The Four Stones

Also known as:
The Four Kings
Nearest town:
Kington (7km ESE)
OS reference:
SO246608
OS sheets:
137, 148
Latitude:
52° 14' 23.12 N
Longitude:
3° 6' 15.65 W

Images

Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by postman

Spring equinox 2019, another well documented sunrise from ancient stones.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
postman
postman Apr 5, 2019
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by thesweetcheat

Looking East. The stone on the right (SW) has three cupmarks.

Image credit: A. Brookes (2.3.2013)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Mar 5, 2013
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by thesweetcheat

Post-harvest. The stones are more overgrown than in years past.

Image credit: A. Brookes (21.8.2010)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Sep 23, 2010
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by faerygirl

They might not look like much, but they are far outweighing some of the other things the area has to offer, so well worth the trip :)

faerygirl
faerygirl Feb 21, 2010
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Laughing Giraffe

It’s me...and one of the stones, illustrating the height and girth both of myself & the stone!

Image credit: Jo Yates
L
Laughing Giraffe Jul 6, 2004
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by morfe

The two indicator stones sighted on the horizon notch/tumuli (Bache Hill). The Whimble is also clearly visible through the bare branches of a small tree (middle right).

Image credit: morfe&scott
morfe
morfe Mar 8, 2004
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by morfe

This angle clearly shows the possibility of two notched stones forming a sightline/alignment to a notch in the landscape between the Whimble and Bache hill.

Image credit: morfe
morfe
morfe Mar 7, 2004
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Moth

What can you say – there’s 4 of ‘em, they’re stones, they’re near Radnor, and they’re big buggers!!!

Image credit: Tim Clark
Moth
Moth Sep 2, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Kammer

Taken 21st June 2003: The Four Stones from (something approximating) the west. I wanted to show just how close the they are to the road and a nearby house.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer Jul 30, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Kammer

Taken 21st June 2003: This photo is a composite of two images, the idea being to show the view through the tree, towards the distant lump (Burfa Camp?). Obviously it’s a dodgy technique, giving a slightly erroneous view of the hill, but it almost works.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer Jul 30, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Kammer

Taken 21st June 2003: The three cupmarks are on the top of the south west stone. They’re a bit tricky to spot, and almost invisible to the camera. I scraped together three one penny coins, and stuck them in the cupmarks to show where they are.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer Jul 30, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Kammer

Taken 11th May 2003: Randomly discarded farm machinery and the stones (to the right). Viewed from the north (and ever so slightly to the west).

[This plogh thingy is obviously a semi-permenant feature. When I visited on 21st June the field had just be cut, and the farmer had left his lunch-box resting on it by accident.]

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer Jun 13, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Kammer

Taken 11th May 2003: The top of the most southerly stone (i.e. the one nearest to Old Radnor) with some brooding sky in the background.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer Jun 13, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by Kammer

Taken 11th May 2003: Looking north towards Radnor Forest (and the car).

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer Jun 13, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by chumbawala

Here are the four stones, they look bigger in real life, and their energy is huge for such a small site. Legend has it that if you touch the four stones from north to west, then all wars in the middle east will cease, and the republicans will be booted out!

Image credit: Jake Zennaman
C
chumbawala Mar 4, 2003
Image of The Four Stones (Stone Circle) by IronMan

These stones are deceptively big. The stone in the foreground is around 6 foot tall!

IronMan
IronMan May 7, 2002

Articles

The Four Stones

C
CARL Jun 26, 2016

Visited 25.6.16

Wow, has it really been 6 years since my last visit? Where has the time gone? Needless to say, the stones are aging better than me! :)

The field where the stones live has been left to go fallow and the grass and nettles were knee height. The stones felt warm to the touch and I sat upon the smallest stone, which is half-fallen. The clouds had cleared and the sun shone. Despite being close to a country lane and being overlooked by a farmhouse, all was quiet. This is a nice place to sit and ponder. The stones are off a decent size (5 to 6ft tall) and are well worth a visit if you happen to be in the area.

Hopefully it won’t be 6 years till my next visit.

The Four Stones

thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Mar 3, 2013

Then I’m back at Four Stones, in my Dad’s countryside. Last time, I was hit with a wave of emotion I hadn’t foreseen, but this time I’m prepared and enjoy the site for itself more. It would have been his birthday in two days’ time though, so it seems more than fitting to be here and raise a metaphorical toast.

It is a wonderful site. The proximity of the house, road and telegraph wires perhaps just enough to keep it from the front rank of circles for the modern visitor, but otherwise the setting, and the stones themselves, are exquisite, the cupmarks on the south-western stone a little bit of icing on the cake. A site to be savoured. Time passes as it often does.

The Four Stones

thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 1, 2011

Arriving at Four Stones provides an emotional punch in the guts. The last visit here was with my Dad, on one of our last days out together in 1999. Coming back here is nearly overwhelming and I find myself in tears, thinking of all the things we never said and all the things we never had time to do. I will experience something similar at Mitchell’s Fold the following spring, showing that the healing we think time brings isn’t either as complete or as secure as it seems. These sites bring such thoughts into sharp relief.

But although Four Stones has the power to open me up, it also has the power to bring a stupid grin. The four boulders, so closely spaced as to enclose the visitor in a tight embrace, exert a strong pull on the senses. The proximity of a nearby house and occasional passing car, the recently cut hay in the field, all fade out of mind as I sit here. The views of the now-revealed Radnor mountains, that I was so recently stumbling across in the mist, add to the overall feeling that this circle is a small part of a grand landscape. And we sit in it, briefly, then we’re gone and it endures, for the next visitors. Long may that continue.

I’m thinking about it all and I’m sorry and I’m not sorry – our time was made up of confused emotions and little whirlwinds and all those things we couldn’t really talk about but, most of all, it was sealed in sacred moments like these and then it was gone.

The Four Stones

C
CARL Mar 8, 2010

Visited on 13.2.10. Easy to access in field next to crossroads – approximately 20 metres from gate into field. Can be easily seen over hedge from lane which runs past the stones (on right) with farm a bit further on (on left).

The Four Stones

Dominic_Brayne
Dominic_Brayne Aug 11, 2003

An old and dear friend was very fond of an expression that I still remember to this day.

‘Words fail me. Please see sketch.‘

Such is the impression that Old Radnor leaves you with.

Upon arrival, you find yourself saying ‘Is that it?’, but hours later, on the drive home, you find yourself mulling over what you actually saw. It is true that first impressions are underwhelming. The geography of the landscape, and the immensity of the plain on which the stones are situated, tend to detract from the scale of the construct. Approached through mountains, then hills, the visitors field of view remains on the horizon, and the stones, magnificent as they are, cannot compete with the surroundings.

And yet, and yet...

Turn your gaze inwards and puzzle. Exactly how deep are these beasts? What do they feel?

Struck deep into a soil that has fed generations for thousands of years, these monsters know all there is to know about the seasons and their cycle. Empires have come and gone, farmers born and died, but they have remained constant.

I felt humbled.

The pure depth intrigues me. Try stamping around the bases and listen to the acoustics. Are there chambers below? Trace the cupmarks with a finger. I struggled but then found them, and their gentle bowls and furrows made perfect sense when traced in tandem with a survey of the distant mountains.

It was a strange feeling leaving the stones, but their attraction increases as you draw distant. Next time, I will approach with a far more inward looking mind, and greater subtlety.

But until then, substituting the word ‘sketch’ for the remarkable photographs found here on this site...

‘Words fail me...‘

The Four Stones

Kammer
Kammer Jul 30, 2003

Visited 21st June 2003: My first visit to the Four Stones left me under-impressed. I got the feeling that the stones were standing in isolation from their surroundings.

Second time round it all felt like it made a bit more sense (whatever that means). I took greater care to look at the hills framing the plateau where the Four Stones stand, and spotted a distinctive distant hill that is obscured by a large tree near the stones (I think this is Burfa Camp).

I also found the three cupmarks that I’d failed to look for on my first visit.

The Four Stones

Kammer
Kammer Jun 16, 2003

Visited 11th May 2003: The Radnor Four Stones were my penultimate stop off on the way home from Oxford. It was my first visit to the site, and I was travelling ‘sans map’. I overshot on the A44, turning off too far west. After asking directions from a friendly farmer I doubled back, and eventually ended up in the right place.

The four stones are enormous, but sat as they are in a big flat field, it all seemed a bit of an anticlimax when I got there. The stones are so squat and rounded that they could almost be sat on the surface rather than embedded in the ground (obviously this isn’t the case). They don’t seem to be orientated in any obvious way. I didn’t feel my eye being drawn to anything specific. I’m new to the ‘four poster’ thing, so perhaps it takes a while to tune into. After all that driving I was probably in the ‘wrong place’ for the Four Stones.

It goes without saying that this is a truly megalithic site, probably pivotal in a landscape of smaller sites, so it that respect ‘je ne regret rein’. The visit left me wondering what a four poster is doing in mid Wales!

The Four Stones

juamei
juamei Jun 4, 2002

- Visited jubilee w/e -
I visited this site the same w/e as Arthur’s stone (near Dorstone) and Harold’s Stones, and I have to say this was my clear favourite.
The stones are indeed massive, being over 4ft in width at their base, which my meager maths tells me is over 12ft in circumference. They sit by the edge of a field in a plain surrounded on all sides by hills, which provide a beautiful setting.
I checked all the stones for markings, but I wasn’t able to discern any, unfortunately :-/ Also someone appears to have dug underneath the fallen stone (presumably why it fell...)
This site is the sort of place one could lose oneself for several hours, just sitting peacefully reflecting the insolubles of life.

The Four Stones

IronMan
IronMan May 7, 2002

These stones are huge! The few photographs I had seen prior to coming here didn’t do justice to the bulk of these stones – my photographs seem to make these stones look small too. The compact size of the circle, coupled with the size of the stones has to be seen.

The setting is good – a flat plain hemmed in by the surrounding peaks. Old Radnor is in clear view in the distance.

Folklore

The Four Stones
Stone Circle
Rhiannon
Rhiannon May 6, 2016

The notion of [another writer], that the stones once formed some of the supports of a covering stone of a large sepulchral chamber, appears probable. The prevalent local tradition which he and the author of the History of Radnorshire record, that the font in Old Radnor Church was hewn out of one of the missing stones, shows that the supposed removal took place at a remote period, and is so far valuable; but an examination of the four stones does not support the tradition of the use which was made of one of their missing fellows, for they are clearly erratic boulders from the adjacent volcanic rocks of Hanter or Stanner, of which a very truthful and picturesque sketch is given in Murchison’s Silurian System. Any local stone mason would, on examination, at once say the four stones could not be dressed or hewn into a regular form, as they would shatter into irregular fragments when broken or dressed.

From ‘The Four Stones, Old Radnor’ by Richard W Banks, in Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 1886-1889.

Folklore

The Four Stones
Stone Circle
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Oct 2, 2006

Four Stones, Old Radnor.-- There was a great battle fought here, and four kings were killed. The Four Stones were set up over their graves. (Kington Workhouse, 1908.)

Welsh Folklore Items, I
Ella M. Leather
Folklore, Vol. 24, No. 1. (Mar., 1913), pp. 106-110.

Folklore

The Four Stones
Stone Circle
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Mar 4, 2005

In WH Howse’s ‘Radnorshire’ of 1949, the author mentions that at the time of writing many farmers still felt in awe of the stones. The hay was left unmown around them and some people avoided going near them after dark. Well you wouldn’t want to risk it – they’ll be lumbering off to the Hindwell pool when they hear the Old Radnor bells.

Mentioned by Simpson in her ‘Folklore of the Welsh Border’ (1976).

Folklore

The Four Stones
Stone Circle
A
a lighthouse keeper Jun 11, 2002

I can remember a local tale that the Four Stones are the burial ground of four kings of ancient Wales, and that if you tap the ground between them it sounds hollow.

Also according to Radnor legend, the stones go to nearby Hindwell pool to drink at midnight. This has also been attributed to several other standing stones in the area.

Sites within 20km of The Four Stones

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