As the link explains, in early sources the fort is known as ‘Ditchling Castle’ but since it was used as a beacon site for fires its accepted name has gradually changed.
It’s said that the Wisht Hounds can be seen racing overhead here (no doubt on dark, stormy nights) in their pursuit of damned souls.
(J+C Bord, ‘Atlas of Magical Britain’)
These two round barrows are known as the Devil’s Humps or the Kings’ Graves.
Along with two bell barrows and two pond barrows to the south west, they form part of a linear round barrow cemetery which is partly enclosed by (contemporary)earthworks around the three limbs of the Y-shaped hill.
Local legend has it that these Bronze age graves actually contain the Viking chieftains killed in a battle with the Saxons. The yews round about mark the graves of other warriors. Their ghosts are said to haunt the area.
Alternatively, if you prefer the Devil hypothesis, you can arrange to meet him by running around the barrows ‘six or seven times’.
(info from MAGIC and J+C Bord’s Atlas of Magical Britain).
It’s not hard to see why local legend has it this fort was built by giants.
It also has an interestingly recent bit of folklore: it is said that during WW2 the Home Guard made use of a tunnel which connects the site with Dorchester, two miles away.
(J&C Bord, ‘Atlas of Magical Britain’)
Just above the giant’s head is a small square Iron Age earthwork, and a maypole was traditionally raised here, as if another fertility symbol were required.
Childs, the former sexton, well remembers the maypole. It used to be set up in the ring just above the giant. It was made from a fir-bole and renewed every year. “It was raised in the night,” It was decorated with garlands, &c. The villagers went up the hill and danced round the maypole on May I. Nothing of the sort is now done.
.. The maypole was set up, not as is usual elsewhere, in the town, which possesses two convenient spaces, formerly, no doubt, “village greens,” but a good way off, on the top of a very steep hill immediately above the giant, in the centre of an ancient camp, belonging probably to the Bronze Age.
From: Dorset Folklore Collected in 1897
H. Colley March
Folklore, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Dec., 1899), pp. 478-489.
J & C Bord report some relatively unsurprising folklore for the figure, though they don’t give any dates – well, perhaps it’s still going on:
In order to cure barrenness, women would sit on the hillside (they don’t mention where, but I think some spots would be more effective than others). Likewise, married couples would spend the night there to ensure they had children. Unmarried girls (being much more polite) would pray at the giant’s feet that they wouldn’t end up old maids.
(’Atlas of Magical Britain’)
A vicar of the nineteenth century put a stop to the scourings of the figure, which were held every seven years, ‘as’ says Udal in his Dorsetshire Folklore (1922), ‘they tended to practical illustrations of the above superstitions.‘
Disgraceful. (Quoted in Jennifer Westwood’s ‘Albion’).
St Levan had been fishing and was just resting here when he struck the stone with his fist, splitting it in two. Didn’t know his own strength. The prophecy quoted below was supposed to have been made by Merlin himself.
A well connected with the saint can be found to the south, in the cliffs to the sea.
(J & C Bord, ‘Atlas of Magical Britain’)
Janet and Colin Bord give a very strange tale for this mountain in their ‘Atlas of Magical Britain’, but as usual don’t reveal their sources, so perhaps a reader will know if this story is still current, or from where it originates.
The mountain is said to be magnetic and distorts compass readings, confusing hikers. There is supposed to be a large smelting furnace at its heart, where iron ore is smelted by dwarves. A standing stone somewhere on the mountain is called ‘the Stone of the Little Men’ and if you leave a silver coin and a drawing, the dwarves will make you your object and leave it on the stone for you.
The mountain does actually contain veins of the unusual earth elements La and Ce.
So, is this a recent romantic view of the mountain? or a weird memory of iron toolmakers and their newfangled technology?!
This story (or essentially a similar retelling of it)
themodernantiquarian.com/post/55818
is also attached to the mountain, according to
p159 of
The Folk-Lore of Sutherland-Shire
Miss Dempster
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3. (1888), pp. 149-189.
If you dare to walk three times round the remains of this stone circle at midnight, the devil will appear.
(noted by Grinsell in his ‘Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain. He gives the name ‘Deil’s Stanes’ with ‘Nine Stanes’ as an alternative name. Canmore denies that anyone knew any local names in the 60s/70s – but with such a wealth, surely this cannot be true?! It’s officially known as the Standing Stones of Urquhart stone circle now.)
If you march round Winkelbury Hill seven times, cursing all the time, the devil will appear on a white horse, and grant you a wish.
Kathleen Wiltshire heard this from a Michael Wheeler, who went to school in Salisbury in the 1940s. It’s printed in her ‘More Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’. I don’t know if he’d tried it. Your success would be limited by how polite you are I suppose.
The Bords, in ‘Secret Country’, connect Winkelbury with tales of a hidden golden coffin.
Kathleen Wiltshire published this story in her ‘More Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’, hearing it from a Mrs J Morrison of Urchfont Manor in 1970.
A man was once camping near Wayland’s Smithy on a hiking trip. In the night ‘he heard much movement nearby as would be heard if men and horses were moving camp.’ In the morning he went to investigate where the sounds had been coming from – but there wasn’t so much as a mark in the damp grass. Locals were said to remark ‘It would be them Romans’ whom he’d heard.
Kathleen Wiltshire, in her ‘More Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’ spoke to a young couple who had experienced something there in September 1973. They were walking there one evening when suddenly a mist came down. As it got thicker they saw several trotting white horses. ‘A strange atmosphere prevailed’ and both the young people felt very scared. The horses disappeared into the mist, and slowly this too disappeared.
White horses are rather a Celtic motif, if you would like to read that into the story.
Legend tells that the stone stood on a hill top some distance from the intended site of the church. When the stone was dragged down to be incorporated into the church structure, it returned overnight to the hilltop. This happened three times and eventually the church was relocated and built on the hilltop so that the stone could remain undisturbed.
Kathleen Wiltshire, in her ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’, mentions an infamous thorn bush which was – and is? – to be found on the top of Winkelbury.
“It was planted some years ago to mark the situation of an earlier thorn known as the Witches’ Scrag Tree. Witches were said to have become entangled in its thorny branches as they rode low over the hill on their broomsticks. It is said that at the time of the full moon a spate of them would litter the hill with their corpses – thus preserving the village folk from their nefarious attentions.”
I’m assuming Gun’s Church is this round barrow – but please, if you have local knowledge and it is a different barrow, do contradict me.
I read in Kathleen Wiltshire’s ‘Ghosts and Legends of Wiltshire’ that the barrow is in the SE end of Hill Deverill parish. The local lords of the manor were the Coker family. The last in the line, Henry, died in 1730, but he haunts the district still. He’s known as ‘Old Coker’.
To me this sounds like another name for the devil – and when you hear what his ghost gets up to it rather sounds like the folklore isn’t just about a local landowner.
Old Coker follows his hounds in a phantom hunt round the barrow. Kathleen reports from her informant in 1971, a Mr J Vyner, that ‘sounds of horses galloping, chains rattling and horns blowing have lately been heard’. Does this not bring to mind tales of Odin / the Devil and his Wild Hunt with his hellhounds?
The name of the barrow is intriguing too – what does it mean?
one is almost tempted from the similarity of wording to suspect Ms Wiltshire of fibbing.
The whole parish seems to be awash in strange stories, and Kathleen collected tales of headless figures in the churchyard, buried treasure, and the appearance of dead inhabitants at Midsummer Eve. They seem to have long memories there too – redheads were locally referred to as ‘Daners’.
As ocifant says, this place has traditionally been considered the burial place of a Danish leader, Hubba – hence the name ‘Hubba’s Low’ – though of course it is a much older Neolithic barrow. It was excavated by John Thurnam in 1856, and in 1910 it was seen fit to use some of the limestone rubble used in its construction as foundation for the nearby Chippenham to Bristol road. Kathleen Wiltshire, in her ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’ reports that “We are told that even today there is a feeling of unease around this pagan burial ground” – she collected this local information in 1971.
John Thurnham’s write-up of the excavation (with extensive discussions about Hubba and battles) can be read at Google Books, in the 1857 volume of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine (v3, p67).
books.google.co.uk/books?id=cDoGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA67
In her ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’, Kathleen Wiltshire says:
“The late Miss Edith Olivier, the author of several books of Wiltshire interest, told of an experience she had had when driving her car from Devizes to Marlborough one night in the years of the First World War. She arrived at Avebury just at twilight, and pulled up her car to look down into the Circle. There she saw the lights and heard the music of a fair being held amongst the stones, so she drove on to Marlborough. On her arrival there, she remarked to someone what she had seen at Avebury, only to be told no such fair was being held; the last fair was held there at least fifty years before. Miss Olivier said she could only suppose she had experienced ‘hindsight’.”
Edith Olivier wasn’t a stranger to such weird experiences. Apparently she once saw Lyonesse from Land’s End. That may or may not affect your view of her tale above.
She relates the ‘fair’ story in a book called ‘Without knowing Mr Walkley’ and not content with just claiming to see a fair from the past, ‘it turns out’ that she saw the long-lost Beckhampton Avenue too. There’s more you can read at the ‘UFOarea’ website. Personally I think she had a rather creative mind. But why spoil a good story.
ufoarea.com/physics_cosmology_windowavebury.html
This maybe of interest or not, but there has always been a story handed down through the generations of a tunnel leading from the church vestry into the heart of the Tump.
Obviously the church would not have been there when the tunnel was built, but knowing the topography of the land, I was born and bred in Brinklow, there could have been an entrance tunnel to the Tump which was latter built over by the church, possibly to guard the village from whatever lies within.
During ages past a Badger man was a miller’s man or a trader in flour. It is thought than an ancient market used to take place here at the time of the equinoxes on the old trade route that traverses the moor.
The small recess beneath the Hangingstones is known as the Fairie’s Parlour.
Said to have been a moot point for the Masons, and the Pendle Witches, standing on the border of four moors. The rock was reported as bearing cup n’ ring marks in the 19th C, which have now presumably weathered away.
Barmishaw is said to translate as ‘Spirit in the woods’. This area of the moor has supposedly played host to a number of strange phenomena including fairies, alien abductions, earth lights and healing wells. Strangely enough the common thread between all the apparitions that have been reprted here is the colour green.
It’s obvious that the moor’s prehistoric inhabitants placed a strong importance in this area due to the number of rock carvings around the hillside spring.
Local tradition says that the stone marks the burial place of a Danish general killed in a battle with the Scots here.
Kathleen Wiltshire, in her ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’ recounts the following tale, collected firsthand from the person who experienced it.
“Miss Muriel Cobern had an experience on Walker’s Hill in the summer of 1965 or 66. She was walking back from the barrow above the White Horse, towards the lay-by at the top of the hill, where she had left the car. About fifty yards from the barrow she suddenly felt very uneasy, and glanced around; it was very cloudy and rather cold, and no one else was about. A flock of sheep through which she was passing seemed untroubled, so she went on. Suddenly she could distinctly hear horses’ hooves thudding, as if a whole army was coming at full gallop; but there was not a horse to be seen anywhere. Miss Cobern, walking much faster she admits, passed Adams Grave, and could hear the hooves no longer.”
Kathleen Wiltshire spoke to an old shepherd who used to keep his flocks on Cherhill Down, in the research for her book ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’.
There is a Roman road behind Oldbury Camp – the one that leads to Silbury Hill.
“The shepherd told me he had seen ‘a lot of men a’marchin’,’ adding, ‘they did wear skirts!’. ‘WERE they men?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes, they did have beards, some on ‘em, and they wore girt helmets – wi’ ‘air across the top.. and had a girt bird on a pole a’front on ‘em!’”
For some reason, I just find this stretch of hills fantastic and inspiring to look at, with its mad chalk undulations. Legend has it that a man carrying his head under his arm haunts Roundway Down above the fort. This area is famous for its Civil War battle – but perhaps the ghost isn’t associated with this era as you might expect. A Mr R Coward, who farmed at Roundway, stated that on three occasions prior to 1848 the apparition appeared to people he knew, and they had been drawn by the ghost towards an almost imperceptible barrow. The barrow was opened in 1855, and (perhaps) the figure hasn’t been seen since. But the vicinity is also haunted by a black dog – his arrival is announced by the sound of chains rattling.
This information was told to Kathleen Wiltshire in 1960, and is in her book ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside’.