Latest Fieldnotes

It’s great when you find somewhere by accident. I was out with the Gibbonnettes, barrow hunting.

I knew that there was a couple of barrows at the top of a hill outside Princes Risbrough, and it was just about the only place open (this was during F&M time)

We parked up, and had a good scramble around the hill and in the woods ... noticing what appeared to be a bit of quarrying on the hill, but not paying too much attention to it ..

We skirted around the bottom of the hill, and looped back up. There’s a lovely walk in the woods, and it opens out to a *stunning* view towards Oxford. With a barrow at the top of the hill.

Perhaps eager to avoid the barrow for as long as humanely possible, the Gibbonnettes roved down the front of the hill towards a big wooden log fence, saying “hey, what’s this?”

Still preoccupied with the rather sorry state of the barrow on top, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to them (shame upon me), but they persisted, so I had a look ...

the whole side of the hill was cut away into huge cross. This thing is *massive*. Huge. Enormous ...

I just couldn’t comprehend it ... I’ve read books, driven past Princes Risbrough more than once, know people who’ve walked the Chilterns, but never, ever heard of this, or anything about it.

Fantastic place, go and have a look

RG

We stopped by here just before dusk. Driving down from Crickhowell, it’s in the gate area of an abandoned army base on your left hand side.

There’s a big sign saying “MOD Property: No Tresspassing, No Photography”.

Walk past this, and it’s on the left hand side of the driveway, about 15 meters down. It’s not really visible from the road, as it looks a bit like a tree stump from a distance.

Get a bit closer, and a magnificent shard of rock is bursting out of the ground, straining at the earth and your perceptions of normality.

Headed off into the Beacons on first night working in Swansea. Almost got fooled by millenium stones in show caves on way. By the time we got to the stones it was lashing it down and quite misty. John couldn’t risk the slippy rocks with his bad knee and Nicky wimped out with floppy shoes. Charles got to the stones and was very impressed, they don’t have these sort of places in Taiwan. Ben enjoyed it too but then it was his birthday, he was up for anything. Good meal in the ‘Ancient Briton’ but no real ale on ,probably because of creeping threat of F&M and lack of visitors. V. Friendly though considering we’re townies. Those stones are quite small aren’t they. Maen Mawr though has a certain majesty and the setting is awsome. Had a bit of a feel of Castlerigg from a setting point of view.

What the Romans started, Powys County Council roads department finished

There’s lots of little wooden stakes patterned around, like at Woodhenge.

Cannot be reached, but you can look at it from the road. Just up the hill from Pentre Ifan.

The water-pump on our old camper blew (unbeknown to us) when struggling up here.
Nice causeways on the enclosures though.

Yes well powerlines ahoy! Like Roman Roads these things are. Funny that int it. Well this site is without a doubt a must see if you are anywhere near it at all. Don’t expect to get your car up the road though unless it has a big engine or thirty five wheels. The hill is of the lovely steep variety so common in N Clwyd. YHA accom at the top (Rowan) which I gather is mostly used by people visiting these stones (though when I visited it was being refurbished so I could only read about it). Nice floor growth later in the year. Beautiful views when chin is lifted.

I couldn’t get into the church when I visited back in the summer of ‘99. Reflections of you in the waterfall. The Llanbedr stones are nearby though in a flat field. My travelling companion of the time listened to the stones for several minutes and said that she heard the stones tell her some stories. She’s Krautrock. Very nice and YHA accomodations nearby too if ya fancy.

If you do have trouble finding the stones the surrounding woods are beautiful to walk through with many big boulders that look like you might think these rocking stones would, especially as the picture in the MD is now kind of out of date. Most of the foilage around the stones has been cut away and so when you find them u’ll know. Just found a site in the Cornwall section also called the 3 brothers. Any connection??? I’ll go find out!

Couldn’t get too near to this circle, mainly due to the presence of a herd of long horned cattle which scred the s*** out of me! Couldn’t see any udders and long grass which soaked my trousers. Its there though, but you have to climb over fences to get there.

Sadly destroyed double circle to the east of King Arthur’s Hall, just by the dry stone wall. Only one stone remains upright and it is not easy to work out which stones belonged to which circle.

Never seen anything like this before! Took lunch here (corned beef butties and lucazade) before carrying on to Leaze and beyond.
A rectangular arrangement surrounded by a earth mound and full of marsh plants.

Fernacre is reached around the back of Rough Tor, just past the settlement at the base of the Tor.
Hard to see at first coming out of the mist and stones confused with cows ans sheep and there it is, Rough Tor behind, Brown Willy in front.
Louden Hill q.v. is just about visible on the top of the hill to the west.
Many stones lie on the floor, others broken but the circle is there.
Follw the path up to Louden Hill and Stannon beyond.

Lovely little circle which can be seen from Louden Hill (q.v.). Nearly all stones seem to be present if a little on the small side
there is an alignment of four strange stones inbetween Stannon and Louden Hill.
The immediate surroundiings are somewhat spoiled by the huge china clay mine to the north.

Returned to ‘the stone’ as we locals call it. Now the foot & mouth verboten signs have gone, I realised how much I missed the freedom to be there! Has anyone else noticed – it takes minutes to reach the stone from roadside, yet it seems to take aeons to return! Aaaaaah – it’s a NICE kinda hurt!!! Incidentally I notice that Arthur’s Stone and Maen Cetti are listed separately – is there a reason for this – I’d always been told the stone and Maen Cetti are but two names for the same stone...(Gower)...or is there another Arthur’s Stone in S. Wales? Love to you all, M’lass of Crofty haha.

I came for the Midwinter Solstice dawn and marched around the broken clock face beating my bodhran drum. Round and round, winding in the sun, pulling it over the horizon, wrestling with it like the Old Man of the Sea.
Soft light on recumbrant stones that felt like fossilised clouds which had fallen to Earth – so solidly grounded and yet so weightless.
An old woman lays a sprig of holly on the altar in the cove. Red blood berries dripping onto white stone.
The midwinter sun is rising. Hallelujah! Oh Ai! Oh Ai! The Goddess’s consort has returned to waken her from the dead. Spring will come again and surely melt the slabs of ice laid out like a frozen splash at Arbor Low.

Cling to the Mother lest the winds blow you cartwheeling over Castleton, tossed like the hang-gliders below their flimsy gashes of colour against a perfect blue sky.
Cling to the Mother, like you clung to your own mother’s breast, and press your ear to the grass to hear the mountain’s heartbeat.
Cling to the Mother, to hold on to her before she slips away down the slope, her body crushed up for the smoking cement works you see below.

Sitting just sitting on a sunny summers day high above the Peak District her patchworked soft rounded beauty laid out before me.
The ancient slumbering stones behind me like frozen surf. An entrance to the Otherworld where centuries seem like minutes and if you drink the wine you have to stay for ever.
Bliss!

When you next visit Stonehenge, try getting hold of the booklet “Exploring The Stonehenge Landscape” that is sold from machines in the car park, but not in the shop for some odd reason.
I recommend Walk 3, which takes in all the most prominent barrow groups to the north, but most importantly includes walking the entire length of the Stonehenge Cursus, a two mile long processional Neolithic route that leads to a now destroyed long barrow. The sides of the Cursus can be made out along most of its length and it is vast in scale.

For much of its length Stonehenge can be seen right on the horizon, without all the modern rubbish that surrounds it. The walk ends by approaching the Henge up the Stonehenge Avenue, from the exact direction of the Midsummer sunrise.

The walk is about 6 miles in total and gives you an utterly different way of seeing the whole area.

I can understand why there are no reports for Windmill Hill as yet.
Frankly, Avebury is nearby and far more accessible and spectacular, whereas Windmill Hill is relatively unknown outside archaeological circles, a bit of a pain to get to and once you get there there isn’t too much to see.

However...

It WAS the forerunner to Avebury, being of the earlier Causewayed Enclosure type that was the style of sacred circle that led to the Henge. It is also the site from which the entire Causewayed Enclosure building culture of southern Britain is named. In all the aerial photographs of it that you are likely to see, from about 1950, there has been a recent archaeological dig, so the three rings look quite prominent. When I got there one could barely make them out.

The one section of ditch that looks most spectacular is actually a more recent quarry on the north eastern side, but the rings CAN be traced, possibly more easily if the grass is cropped close, and there are two impressive Bronze Age round barrows on the top of the hill, inside the enclosure. This is typical of the later Bronze Age peoples, who seemed to see Neolithic sites as places of death, where it was auspicious to bury their chieftains.

Strangely the centre of the enclosure is not upon the top of the hill, but offset to the northwest. I like to imagine the first arrivals trying to determine where the centre should be, while the place was still forested. Being such a low hill this would not have been easy necessarily, and the centre just misses it. But who knows? Perhaps it was deliberate.

It IS a very peaceful place. The place from which those who first decided to create permanent meeting places in this landscape would have viewed the land around them as the tree cover was stripped away from the hill over the years. Sitting on the hill, looking in the direction of Avebury, it is easy to imagine a person in about 3000BC, whose name we will never know, first thinking up the idea of a more ambitious project in the shallow valley below, and the site of the future Silbury Hill is clearly visible.

You are guaranteed peace on this hill, and I look upon it as Avebury’s “quiet room”, as the tourist trail doesn’t go near it. But it does also seem a slightly sad place for all that. As I traced the circles I felt quite sombre, yet safe and welcome there.

This was on Tuesday 16th February 1999. Immediately after walking to Windmill Hill I visited my last remaining grandparent in nearby Swindon. He unexpectedly died two weeks later, so Windmill Hill will always have a certain association for me.

To sit upon its highest point in silence, with a gentle wind sending waves through the grass around you, is to feel a real connection with a way of life and a culture that has now passed, yet which gave birth to the culture which created our best known sacred sites.

Adam’s Grave, once called Wodnesbeorg (Woden’s Barrow) is a Neolithic tomb dominating Walker’s Hill above the Vale of Pewsey. Nearby are East Wansdyke and the Ridgeway, and two battles have been fought here that we know of. And yet, this place which must have been an ancient M1 is so very quiet today. Time heals all.
I visited during a scorching hot day, and enjoyed the views all around until I thought I would burst..

Though this is still England, you can forgive anyone for thinking it’s Wales. In fact, this is border country. Little Doward rises high above the river Wye, just south of Goodrich Castle and Simonds Yat, which are better known places. Little Doward, however, is the one connected to Vortigern and the Dark Ages.

This hillfort above Ganarew is the foremost candidate for the elusive ‘Caer Guorthegirn’ (City or Fortress of Vortigern) is . Vortigern, on the run from St Germanus, fled into Wales to one of his strongholds. We know several of them, ranging from Gwynedd in the north, Dyfed in the west to this one, high above a loop of the river Wye. ‘Nennius’ describes it as being located in the region of Gueneri or Guenessi is probably Gwent, but the actual location is far from clear. ‘Gueneri’ can very well be equated with Ganarew (below).

The hillfort, which lies just to the east of the A 40 (T) a few miles north of Monmouth, is hardly accessible today. No paths lead to the summit of the hill, which is heavily wooded anyway. The OS Landranger map does show a fort, but it is very overgrown and spooky. One has a very nice view from the fort of the Wye and the surrounding countryside though.

A good view of the hill for those too daunted to attempt a visit is from the little hamlet of Ganarew, especially from the church (which is unfortunately closed most of the time). But one should take care, for leaving or rejoining the A40 can be quite hazardous due to heavy traffic.

vortigernstudies.org.uk/artcit/caerdoward.htm

Standon Drew is slowly getting the attention it deserves. There has been research, confirming the old lithos from the 17th and 18th centuries. Did anyone know that the ‘Druids’ Arms is agreat pub? Go there! And while we’re at it, visit Maes Knoll hillfort as well – West Wansdyke starts there! You don’t have a clue? Read this:
wansdyke21.org.uk/wansdyke/wanvisit96w.htm
and this:
wansdyke21.org.uk/wansdyke/wanwesteast/wanwest1.htm

I0ve been to Glastonbury three times now, and during that time I0ve seen the town change. From a depressed village with lots of beautiful sites in 1992, it changed to a booming tourist town by 1996. This was a little unfortunate (though I don’t envy the jobs to the locals), because the High street changed with it to a collection of capitalist shops. Unfortunately, the prices went with it. A the small shops went alltogether, or if they were lucky, were relegated to back alleys. I hear that since that time, even the ‘Gothic Image’ was up for sale – shame! Anyway, the land does not change, and so the Tor, the Chalice well and the Abbey are stiil (and will always, I hope) be the same beautiful places.

Some call it simply Kit’s Coty, because ‘coty’ means the same as ‘house’. The story explaining the name tells us that Kit is Catigern, who, together with his brother Vortimer fought Hengist and his brother Horsa here around 455, which is recorded both in the Historia Brittonum as well as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:.

Historia Brittonum, chapter 44
He [Vortigern] had three sons: the eldest was Vortimer, who, as we have seen, fought four times against the Saxons, and put them to flight; the second Categirn, who was slain in the same battle with Horsa...

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 455:
the second battle of Vortimer against the Saxons at Episford, where Catigern and Horsa fell.

Both Horsa and he were killed. We don’t know who won, but Catigern was supposedly buried here. Indeed, This site is just a few miles north of Aylesford, which is usually identified with the Episford of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. That a battle once raged here may be supported by another reference to this place as the battle of ‘Cit Coit’. This battle is also a legendary Celtic battle (’Battle of the Woods’), but not connected with any specific site. A possibility therefore remains that both are the same thing, as ‘Cit’ (or ‘Kit’) is in fact the same as ‘Cat’, the Celtic word for ‘battle’, which is of course the first part of Catigern’s name.
(vortigernstudies.org.uk/artgra/kitcoit.htm)