Latest Fieldnotes

How strange that a stone circle only 500 metres from the great henge at Avebury should be so unnoticed.

Every day dozens of people walk down the West Kennett Avenue, unaware that this circle was ever here, let alone that a stone still stands.

The OS map marks it as ‘Stone Circle (rems of)’, with a single black dot to indicate the remaining stone.

If you come down the Avenue from Avebury, look across the road to your left. About 200 metres along the tree line in the field you’ll see the stone. If you go to the end of the stones (as they stand today), cross over and follow the hedge/fence.

At a bend in the tree line there’s a gap in the hedge for access between the fields. This access runs right through the site of Falkner’s Circle. A small wooden sign is nailed to the fence post to mark the spot, and several large sarsens lie around. The one remaining stone is wider than it is tall, being about 6 feet by 4 feet. Sadly, it lies just on the north side of the field boundary, i.e. just outside the National Trust owned land, and so vulnerable to farming mistreatment.

And what a strange spot. Right on the valley floor, the squat stone suits the snug location.

But what was this place? Some two hundred metres off-route for the Avenue to Avebury lacking the commanding and/or central feeling that is so common in other stone circles.

In ‘The Avebury Cycle’, Michael Dames suggests that it is perhaps to do with the midsummer sunrise. The sunrise would come over the eastern horizon (directly between two Bronze Age barrows), and a line could come through this circle, the stone in the Avenue known as 35N (uniquely not set flat-side inwards, but at a right angle to the others with a pointing edge to the east), across Waden Hill and to the summit of Silbury.

To me, this place is another discovery that makes me believe I really will never be fully familiar with all the monuments and features of the Avebury landscape, let alone divine their purpose.

(visited 4 April 02)

notes from the stones, 4 April 02:

Rarely referred to, yet obviously once an integral part of the Avebury complex of monuments, Little Avebury stone circle stood on Cow Down at the base of Furze Hill, at the point of two beautiful narrow sheltered valleys.

What a confounding and enigmatic monument in such a beautiful setting. Heading from the Sanctuary through East Kennett we took the Ridgeway south. The views back to the imposing East Kennett long barrow and Silbury gave a whole new spin on my understanding of the layout of the Avebury landscape.

After a mile or so we arrived at Cow Down (no cows, but plenty of sheep). The Modern Antiquarian marks this as the site of a stone circle ‘destroyed’. Having visited the ‘destroyed’ Falkner’s Circle earlier today and found the site clearly marked and a stone still standing, and having previously been to several ‘destroyed’ stone circles in Aberdeenshire that are still readily identifiable, I had no idea what to expect of Little Avebury.

The OS map did a great job of pinpointing Falkner’s Circle for us, but it marks nothing here.

There’s a rough circle of about 8 recumbent and broken stones – with three more heading out in a line to the south – on the valley floor at 118654, between the Ridgeway and Furze Hill.

At the end of Furze Hill there’s a *really* weird thing – a modern 12 foot tall pillar of rough white marble with a horse’s head carved in the top. About 30 metres north of that is a bit of rough ground, littered with large sarsen boulders, some fifteen of which are in a neat north-south line. If I didn’t know better I’d say it was a ruined barrow, but the lack of any MA reference and the valley-floor siting means it can’t be.

Ten metres west is another small rough circle of small recumbent sarsens.

What confuses me is none of these three sites make sense as field clearance stones. A farmer would move stone to the edge of tillable land; the side of a field or the start of a steep slope. I can see no reason why any of these stones would have been cleared to their present positions, yet none of this is an obvious circle.

Does anyone know when it was destroyed? Or of any other clues to the exact siting? Can Stukeley perhaps help us out on this one?

Still, for all this confusion I’m calmed by this hazy heat and the beautiful steep green curved valleys here.Stones or no, this place has a rich magical air.

The three-mile walk from the Sanctuary to Adam’s Grave is an essential thing for anyone wanting to get a handle on the geography of the Avebury landscape.

The Ridgeway – although all the books give it as ending at the Sanctuary – goes south past Overton Hill and carries on south, coming out of the magical rolling chalk hills between the 2 MA sites of Knap Hill and Adam’s Grave into the Vale of Pewsey, seeming to end at the foot of Woodborough Hill.

As you come into the village of East Kennett, the tree covered long barrow on the hill looms large and forboding. It had always seemed such a speck when seen from West Kennett, but from the east and south it shows itself as the big monstrous mother it really is.

Passing the site of the destroyed Little Avebury stone circle on Cow Down, you come up the hill to the Wansdyke, and out to a spectacular view of Adam’s Grave and Knap Hill. on the horizon in front.

The climb is tough but short, and the view from the top is incredible. Up here is another one of those places that makes you glad you brought the tombstone-esque bulk of the Modern Antiquarian, for only when here can the true accuracy of Julian Cope’s poetic writing really come clear. You do glimpse forever.

The plain in front drops away, and it’s one of those places like the top of Glastonbury Tor where you feel like you are looking at the whole world.

Such a magnificent place compels you to stay for hours.

The view stays wonderful if you walk the hilltop path to the west, along to Tan Hill, a site of Lammas celebrations in sight of Silbury from time immemorial until 1932.

The edge of the Avebury landscape up here, and somehow also the heart of everything.

visited 4 April 02

There’s so much to see on the Avebury landscape that you really shouldn’t make do with the OS Landranger map. Splash out on Explorer 157. It’s twice the scale, so you can easily find everything, and they’ve coincidentally put Avebury in the centre. If you have this map you’ll find otherwise fiddly things like the Mother’s Jam really easily.

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Head east out of Avebury on the trackway that was, until 200 years ago, the main London to Bath road. It takes you over the Ridgeway, across the top of the hill, and then you cross a mad horse track and go downhill, with the trees of Delling Copse on your left.

And as you go down, you see them on your right. recumbent sarsens, littered across the ground. At the valley floor turn right and walk along. And there it is, the vast oracle stone of the Mother’s Jam. The hill to the west is bare, except for it’s cleft with a trickle of stones leading to the biggest of all at the bottom. The slope to the east is covered in sarsen. It is totally weird. You cannot believe this is natural, it feels so arranged, so ordained.

The few bushes and trees that grow there are weird to, all intense and twisty.

This would be worth visiting just to see the place where the Avebury stones came from. But it would also be worth visiting even if it were not. The weird crackling magic is tangible here, every time you visit.

Truly, the strangest and most intense place in all the natural world I have ever seen.

The centre – the big stone – is at grid ref 135708

Located in field on the footpath up to Nab End Moor and the Bridestones.
From the B1257 take the footpath opposite to the entrance to High Crookleith Farm. Walk up the side of the meadow, cross the stile turn right and walk between the wood and the wall. After about 150m you will come out into a rough field. Walk up the left hand side of the field for about 75-100m and thar she blows. Standing beside a gill is a lovely erect stone about 2m in height.
Give him a rub from his old uncle Fitz.

Yet another site known as the Bride stones. Bride was a popular lass back in the day.
To get to the Bride stones, you can either continue a mile or so in a southerly direction from Bills Dyke or you can hike up the side of the dale using one of the many footpaths.
The hike up is great and I discovered a standing stone in a field that has not been marked or recorded.
Before you reach top of Nab End Moor take some time to explore to the rocks strewn around the rise of the hill. I think I may have found at least two large boulders that have cupmarks (I’ll send my photos to the very knowledgable, Greame C. to see what he thinks).
The circle itself is just below the cairn summit and lays beside a well marked track (an extension of the Billys Dyke path).
The circle itself is a cairn circle with many good size stone still in situ It is 9 meters in diameter with the tallest stones standing at 1 1/2 meters.
Despite it being beside a well made track, it is obvious that no-one comes here, there is a distinct lack of new age debris and coins rammed into crevices.
With the brow of the hill to it’s back, the circle looks out due south over a spit of land known as Nab End. It is a triangular spit flanked on one side by Tripsdale and the other by Bilsdale. In the far distance another mound is visible on the horizon ?Coniser Howl.
One of the South Westerly stones has markings that appear to be man made, again I need to get this verified before I crow about it.
Burl would give it a three, I’ll give it a two and a half because it’s a lovely place to spend an hour or two.

This site was merited a flying visit via the pub in Chaldon (at the bottom of the hill). It is 5 or 6 barrows on another ridgeway path in dorset.

Only two of the barrows are in good condition, the rest are eroded due to walkers and probably agriculture.

Quite a nice spot to stop for half an hour or so, but better pickings can be found further east in purbeck.

.....went to visit on monday evening in the rosy early spring evening light, and how fantastic it looked...........there amongst the birch glades, absolutely perfect. An all too brief sojourn( I had to get to Rowsley for the last Manchester bus of the night ) of some half an hour......but it felt like longer, and certainly was some of the best quality time I’ve had this year.............they just can’t destroy this area, I’d take it over many a bigger site in terms of tranquil setting...........one of the absolute best.

This is also known as Luckington Long Barrow. It’s refreshingly dilapidated and covered in trees, but the stones of the side chambers still poke out of the earth, and around there is a typical cotswold drystone wall of little flat stones. Apparently the ends of the barrow were ripped out for road making stone in victorian times and there used to be an old boy in the village who kept a skull ‘for a momento’ (Exploring Ancient Wiltshire – George Osborn). It was such a calm place when I visited, only the sound of the rain dripping through the leaves. It did have a real atmosphere and you feel like you’re exploring as you climb up onto the mound.

My twenty year old book suggests you ask the farmer at Allengrove Farm to the north before you hop over the gate (but I didn’t know this at the time honest guv).

There are detailed plans of the long barrow in Wiltshire Arch Mag v65 (1970).

One of a number of rectangular barrows/cairns in the Harland Edge area, above the Park gate Circle. The shape of the ditch and mound are clearly defined altho’ covered in heather. An oblong of perhaps 8-10 stones, the remains of a cist, sits on its top.

Ah Silbury.
so sorry
So sorry
to think of them filling you with polystyrene
my tears a lake around you
so sorry they forgot you
but I’ll see you next solstice!

Reading Phil’s postings about Cornish stones reminded of a stone I’d seen a few years back but not heard any info for. I’ve stayed in Polruan and surrounding villages many times but only once spotted these stones, even though Essa1 is right by the road side, admittedly the hedge is quite high. Any I snapped a photo, which I have uploaded. According to Phil these stones don’t appear on maps, which is scandalous. Anyway, if you are in the area, take a walk up Polruan’s road out, up the hill toward Lantic Bay and the stones are in a field on your left – sorry can’t remember how far along the road they are.

johan

Billys Dyke is an earthwork that extends from Clay bank to Chop Gate (pronounced Chop Yat) It skirts the edge of Urra Moor at the 325m contour.
No-one Knows it’s age or purpose. It sits on the North eastern rim of bilsdale.
To get there park at the top of Clay bank and follow the footpath up to the scars and jet working spoil heaps.
Once up on the dyke its a doddle, just follow your nose. When I was a young shaver, this was my prime hunting ground for exotic fungi.
From the dyke you can see the round barrows of the exotically named Round Hill.
If you follow the dyke to chop Gate you can cross the dale and hike up onto Cold Moor and then onward to the Wainstones taking in the dug-out barrows (and frog kingdom) of the three howes then across hasty bank, were the views of the vale of Cleveland are lovely, to the Clay bank car park.
Plenty to see and a nice afternoon’s walk.

Whitehills was found due to one of a23’s numerous detours – no we were not lost – but it was a joyous outcome.

Its on forestry commission land and currently the site car-park which is right next to the site is being used as a log-yard so i’m afraid that it is at least a mile’s walk from the car-park at the forest entrance.

Do not be put off though as for one the walk is great and two the site is wondrous.

The setting is great, the stones are all in good shape and check out the phallic one!!

In the centre there is what looks like a chamber/burial of some sort as there are a great number of rocks which i was gagging to explore with a trench and a trowel.

Due to the logging around you the smell is great as well.

Find this site and you will be rewarded greatly.

And remember that the walk back to the car is all downhill!

This site is a cracker – it must be the least visited decent stone circle in the Peak District. As for outliers – John Barnatt mentions four in his 1978 book but calls all but one “fortuitously placed boulders” in his 1990 book – one is believed to be a pack horse trail marker. Good photos on the Megalithic Portal

Cley Hill is frankly like a huge breast on the landscape (complete with barrow nipple plonked right on top – don’t tell me they didn’t think of that at the time). It’s owned by the National Trust and is an important nature reserve because of the early gentian and other rare chalk grassland plants that grow there. You will also find mountaineering cows and should check out the musk thistles bristling with bees. It’s so bloody draughty you’ll wish you were a bee stuck down in the flowers off your face on nectar too. It certainly clears your mind.

In all the books the site is mentioned as an Iron Age Hillfort, but frankly a place as obvious as this would hardly have been ignored by previous people – as proved by the older barrow on the top in any case.

JC mentions the site in passing in tma in a similar vein, commenting that perhaps Neolithic peoples had too much respect for the Mother to go altering sacred landscapes. It’s certainly been altered since though – the side where the car park is has been extensively quarried.

If you’re driving past , the best view is coming along the Frome road. And if you’re stopping, there’s an NT carpark conveniently located at the road, near the bottom of the hill.

This is such a special spot. The polissoir is one of only two in England, and it’s apparently by far the better one*. It’s a sarsen stone worn smooth / into six gashes by people sharpening stone axes and arrows. We sat there for ages. It’s amazing to think you are sitting in exactly the same spot as those people thousands of years ago, and it’s amazing to run your hand over the marks in the stone. It’s not easy to find, for which I’m not sorry. If some people don’t mind daubing paint all over Avebury or Glastonbury tor or breaking the stones at Stoney Littleton (ooh it makes me SO MAD thinking about that even now) well I don’t want them anywhere near this, or I would be forced to practice sharpening their faces on it. Basically you walk along the Ridgeway from the Sanctuary, turn right and hunt for it amongst the ‘Grey Wethers’. Helpful eh. But half the point is to find it yourself.

*sheer hearsay, from George Osborn’s ‘Ancient Wiltshire’ (1982). I have no idea where the ‘other’ he talks of is. And besides, people were polishing their axes somewhere weren’t they. Maybe he means this is only one of two really obvious ‘multi channelled’ polishing stones. Who knows.

Starting from the village of Hebden, Follow the footpath North along the westerly side of the Hebden Beck and cross the beck using the footbridge at Nanny Spout. Follow the footpath through the fields (avoiding the huge amount of dead rabbits) gradually heading uphill towards the very visible scar. The path snakes up the scar and brings you out onto the moor at Scar Top House.
You could drive to this point using the trackway but you would miss a beautiful walk. My daughter was most pissed off when I told her that we could have driven to this point.
Turn to your left and walk along the footpath onto the moor.
The circle is about 1/4 km along this path. It takes some seeing, even with the heather burned back, but if you take your time you will see a slight embankment which defines the circle.
A little further on there is the hint of a circle but the rocks here are country rock not loose stones and there is no embankment.
I was a little disappointed at first but then I took in the surrouding area. About a further 1/6 km from the circle is Mossy Moor reservoir. If one presumes that this small reservoir is sited upon an existing tarn, then this would make it a sacred lake, which gives the circle much more significance.
All in all a lovely site, a ruined circle, a possible sacred lake, a crackin’ walk.
Don’t forget to take a jumper!

We parked up beside the B6265 Pateley Bridge road and entered the moor through a gate beside the quarry.
A short traipse revealed a moor covered in stone debris. Following Ironman’s instructions we walked along the brow and there it was.
Appletreewick is a lovely little circle.
In comparison to the lakeland circles, which have the vibe of a neolithic minster, Appletreewick has the vibe of a chapel serving a small community.
Once you’ve taken in the circle check the view and you know why it is sited there. It is on a hillside at the convergence of three dales. Ahead of you is Wharfedale, to your right is the valley of the River Dibb and to your left the valley of the Barben Beck.
A mile or so to the south east there is a large area of cup marked rocks, I did not have time, (or should I say my kids would not come with me and I couldn’t leave them) to investigate them. I shall definitely return to this area.

This site is not far from the Eden project.

A very pleasant walk thru the woods but unfortunately the site is on private property. I did try driving around to get a good view from a nearby hillside but you still can’t beat an aerial view of this type of site.

Anyone have a helicopter handy?

have a look from above at....
uk.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?client=europe&x=206000&y=56000&scale=10000&width=700&height=410&gride=205900&gridn=55700

I love this henge. It is completely wooded with a well defined, deep ditch and bank.
The wood has obviously saved it from the plough.
This feels like a far more intimate space than the gargantuan central henge. More fitting for a final ritual venue (if the henges were processed through).
The vibes are lovely and you could spend a day just mooching around this place, a good spot to spend a night in, too.
The floor is lovely and springy due to years of accumulation of leaf litter and that lovely loamy soil it forms.
I was loathed to leave this place but my bread snappers demanded that I pay the bribe I had offered for visiting. A visit to Stump Cross caverns.

One of the four cursus (cursii?) that cross the Rudston area, the southern end of Beacon cursus is just about visible as a crop mark next to the Roman road (Woldgate) that runs from Kilham to Bridlington. The same road passes over Beacon mound, a short distance to the west.
While there is not much to see on the ground, the views are interesting, the sea lies to the east, there are extensive views to the south, and the church tower to the north at Rudston now blocks the view of the monolith.
It’s worth taking some time here to stand an the start (or is it end) of the cursus and ponder just what the ancients were doing here, its obviously an important area. Just what ceremonies were taking place here? What WERE they thinking?

Edit:
I visited again in Autumn 2003 to see if the end of the cursus was any more visible in the freshly harvested field – it wasn’t. There is a very slight raised bank that can only really be seen by walking backwards and forwards but totally vanishes on photographs. There is however a good aerial shot in Anne Woodward’s book ‘British Barrows, a matter of Life and Death’ ISBN 0 7524 1468 2

This is a beast of a henge, it’s huge!
There is no obvious access so we had to bust-in over the gate and then Wow! How many folk would this place hold? and jesus! why did they need three of ‘em.
Although the bank is quite broken down in places you still get the feeling that this place is a monster.
If all three henges are contemporary with each other the amount of work put in is immense, there must have been some serious stuff going on here back in the day.
My theory, for what its worth.
If you are journeying up to the axe country from the South and East you will hit this place. The central henge could be the mart where animals are traded for the precious axes. It just looks too big for people. A neolithic N.E.C.
The site is also central to people from the Dales, the Vale of York and the Tabular hill peoples. Three sets of folk, three henges ????

Probably the easiest site to find in Cornwall. On the A39 about 7 miles north of Bude ,when you hit the sign for Wooley look to your right and there it is about 15ft from the road .

Visited 30/03/2002

After a non-neolithic day near my favourate sites, I escaped the family and headed off up here for sunset.

It had been a few years since I was last here, its the first time I’ve been up here for sunset and I wasn’t disapointed.

I situated myself on the south side towards the east entrance and watched the sun set behind the Iron Age ramparts, all the while feeling more and more peaceful.

This site oozes power and peace in a strange combination. It always invigorates me more than the obligatory run up the ramparts would alone.

All in all a successful re-aquaintance with this lovely hill.