With no clear entry point to this enormous site, now thickly wooded, we parked up and clambered through a bit of broken fence on the western side where the lane skirts it. It takes an enormous amount of imagination to work this one out just because its a bit like hacking your way through some subtropical jungle. The bunnies scampered out of our way, the deer bolted, a family of tapir cantered away and I half expected to see a monumental python drop hideously from a branch...If you have a wild imagination come here! (I lied about the tapir). But despite the verdant undergrowth and dense woodland you can still make out the banks and ditches and the vast internal space. It’s very moving, actually.
Jane
This vast site consists of an area of craggy outcrops, now run by NT. As we approached from a back lane we could see pillars and tors and chimneys of rock rising impressively out of a heather and willowherb purple hillside. Magic! We parked next to a sign saying ‘No parking’, knowing we weren’t going to stay long and headed off up a track to get a closer view. If only, if only we’d had more time here – this is a HUMUNGEOUS site, certainly worthy of a whole day’s exploration. There’s a neat expensive car park further up the road from which NT will extract your money. The promise of refreshment at a kiosk lured me in, but we left caffeineless. I can’t wait to return here. But I’ll bring my own coffee.
A tortuous lane through bleak rolling moors pitted with white limestone scattered here and there lead us as close as we could drive (I’m not a walker) to this curious little stone .... circle? To call it a stone circle is stretching ths imagination, but it’s not a cairn, as suggested by the map, but a four poster, of a type more commonly viewed in Scotland. One of the uprights has cracked off and fallen inwards. You can see that it was originally built on a little mound. I had been warned that is was mightily underwhelming, but the peace and clarity of the atmosphere here, coupled with completely silent solitude and tear-jerking views makes up for it’s damaged state. This is a corker.
Weird and wild, these natural outcrops of rock are *absolutely breathtaking*, their crazy eroded shapes mushrooming up like giant mad cowpats from their cliff overlooking glorious dales scenery. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the cup marks I had read about. Anyway, go there – I challenge any one not to be mind-blown.
I spotted the stones in a field on the right just before entering the village of Trellech from the south. And WOW what an impact! I excitedly passed through the kissing gate into the field. Wading throught the wet grass, thistles and ovine faeces towards the menhirs, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the stones and their slenderness and the mad angles which they tilted! The biggest looked for all the world like a really rather monumental cock, the angle of it making it inescapably look like a gigantic willy! Yes, I liked this place. It made me smile.
This sadly neglected long barrow/chambered tomb has the most commanding of locations on the Welsh side of Severn estuary overlooking it’s two beautiful bridges.
I parked in Leechpool (not a place where you’d want to paddle, unless you were a medieval quack, perhaps?), climbed over the stile and walked up the field to the barrow, its outline unmistakable on the skyline, with it’s two east facing portal stones jutting out above the horizon. It sits atop a little rise, giving it enough height to be described as impressive. I rather think its hillocktop location is the very fact that has saved it from destruction. The view is wonderful – two glorious modern gleaming bridges engineered to span and link this gaping physical divide between England and Wales. Sadly, not much peace here though, the traffic noise constantly swishes in the background. I wondered about the longevity of this modern engineering I was looking at compared to the the ancient engineering on which I stood. No contest. I had a bit of a scout round, and was surprised to see that the stone outline of the chamber, on top of what is left of the barrow, is still in pretty good condition (underneath the thistles and weeds) and realised that at one time the height of the barrow would have covered this lot – and some! It must’ve been a wonderful sight!
A narrow chalk footpath/bridleway leads up from Blewbury to the Downs. Today the track is lined with field scabious, poppies, cornflowers, lots of blue flowers which I couldn’t identify and the most wonderful little purple orchids which are quite rare and only grew on very chalky soils such as was now underhoof. A quick canter past the old chalk pits lead us up to the top of Churn Hill and... there it is! Churn Knob! We couldn’t actually get very close on horseback, ironically, because it lies directly beside one of the privately owned ‘gallops’ which casual riders are forbidden to use by The Expensive People. We got as close as we dared without being shot or set upon by slavering hounds for me to take a couple of pics.
It’s quite big, perhaps, 10 or 15 metres wide at it’s base and seems to rise quite steeply. At this time of year it is resplendent with wild flowers glowing purple in the hazy sunlight. But it’s the position of the knob which is so impressive, for the views up here are remarkable. Looking north you seem to look vertically down over Blewburton Hill and across to the Wittenham Clumps. The graceful curves of the cooling towers of Didcot Power Station are just over to the west and on a clear day I’m sure you’d be able to see Oxford. It’s from this position that St Birinus (whoever the f**k he was) preached a sermon. To remember this, for the millennium, local Christians have erected an unsightly and monstrous cross on the Knob. A deeply offensive and outrageous piece of vandalism in my opinion. Throw the perpetrators to the lions!
...I rode south out of the stables in Blewbury and trotted alongside Blewburton Hill. This cracking hillfort covers the entire area of a ‘freestanding hill’, if you know what I mean, with phenomenal terracing all around it. It looks really ‘sculpted’. You get a really good view of it as you drive along the A417 Wantage to Reading road, as many people do every day, but I bet they haven’t a clue about this gloriously placed defensive village.
Only a few metres from the Andle stone is this petite beauty. It was a miracle we found it really, not having any maps or anything. But I was beginning to develop a ‘sense’ for these places by now. Nestled at the edge of a wood this teeny weeny little circle of six standing stones and a couple of fallen ones reeks of skipping elves, dancing pixies and kindly woodland folk, a place where the magic of childhood storybooks comes alive. The dappled light falling through the leaves, the pink wild flowers, late foxgloves and unfurled bracken fronds seemed to echo with little whispered voices of long dead spirits, urging you to ‘keep it a secret!’ I wanted to. I wanted it all for myself!
Badly ravaged over time, this probably survives due to it being so tucked away. And it’s this ‘tuckedawayness’ that makes it so captivating, bewitching, charming and hopelessly appealing. The others went back to the pub for more beer, but I stayed here: I wanted to drink in the atmosphere. (And make a sketch, obviously!)
The Andle Stone is a naturally occuring rock – truly massive and quite splendid! There was no mistaking it standing in the field before the land fell down sharply towards the dale bottom. Some footholds had been cut into it so that the brave and the foolhardy may climb to the top. Being fearful of heights and of falling (weird, that, coz I have fallen off horses a lot and it hurts!) I didn’t climb it. Les did – rather bravely, I thought. She said there were some marks on the top, but my phobia was stronger than my curiosity.
A gentle stroll of no more than half a mile from Nine Stones Close takes you to this magnificent natural outcrop of Robin Hood’s Stride, where some attractive, muscly-legged young bucks were busy roping themselves to it and
scaling it’s faces. We sat admiring the great trees growing out of it’s crevasses and massive boulders hanging on the grassy slopes. Now THIS is a place to sit and contemplate your life.
Visited August 2001: Ah! Road altases. How marvellous that the cartographers still mark places like Nine Stones Close. Without an O/S this could be hard to find, but my vague hunch as to its whereabouts and some chaps with a tractor pointed the way and although it’s on private land and we had to wade through a sloppy, well-manured field of friendly cattle to reach it, it was truly worth it. Each of the four remaining stones stand tall, proud and each is uniquely individual. The view they enjoy is quite superb – one way looking out over gentle dales and the other way back towards Robin Hood’s stride. You get a very clear sense of there being something much, MUCH larger here at one time. Though precisely what is a secret it retains. We noticed some large stones in the walls of the field – perhaps these were once part of it?
Visited August 2001:
Some kind soul had erected a very roughly painted wooden sign by a very clear track. We chanced it. A longish walk through the woods somehow lead me and Kath to this charming stone circle. There were a couple of people camping in the woods about 30ms off, but other than that we had the place to ourselves. After the 12 mile ride earlier that day, Kath did nothing but lie in the dappled sun and drifted off.....I got out my paintbox and sketchbook and all was peaceful.... I have only since found out about the painful struggle fought by the eco-warriors to defend its very existance. Good on ‘em. This delightful place exudes fairy charm, certainly a place where the little people live and dance and sparkle. We sat and lost ourselves here for 2 hours or more.
A walk through a managed pine forest took 4Ws and me to the now horribly jumbled mess of stones that make up Ballyedmonduff Wedge Tomb. Imposed upon by the encroaching trees and with no room to breathe, this huge place had two distinct chambers and apparently once had roof lintels. Now lost. Hard to tell what should have been where, this is an example of staggeringly careless excavation. FourWinds thought that it once looked out over to Howth, a promentary just a few miles away, but the trees obscured its reference point inthe landscape. Bloody foresters. My protest was made by urinating in the trees.
With palettes still tingling from a visit to the nearby cheese making farm, we visited Carreg Samson. Thrilling! The view is awesome, surely one of the finest placings of a dolmen in these parts? It certainly rivals Pentre Ifan for sheer gloriousness. But what of the cromlech itself? Outwardly it appears to be just another typical dolmen. But look more closely and you see a puzzling construction of two kinds of stone. (I’m no geologist, as I’m about to reveal!) One kind is a smooth bluestone type, the other a lumpy-ricepuddingy kind, shot through with stars and splats of quartz, edged with black. The capstone is of the latter and deserves particular observation. I studied it for as long as I could without getting ‘in shot’, as treaclechops was photographing.
Driving out in the blazing sunshine (again! yippee!) towards the soaring, dramatic cliffs of Ceibwr Bay we called in here. It lies up a track leading towards Penlan farm. You have to hold your nerve as you drive up the deeply tractor-rutted track and pray the undercarriage of your car isn’t removed by the central raised strip! Fearing it would be, we parked at a point wide enough to let a tractor through and got out and walked the last few hundred metres. Although it’s on private land, the construction of a wooden stile implied it was OK to go and view it. The great thick capstone, resembling a grand piano, is held up by only three of the five stones and looked a little precarious, but we liked this very much.
If you do get here, I urge you to continue on to Ceibwr Bay, 2 kms up the lane, where we sat blinkingly in the brightness, cooled by the breeze which whipped up great waves crashing into the wild contortions of the black slate cliffs. The cliffs were topped with grassy green ‘icing’ and great patches of pink sea thrift. See it!
The roundhouses blew me away, and the detail of the interiors was wonderous! I loved everything about this place, and apart from the lack of sunshine, it looked and smelled just like being back in an African village: the smoke seeping out through the deep thatched rooves, the inky blackness of the interior of the huts, the smouldering logs, the woven withy fences, the cow shite and mud walls, the dust underfoot, the rough branches holding up essential furnishings, the sense of constant activity needed to maintain the place; rethatching, weaving and so on. I would have been quite happy ‘surviving the iron age’. I felt quite at home here and it rekindled my spirits.
Massive ditches and ramparts enclosed a small interior centre, but a quarter of the earthwork had apparently been ploughed up in the 1950s so its sense of enclosing anything at all was now lost. I liked this place a lot.
As its on private land, ask the farmer before you enter, as you might disturb his bullocks.
...a single menhir about 6 or 7 feet high with her square footprint in a pool of boggy water with marsh grass growing jauntily up against it. Charlie Dimmock couldn’t have produced a more picturesque water-feature. Indeed, so stately and serene was this menhir, in her own little pool, we felt she looked like the lady of the lake.
What kind of strangeness is THIS?!
Five cist-like chambers arranged like the spokes of a wheel, in varying states of disrepair, some with capstones, dolmen-like, some with only three sides of their chambers remaining, overlooking Dinas Head. A real mish-mash is all that is left. But what a mish-mash!
A decidedly weird place and like NOTHING I have ever encountered before. At its widest point it must’ve measured 30 or 40 metres across. It lies only 10 metres away from the main A487 Fishguard to Cardigan road and can be clearly seen through a small gate in the hedge.
I tried to make sense of it… was it one almighty barrow-like structure at one time? It showed no hint of hump or raising as many still do. Treaclechops noticed there was a standing stone in the same field, but as we were already trespassing, and the field was very wet and full of bullocks, we didn’t venture too far further.
A large standing stone, about 8 feet high, on private land, but only 15 ms from the road. On a steep hillside, this menhir is in a very dramatic position being overlooked by Mynedd Carningli. Very stately.
The fallen Maen-y-Parc stones are bit hard to find… One stone is only a 50 or 60 metres away from Maen-y-Parc ‘A’ so hidden as to be imperceptible. Now firmly integrated into the hedge/field/lane boundary and hidden under a hawthorn bush, my son Rupert noticed the top of it just peeping up.
Suddenly it became easy to see how a 6 foot tall menhir could become ‘lost’.
There is no public access to Maen-y-Parc ‘A’, but you can see it at the edge of the field, rising sharply up towards a bit of a forested hill. Despite the lack of access, I vaulted over the gate and started trotting towards it around the field boundary in order to get a photo. The stone itself is very lonely but quite grand at about 7 or 8 feet high. Like many round here, it has a square footprint.
According to the map at Tafarn y Bwylch a number of standing stones can be found.
Parking by the cattle grid, we trudged up the bleak looking path, and first came across a pair on the left hand side of the track leaning violently over as if bracing themselves against the wind. The light was low and the mizzle and murk prevented me from sketching but treaclechops liked the moodiness of it and, naturally, got out her camera. The stones stood stoicly together about 4 feet high, and the place felt very bleak.
We pressed on towards an altogether grander affair, the Waun Mawn stone part of the same complex only about 100 bone chilling metres up the hillside on the right hand side of the track…We noticed on our map that there were a number of other standing stones, again part of this Tafarn y Bwylch group, just about 200ms away to the east, but by this time we were so cold, that we couldn’t be arsed.
Late May, and after wading through a sea of bluebells, there it was. Talk about mindblown!! It is truly remarkable. Even my hard-to-please son liked it. My daughter adored it.
The capstone appears to hover over only three of its uprights, looking for all the world like some gigantic aerodynamic cuttlefish with Mynydd Carningli lurking just beyond and away in the distance, the Nevern estuary and Newport Sands. PHWOAAR! I sat and made four quick sketches from various angles just to try to make sense of this magnificent beast and capture the deepening shadows that moved around the uprights.
During the week I had in Newport, I returned here five times.
This is curiously wonderful and though I had seen it before in 1998, I couldn’t wait to see it again.
It has its own little neatly-tended lawn tucked away in its own plot between some very white, middle class holiday chalets. And yet, as soon as you see it, you realise you have entered fairyland, and the encroaching chalets cease to matter.
Enchanting, bewitching and tear-jerkingly cute, this little dolmen stands like a magic mushroom close to the Nevern river estuary, (from perhaps where the bluestones of Stonehenge were once floated down?) and points at the sacred mountain Mynydd Carningli.
I sat and looked and made a rather crappy sketch of it.
Go there. You’ll love it.
What a fine chap Kammer is! About 2kms from Parc-y-Meirw, at a crossroads on the edge of nowhere, just under the rocky outcrop of a high mountain, his car screeched to halt in front of us and he ran out to tell me: “There’s a cairn over there!” Well, I couldn’t see it, but we got out to look anyway.
Indeed, I didn’t see it until he was standing in it. It turned out to be this -Glyn Gath- a small ring cairn, about six to eight metres wide, camoflagued by lowgrowing gorse and heathers, with a ring-effect up to 3 feet tall in places. Not especially worth going out of your way for, (unless you’re really into ruinous ring cairns), but nevertheless certainly worth a shufti if you’re in the immediate vicinity.
Well-spotted Kammer!
This lovely stone row is cunningly disguised as a hedge or field boundary, and in May is replendant with gorse, bluebells, red campion, kek, young green bracken fronds, foxgloves, white campion and buttercups. Really exceptionally pretty.
Visited here with my sprogs and the lovely Kammer and his family.
Scrambling up the steep rocky hedgerow at the top of the field you could clearly see the the stone row pointed at the promentary at Fishguard off in the distance about 5kms away, where a ferry to Ireland was moored up. My son and I walked down the length of the row and counted 4 standing stones, one used as a gatepost and 3, perhaps 4 fallen ones in the verdant undergrowth. But what a view! You could even see over to St Davids, way out to the west. The stone row seems to follow an ancient track, the lane is very sunken, implying great age.
Go to the viewpoint at SN010384 up the hill from Dinas Cross and you’ll see this standing about 9 feet high in a field behind some cottages on the main road. The view from up here is utterly wonderful. I sat on a bench dedicated to the memory of ‘Big’ Glyn Somebody-or-other. The inscription read: ‘If you knew him you were lucky.’ I didn’t know him, but I knew I liked this view, as must he have done. I felt lucky.
All hail to this mighty burial chamber! All wind and all rain, too. To reach the beast, I galloped the quarter of a mile through the tall wet grass in the field in inadequate clothing clutching an all-too-small umbrella to protect me from the horizontal, angry hailstorm.
But I wanted to inspect the GIANT weetabix capstone, the beautiful construction of the stones supporting it, the whopping chamber beneath it. The appalling weather made it feel very intimate, not only because I had it entirely to myself, but also because from beneath my umbrella my field of vision was severely impaired, so the massive pylon looming over it so closely was completely irrelevant to me. The rivulets of water streaming off the stones made them glisten with life and despite the dull lighting conditions, the photos I took showed the stones off as shiny and wonderful.
I marvelled at Tinkinswood’s great size and shape, it reminded me of Belas Knap, but without the swelling of Belas’ reconstructed mound. Tinkinswood is more collapsed and flatter. Was it always thus?
Despite my cold, saturated trousers I felt happy and inspired by this place. Carole, waiting for me in the car, could hardly believe that after having spent 15 mins out in the storm I could return to the car smiling. That’s the power of Tinkinswood.
Ooooh! So cute! and standing just 20 metres or so from the kissing gate at the edge of the field its beautiful silhouette on the horizon. I ran up the field excitedly towards this little house of cards but made in stone, its simplicity of construction and symmetry a sheer delight. It provided perfect cover from the appalling weather for a moment until curiosity forced me out from the dolmen’s cover in order that I investigate the context of the field in which it stands. The weird low western light, the stairrods-rain and the shimmer of long wet grass revealed the original shape and size of the long barrow of which this dolmen would have once been a part.
Love it! I’d love to return here on a sunshiney day with a flask of Earl Grey and a selection of interesting cheeses. A little Jarlsberg anyone?
I happened on this accidentally a week ago. I was driving on the A34/Newbury bypass and completely missed my turn and ended up at Whitchurch, stumbling across this enroute. The prominence and height of this beastie and it’s proximity to the road is outstanding.
Stretching for 85 miles from Ivinghoe Beacon in the north east to Overton Hill in the south west, the Ridgeway’s midsection cuts a dashing white swathe through my patch: Oxfordshire. A particularly fine short section from the Uffington White Horse to Waylands Smithy allows the walker/cyclist/rider to experience the drama of Uffington Castle enroute to the great long barrow just a mile and a half away to the south west. The views over the big wide fields and patches of woodland of Uffington Down are breathtaking. Park at the ‘official’ car park for the White Horse and follow the signs to Waylands Smithy for a real treat....
Knowing that this is the oldest trackway in Europe in continuous use, when I walk on it, I love the sense of my feet echoing back down the track for millenia.
If you’re into birding, this short section never fails to disappoint. Keep ‘em peeled to see buzzard, brambling, greenfinch, yellowhammer, titmice (lots), kestrel, lark, plovers, thrushes, woodpeckers.
There are a number of barrows here, probably six or seven scattered around.
We passed a pair of large tumuli at SU519832, which must’ve once been part of the necropolis of Blewbury Down, for here we are between the Ridgeway and the line of Grim’s Ditch. A shufti of the O/S map reveals almost an alignment of tumuli, some in pairs, that seem to run parallel to Ridgeway. All are visible from it as you ride along.
The pair I admired at SU519832 were in a vast field of corn and has somehow escaped being ploughed over. The farmers here just cultivate around them in a wide strip and avoid any damage at all.
They are not particularly big nor clever, nor do they have any outstanding features but evidence of our prehistoric past lying there in today’s landscape for all to see -despite modern farming methods- still gives me a little tingly thrill.
...sit with me a moment longer on hillside, just above the head of the White Horse and look down and see Dragon Hill. Wow! What is this massive chalky children’s sandcastle? A landing pad for flying white horses? Certainly a significant ritual place. I think of Mexican temples, Guatemalan ruins at Tikal, Saqqara pyramid in Egypt. What happened here? It feels like a place of sacrifice or death, but not in a morbid way. Perhaps the dead were laid out on platforms up here, to be picked off by crows, or maybe a priest performed sky burials?
Ah!.... the great long barrow of Waylands Smithy. Is it the great beech trees which give the barrow so much intimacy? Why does it feel so much like home? I have lost count of the times I have been here for painting, picnics, loving, birdwatching, healing, photography, chillin’, and now grieving and celebrating all at once. Sitting above the chamber on the capstone I look down into the mouth of the barrow and think of the beautiful, newly dead, feline body of Finbarr gracefully lying in her grave in my garden, 18 miles away. God, I loved that cat. But Waylands has eradicated the grief and now I remember with joy all the love we shared.
I was curious to see the phenomenon of the way that although the long barrow is tapered, that if you stand at the very end, the edges of it appear parallel. ‘Accident or design?’ I mused. Gotta be design. Surely? Very clever in any case.
...a peculiar beast indeed, lurking in its own picket-fenced enclosure in front of a line of small chalk-built cottages. It seems so lost and lonely, ‘what great site had this been part of?’, I wondered. It felt like the last of its line, a curiosity like a stuffed animal in a museum. But having said that, I liked it hugely and enjoyed it’s quirky resting place nestling at a crossroads in deepest Oxfordshire.
Stanton Harcourt is an ancient village 8 miles west of Oxford on the B4449. It got the ‘Harcourt’ part of it’s name from a Norman family who settled here in the 15th century, I believe. The Harcourt family still live in the manor house.
‘Stanton’, of course means ‘place of the stones’ – as indeed it has – the magnificent rebuilt henge, the Devil’s Quoits. But other rich archaeological finds in the river gravels have been made round the village and have been explored in C4s “Time Team” programme.
The quarrying of river gravels have revealed incredible finds of more than 900 bones and teeth of animals including mammoth, elephant, horse, bison, bear, lion and hyena, many in almost perfect condition.
There is evidence that climactic change 200,000 years ago forced the shift of the position of the River Thames, leaving rich fertile grasslands and big prey animals for early human settlers to exploit.
Excavations by various agencies during the past 15 years have revealed stone- and bronze-age tools. burials, beaker peoples settlements and more. Some seriously important finds were made during the excavation of Gravelly Guy.
Thanks to Pure Joy’s post (below) we didn’t miss the little wooden sign at the side of the road and easily found this little piece of prehistoric loveliness.
‘We’re big and cute and white, white, white!’ the stones scream at you as the massive pillars of sugar dance intimately at the edge of a field. Just above their angular footprints I noticed that a wide strip through the bottom quarter of each stone (at the same height on each stone) seemed pinker than the rest – modern environmental conditions or deliberate ancient artistry?... I couldn’t tell. But it was very pretty nevertheless as the stones glittered with Hollywood glamour in the bright spring sunshine. Glencullen eight times over...
I only had 10 minutes here
which was a real pity
The sun was out, the sky was blue
And the grass was not cow-shitty
I would have liked to think of stars
with which they were aligning
In the sparkling sun I saw the stars
In their surfaces a-shining
I would have liked to sit and stare
Till the stones gave me snowblindness
But I had to leave so I just bowed
And thanked them for their kindness
Walking through Wychwood forest (part of the Cornbury estate, some game keepers with big smokin’ rifles cocked who were shooting squirrels approached us, and said ‘you’re going the wrong way’. I said: ‘no I’m not’. They wanted to know if we had permission to be there, which we did. They turned out to be really friendly and interested in the long barrow.
A big Roe Deer galloped through the trees in front of us away from the gunfire.
Churchill Copse long barrow is virtually an unrecognisable ruin and had it not been sited in the forest would’ve been lost to ploughing years ago. As it is, the only way to spot it is that it’s an overgrown earthen lump about 60 ft long, maybe more, at the track side which swings round slightly to get past it. There’s no stones, no naffink. Just another ancient monument being reclaimed by its environment. Very sad.
...things looked no brighter at Lyneham long barrow. Just metres from the busy A361, this once mighty construction is reduced to a vast mound of thickly be-mossed rubble with thorny trees growing in a tangle out of the top if it. Wrecked, ruinous and depressing to see it. The one bright spot is the beautiful square outlying stone, standing proud, 6 foot tall, made of the same Oolitic rock as the Hawk stone and the Rollrights. Weather beaten, lichened and yet glowing in the spring sunshine, I grasped it as a pinprick of hope that the longbarrow might not be lost. Not yet, anyway.
...talking of ancient monuments being reclaimed by their environment... this long barrow is practically indistinguishable from an edge-of-farm-dumping-ground, the big tump standing hopelessly neglected surrounded by rusting tractors, discarded agricultural detritus and is hidden beneath a thick growth of scrubby trees. Climbing over the fence to trespass, I took my machete* and hacked my way through the brambles to climb it and walk round it. It rises about 12 feet from ground level and is badly pockmarked in its south side by badgers’ holes.
Very sad to see a once important structure reduced to weeping in the corner of a forgotten field.
*I lied about the machete
On the map this appears as an earthwork. I suspect it’s horribly ruined with not much to see. Tried to take a look but it would’ve meant trespassing at the back of an Expensive Person’s stables and I didn’t fancy it. Expensive People often have firearms.
Our ability to read maps and chart a course through the delightful Wychwood forest on rough trackways meant we found Slatepits Copse Long barrow more easily than I could have hoped. Its about 70ft long and appears to be melting back into the undergrowth of the forest effortlessly, as trees and scrub overtake it. The chamber is clearly visible at the front of the mound, whos profile undulates, its back broken by poor excavations in 1850 I believe, when three skulls were found.
The only hint to the passer by (or trespasser) to it existance on the ground are the three great flat stones which form the chamber at the western end. We sat in amongst the fallen branches by the chamber and enjoyed the utter peace of being pretty much alone (but for squirrels, deer, birds) in this fairy-like woodland.
Badly neglected, yet probably only still in existance by its position tucked away deep in a remote corner of Wychwood forest.
I liked it here.
Standing proudly in a field at the back of the village, atop the highest point in the locality, 200 feet up it has great views over rolling scenery. About 50ft in diameter the great earth tump reminds me bit of Hetty Peglars, but there’s no grand entrance, no stones to see, nothing. Just 6 great trees and a triangulation post sticking out of it.
Its very much the king of the castle, and probably been saved from being ploughed over by virtue of its commanding position.
Its on private land, so to reach it, find the Fox PH and just to the right of this between two houses (called The New House and No 1, The Green, I think) is a gate into the field. You’ll see it there in front of you.
It was too grey, misty and evil to attempt Scorhill without a GPS and an OS map, so we found this instead and... Oooooh it’s lovely!
A little hidden gemstone – fairy-like, peaceful and gorgeous, though how much of the 19th century rebuild of it is ‘true’ I don’t know. It seems almost too picture-book to have been really like this. The Uprights are slim and tapering, carefully worked into flat plains and angles whilst still retaining the character of the rock (which has what appears to be quartz oven chips tossed into the mix). The Capstone is a highly worked mushroom-like structure and the base of it stands 5’7” from ground level – not quite high enough for me to stand upright in.
The grey horse mentioned by Pure Joy’s post (below) still shares his field with this sweet little cromlech, which perhaps ought to be renamed Fairyglen Stones, Enchanted Pebbles or Magic Mushroom Rocks. Would be a delightful place to fire the imaginations of your kids and introduce them to the thrills of megalithic Britain.
A bugger to find but we finally reach it and suddenly I get that tingle. Its gobsmacking! Treaclechops has been reading ‘The Vagina Monologues’ to me as I drive here, and hey, seeing Stoney Littleton it all make sense! Here is a great vagina made of stone and earth and tufty hummocks and light and shade. I love the way its profile rises from the hillside like a great mound of venus. We crawl in. I love the way it goes DOWN with the curve of the hillside, WOW. I crawl s-q-u-e-e-z-i-n-g-l-y out of the darkness of its long, long passage and blinkingly I re-emerge. I feel reborn. What a place. What a fucking place!
A real survivor, big and bold, but like an old war horse, badly scarred and needing nurture. Despite being such a big complex – three circles! – it didn’t get me going. It felt broken and somehow bereft. My state of mind perhaps? The stones are massive, impressive with highly worked flat surfaces, and as big as the monsters at Avebury. Impressively rose-coloured with peppermint lichen, the sun cast great dark shadows and allowed the spring green of the grass to sing. I made a sketch but came away feeling sad. Up at the Cove, by the church, conveniently situated in the garden of the Druid’s Arms, a monumental stone of the weirdest shape defies gravity and bends over to the left. I leave feeling sad.
A great shining white sugar cube of a lump of quartz with an entirely square footprint! Christ, if it wasn’t disrespectful to the lichen which had made there home upon it, I would be tempted to scrub it back to its Persilwhiteness to see it glow, glow, glow. An iceberg in a field.
It reminded me of the solitary and proud beauty of the Hawkstone in Oxfordshire. Gorgeous.
The gloriously incongruous Ballybrack portal tomb has survived against all the odds, and somehow now found itself on a piece of wasteland in a ghastly, grey council estate... the sort of wasteland where small boys play football and girls go to gossip and bitch. I guess the tomb makes a change from a bus shelter. Tiny, almost cute, the underside of the capstone was worked so as to be completely flat. Astonishing. From one angle it resembled an upturned grandpiano. Amidst the dogshit, I sat and made a quick sketch.
Remarkable place.