‘A large rock called St Moluag can be seen to east of the path up Tap O Noth. St. Moluag was a famous Celtic missionary and a contemporary of St. Columba. Sent to Pictland in AD562 he founded several churchs in the area including one at the nearby village of Clatt. The great rock Clochmaloo (stone of St. Moluag) was probably used as a retreat whilst he worked in the area.‘
From the notice board at the car park.
This mysterious and imposing monument of a prehistoric era is commonly known by the name of “The Three Auld Wives’ Lift” [..]
On the upper surface of the top stone of this structure, which is a plane declining a little to the south, there is sculptured a circle of thirty-six inches in diameter, [..] and strange as it may seem, notwithstanding the hundreds that visit this curious relic every year, and for as often as it has been described by archaeologists, this is the first time, so far as I know, that this typical figure has ever been brought under notice [..] The greater part of the upper surface where this symbol occurs is much disfigured by roughtly cut initial letters, and names of thoughtless visitors, rendering it less observable than it would otherwise be [..] To the experienced eye, its purpose-like execution, and weather-worn aspect, will be sufficient evidence of its great age and significance.
Between the upper and the two lower stones of this monument there is a triangular opening from east to west which, if passed through according to the course of the sun in a truly penitential spirit, was formerly believed to have procured complete absolution for previous sins, and superstition still holds it necessary for all strangers visiting this enchanted place for the first time to creep through it if they wish to avert the calamity of dying childless.*
[..] The traditional account of this monument is, that three old women having laid a wager which of them would carry the greatest burthen, brought in their aprons the three stones of which it is constructed, and laid them in their present position. Verily, there must have been giantesses in those days.
*Or you could just stay sinful and childless, yay!
From A D Robertson’s rather long-winded account in the Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society (vol 2, 1883).
archive.org/stream/transactions11socigoog#page/n19/mode/1up
(while you’re about it, you may not want to miss the ghastly account of Oliver Cromwell’s preserved head, also in the same volume. or maybe you would.)
On The Gold Corselet Found Near Mold, Flintshire.
Though the discovery of this unique and splendid corselet took place some years ago, viz. A.D. 1833, yet, as no very satisfactory conjectures relative to the distinguished wearer were then offered, it is presented once more to the notice of the public [..]
We shall preface our account with a “ghost story,” which is as singular as it is true. A considerable time previous to the discovery, an old woman, on her return from Mold late one night, saw an apparition “of unusual size, and clothed in a coat of gold, which shone like the sun,” crossing her road to the identical spot where the treasure was afterwards found*, and which was commonly known by the name of “Bryn yr Ellyllon,” or the Goblins’ Hill. We stop not to enquire into the probable nature of this spectre, whether it was really an emigrant from the unseen world, or merely the effect of imagination, or some other optical illusion; it is sufficient for us that the old woman herself was convinced of its personality. And no less curious is it, that she should have mentioned the circumstance on the following morning, amongst others, to the very person whose workmen dug out the breast-plate!
*This circumstance is mentioned by the Rev. C.B. Clough, Vicar of Mold (and now Archdeacon of St. Asaph,) in a letter communicated by him to John Gage, Esq., Director of the Society of Antiquaries, where he moreover adds: “Her having related this story is an undoubted fact.”
Lots of details too of the unearthing of the various objects, from Archaeologia Cambrensis, v3, 1848.
archive.org/stream/archaeologiacam30assogoog#page/n112
The Monthly Review from 1837 shows the story was definitely doing the rounds quickly, as the quoted letter is supposed to date from 1834.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=hfgEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA555
And finally, here, and certainly best of all, is a letter from John Gage, and he quotes the Rev. Clough (The old woman had been to collect her husband from the pub. But I’m sure she wouldn’t have drank anything before she saw the ghost :)
books.google.co.uk/books?id=R1pEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA424
It’s in v26 of Archaeologia (1836).
It includes a lovely drawing of the design on the cape.
This area is full of hut circles, cairns and other traces. canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/6006/details/blairmore/
My friend, the Rev. Mr. Joass of Eddertoun (Ross-shire) has been prosecuting similar researches to my own with great vigour [..] his notes of exploration are so exceedingly interesting that I prefer incorporating them in their entirety [..]
” In Rogart [..] I found similar pairs of [hut] circles associated with tumuli , which latter are connected, in the traditions of the district, with battles fought between the McKays and Sutherlands within the historic period. Such stories frequently spring up to suit the circumstances of particular localities. The kists of these tumuli indicate that they were not the hurriedly got-up graves of those who fell in battle, but the burial places of detached settlements [..]”
Some Further Notes upon Pre-Historic Hut-Circles, by G E Roberts. J of the Anth. Soc of London (vol 3, 1865).
Found on the Am Baile website, from the John O’Groats Journal Christmas Edition 1929...
” The legend concerning it is that a month old son (which is English for Mac Mese) carried it there from the top of Ravens Rock, one of the surrounding hills. ”
ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_page.jsp?item_id=92804
(click to enlarge photo, then look to bottom right corner)
The appearance of this Circle is much hurt by a stone wall built cross it, that cuts off a considerable segment which stands in the road. The enclosed part, in 1774, when this view was drawn, was sowed with corn, and it being then nearly ripe, many of the Stones which had fallen down, were thereby hidden.
The same ridiculous Story is told of these Stones, as of those at Stonehenge, i.e. that it is impossible to count them, and that many persons who have made the trial, could never find them amount twice to the same number. It is added, that this was a holy place, and that Long Meg and her Daughters were a company of Witches transformed into Stones, on the prayers of some Saint, for venturing to prophane it; but when and by whom, the Story does not say.
Thus has Tradition obscurely, and clogged with fable, handed down the destination of this spot, accompanied with some of that veneration in which it was once undoubtedly held, though not sufficiently to protect its remains from the depradations of avarice, the enclosure and cultivation of the ground bidding fair to destroy them.
From ‘The Antiquarian Repertory’ 1775.
From the Northern Times, Published: 25 May, 2007 (report on annual summer school of the Council for Scottish Archaeology at Bettyhill)
“at Skail, discussion centred on the denuded neolithic chamber known locally as “the Temple”, associated in folklore and possibly in reality, with Sagart Ruadh, the “Red Priest”, a Columban cleric said to have died there at the hands of a Norse warrior.”
Instead of a cromlech at Mynnedd Cnwc we found the vestiges of a large carnedd many of the flat stones of the cist faen or chamber are still remaining but the small ones have been almost all removed to build a wall close at hand. On another fork of the peninsula about an hundred yards distant we observed the traces of another carnedd of much smaller dimensions.*
...The country people have a strange idea of spirits haunting these carnedds and frequently see lights (Ignis fatuus) hovering round the point. They moreover report that an iron boot was dug up not long ago full of money but on further enquiry the money vanished and so did the boot too.
By the description of a man who had seen it I believe it was no other than a gambado belonging to Mr Woode or one of his descendants.
From the Rev. John Skinner’s ‘Ten Days’ Tour through the Isle of Anglesey’ (1804).
Apparently a gambado is a big boot / gaiter that attaches to a horse’s saddle so you don’t get all cold and wet in bad weather. But That Explains Nothing, why would it be buried with money in it?! Besides, I prefer the tales of the strange lights anyway.
Whilst a farmer was removing some of the stones from the north east side of the larger carnedd to employ them in his repairs he came to the mouth of a passage covered with a square stone similar to that at Plas Newydd, anxious to reap the fruits of his discovery he procured a light and crept forward on his hands and knees along the dreary vault, when lo! in a chamber at the further end a figure in white seemed to forbid his approach.
The poor man had scarcely power sufficient to crawl backwards out of this den of spirits as he imagined however in the course of a few days instigated by the hopes of riches and the presence of many assistants he made his second entre into the cavern and finding the white gentleman did not offer to stir he boldly went forward and discovered the object of his apprehensions was no other than a stone pillar about six feet in height standing in the centre of the chamber.
His former consternation could now only be exceeded by his eagerness to see what was contained beneath the stone which he shortly overturned but treasure there was none, some large human bones lying near the pillar sufficiently testifying the purpose for which the structure was intended.
This is the substance of the account we received from the young man whose father was one of Colonel Peacock’s labourers and on the premises at the time of the discovery. The superstition of the common people still suppose this to be the habitation of spirits.
Our two conductors seeming rather to compliment each other about precedence I took the lanthorn and [crawled in].. my companions followed close at my heels.
He then mentions a ‘tribe of immense spiders who have reigned here unmolested for ages’ so that’s put me right off, far more than any talk of spirits.
From the fearless Rev. John Skinner’s ‘Ten Days’ Tour through the Isle of Anglesey’ (1804).
Coeten Arthur – Literally, Arthur’s Quoit – a cromlech near Llanddwywau, having the print of a large hand ingeniously cut on it, as if sunk in from the weight occasioned by holding it. It is a large flat stone somewhat of an oval form, about ten feet long, and, in the widest part, nearly seven broad, two feet thick at one end and not more than an inch at the other. It stands upon three rude stone pillars, each about half-a-yard broad. – Ed. Tr.
p152 in ‘Transactions of the Cymmrodorion’ v1 (1822). The first part of this seems to be copied from ‘The Cambrian Register for the year 1795’, except that says ‘a large hand dexterously carved on the side of it’.
The largest of the eight Long Stones in the County Kildare is the one at Punchestown, which is 19 1/2 feet in height above ground, and 11 feet in circumference ; like all the others, it is of granite. One the opposite side of the Wool-pack Road, within view, and a quarter of a mile to the west of it, on the Cradockstown townland, is another granite monolith.
The only tradition the peasantry have about them is that they were hurled from the Hill of Allen, seven miles off, by the giant Finn Mac Coole; one account says it was due to a trial of strength between Finn and a companion; and the smaller boulder they call “the Gossoon’s Stone”; the other accounts says that they were “fired” by Finn in this direction, as his wife was at Punchestown at the time!
The great lean on the Punchestown stone was caused by an attempt, it is said, of one of the Viscounts Allen to remove it to his mansion at Punchestown, for which purpose he yoked fourteen couples of plough-oxen by chains to the boulder, and tried to drag it from the ground – an attempt which fortunately failed. Of Punchestown House not one stone now stands on another, though an old farmer named Comfrey, of Cradockstown (strong and hearty in 1900), remembers to have seen the walls standing; they were eventually levelled, and the materials sold for building purposes.
It’s not explicit that the house and its family disappeared because of the stone-tampering. But perhaps it’s implied?
From the Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society 1906, in an article by ‘Omurethi’ entitled ‘Notes on Punchestown and Cradockstown’.
The accompanying photo
archive.org/stream/journalcountyki00socigoog#page/n64
shows the stone leaning massively (with a rather brave soul standing underneath it) so it’s obviously been straightened considerably since. There’s a photo of the Craddockstown stone too.
The site of the old fortress of Conyers, at Bishopton, called Castle Hill, is hollow, if folk-lore be true, and the abode of fairies. The same may in truth be said of almost every circular mound in the north. A most notable specimen near Thirsk, a large tumulus, possesses the euphonious cognomen of Pudding-pie-hill, inasmuch as the fairies there were positively so good as to furnish pies and puddings for their juvenile votaries, who went for the the good things of the fairies of its palaces within. Moreover, they heard the fairies’ music, which thing may be believed, as they had to go so many times round the hill before they put their giddy heads to the ground to hear the strains of the little green people. The appointed day for all this condescension was Pancake or Shrove Tuesday.
Saint James’s magazine, v1 (1850), p 231.
The folklore of the axes is another subject beyond the scope of this work, but it may not be amiss to record here some opinions concerning these implements that were expressed in the hearing of Captain Francis du Bois Lukis on the occasion of a visit to Alderney in 1853.
In general these remarks support, of course, the common belief that the axes were thunderbolts, a belief that was on another occasion charmingly confirmed by a Guernseyman who had discovered that when the broken pieces of these bolts were rubbed together their origin was thereby demonstrated, in as much as one could ‘smell lightning’; he referred, of course, to the curious chemical phenomenon of an empyreumatic or ozone-like odour, accompanied by luminosity, that is often a result of the rubbing together of pieces of quartz, flint, and chert.
Only two people did not share this popular belief; one was a labourer who recognized the axes as implements because he had seen them taken out of the ‘Druids’ Vaults’ in Herm, and the second was a man who knew that axes were used by the ‘old people’ to throw at one another when fighting.
The following are examples of the orthodox belief: A labourer found a thunderbolt near L’Etac, and said that he thought these thunderbolts must hit the ground very hard as they were so often broken. Another man knew what a thunderbolt was, but he had never found one himself, although he had often seen the holes that they made in the ground. Another islander stated that he had found a thunderbolt that had actually knocked down his wall*; he had had the prudence, however, to cover it up at once with big stones to prevent it doing further mischief. This is a departure from the usual custom of preserving the axe in or close to the house as a certain protector against lightning.
In the same notes Francis Lukis also records a remark of an Alderney man about ‘cromlechs’, or megalithic monuments; this informant had told him that they were erected by the Catholics as sites for the performance of human sacrifice; but this was a long time ago, since his family, the oldest in the island, had no recollection of it.**
Another and different belief about stone axes was to the effect that they had been thrown to the earth by fairies and hobgoblins, and for this reason it was sometimes the custome, when an islander found an axe on his land, that he should immediately smash it to pieces upon a larger stone. This information is contained in some remarks by Dr. Frederick Lukis that were quoted by Lieutenant Oliver.
Collated in ‘The archaeology of the Channel Islands’ by TD Kendrick and J Hawkins (1928), v2, p59.
There’s a story about the hill in ‘The Vale of Strathmore – its scenes and legends’ by James Guthrie (1875). But it’s couched in the most outrageous language (’when the silvery moonbeams lovingly slept in dreamy beauty..’) and it’s too excruciating to copy out. Whether it’s even based on local tradition is a good point. But according to the RCAHMS record, the fort has a wall an impressive 8m thick and 5m high. So you’d think it’d capture local attention.
It seems the fairies had decided they couldn’t have any human beings building places to live inside the fort. So they did a deal with some evil spirits – if anyone tried to live there, their attempts would have to be ‘blasted in the bud’. Of course, soon someone turned up and started work. That evening, the demons did their duty and hurled all the stones into the vale below. The next morning the builder was a bit surprised but started afresh on some even more sturdy foundations. Rather meanly the demons allowed him to continue a bit longer this time. But then they demolished it all as before. Not learning from experience the man rounded up lots more workers and began again. But of course their efforts were all swept away once more. He was only pursuaded to get lost once and for all by the demons shrieking at him ‘Go build the castle in a bog, where it will neither shake nor shog!’ Hmm.
I rather wonder if the fort at Camp Hill is the site for the following folklore. There is a ‘Keys to the Past‘ page about the fort though it doesn’t seem much is known about it. I can tell from the map that you would seem to get to it by walking up Clayport Bank. And Swansfield Park is the name of the golf course in which the fort now resides. But maybe someone from Alnwick would know.
.. on moonlight nights these tiny folk trooped out of dell, and cavern, and mine, and from beneath the bracken, and from under green knowes, and out of other lonely places to hold their revels, with music and dance, in the Fairies’ Hollow at the top of Clayport Bank.
On one occasion, while visiting Alnwick, Mr. Tate pointed out to me the Fairies’ Hollow at the head of Clayport, and a series of steps, or rather little benches, caused by subsidences of the soil, rising in a gentle gradient to Swansfield Gate, which had obtained the name of the “Fairy Steps.”
From the Denham Tracts – the first paragraph he has copied from Tate’s History of Alnwick.
I found George Tate writing about the Fairies’ Hollow elsewhere. I can’t help thinking he’s writing autobiographically! as it’s curiously imaginative otherwise...
The fairies, it is said, have been dead and were buried at Brinkburn many a long year ago. This, however, will apply only to the Brinkburn community, for in other localities the belief in the “good folk” has lingered on even into the present century. Some forty years ago, or more, we had near to Alnwick, the Fairies’ Hollow, on the top of Clayport bank. At that period a boy who, having drunk more deeply than was perhaps good for him out of the wells of imaginative literature, stole away from his bed on a moolit night, and ensconsed among the rocks overlooking the hollow, waited and watched till the “witching hour of night” to catch a glimpse of the fairies tripping out of the caverns and hills. The grass waved to and fro by a gentle breeze, and the pale light flickered over the hollow, as fleecy clouds sailed over the moon; imagination was excited, aided, it may be, by the “foure-levit clover” hidden in his cap, and troops of green-clad tiny elves appeared to swarm over the hollow, and to join in the mystic mazes of the dance. Soon, however, darker clouds obscured the moon, and threw a shadow over the scene; the illusion was dispelled – the vision melted away – and the boy reluctantly returned home to his bed, to dream of fairy land.
Printed in the Border Magazine for July 1863.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2GcEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA294
And now we may make a brief reference to an old belief which has died out with a bye-gone generation. Half a century ago the fairies were supposed to have local habitations in our district [..] Brinkburn and Harehope Hill too they frequented. Old Nannie Alnwick, the widow of the last of the ancient race of Alnwick, the tanners, had faith in the good folk, and set aside for them “a loake of meal and a pat of butter,” receiving, as she said, a double return from them; and often had she seen them enter into Harehope Hill, and heard their pipe music die away as the green hill closed over them.
p 439 in volume 1 of George Tate’s ‘History of the borough, castle and barony of Alnwick’ (1866).
Harehope Hill has a couple of cairns on it on the current OS map. The Keys to the Past website suggests there would have been many other Bronze Age cairns up here too. Some swords were found here in the 19th century, which have been taken to mean that the hilltop was reused for burials in the Anglo Saxon period. The map also shows some shakeholes. And they’re a bit weird.
I think this curious story could well be about Kemp’s Cairn. First he talks about Knaughland and how on top of the hill there are the ‘faint indications of an old cairn’. Then:
Mr Cruickshank is between sixty and seventy, and remembers the removal of another cairn, much farther down the hill, in 1816. Part of it, however, had been removed a century ago, and a cist disclosed, which was allowed to remain entire till 1816, and of which the cover yet remains. He says the cist was built of small stones, and was about 1 1/2 foot deep, or high, and covered by the large stone yet remaining.
He mentioned a curious thing. The farm has been in their family two hundred years. In the rebellion, his grandfather, on the approach of the rebels, buried his cheese in the stone grave, raising the lid with a “pinch,” and letting it down again. He has heard him tell of it.
In 1816 the whole was removed by Mr Cruickshank’s father, and the cover only preserved. It is fully 6 1/2 feet long by 4 to 4 1/2 broad, and about 6 inches thick – like a strong flag.
He also mentions a suspected ‘Pict’s House’ (an underground chamber) and also a stone with 13 or 14 cupmarks – the RCAHMS record shows the latter couldn’t be found in the 1960s, but if you read the description it makes you wonder if it’s not so far from Conjure Cairn.
From PSAS v7 (1868), ‘Notes of Early Remains on the Farm of Knaughland, Rothiemay’ by James Hunter.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=h0wGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA572
Found you a little bit Chance, for your lovely carved stone. But sounds like whatever curses worked at the time they didn’t last enough to stop it being moved in the end.
Not very long ago the authorities of Geneva conceived the idea of carrying away, and placing in the Botanic Garden of the city, the great Druid Stone of Troinex, known as the Pierre aux Dames. The project went so far that a trench was dug about the block, rollers were on the spot, and the removal was about to begin, when the people of the neighbourhood raised such an outcry and besought the Council of State so earnestly to let the stone be, that the order was countermanded, and the Pierre aux Dames of Troinex still remains undisturbed where it has lain for unnumbered ages.
It used to believed in days gone by (and the belief probably still lingers in the remoter parts of the Pays de Gex) that the Pierre aux Dames, an the three Druid stones between Versonnex and Grelly, were thrown thither in sport by the giants who, according to tradition, once dwelt in the fastnesses of the Jura. Another legend has it that the giants placed the stones in their present situation to protect the treasures which are supposed to be buried at immeasurable depths underneath them. These treasures are further and more effectually guarded by the giants’ curse, which will pursue anybody who attempts to destroy or remove the stones; and it is a well known fact that evil has never failed to befall the reprobates who have dared to lay unhallowed hands on these mysterious relics of the past.
From ‘Tales and Traditions of Switzerland’ by W B Westall (1882).
Also there is a long-winded tale about a stone at Versonnex in the same chapter.
Switzerland has very little, if any, folklore concerning megalithic sites. This is because the tribes that lived in the area adopted a scorched earth policy and destroyed all their villages before beginning their doomed mass migration in 58 B.C.. When Julius Caesar burned the bridge of Geneva, to stop the advance of the Helvetii, the area around Troinex would have been trashed too.
See – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetii
The Pierre-aux-Dames is a mystery of this period. The four sculpted figures are attributed to the Gallo-Roman period due to their dress, the use of metal tools and the craftsmanship employed. That said, the mound and the tombs were clearly placed in the late Bronze Age which could have been 1,000 years earlier. It may be possible that the stone was sculpted by Greek or Mediterranean stone masons commissioned specially for the task. Alternatively, the sculpture may have been produced after the Roman conquest of the area by descendants of the Helvetii in order to preserve the memory of their ancestors.
Whatever the truth behind the Pierre-aux-Dames, modern myths are being created about the fertility of the soil and the grapes that are grown to produce wine in the area.
From Samuel Lewis’ A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, 1849.
“The church, dedicated to St. Peter, is an ancient structure; according to an absurd local tradition it was originally intended to erect it at a place about forty yards to the right of the road, where are four or five broad stones, eight feet high, standing upright; but the workmen found that what they executed by day was removed at night, and therefore commenced the building on the site it now occupies.”
Absurd indeed!
From Rhys’s ‘Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx’ (ch. 7):
Next comes the story of Llynclys Pool in the neighbourhood of Oswestry. That piece of water is supposed to be of extraordinary depth, and its name means the ‘swallowed court.’ The village of Llynclys is called after it, and the legend concerning the pool is preserved in verses printed among the compositions of the local poet, John F. M. Dovaston, who published his works in 1825 [..] How much exactly of the poem comes from Dovaston’s own muse, and how much comes from the legend, I cannot tell. [..]
Alaric’s queen was endowed with youth and beauty, but the king was not happy; and when he had lived with her nine years he told Clerk Willin how he first met her when he was hunting ‘fair Blodwell’s rocks among’. He married her on the condition that she should be allowed to leave him one night in every seven, and this she did without his once knowing whither she went on the night of her absence. Clerk Willin promised to restore peace to the king if he would resign the queen to him, and a tithe annually of his cattle and of the wine in his cellar to him and the monks of the White Minster.
The king consented, and the wily clerk hurried away with his book late at night to the rocks by the Giant’s Grave, where there was an ogo‘ or cave which was supposed to lead down to Faery. While the queen was inside the cave, he began his spells and made it irrevocable that she should be his, and that his fare should be what fed on the king’s meadow and what flowed in his cellar.
At this point the retelling gets very complicated. But basically the queen was actually an ogress on her day off and she wasn’t very happy at the interference. So she sank the town under water so all the miserable clerk would get would be slimy water and pike to eat. I don’t know if she was intending to get rid of her bored husband at the same time but that seems to have been the side effect.
The visitor will, Dovaston says, find [..] stories which the villagers have to tell of that wily clerk, and of ‘the cave called the Grim Ogo’; not to mention that when the lake is clear, they will show you the towers of the palace below, the Llynclys, which the Brython of ages gone by believed to be there.
This is not to do with this site necessarily – which is a small hillfort on a site previously occupied in the Neolithic – but does have links with the farm at its base, Bagbury. It struck me as odd to find a story about a strange and supernatural bull when there’s one about a strange and supernatural cow not so far away at Michell’s Fold. It even gets a bit of a stony connection, as the bull had to be contained by burying under the door stone of the church. It sounds awfully pagan vs christian – the bull ruled the area before the church turned up, and he even tried to destroy the building until he was firmly put in his place. I think Alan Garner would love it.
The story is in Collectanea Archaeologia (1862), in Thomas Wright’s ‘On the local legends of Shropshire’. He also tells the story of the Mitchell’s Fold stones and their cow.
There are quite a few versions in Burne’s ‘Shropshire Folk-Lore’:
https://www.archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00burngoog#page/n132/mode/2up and the following pages.
There are two large carneddau on the Carno mountain, where a sanguinary battle was fought between Ethelbald King of Mercia and Roderic Molwynog, a prince of North Wales, in which the latter is said to have been victorious. This bit of legend is offered in ‘A topographical dictionary of Wales v1’ by Samuel Lewis (1833).
I wonder how the site of the cairn might relate to its landscape. ‘Eglwys Faen’ means ‘Stone Church’ and is the name of a big cave in the limestone cliffs immediately below. There is an extensive cave system under here (and shake holes above) – you can read all about it here.
It is almost impossible to realise the extent to which the coast-line must have altered. According to tradition, a long spit of land once ran out from Sudbrook Point in a south-westerly direction, extending as far as the Denny, a rocky islet now lying in mid-channel at a distance of over four miles from Sudbrook.
Sudbrook fort’s certainly been nibbled away at by the Severn over the years. And there’s a lot of mud about. It’s a long way though!
In the 17th C. Camden described the erosion rather elegantly: The Church whereof, called Trinity Chappell, standeth so neare the sea, that the vicinity of so tyrannous a neighbour hath spoiled it of halfe the church-yarde, as it hath done also of an old fortification lying thereby, which was compassed with a triple ditch and three rampiers, as high as an ordinary house, cast in forme of a bowe, the string wherof is the sea-cliffe.”
From AE Lawson Lowe’s article on the camp in Archaeologia Cambrensis (Jan 1886).