Rhiannon

The helpful MAGIC site provides this information:

“The monument includes a henge monument set on a gentle south-east facing slope in an area of undulating chalk downland immediately east of the Wylye Valley. It comprises a central area between 30m and 33m across raised 1m above ground level. Surrounding this is a ditch, from which material was quarried during the construction of the monument, and an external bank. The ditch has been partly infilled over the years but survives to a depth of 0.5m and is c.10m across. The bank is 0.2m high and 10m wide. In the south-west portion of the ditch is a causeway c.4m across.

I must say I’m not particularly convinced by these figures but can’t do any better. I was preoccupied at the time by the sheer excitement of tracking it down and taking in the feel of its location and the hillside opposite, which you can see in the photos above.

I was sadly quite thrilled to see the henge show up on Multimap’s aerial photo.

The marvellous ‘MAGIC’ (https://www.magic.gov.uk) map site has this further information:

The monument includes a bowl barrow set on the crest of a gentle east-facing slope above the valley of the River Wylye. The barrow mound is 30m in diameter and stands 4.2m high. A central depression 1.7m deep may represent early exploration of the barrow mound, probably in the 19th century. Although no longer visible at ground level a ditch, from which material was quarried during construction of the monument, surrounds the mound. This has become infilled over the years but survives as a buried feature c.3m wide.

This is the experimental ‘barrow’ set up by P A Jewell in 1960 – to look at how ‘real’ barrows would have changed over time. Part of the original study was to actually build the ‘barrow’ with ancient vs modern methods (using deer antler picks, for example). Archaeologists also wanted to look at weathering, soil movement, ditch silting, etc. They buried cremated human bone, sheep bone, charred and uncharred oak and hazel, wool, cotton, and linen, variously tanned leathers, and flints and potsherds.

(The experimental earthwork on Overton Down, Wiltshire. Ed. P A Jewell. 1960)

This information is from ‘The History of Warminster’ by JJ Daniell, the former curate of Warminster, in 1879.

A hillock on the north of the town, formerly bar, now covered with trees, bears the name of COP HEAP. This point commands fine views west, south and eastward, of wood, hill and vale, and many tumuli and military earthworks of high antiquarian and historic interest are visible from its summit. The apex of the knoll is a barrow raised to a considerable height, with a bank and ditch. It was opened in 1809 by Sir Richard Hoare. He found, on the south-west side, at a depth of two feet, a skeleton of a man with the head towards the south, some pieces of worked flint, and fragments of stags’ horns, one of which was perforated, as though used for a hammer. On the west side, about three feet down, another skeleton was disinterred, and on the north a kist, or coped grave, was discovered, which had been disturbed in making the plantation; it contained the remains of a woman, with an infant by her side, some ivory beads, and a sea shell.

I liked the seashell.

I was very interested by the curate’s next words:

We of the latter day are in no ways justified in wantonly ransacking these houses of the ancient dead. It jars with feelings of decency and religion that graves which have been left undisturbed for 2000 years should be ruthlessly broken into, and the frames of poor mortality shattered and splintered by pickaxe and spade, merely to gratify indelicate and unnatural curiosity. The examination of some FEW barrows would have abundantly satisfied all reasonable claims of archaeological scrutiny, but Sir Richard Hoare and his company, go on without scruple or remorse plundering grave after grave, and revelling, like GHOULS amongst dead men’s bones, til scarcely a solitary barrow over the whole area of the county escapes their sacrilegious fingers; notwithstanding that the newly ravaged charnel houses disclose no object of fresh interest, and here and there, as Sir Richard confesses, the skeletons ‘grinned horribly a ghastly smile’.

An extra little bit of information: the big barrow within the camp is called ‘Picket Barrow’. Its ditch was excavated in 1939, and in it were discovered a number of stone axes. At the summit of the barrow they found a bronze age cremation in an urn (which had been disturbed by industrious rabbits).

According to Kathleen Wiltshire in her ‘Wiltshire Folklore’ the valley below Tan Hill was within living memory supposed to stand ‘a miniature stone circle of 9 upright sarsen stones about 4 ft in height, in the centre of which lies a prostrate stone about the length of a man’.

Leading up from the circle was a path, to a chalk figure of a horse – or a donkey – on the hill above. ‘This pony or donkey is 75ft from nose to tail, which stretches down much like that of the Uffington horse, and its head is very large.‘

‘Tan’ is apparently an ancient word for ‘fire’ (it certainly means fire in Welsh) – perhaps indicating that this hill (the highest in Wiltshire) was used as a beacon? Also a festival was held on the hill on St Anne’s day every year (geddit? – St Tan’s) in July – given official status by Royal Charter in the 1300s, but effectively died out in the 1930s (though I suspect people will still be gathering up there). John Aubrey said: “On St Anne’s hill, vulgarly called Tan Hill, every year is kept a great fair within an old camp.. the commodoties are sheep, oxen and fineries.” His mention of a camp might have been a confusion with the earthworks of Wansdyke. (quote reproduced in ‘The Marlborough Downs’ by Kenneth Watts, 1993)

To the casual observer Marden Henge might look like a field full of dandelions, but it actually belongs to the ‘superhenges’ that include Avebury, Mount Pleasant, Durrington and others. It’s one of the largest henge monuments spanning 530m by 360m and was built c2400BC. The land it’s on was cleared some time before this (they can tell from the types of snails found at the site). Excavation of the site in the 60s showed that there had been a 10.5m diameter timber structure within the henge – though the post holes were very shallow, which suggests it was open to the sky.

The henge is bordered on one side by the River Avon. It’s been suggested that via the river there could have been communication between this site and the one at Durrington. These two henges are both near water – it seems that the superhenges are also associated with causewayed enclosures: Avebury with Windmill Hill, Mount Pleasant with Maiden Castle, and Marden to Rybury and Knap Hill.

The Hatfield Barrow was reputedly a mound like its neighbours at Marlborough and Silbury – Neolithic and with no burial inside. It was much smaller though, only a fifth of the size of Marlborough Mound. In 1768 the Reverend Mayo recorded that the mound was 70yds to 80yds (70ish m) in diameter and 30ft (9m) high. Regrettably it no longer exists.

William Cunnington excavated the sandy mound in October 1807. Eight men worked for him over ten days, sinking a great conical pit into the top. In the core Cunnington found some ash, some charred wood, some sherds of pot, and bones of red deer, pig, and a large bird.

Almost immediately (and hardly surprising to the workmen, surely) the sides started to fall in and the mound slumped into a heap. Great. Within a few years a tidy fellow called Mr Perry shovelled the remainder into the ditch of the henge, and by 1818 there was nothing to see.

(info from Burl’s ‘Prehistoric Avebury’)

Mount Pleasant is at SY710898 just outside and to the East of Dorchester – a palisaded enclosure here surrounded the henge that’s relatively visible today (you can see how in a diagram in Alex Gibson’s paper at jungsteinsite.de/2000_gibson/hindwell.htm).

As palisaded enclosures go, it might not have been as big as the one at Hindwell – but it used the most ridiculously large timbers. The posts were much closer together than at Hindwell and were 9 metres tall (9 metres!). Not only that, but at the Eastern side, there was an entrance with two post holes 2m! in diameter and 2 metres deep. This suggests they contained HUGE oak posts, rising 6m above the ground, and weighing 17 tonnes each. I’m only quoting the archaeologists, so don’t blame me if this sounds mad – we know our ancestors transported and raised the huge trilithons in Stonehenge, so I suppose we mustn’t underestimate their ability to use wood in constructions.

Also interestingly, the gap formed as the entrance between these two enormous posts was only 70cm wide – begging the interpretation that the enclosure would have had to have been entered slowly, one at a time. The inner henge would then have acted as another ‘restriction’ on the entry of the people at the site.

I’ve been reading a book of essays called ‘Prehistoric Ritual and Religion’ by Gibson and Simpson, which has been put together in honour of Aubrey Burl. It’s all really interesting, but I was particularly taken by the chapter on Neolithic palisaded sites. Now I can tell some of you are drifting off already – especially when you hear there’s nothing to actually SEE here – but if you imagine past the facts and figures, it’s really quite amazing.

At Hindwell there was the largest palisaded site yet found in Britain. It was an oval shape 800 by 400m, enclosing 34 ha (Maiden Castle is only 17.2ha), with a circumference of 2.3km. If you look at the map, that incorporates the lake, the farm, the Roman fort, the barrows – it’s huge. I think the ‘kink’ in the road to the North is on its outline. Pottery in its ditch has been dated to 2700BCE.

Think about how much work was involved to make this – there were post holes dug, 3 in every 5 metres. They were all 2 metres deep, and held oak posts about 70 cm in diameter (and therefore weighing about 4 tonnes each). Using the ratio 1:3 for below:above ground (I don’t know where the authors got this from, but supposing we go with it..) this means the posts were all 6m tall! and there were 1400 of them around the enclosure. They’d been charred before putting in the ground – for waterproofing?

The authors calculated at length that allowing for the size of the local population, the weather, preparatory work (cutting and transporting timber, making ropes, ramps, tools) plus everyday growing food etc, it would have taken 3 and a half years of good work to finish the project. A lot of work – and would everyone even be allowed in when it was done? Think how impressive such a structure would have been – so our Neolithic forebears weren’t just a dab hand with megaliths when it came to architechture.

Mount Pleasant was a smaller palisaded site, but if anything sounds even more bizarre.

Apparently standing at around 6m high, this is one of the ‘tallest’ longbarrows in Britain. In was opened in 1700 by Matthew Huntley, who by rooting around mostly at the East end found 3 chambers which were ‘vaults arched over’. Each contained cremation urns, and whole skulls and thighbones. Unfortunately he didn’t tidy up behind himself very well and the barrow decayed a bit. But presumably not that badly if it’s still 6m? Now it’s covered in trees and surrounded by a modern wall – I don’t know if any stones are still visible, but maybe it’s still impressive due to it’s size. It’s not far off the A46 should you be heading that way.
(info from Castleden’s Neolithic Britain)

James Dyer’s ‘Cotswolds and Upper Thames’ regional archaeology guide says that John Aubrey described a stone standing at the ‘great end’ of the barrow, but this has vanished.

I’ve just been thumbing through Castleden’s Neolithic Britain, and came across the section on Crickley Hill. The site’s produced some pretty interesting finds – definitely some food for thought if you should trek up here.

The spur was originally cut off by two arcing ditches in the Neolithic, way before the Iron Age hillfort that you assume Crickley Hill is. The ditches were apparently filled and recut several times – rather strange, but this was done at other Neolithic causewayed enclosures too.

After they’d done with this stage the site was given even deeper ditches and a drystone wall rampart topped with a timber stockade. Inside there were houses and roadways – a fortified village. This is very uncommon for the Neolithic. There were two entrances closed by substantial gates (gathered from the size of the postholes), and round these were found over 200 arrow heads (I’m not one for too many material items, but ooh I’d love a neolithic arrowhead) and evidence of burning. The site was apparently attacked c. 2500bce (the late neolithic).

The western tip of the spur had been developed as a shrine area from early on – a cobbled stone platform surrounded by fences and approached by a narrow fenced path. A stone barred access directly to the platform from the path – the archaeologists could tell that people had walked round it to the left and passed through a gateway to get onto the platform. The platform was extremely free of finds (kept clean?), but at its edges were piles of bones and pottery and flints (offerings?). A small building was at the west of the platform, its open side facing the path, and fires were lit outside it.

The ritual platform was later destroyed, but about 400 years after its construction (c2300bce) the west end was covered with a cairn and a stone circle raised. The interior of the circle was cobbled, with a large slab at the middle (where they found evidence of burning).

The cairn was later extended to make a 100m long 4m wide mound, using topsoil from somewhere outside the site. At the east end of the mound was a paved semicircular forecourt and a large post hole (to hold what? Castleden suggests a ‘totem pole’). At the west end there was another paved area. Looking at the trampling, archaeologists were able to suggest that people processed along the side of the mound and then clockwise round inside the stone circle. Pretty cool if it’s true, because you usually imagine such information to be unknowable.

The long mound is still there on Crickley Hill, but not the stone ring which ‘has been reburied for its own safety’. Castleden concludes: “There is no surface trace of the destroyed Neolithic settlement, and, in fact, little to suggest that this is a key site in British archaeology.” I guess we’ll have to use our imaginations then, but that’s ok.

Wiltshire Web mentions that:
“This barrow is 150 feet long by 40 feet wide and only 4 feet high. The sarsens from the burial chamber protrude from the barrow. It is a local landmark used as a parish boundary. Three skeletons were found here in 1890 during the erection of a farm fence. ”

There are a number of caves in the rocks of Ebbor Gorge (though I must admit my mind was on the plants, not the caves) with satisfying names like ‘Little Cave’ ‘Savory’s hole’ and ‘Bracelet Cave’. Tools and bones from many eras including the Neolithic have been found here. Apparently some of the artefacts are on view at Wookey Hole.

I’ve taken the name from Castleden’s ‘Neolithic Britain’ though the barrow isn’t exactly in Amesbury. It’s right next to the A303 between Stonehenge and the New King’s Barrows. It’s probably very obvious though when you’re on the 303 at this point you’re probably either gawping at Stonehenge or concentrating on the traffic. It’s been excavated twice, in the early 1800s and in 1960. A fire had been lit on the surface of the land before the mound was raised. Worked flints and animal bones and pottery sherds were found in the core of the mound – these came from an earlier era than the late neolithic mortuary structure discovered, and were maybe deliberately incorporated. Grave goods included shale beads and buttons and amber beads. Maybe I’m just a magpie, but I like to know about these personal artefacts, because I know I’d be the proud owner of such rare and carefully made things too.

Out here on the Mendips there are four large henges, roughly in a north-south line. The southernmost was partly excavated in the 1960s and they discovered the bank was made of earth, turf and stones, supported both sides by posts and stakes. The funnel-shaped entrance was outlined by posts. They didn’t find anything actually within the henge – no structural features and no little artifacts from the time of its construction: a deliberately ‘clean’ area? A pollen analysis showed that the land was grassy when the henge was being built, rather than it still being surrounded by woodland.

What’s left is probably best appreciated from the air – I saw a local tv programme recently in which they were flying over the area, and the size of the henges was really impressive. (A bit bigger than vulcan’s photographed circle). One would be impressive enough – but why did they need four (or more)? It’s all so very mysterious.

There has been plenty of evidence found up here on this plateau for the Mesolithic era onwards: flints, Bronze Age barrows, the Iron Age fort of ‘Little Down’, remains of a Roman town.. There were 20+ barrows but many have been ploughed out or otherwise destroyed. However, in one of them (officially titled ‘number 3’ though I am yet to find out where this is) a gold disc was found. It was labelled a ‘sun disc’ by archaeologists, and similar designs have been found across Europe from the Bronze Age. It’s probably languishing in the British Museum now and I had to make do with a drawing in the Bristol Museum.

It is a nice area to stroll in – cross the racecourse and admire the view from ‘Prospect Stile’, including the weird tree-crowned Kelston Round Hill (which begs to have prehistoric pagan significance, though I don’t know if it does), and walk along the edge to Little Down fort.

Apparently the ancient looking small stones on top of the hill are the end markers for medieval strip fields.

How could I resist adding a site with a name like this? But technically there won’t be much to see. Before it was ruined it was probably as beautiful as Stoney Littleton, and had at least three pairs of sidechambers. I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere, but I came across something about it in the library, in the Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club (vol 3 for 1877).

It was 150ft north to south, and 76ft east to west. The chambers were closed by a perforated stone 13ft north of the entrance (I suppose this means it was kind of ‘horned’ like Stoney Littleton – also it’s interesting that the stone was perforated). It had large slabs infilled by dry stone walling inside, and a drystone wall outside with the earth mound above it.

“The waywarden wanted stones for the road, and so found the chambers... A limekiln has been built on the site and the stones..burned into lime; also a fold-yard constructed at another point, and the stones used for walling! A very small portion still remains..”

“Such monuments.. are destroyed through ignorance of their true value, and the use which may be made of them. The spots of land on which they stand not unfrequently fall into the possession of persons quite unable to comprehend their value or importance, and for the sake of a little temporary gain a record of past ages is ruined irretrievably!”

I suppose there may also be stones left in any walls to the field? Otherwise the site rather serves as a reminder as what could have happened to similar barrows like Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Stoney Littleton if they hadn’t been brought under the wing of local Antiquarian societies, and the last paragraph of the quote above is probably as true now as it was then.

Yeavering Bell is the most prominent hill of the northern Cheviots
overlooking the Milfield basin and is topped by the biggest hillfort in Northumbria. It overlooks the crossroads of north-southand east-west routes. Gefrin was obviously positioned with this in mind -in view of and on trading routes, and closeby to the fertile land of the floodplain(but high enough not to be flooded). Although, as you’ll see if you read the fieldnotes about Gefrin, the area is rich in Saxon Christian history, the area has been used and reused for millennia by Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age peoples.

Also I’d like to point out that feral goats clamber about on the hill.

Old news from October 2002 –

National Park Archaeologists found 34 holes at the site made by metal detectorists (hiss).

Dr. Rob Young, the National Park Archaeologist, said: ‘This represents a serious and worrying development in the National Park. Such damage has never occurred on this scale before. The Police and English Heritage have been informed. The activity is highly illegal as the site is an ancient monument protected by law. The culprits could be liable for up to two years imprisonment and an unlimited fine when they are caught and they would also probably be charged with the theft of the objects that they took away.’

‘Ancient monuments may look pretty substantial, but each one is unique and they represent a fragile resource which action like this damages irreparably. Objects removed from any archaeological site in this kind of uncontrolled way lose all of their historic value as we have no understanding of precisely where on the site they have come from.‘

The map only shows one ‘tumulus’ but actually there are three round barrows here and some stones. The round barrows are, as you’d expect, Bronze Age, but it may be that the stones come from an earlier Neolithic long-barrow. The area contains (judging by the map) the confluence of two little streams – if that’s of any significance.

According to L and R Adkins’s field guide to Somerset Archaeology, there are two red sandstone stones nearly 2m long, and two smaller ones. The site was excavated in 1931, when they found what could have been socket holes for the larger stones, and a number of smaller stones – so perhaps it could have been the entrance to a long barrow, though no burials were found here. A female urn cremation was found in one of the round barrows.

Past names for the site have been Grabburrows (’grave barrows’), Gradborough, and Bytelgore.

Oldbury hillfort was built by Iron Age people (who obviously had some run-ins with other tribes or the romans, as the NE timber gate was burnt down at some point, and caches (if I may use that word) of sling stones have also been found)
– But the hill was also the site of activity in the Old Stone Age. On the east side of the hillfort and 400m south of the NE fort entrance are two sandstone hollows (probably covered in vegetation) which were ‘workshops’ for tool makers – 40 hand axes and hundreds of flakes and other tools were found here (and are now in the Maidstone museum).

I found a fascinating article online about Swallet holes on the Mendips, and their possible uses in the Neolithic. Swallet holes are natural vertical caves – they sometimes open up overnight, and are difficult and dangerous to enter. But they’ve been found containing bones, fine stone axes, pottery, and stones that aren’t local geologically.

The Priddy Circles are in an area with a very high density of swallet holes, which date to older than the circles themselves. Is this why the circles were sited here? What connection is there between them? It’s all very interesting.

Colt Hoare recorded this sarsen near Woodhenge. He didn’t know it was near Woodhenge at the time of course, because Woodhenge hadn’t been discovered :) It’s 2 metres long (though it was standing when Hoare saw it) and it seems to be in line with the Cursus. As a single standing stone it would be very unusual in this part of the country. Maybe it’s called the cuckoo stone because it’s out of place here?

Its position has been used as the extent of the parish boundary.

Apparently the National Trust are in the process of turning the field where it lies from intensive arable farming into a wildflower meadow.

William Camden, an Elizabethan antiquarian, wrote illuminatingly about this site: “Design’d to preserve the memory of some Action or other, but the injury of Time has put it beyond all possibility of pointing out the particular occasion.”

(from Burl’s from Carnac to Callanish)

A glance at the map will show you so many stone rows in this area – but the one I mean here is the longest at 1900 metres! It runs north-south along the top of this ridge of moor. Burl quotes it being referred to in a Saxon charter as “the old way with the white stones”, and suggests that there must have been over 2000 stones at one time. Blimey.

Here’s a bit of Jarlshof related trivia for you: apparently the misleadingly Norse name was made up by Walter Scott, who visited the site in 1814 and made it the setting for his novel ‘The Pirate’.

Burl (in his book on stone rows) describes a stone further south than the Longstone, at SX660855 – the surviving stone of the ‘Three Boys’ , the other two apparently taken away for gateposts. The remaining boy is about 4 1/2 ft high.

I couldn’t resist the name of these standing stones. At a leaning 10ft and 8 1/2 ft they stand 45 feet apart. Apparently a limpet hammer is a stone tool used for persuading the poor molluscs off their rocks, a term also applied to any number of mysterious stone tools by bemused archaeologists (none of whom had probably ever eaten a limpet).

The site’s name probably means ‘Finn’s People’ – Finn MacCool that is -though it’s also been translated as the Holy People.
The circle is built on an artificially levelled surface (quite a feat) and has 22 standing stones, the largest about 7ft tall. There are two broad ‘entrances’.

Aubrey Burl gives it a romantic description in his ‘from carnac to callanish’ book:

“..Strangely beautiful.. overlooking a loch and distances of grassy machair with water lilies, marsh marigolds and orchids, overflown by lapwings, thinly whistling dunlins and shrieking oystercatchers..”

According to Aubrey Burl, people used to drive their cars into the middle of the circle and get out their picnic hampers. Tsk. These days such activities are a bit more tricky as there’s a big kerb at the road nearby (which I only vaguely noticed at the time, despite it being such an incongruous thing, in the middle of a moor).

This 3 metre grey stone laced with white quartz overlooks the sea. Some people think it has the sillouette of an (admittedly very tall) stooped woman, hence its other name ‘Auld Wife’.

The three stones here aren’t regularly spaced out – because one is allegedly missing. Aubrey Burl (in ‘From Carnac to Callanish’) reports that a fourth stone was overturned in the early 17th century, by someone digging for treasure. The stone was apparently later dragged to Boroughbridge to form part of the foundations of the bridge over the River Tutt.
There have been rumours of a missing fifth stone too, but Burl says there is no documentary evidence for one.

Stukeley also came up with the idea that the fair was a continuation of older rituals (see entry above)

This stout stone, over a metre and a half high, stands outside the entrance to St Gwrthwl’s church. The churchyard is slightly rounded – according to the Clwyd-Powys archaeological trust, the NE perimeter is part of an earlier, smaller circular enclosure, and you can see a low scarp on the west and south sides. The present church is quite new, replacing an older one in Victorian times.

Interestingly, the river Wye is only about 100 yards away: perhaps this is significant in the positioning of the stone / site (or perhaps this is a case of me trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole).

With 6 standing stones (well, 4 still actually standing: two of those as gateposts, and two fallen over ) and covering 130ft+ this is the longest stone alignment in Wales, and the only stone row in south west Wales. There may have been 8 stones originally.

Wimble Toot lies between Steart Lane (near Bowers Farm) and the nearby River Cary. It’s a small conical mound, ten feet high and crowned by a group of trees – it’s probably a Bronze Age round barrow.

If you go for that sort of thing, it’s part of the “Glastonbury Zodiac”. Of course, it’s Virgo’s breast.

An excellent place to appreciate this womanly view is at the Scott Arms (raised up on a hill opposite, further into Purbeck) with a pint of beer in your hand (check it on the ‘facilities’ menu). Also I can vouch for their puddings.

A trip to the museum in Devizes is really worthwhile to see the fantastic artefacts pinched from this barrow by Colt-Hoare – the gold* lozenge / buckle and beads and a mace and many other beautifully crafted things from this and other barrows on Salisbury Plain. There’s an old (but clear) exhibit on the development of stonehenge, and some Neolithic axes upstairs too. The opening times are:

Opening Hours: 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Saturday 12 noon – 4.00 pm Sunday.
Admission free on Sundays & Mondays, chargeable on other days.

*well. They might be replicas actually. But they’re still nice if so.

Mr Burl suggests that the name comes from mor liae – great stones. Great big stones, that is, though I’m sure they’re lovely too.

Here is some information about the 12th century Viking inscriptions at Maeshowe:

There are some pictures – a dragon, a walrus and a serpent, but also also quite a lot of graffiti, in runes. I say graffiti because most of it recalls the type of thing you find written on modern bus shelters: ‘Thorfinn wrote these runes.’; ‘Thorni fucked. Helgi carved’; ‘Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women’; ‘These runes were carved by the man most skilled in runes on the Western Ocean with the axe that killed Gaukr Trandkill’s son in the South of Iceland.’ Though there is some that sounds a bit more exciting: “A long time ago was a great treasure hidden here. Lucky will be he who can find the great fortune. Hákon single-handed bore treasure from this howe.”

Maeshowe is also mentioned in one of the Viking sagas from the same period – the Orkneyinga Saga (this version in penguin translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edward):

“Earl Harald set out for Orkney at Christmas with four ships and a hundred men. He lay for two days off Graemsay, then put in at Hamna Voe on Mainland (Stromness), and on the thirteenth day of Christmas they travelled on foot over to Firth. During a snow storm they took shelter in Maeshowe and there two of them went insane, which slowed them down badly, so that by the time they reached Firth it was night-time.”

Perhaps it’s best not to spend too long in there, eh.

Reading ‘The Ancient Burial Mounds of England’ by Grinsell (1936) I came across his account of quite a few sites in the vicinity of the Rollrights. Sometimes he is a bit keen to attribute any large stone to megalithic origin, but I thought it would be interesting to copy his directions here in case anyone local has the time and inclination to check them out if anything is still there, or knows anything more:

“North of the White House (400yds west of the King’s Men) is a track,.. if this trackis followed for about 500yds until a hedgerow running eastwards is reach, and if this hedgerow is followed eastwards for a few yards, a number of sarsen-stones will be found north of the hedge and overlooking a spring flowing towards Long Compton. These stones may be the remains of a barrow.. which was mentioned by Stukeley”

“If the ancient road on the county boundary by the Rollright Stones be followed South-westwards, past the Cross Hands Inn, a small group of sites may be seen to the west of the road and near some old quarries. Among the sites is alarge prostrate stone in the field south of the quarry west of the Cross Hands Inn; the possible remains of a long barrow in the field west of this; and a small round barrow about 9 yards in diameter and 2 feet high, at the corner of the wood to the south. South of this wood, beneath a clump of trees, is the remains of a round barrow which appears to have been edged round with a retaining circle of large stones. Southwest of this is a camp called Chastleton Burrow... To the east of Chastleton Burrow is a road leading to Cornwell and across a stream towards Boulter’s Barn, near where the road meets the main road to Chipping Norton. On the north of this road and a few yards east of the corner is a large stone which may be the remains of a megalithic monument. Half a mile south of this stone, on the south side of a trackway leading to Churchill is a large round barrow...”

really it would have been simpler to have given the OS references?! I jest.

From my reading of ‘The White Horses of the West of England – With Notices of Some other Ancient Turf-Monuments’ by the Rev. W C Plenderleath MA. (1885?).

He mentions that the Great Western Railway passes the hill about 2 miles away, yet because the horse’s outline is very narrow and because you have to be at just the right angle to see it properly, “it would not easily be found by anyone who did not know exactly where to look for it.” I’ve noticed this myself from the train and thought it odd. Even in fine weather it’s quite difficult to make the horse out. Other contributions above comment on the less than obvious placing of the figure on the hill. Westbury horse, for example, is very obvious, and can be seen from miles and miles away (perhaps aided by the landmark of the smoke belching out of the cement works, who can say).

People trying to date hill figures understandably look to old documents to see if they’re mentioned. The Reverend has a very sensible word to say on the matter. Only one medieval document seems to allude to the horse “But this does not in the least throw doubt upon its existence at the time they wrote; for not only they, but the Saxon and Roman chroniclers as well are equally silent [about] Silbury Hill, the largest solid earthwork in Europe, which was indubitably in existence in their time, and close to which all travellers by the western high road must have passed.” Right on Rev! Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Incidentally, the medieval document it is mentioned in is a ‘cartulary’ of the abbey of Abingdon, written around the reign of Henry II. It’s about some monks and their inherited lands: “One of them, Godric, becoming possessed of Spersholt, near the place commonly known as the White Horse Hill” (locum qui vulgo mons albi equi nuncupatur).

The following made me smile too. Dr Francis Wise published a letter in 1738 putting forward the idea that the horse (the emblem of Hengist, which means stone horse) was carved in 871 to commemorate Alfred being victorious over the Danes at Ashford. Two years later a reply appeared by ‘Philalethes Rusticus’ entitled ‘The Impertinence and Imposture of Modern Antiquaries Displayed.‘
PR disputed that the carving even depicts a horse. And as for any significance of its colour:
“I may venture to hold [Dr Wise] a small wager, that should the Horse scape a scouring but two seven years more his Dapple would become a Green One, which would be a still greater Rarity for all true Lovers of Antiquity.”

Another theory about the horse derives from its strange ‘beak’. Some Celtic coins show horses and birds with a similar beak. In Taliesin’s medieval (?) poems the horses of Ceridwen are sometimes referred to as ‘hen-headed steeds’. Ceridwen is said to have assumed the form of a white mare, and was also known as the ‘high crested hen’. Hence the suggestion that the Uffington horse could be a representation of Ceridwen??

Reading a dusty old book in the library (’The White Horses of the West of England – With Notices of Some other Ancient Turf-Monuments’ by the Reverend W C Plenderleath (MA)) I came across his comments about the redesigning of the horse.

A man called Gough drew the horse as it was in 1772, complete with a strange curvy body and a crescent to the tip of the tail. It’s thought that the horse was then recut in 1778:

“by a wretch of the name of Gee, who was steward to Lord Abingdon”. Presumably that’s the closest to swearing a Victorian vicar can get.

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I think I’d like the old Rev Plenderleath. In his ‘White horse jottings’ in the 1891 vol of Wiltshire Arch. NH. Mag. he dryly remarks:
“Mr Gee’s horse... was repaired and the outlines practically recut, about the year 1853... Since [1870] some further reformations have, I believe, taken place. I remember that before the latter works were begun some one was good enough to write and ask me [..] whether there was any objection to the outlining of the figure with kerb stones..
Mr Gee’s horse appeared to me to enjoy the same security against injury causable by restoration as did Juvenal’s traveller against loss by robbers when his purse was already empty.”

He also mentions, interestingly, that the Gough drawing of the earlier horse might not be as weird as we now think: he says that Gough described the figure being 100ft in length, by nearly as much in height – therefore perhaps the drawing is just a product of foreshortening.

On its eastern face there was an inscription, which was apparently spoilt by some miners in 1875. It was said to have read “TEFROIHI” or “TEFSOIHI”. There’s some argument as to how old the monument is, as it’s near a Roman road, and it’s been suggested that it could have been a burial marker, but perhaps at the site of a Bronze age cist anyway.

From UCL’s ‘CISP’ (Celtic Inscribed Stones Project) site
ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/manual/MANUAL4.html

“In the letters of E. Lhwyd, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is one dated October 10, 1693, in which this inscription is copied, and it is further stated that `close under this stone there’s a small round [represented as oval] trench about 6 yards over, with a square area, &c., within it. My thoughts are that in ye area in ye midst, a man lies buried’.”

CISP also sugests: “Approaching from the north the stone is on the horizon, though it’s less conspicuous from other angles.”

This group of barrows were shown as ‘Five Meers’ (boundary marks) on Taylor’s map of Dorset in 1765. Two of the barrows in the group were excavated before1866, under the direction of the exiled Duchess of Berry who lived at Lulworth Castle.

In one barrow there was a deep chalk-cut grave containing two skeletons in a sitting position, one male and one female. Interestingly, both had stag antlers on their shoulders. The second barrow excavated also contained a deep grave with a similarly stag-antlered skeleton. There was also a secondary cremation in the upper part of this mound. The barrows in question are probably the first and the third large ones from the west end of the cemetery.

The Five Marys are only some of the barrows that stretch along the ridge here – to Moigns Down in the west, and with one more barrow at their east. In total there are seven bowl barrows, two bell barrows and a pond barrow, which “were no doubt” (according to the SMR record) constructed over a long period of time.

(info from the scheduled monument record on MAGIC)

If the name has been the five ‘Marys’ for a long time, it would be interesting whether any local people have some folklore on the identity of these alleged ladies. Could it be put down as a biblical thing? ‘Mary’ is not the most obvious connection for five things. ‘Meers’ are hardly in the modern vocabulary.. would it have been obvious to call them ‘the five meers’ in the past?

With such good views of the surrounding flat farmland – what a surprise – crop circles have frequently ‘appeared’ around Barbury Castle, and there was one visible when we visited. Definitely aliens if you ask me.

This was a neolithic causewayed camp, later used in the iron age. From the pottery excavators have found they’ve assumed it was mostly used in the summer for short periods (no large storage vessels, only picnic cups and plates) – I can appreciate this as it was cold enough up there when I visited: I wouldn’t have wanted to live up there all year round when the valleys look so inviting. To be serious, the huge ditches contained many bones and burials – the full uses of causewayed camps aren’t (can’t be?) known I suppose. There’s also a longbarrow right on top of the hill: all these features would have taken a great deal of work to create.

Peter Gabriel wrote an esotericy song about Solsbury Hill. The video is rather hill-less though.

Carn Llidi is the highest point on the St David’s Peninsular, and home to various forts and settlements. Two burial chambers here have pits cut into the rocks.

Garnwnda burial chamber(s) lie above the village where the French tried to invade in 1797 (honestly). The capstone is apparently only supported by one upright.