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October 26, 2025
October, 2025, fairy door on path through the pine plantation
Image credit: Merilyn McKelvey
October 25, 2025
The Stevenson light at the broch site gleams in the gloaming…
Image credit: Mike Purslow
Beckbury hillfort is an impressive site, a large open space just smaller than a football field with ramparts on the southerly and eastern ends. The northern and westerly edges follow the escarpment providing some defence. It was a warm and sunny October day the last time I was up here with friends but we still saw no one else whilst we were there. If you don’t know what you’re looking for as a rambler I guess its easy enough to miss (as I did for many years as a child growing up in the area). What can’t be mistaken for constructed is so-called Cromwells seat, a large stone chair on the north western edge of the escarp, scribbled with grafitti which I actually think kind of suit it. I have tried to find out a bit more about this chair and it seems only stories remain of how it came about and why. The most common being that it was built for Thomas Cromwell who met Henry VIII at nearby Winchcombe abbey to plan the dissolution of the monastries. Cromwell then sat atop this chair as Hailes abbey in the valley below were burned down. Others call the chair Arthurs seat though are unsure why this name would be connected to it. The views and the hillfort are well worth the climb, on all but the mistiest days, you can over to the Malvern hills to the west and the vale of Evesham to the North.
Belas Knap is an amazingly well restored long barrow. Being a local to Winchcmbe and having visited this site many times as a child, I was unaware of how rare it is to find a burial mound that looks something akin to how it was built. There are two accessable entraces on the west and east sides which make for a good place to enter into to sit and think about whatever brought you to this place. The northern and southern entrances are blocked off but are nonethelss impressive and you can spend plenty of time around and atop the barrow. It is a very well known spot so don’t expect to have it to yourself. The Costwold way goes straight to it with Winchcombe following it northerly and Cheltenham following it southerly. The walking around here is pretty amazing and you got a few pubs nearby, the rising sun on Cleeve hill and a few in Winchcombe. I’ve spent some night wild camping nearby Belas Knap on Cleeve common (though never too close for some undefined fear of the dead)
October 24, 2025
A collection of our research on St Lythans cromlech, including old records and old images
October 23, 2025
Sketch map of the barony of Carnousie
Image credit: Please note that downloading any of the PDFs is for private/personal use only. If you wish to use the material for any other purpose you will require permission from the Banffshire Field Club - https://banffshirefieldclub.org.uk/contact.html
Prehistoric traces accordingly are numerous. A short cist was dug out in the Cunning Howe, and others on the farm of Castlehill, while burials were found on the slopes of Cairnhill—the name of which is significant. The remains of at least two stone circles and a much dilapidated cairn. Cairn Ennit, survive in the Whitehill Wood (now cut). Flint and stone implements have been turned up in various localities. A little further to the east, in the grounds of Forglen House, are the notable Bronze Age burial mounds known as
Rounie Law and Barbara’s Hillock, from the latter of which a short cist grave was recovered, while the former yielded three unburnt and uncisted interments associated with beaker urns, charcoal and, in one instance, a flint arrowhead.
Seems like this used to be a biggie:
“Stone circles vary very much in size ... one at Innesmill, Urquhart, is 120 feet” – banffshirefieldclub.org.uk/PDFs/BOOK_8/Banffshire_Field_Club_Transactions_1908-1909_-_1909_The_Stone_and_Bronze_Ages_in_Scotland_WM.pdf
“Perhaps the largest is one in the parish of Urquhart, which is a hundred and twenty feet in diameter.” – banffshirefieldclub.org.uk/PDFs/BOOK_9/Banffshire_Field_Club_Transactions_1910-1914_-_1911_Sepulchral_Stone_Circles_WM.pdf
October 22, 2025
Archaeologists searching for the remains of a 400-year-old castle have unexpectedly found evidence of an 8,000-year-old settlement.
The team from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) was hoping to find the ruins of Derrygonnelly Castle in County Fermanagh, but they also discovered artefacts dating back to the Mesolithic period.
Prof Eileen Murphy of the Centre of Community Archaeology at QUB said the find was “mind-blowing”.
“With archaeology you never know what you’re going to find. We’ve actually been able to push the date of this site back from the 400 years we were looking for to about 8,000 or 9,000 years ago, to the time of Ireland’s first settlers in the early Mesolithic.”