The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

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Lud's Church (Natural Rock Feature) — Fieldnotes

A recent visit to this site on a beautiful Autumn dusk yielded the following. If you clamber to the highest point of Castle Cliff Rocks, the boulder group close to the northern end of Lud's Church and overlooking the valley, you will be rewarded with a view of the top of Shutlingsloe hill peeping above the far valley side. This hill has a strikingly flattened cone as its summit and dominates the landscape for miles around. It also has a key role in the novel 'The Wierdstone of Brisingamen' by Alan Garner.
Secondly, at the nearby Gradbach Youth Hostel is an intriguing picture on the dining room wall. A blown-up reproduction of an old picture postcard shows a strange statue perched on one of the walls of the Lud's Church gully. To my eyes it looks like a female, with partially-damaged outstreched arms. White in colour with a long dress or skirt obscuring the legs, the style to me looked 17th Century. I wonder what it was, and what happened to it. Perhaps active religious ritual continued at this site until the modern era.
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