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Natural Rock Feature
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This extract (from 1818, well before the saga of the burying / reerection) seems to imply that the surrounding stones were from a defined structure, rather than just being some stones that were lying about. But who knows - this sounds more romantic.The boulders of this brecia.. were used in distant ages as sepulchral stones. Beneath one of those, near Brighton church, an urn of high antiquity, containing human bones and ashes, was discovered by the late Rev. J. Douglass, F.A.S. An immense block of this kind is situated in Hove parish, near the Shoreham road, and is vulgarly called Goldstone,
"from the British word col, or holy-stone; it is evidently a tolmen of the British period. This stone is in a line to the south of Goldstone Bottom, at the end of which, close to the rise of the hill, is a dilapidated cirque, composed of large stones of the same kind.
On a farm of Thomas Read Kemp, Esq. opposite Wick, are two dilapidated kist=vaens, formed of similar materials; and on each side of the British trackway, leading to the Devil's Dyke, blocks of the same substance may also be observed."
Extract of a Letter from the late Rev. J. Douglass to the Author, dated May 1818. p60 in The Geology of the South-east of England. By Gideon Algernon Mantell. (1833). Online at Google Books.
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Posted by Rhiannon
30th April 2007ce
Edited 23rd January 2014ce
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