Cuddesdon Stones

Nearest town:
Oxford (9km W)
OS reference:
SP604024
OS sheets:
164, 165
Latitude:
51° 42' 59.61 N
Longitude:
1° 7' 32.16 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Cuddesdon Stones (Standing Stones) by Darren

Cuddesdon Lower Stone
(51.715270733551726, -1.1262380465933124)

First found on a cold December day in 2015,
it lay quiet by the hedgerow,
in the same wide field where once it stood proud—
a silent witness near the shadow
of a war-born decoy from darker times.
Tall as a man, slender as memory,
six feet in height, a foot in breadth,
weathered by wind and watchful time.

I returned in May, a decade on—
the nettled margins thick and high,
too wild to pass with ease.
Across the ditch, in the neighboring field
where the Upper Stone once met the sky,
I glimpsed another:
a broad slab half-buried in the bank,
mute and mossed, holding its secrets still.

I hope to walk those fields again
when autumn’s breath lays down the green,
and take a closer look—
stone to soul.

D
Darren May 5, 2025

Articles

Link

Cuddesdon Stones
Standing Stones
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Nov 1, 2011
Ashmolean Museum: Oxfordshire's Historic Archives

This page has drawing of the ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ stones at Cuddesdon, which seem to have been at SP604024 and SP607020. “Local inhabitants have stated that the stones were removed sometime in the 1980s.” But I wonder where they were removed to – it’s possible they might be lying in the hedge I suppose. The writer of the website sounds hopeful they won’t have disappeared without trace.

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