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Pottering about for new sites

I've been particularly taken with the MAGIC web site (www.magic.gov.uk) just recently.

Whenever Mikki wants to go to a new shop now, Magic is my first port of call. Many of the Scheduled Monuments on there are out of our timeframe, but there are occassional goodies that pop up.

This weekend was a Glocs and Oxon weekend again, so I checked out the site as usual. I *think* I've seen most of the major Oxon sites now, though there is always new stuff to see.

I decided on three potentially easy sites, Lad Barrow, New Street Stone and the Burnt Hill Dolmen for this week's excursion. Fieldnotes for all three are included below.

So off to Glocs, and after some heavy retail therapy I checked the map. We were very close to Barrow Elm barrow, just outside of Hatherop, so I checked there first. Very little to see, and so damaged/unrecognisable that I didn't feel it was worth adding to TMA. So we made our way up to Lad Barrow.

Lad Barrow — Fieldnotes

01.09.03ce
Visited this at the weekend, but not much to see, to be honest.

Parked at the bottom of the hill, there's a parking area at the junction with the main road. Pleasant enough walk up the hill (the road is marked as no through route for motor vehicles) - very quiet, even the traffic noise was negligable, so very peaceful.

If you walk up the road and reach the pylons, you passed the barrow. It's in a field to the left - no obvious way in and it's in the middle of a cultivated field so I didn't trespass to get to it at all. All that can be seen is an uncultivated 'lump', although there are apparently a couple of possible entrance stones to be seen.

There are good views all around. 2-300 yards difference in the location and it would be a different story though.

After the brisk walk up the hill, lunchtime beckoned, so we worked our way up toward Stow and Chipping Norton. Burford and Stow were both officially FULL - nowhere to park at all in either town, so we continued up toward Chastleton to search (unsuccessfully) for the Burnt Hill Dolmen.

Burnt Hill Dolmen — Fieldnotes

01.09.03ce
I failed to find this at the weekend.

The EH Monuments record describes the site thus:
"The site lies on a gentle south east facing slope at the north east corner of a small wood.
The portal dolmen has one large upright and one adjacent inclined stone, together with a number of smaller stones on the northern side of a roughly square depression which measures 3m across and 0.2m deep. The upright limestone block measures 1.54m long, 0.72m thick and stands 0.94m high above the present ground level. The inclined stone immediately to the east measures 1m long, c.1m wide and 0.5m thick. Surrounding the central depression is a circular bank of small stones which measures c.10m in overall diameter. The bank is 2m wide and stands 0.4m high to the south."

I could see two possible candidates for the 'small wood', but couldn't find a way through the hedge from the road (which is a bit of a racetrack!) I'll have to leave this for someone more local to investigate further.

There is also a possible Long Barrow in the same vicinity, which is close to Chastleton Barrow Fort and the Goose Stones, so lots of evidence for this being an important centre at one time.

Heading for Chipping and our usual ports of call there - the New Mill Cafe, and the Old Bookshop, we briefly paid our respects to the New Street Stone which was just around the corner, then had a wonderful lunch and bought several books.

New Street Stone — Fieldnotes

01.09.03ce
Popped in here on Saturday to pay our respects. As Jane says, it's almost totally hidden and you wouldn't know it was there unless you were specifically looking for it.

"You didn't see me, right?"

To finish the day off, we headed for Jane's abode. A wonderful afternoon of stones chat ensued, with Jane, her partner and the additional bonus of Treaclechops(!) before finally heading off home.
ocifant Posted by ocifant
1st September 2003ce
Edited 29th September 2003ce


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