Devil’s Quoit (Sampson)

Also known as:
Dancing Stone of Stackpole, East Hole Stone, Sampson Cross Stone and Sampson's Farm Stone
Nearest town:
Pembroke (6km NNE)
OS reference:
SR962964
OS sheet:
158
Latitude:
51° 37' 44.11 N
Longitude:
4° 56' 41.85 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Devil’s Quoit (Sampson) (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Kammer

Taken 17th April 2003: Looking west towards the setting sun.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer May 16, 2003
Image of Devil’s Quoit (Sampson) (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Kammer

Taken 17th April 2003: Viewed from the south, this shot totally fails to give any impression of scale. This is a large stone.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer May 16, 2003
Image of Devil’s Quoit (Sampson) (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Kammer

Taken 17th April 2003: The stone from the west.

Image credit: Simon Marshall
Kammer
Kammer May 16, 2003

Articles

Devil’s Quoit (Sampson)

C
CARL Apr 26, 2010

Visited 25.4.10.
Easily seen from the B4319 – from one of several field gates. No public right of way to the stone but it wouldn’t take long to quickly run over if you wanted. I had little Dafydd with me who was asleep in the car at the time so I settled for a view from the roadside.

Devil’s Quoit (Sampson)

postman
postman Mar 12, 2009

A big lump of a stone is this, set on the top of a slight hill, nearly seven feet tall.
A large black rub site marrs one side with black fur still on it .
This isn’t as far as I know a quoit, to be fair the map says its a standing stone,
perhaps the name “devils quoit” can be applied to any big stone or was the stone
once lying down and got it’s name that way, either way its a bit of a confuser.

Devil’s Quoit (Sampson)

Kammer
Kammer May 17, 2003

Visited 17th April 2003: This stone is in a field of lush pasture, so I decide to exercise my right to roam (somewhat prematurely) and take a closer look. The field is a lot bigger than it looks, and the stone is lot further away from the road than I expected. I’d anticipated a short jog, but the journey turned out to be quite a run (with a commando style roll in the middle to get under an electric fence).

I realised why I’d misjudged the distances when I eventually stood next to the stone. It’s really rather large (none of the photos I took convey the real size of it). I  remember thinking that it wouldn’t look out of place at Avebury. A short run back to the car, and we headed off to the next Devil’s Quoit, trying to beat the sunset.

Folklore

Devil’s Quoit (Sampson)
Standing Stone / Menhir
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jul 11, 2024

Pembrokeshire – in common with several other districts in Great Britain and Ireland – possesses a good phantom coach legend, localised in the southern part of the county, at a place where four roads meet, called Sampson Cross.

In old days, the belated farmer, driving home in his gig from market, was apt to cast a nervous glance over his shoulder as his pony slowly climbed the last steep pitch leading up to the Cross. For he remembered the story connected with that dark bit of road, that told how every night a certain Lady Z. (who lived in the seventeenth century, and whose monument is in the church close by) drives over from Tenby, ten miles distant, in a coach drawn by headless horses, guided by a headless coachman. She also has no head; and arriving by midnight at Sampson Cross, the whole equipage is said to disappear in a flame of fire, with a loud noise of explosion.

A clergyman living in the immediate neighbourhood, who told me the story, said that some people believed the ghostly traveller had been safely “laid” many years ago, in the waters of a lake not far distant. He added, however that might be, it was an odd fact that his sedate and elderly cob, when driven past the Cross after nightfall, would invariably start as if frightened there, a thing which never happened by daylight.

I think all that universal headlessness happening every night is a mite ostentatious. But you can’t be too careful at prehistoric stones especially at liminal places like crossroads. So be careful.
From ‘Stranger than fiction, being tales from the byways of ghosts and folk-lore’ by Mary Lewes, 1911 (p.24).

Sites within 20km of Devil’s Quoit (Sampson)

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