We follow the arc of Meg’s Walls south, before leaving the wood to emerge at the Three Men cairn. The three stone piles are clearly modern, but they sit on a much larger footprint. The views from here are great, looking down on Baslow as the sun sinks further. It’s starting to get colder and it won’t be long now until dark, so we press on without lingering.
[visited 2/10/11] Well this its a great place to be buried. An almost archetypal location for some Neolithic chambered barrows shouting out to all and sundry that this land its occupied.
Of course there is previous little of that left on the ground. A mere outline under the 18th Century mounds of rocks, presumably made from the barrow stones.
Access is relatively easy if you continue from the Gardom's Ring Cairn. But the provisos for wheeled seekers there applies.
The Three Men are 18th century additions to a Neolithic oval barrow, the outer rim still quite visible. This is the only burial found within the Meg's Walls enclosure.
The 3 cairns are said to commemorate 3 shepherds who died on the moor or, and the more believable story, 3 drunken priests returning from a funeral.
I do not know the origin of the "Three Men", but it is worth pointing out that it is only yards away from the junction of 4 early 19th century walls made of stones that look to me identical to the stones that make up the Three Men. A simple answer to their origin might be that they are the remains of the material dumps the wall builders must have had. It would certainly be remarkable if the wall builders had ignored 3 piles of walling stones and hauled similar material up from the quarries. There are some memorials to lost travellers in the Peak District, but the others are inscriptions.