasonable view from the road that leads from Perranzabuloe to the fantastically named vilage of Ventongimps.

The small fort sits nicely on the hilltop and is covered with trees in the distance you can also see the larger wooded site of Caer Kief.

Another of the sites you wouldn’t know about unless you flew over it.

Just of the roadside between Goonhavern and Perranporth.
Don’t look for any sign posts though (You won’t find any)

WOW! someone in their infinate wisdom drove a road straight thru this one. (Not recently though)

You wouldn’t know its there if you han’t noticed on the map.

I have driven thru this site soo many times without realising the history a ROUND me!

Another LAAARGE barrow.
This one is on on the edge of Cubert Common. The site is owned by the the National Trust and even has it’s own little car park.

The views from the top are stunning. You can see Castle an dinas to the north-east and St Agnes Beacon to the South west.

The Common is great place to walk your dog/kids/horse etc.

This is indeed a lovely spot. It was one of the stopping points on a brief tour of the area at the Ancient Sacred Landscapes Network conference in summer 2000. Nice to see that even though there were clearly solstice campers coming through the area, the Smithy site was relatively free of trash (not so Avebury or the orchards at Glastonbury, sadly...)

I hope to hike all or part ofthe Rideway track this summer when I visit, and will certainly be spending time in this location; White Horse Hill and environs is my favorite place on earth.

I always knew these as Druid Rocks when I was growing up in Derbyshire, but ‘officially’ they’re called Rowtor Rocks. They resemble a mini-Robin Hood’s Stride. There are many legends and myths about druidic activity on the rocks (although as far as I know the evidence is sketchy) and the Victorians loved ‘em. There are comfy little armchairs carved into the rocks, and several caves, rooms and passages to explore. I went up there yesterday for the first time in years, and they’re as much fun as they’ve always been. If you’re going to the Nine Ladies or the Andle Stone, then don’t miss these rocks. The views from the top are amazing, especially in winter when there are no leaves on the trees. Does anyone know any history of Rowtor?

Devil’s Quoits, 9th March 2002

This site has occupied a curious place in my imagination for several years now – I’ve always known almost exactly where it was, but always felt as if it was untouchable, beyond reach, to be imagined but not experienced. I first read about it, as a passing reference, in Aubery Burl’s field guide many years ago. Not quite so many years ago I failed to get onto a rare organised visit organised by organised southern stone circle freaks. Only when the topic of the site was raised a few weeks ago did I finally decide to get down there and find out just what was going on, and why this site is so difficult to visit, or at least seems that way.

Located just south-west of Oxford, on the edge of the village of Stanton Harcourt, the Devil’s Quoits have suffered unjustly from their favourable location. Once the centre of considerable Bronze Age activity (records show this to rival Avebury, Flag Fen and Glynsaithmaen as a prehistoric cultural centre), first medieval agriculture, then wartime ‘necessity’, then construction (this is a rich gravel bed extraction area), and finally, the greatest insult of all, landfill. The henge and barrows ploughed out and destroyed, the stones flattened to build the runway, the earth scarred and ripped to provide the raw materials for road-building, and the wounds tended with the rotting garbage of our throw-away society. To study the progress of British civilisation, look no further.

But you can’t. This site is still a working landfill site, home of a never-ending procession of bin-wagons, bulldozers and responsible landscape gardeners, as an unwelcome a prospect for Neolithic explorers as could be imagined. But prompted by a throwaway question, and still smarting from being too disorganised to make the previous visit 2 years ago, I took the bold step of ringing up the site, and asking, no, demanding, to be allowed on to the site, to inspect the damage for myself. In one of those strange twists that came to define the day, the lads on the site were really helpful, and could see no problem in me turning up, with up to 9 friends, pretty much any time I liked. That’s it, you can visit anytime you like, you only have to ask, and you’re in.

As the site is still a working landfill site, and is going to remain that way for a while, you have to follow Health and Safety regulations when on-site, which means high-visibility jacket/vest and hard-hat, but the site office can lend you these, and you really want to be wearing wellies as well.

7 of us got together, and turned up on a fiendishly blustery day in March 2002. We parked up, signed in, kitted out and walked the 800 feet from the site office to the remains of the Devils Quoits henge, alongside an enormous gravel pit lake, which according to my map of the area, previously was home to dozens of barrows. By the waters edge are a variety of felled stones in a variety of conditions, piled up, half-buried and up on display. Most prominent is the stone clearly recognisable from the 19th century photograph (aka “Quoit A”), then towering above the self-photographer, now lying on the ground, still with a deep groove on it’s right-hand side. Slightly to the south are 2 half-buried stones, man height, which we took to be the other 2 stones standing in 1940. To the north is a genuine “pile of broken rocks”, which were apparently discovered in the 1988 excavations. These are not thought to have been part of the circle, but have been kept anyway, “just in case”. If all you’re interested in is seeing big stones tower above you, then you’re going to be disappointed, for the time being anyway. All the stones have been recovered from their graves, but await res-erection.

To the east of this megalithic graveyard is a far more impressive sight – the henge returns! And what a beauty it is, roughly equal in size to an Avebury inner-circle or Stanton Drew. This was a true giant among the henges, the focus of what seems to have been a site of huge importance, quite plainly the result of a lot of effort and hard-labour. The reconstructed ditch is deep and wide. It’s hard to imagine on a bleak pre-equinox spring morning, with rubbish blowing about, a disturbingly large number of dead birds crunching underfoot, and heavy plant roaring in every direction, but this was the centre of a barrow cemetery stretching for miles in every direction, the focus of a determined and extremely able society, of which we know just about nothing, and have literally thrown away the chance of discovering.

The Oxford Archaeological Unit (OAU) are working hard to make amends and cling onto what little we have, along with the heavy machinery of the Waste Recycling Group. 3 excavations have uncovered the surviving stones, the location of the stone holes, and the dimensions of the henge ditch. The ground has been brought down to the level of the site at the time of construction (various datum levels remain to show the level before work started, with little grass hairpieces) and the immense ditch dug out. The OAU have calculated the labour required to raise each stone by hand, and plan to reunite each surviving stone back to it’s place after their oh-so brief immersion in the soil. Missing stones are to be replaced with likely substitutes, from the local conglomerate. An awesome weekend awaits the strong, curious and adventurous.

The end-result should be a cut-above the average “landfill-turned-countrypark” that are becoming increasingly common. A great scar has been inflicted on what was once a site of intense activity. The countless barrows are gone, never to return, but a peaceful place for the future beckons. Visit it often, and marvel at the changes.

After being re-erected for a brief period in the mid-20th century, this chamber tomb had collapsed again by 1983. Currently still lying in a sorry state; no plans to re-erect it. Last visited in August 2001, nevertheless impressive and atmospheric.

Very little remains of this cliff fort which looks like it’s gonna completely disappear in the next couple of generations. what would have been a headland defended by a ditch across the narrow neck has now disappeared; a few yards of the defensive ditch, cut into the crumbly cliff rab still 4 feet deep,august 2001.

Overlooked by the very fine Craig Weatherhill guides to Cornwall (CORNOVIA and BELERION), this univallate hillfort round is still worthy of a visit. Marked on the OS explorer map sheet 204 (Redruth&St.Agnes) as a settlement,The Hood presides over the Roseworthy Valley,with sight lines south towards the complex of sites around Black Rock and Carmenellis; and north-west towards Trencrom Hill.
The formation of the fort is preserved by modern field boundaries,and although the interior of the fort is now a perciptibly conical crop field,the ditch still survives on the northern and south eastern circumference.On my last visit in august 2000,the northern ditch was still upwards of 8 feet in depth.As far as i am aware,no excavations have been carried out on this site.
It is accessible by foothpaths from both the Roseworthy and Penponds ends of this section of valley;indeed, the(incredibly muddy)track, Viaduct Lane, which runs along the valley side below,shows evidence of being a “green lane” of great antiquity. It runs inland from the coast at Gwithian to the granite uplands at Carwynnen,and is still a right of way for most of its length, variously as a bridleway and a minor road.
There are other sites along this route;a clapper bridge crosses the stream approx. half a mile inland,which local folklore records as forming part of the “Saints Way” to St.Micheals Mount(SW632387,unmarked); further inland at the Carwynnen village end of the track, lies the currently collapsed chamber tomb, “The Giant’s Quoit” (SW650373).
The Hood is certainly worthy of further investigation and recognition.

Wow! what a wonderful website!
Anyways me and my missis have just come back from a short break in Devon Stone-circle hunting (no red coat necessary)
On the way to track some down’ just before Chagworth village
came across this lovelly cromlech. On the sign to the rocks is a short description of how they got the name “built as legend has it, by three spinsters before breakfast” or words close to that effect. I’ve got another theory on the name:as you climb over the stile and enter the field and look at the stones’ i was struck by the shapes of the three supporting stones, which to me could easily be turned into, with a little imagination, three hunched,old ladies, each supporting on there shoulders that giant mushroomed cap stone....tell that explanation to the kids and they’ll have to behave themselves, otherwise they will end up the same!!

This stone sits about 600 metres directly to the north of the stone row. It sits right at the edge of a wood just east of Glenhead farm. The stone is over 7 feet high and about the same wide and has a broad, strong presence. The stone looks to have patches of very fragile, light coloured quartz and has very weathered cup markings on its eastern face.

There is a rusty old metal fence post which has been driven into the stone and secured with what looks like concrete.

It is not in alignment with the stone row and it’s now hard to tell if it would have been visible from the stone row.

The monument sits in a field between Doune and Dunblane and are just visible from the B824.

There are three (*possibly four stones) in a clear NNE – SSW alignment. There are good views to both horizons along the alignment. The southernmost stone sits at an angle and would have been around 7 or 8 feet high when upright. The middle stone is about 4 and a half feet and is short and stubby with nearly 30 cup markings on it’s flat surface. The north stone is also at an angle and would have been about 6 feet high.
*There is another stone which lies prostrate, to the immediate north of the alignment. If this was a seperate standing stone, the way it looks to have fallen suggests that it was not in alignment with the rest. Of course this stone may have been moved. It is generally thought that the prostrate stone is actually a broken piece of the northern most standing stone which it lies beside.

The stones are set in gently undulating countryside about a mile north of the River Teith carselands.
There are good views of the Gargunnock and Touch Hills to the south and the Ochils to the east and the mountains around Callander to the north west. When we visited Ben Ledi to the north west was snow capped and looked fierce and volcanic, like Mount Fuji.
Dumyat to the south west of the Ochils also looked prominent.

There was a strange modern stone sculpture being erected at the entrance to the field. There was also loads of building materials which suggested someone was building a house with the stone sculpture as a centrepiece – will check this out at a later date.

There was freezing wind and we left to find the other stone near Glenhead farm.