Merrick

How shocking are the differences in site preservation.

This is a monument of the same age and type as Torrylin, so close you can almost shout to it, and they’re lumped together with one ‘Chambered Cairns’ on the OS map, yet Torrylin gets signposts from the road, an info board and bought for posterity while this is lost among gorse and the wallstones are being pulled out by cows clambering to the summit.

A round mound about 2m high and 10m across, only two stones are visible, a pair of uprights in the chamber sticking up about 6 or 8 inches out of the grass. This is enough to show that it definitely doesn’t align on Ailsa Craig, nor Torrylinn, nor anything else so neat and romantic.

The chamber’s on a roughly NE/SW axis.

The view today has the Scottish and Irish mountains, the tip of Kintyre, Sanda and Ailsa Craig.

Directions. It looks a bit tricky to find, but it’s not that bad really. From Kilmory and Lagg, head west for half a mile. There’s a sign ‘Cart Track Cleats Shore’. Go down this track. After the gate, it bends right. The sharp cliff-drop in the land comes in to join the track 200m further on. It’s between the gate and the cliff-join that you want to head east. Go down the slope to the open flat fields, cross the stream, and halfway between that and the big buttressed wall, head uphill. It’s a cleared mound among gorse just at the top of the slope.

visited 11 June 05

What an arresting position! As you walk down the hill the stones are glaring back up at you, set out on a flat promontory surrounded by sea. This looks like the kind of setting standing stones have in Victorian paintings of druids but never in real life.

Once down here, you find two stones on a north-south axis. The northern, leaning at about 20 degrees, is about 3 foot high, the southern one’s about 4 foot. Both are heavily pocked with great rounded gouges of weathering.

At this place, Ailsa Craig has come into view. The stones are aligned on a straight line between Ailsa Craig and the mountain of Holy Island.

Furthermore – although I’m not sure how much is me wanting to see this – the contours of the top of the southern stone approximate the shape of Ailsa Craig whilst the northern are similar to Holy Island.

This is a beautiful place. Dramatic rock formations act as a plinth to idling cormorants, we watch a hare career back up the hill, and a gang of gannets wheel in the air and dive for fish.

Once more, I’m thankful for the amazing places stones bring me to and I could sit here all day.

Directions: Park on the road. Follow the track between the houses down. After 500m or so, once you’re on a similar elevation to the stones and just before the steps down to Shore Cottage, there’s a stile on your left.

visited 10 June 05

From the mini-circle of Adilistry yesterday to this catering size mutha today. Both the scale and the setting of this circle are utterly breathtaking.

Set on the dome of a small hill with intermittent views down to the Atlantic for 180 degrees, with the strange knobbly mountain of Beinn Tart a’Mhill bearing down from the east, the sense of centrality and grandness is almost overpowering.

It seems to have originally been about 15 or 20 stones, from 5 to 8 or 9 feet tall. It’s 35 big paces across. Sadly, only two stones still stand (although greyweather’s field notes suggest some were never erected in the first place). Oddly, of the two that remain standing, facing each other east-west, the western seems to have been one of the very smallest.

While many lie fallen, some stones at the edge seem too wrongly proportioned to have been circle stones.

Strangely, a kerb of smaller stones – fist size to head size – runs between all the standing stones.

A hundred metres or so to the west, the main sea view, is a peculiar round barrow type mound. Though not marked as a cairn on the OS map the shape is certainly anomalous and eye-catching, and Greywether’s photo caption unequivocally calls it a cairn.

Far flung but well worth it. Imagining this place with all the stones up is really intense.

visited 16 June 05

Standing in the field a few metres behind the house and clearly visible from the road. This was only a very brief visit, as we were hurtling across Kintyre to get the ferry to Arran and had not a lot of time to spare.

As with many of the other chambered cairns we’ve seen on this trip, this has a feeling of uncaredness and degradation. It seems battered about, with stones leaning at an assortment of angles.

It stands on private land. We knocked at the house but got no replay, so went and had a look. We noticed we were being peered at by curtain twitchers whilst doing so!

visited 18 June 05

This strikingly flat sided stout stone stands at the head of Loch Finlaggan, north-east of the Loch’s islands.

The stone is about 6 feet high, four and a half feet wide and two feet deep.

The loch has three islands. Two were the seat of the Lord of The Isles, the rulers of the whole of this part of Western Scotland from the 12th-14th centuries. The ruins of the Lord of The Isles’ buildings still stand and are well worth the visit if you’re here for the stone. They’re open any time with good info boards.

The larger island is clearly natural, but the second one, used for the Council of The Isles and proclamations, is the same small and perfectly round shape as the crannog farther down the loch.

This second island has Iron Age fort remains below the Lord of The Isles stuff. That, and the presence of this stone a few hundred yards away, says this was a power base of great significance for millennia, and why the Lords chose it in the first place.

visited 18 June 05

On the hill 300m or so behind the farm, this stone is easily 10 feet tall, and 3 feet wide. It stands on a NE/SW axis, edge-on to the Paps of Jura, with a sweeping view over the Bruichladdich distillery over north Loch Indaal to Bowmore/Bogh Mor. It stands on private land with no public access – ask for permission at the farmhouse, the farmer’s very friendly.

visited 17 June 05

This sad ruin stands just south of Port Charlotte/ Port Sgiobha.

Tucked in the long grass at the corner of the football field of Kilchoman Community Park, the chamber walls have nine stones standing plus one chamber divider.

There’s a lot of pebbles and other stones around in a haphazard rubbish-tip style. It’s impossible for me to tell which way round it stood. The chamber’s roughly north-south, and I’d guess the entrance was at the north from the hints of mound at the south. But maybe that’s just cos the rest of the land’s been cleared and levelled for the playing fields.

This is surely the only place where you can kick a ball wide of the goal and have it land in a 5,000 year old death monument. We certainly didn’t have that in the park where I grew up.

I’ve seen places in worse condition, but something about this place depresses me beyond its state of preservation. It’s the way it seems tipped out of a dumper truck as mess at the edge of a municipal sports ground. The (surely expensive) marbled info board is generic and says nothing about this site. It shows an intact cairn and says it’s a Neolithic monument but nothing about its use. I cleared assorted plastic and broken glass from the chamber floor.

To add to the uneasy vibe, two grey navy ships came up Loch Indaal as we approached, and they’re now passing back out between me and Laggan Point. The view across the water to Beinn Bhan and the mountains of the east, round to The Strand and The Oa are rich and impressive, somehow simultaneously imposing and soothing, but this site is a sorry place indeed.

Visited 16 June 05

Standing on a ridge of low hill overlooking Loch Indaal, barely 300m from the sea, this blue stone stands 10 feet tall, 5 feet wide at the base, and 2 feet thick.

On a SE/NW axis, with the flat side facing NE. The stringy lichen has bald patches revealing white quartz lumps in the stone. There’s a tremendous view down the loch with Beinn Tart a’Mhill jumping in on the SW and a sweep of mountains to the east. On a clear day the Paps of Jura should be staring down over this, too, but today there is the prevalent Islay mist.

We camped the night just the other side of the road on the flat grass by the beach and awoke to cows, lapping waves and a view to the Bowmore and Bruichladdich distilleries. Perfect.

Visited 15 June 05

You never know what you’re going to get when a map says ‘stone circle’.

This is the smallest stone circle I’ve ever seen. Four tiny stones, ranging from 6 inches to 30 inches high – though of course there may be a little more under the peat – in a circle about 8 feet across. Lying across it, I can touch one side with my toes and the other side with my finger tips!

The stones are rich local blue stone, and the east and west stones have defined grooves in the top, possibly aligned on the striking breast hill Cnoc Rhaonastil to the south.

The circle is hidden among the grasses. Coming from Port Ellen/Port Eilein, after the track on your right to the house called Ardilistry, about 400m on there’s a passing place lay-by. Park here, walk straight into the field perpendicular to the road (waterproof boots strongly advised!). The long outcrop in front of you levels out for about 100m before another outcrop starts on the right near the house. The stones are at the right hand end of the left hand outcrop, on a flat ridge at the same elevation as the road.

Visited 15 June 05

This stands (or rather, leans) adjacent to a natural rectangular area of rocks that suggests a very ruined chambered cairn, all stones on end and right angles.

The stone is 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide, less than a foot deep, on an ESE/WSW axis. It leans at about 30 degrees and is propped up by a mound.

There’s a clear line of sight uphill to the Kilbride stone.

Visited 14 June 05

Another of the deep glowing rich blue stone monoliths, standing on an unusually level field above the bay. On a roughly E/W axis, it is about 10 feet tall, 18 inches deep and 3 feet wide.

Looking to the east, the eye is caught by the odd lump of the peak of Cnoc Crun na Maoil (I think).

Just over the brow as you head downhill, at the left in front of the little copse is the outline of the walls of the Kilbride chapel, and beyond a clear line of sight to Druim nam Madagan (Torradale) standing stone. There’s also a view to the loch where the water for Laphroaig whisky comes from down to the distillery itself and the sea.

Visited 14 June 05

Monstrously tall, roughly 14 feet high, 3feet wide and 18 inches thick, on a WNW/ESE axis, and about ten metres from a rocky outcrop (possible ur-sacred site?).

The material is a dark blue stone covered – above the level of livestock using it as a rubbing post – in that stringy green lichen that you only find in places with very clean air. There is a fabulous view out to the open sea.

Clearly visible on your left as you go along the A846 from Port Ellen/Port Eilein to Ardbeg. Don’t bunk the fence – there’s a stile by a dip in the wall beside the minor road that runs up from opposite the new water treatment works into the hills.

Visited 14 June 05

As with all the chambered cairns we’ve seen on Arran, this one’s suffered a lot of damage but is still well worth a visit as the size of the mound is still well defined.

Around 30m long and 5m or 6m wide standing in a flat clear field, it makes a big impression. To sit here and superimpose this scale of mound on Torrylinn and the others we’ve seen makes them even more impressive.

It’s orientated on a roughly WNW/ESE axis. The top has been much dug into, and indeed it’s not clear to me which end is which. At the east end there are several uprights poking up in the centre which strongly imply the chambers. At the west end there’s a Batman ear shaped stone, the classic ‘doorpost’, recumbent. Plus, the mound seems a bit wider at the west end.

In the field boundary to the west lies a large stone possibly removed from the monument (or a former standing stone?).

About 25m to the north of the mound stands a stone, 7 feet high, Batman ear shaped, on a NW/SE axis, flat side facing NE. Less than a mile to the east, the ridge of the hill of An Tunna points straight at us, with an ancient earthwork a third of the way up marked ‘fort’ on the map.

The Monyquil monuments are on private land – ask at the house for permission.

Visited 12 June 05

It’s worth mentioning that this is one of the few wheelchair accessible megalithic sites. The track up from Kilmory post office is 800m, untarmacked and on inclines so you’d probably want a push, but nothing horribly steep. No steps, no gates (except a wide one at the stones).

Incidentally, when the path forks 300m in from the post office, take the right hand one. They meet up again later, but the left goes steeply uphill and back down again to do it.

Looking along the coast to the west, there’s a cairn barely 500m away just across the burn, and another chambered cairn, Lagg or Torrylinn 2, a few hundred metres beyond that just after the big buttressed wall thing.

It’s got all the sanitised feel of a municipally restored showpiece, but still the view out to Ailsa Craig is wonderful, and it’s well worth the visit.

visited 10 June 05

On a hillside amidst vast brutal pine plantations, this chambered cairn stands on a north-south axis. The two portal stones are around 5 feet high and in the Batman ear shape like Aberdeenshire flanker stones, with one of the other frontal stones about 2 feet high beside.

The chamber is 10 feet long and about five feet deep, set 2 feet below entrance level so that the chambers would have been half above and half below ground. The vertical divider walls are intact, if heavily mossed and lichened in the damp clean air of this clearing in the forest.

There are two of the internal dividing stones recumbent on the floor of the chamber.

For all the environmental havoc wrought by pine plantations, there’s a sense of stillness here so far from the roads, with the soft rushing of wind in the treetops and the occasional slow creak.

The site itself has a tremendous feeling of focus – not dark or spooky in any way, but certainly a jangler of your psyche.

Regarding the name Meallach’s Grave, which is so official that it appears on the signposts instead of Monamore: Is Meallach a mythical character? Is there any connection with the twin peaks of Holy Island being called Mallach Mor and Mallach Beag (’big Mallach’ and ‘small Mallach’)?

Directions: From Lamlash, turn on to the Ross Road. Half a mile from Lamlash, just before the cattle grid and the road goes single-track, there’s a place signed ‘Forestry Commission Dyemill’ with a car park and picnic tables. In there, take the dirt road going straight ahead, not the one to the right. ‘Kilmory 9 miles, Whiting Bay 4 and a half miles’ says the sign just past the gated roadbridge. You can’t drive this dirt road but you can walk or cycle. About half a mile in a green Forestry Commission signpost points off the track to the west, and a couple of hundred metres into the woods there’s another one pointing south. Meallach’s Grave is in a small clearing about 400m in.

Visited 10 June 05

Clearly visible on the east side of the A841 and marked merely ‘stones’ on the OS map, this circle’s five metres across, with an outlier stone about 20 metres south-east on an east-west axis.

Three grey stones about five foot high and stout, with a smaller fallen one and several tiny stones lying around, seemingly recent additions.

Goat Fell glowers down from the north and although we’re on a slightly raised bit of land here we’re still sunk just below sight of the immense bulk of Holy Island.

Directions: 100m south of the circle there’s a dirt road turn-off. Park here. From this point there’s a footpath up to Donan Beag and Donan Mor chambered cairns, a kilometre south-east of here in the woods.

Visited 9 June 05

The stone’s about 5ft high, similar in size and shape to The Longstone a mile away, and with the same orientation. The thin edge points straight to The Longstone.

I’m always wary of being too keen about sightlines – it seems such a maps & diagrams attitude, very Roman linear, the vision of someone new on the landscape who needs exaggerated simplicity and obviousness.

The megalith builders knew their landscape well, they didn’t need sightlines cos they just knew what lay beyond the hill the same way you and I can find our way round the bedroom even when the light’s off. They were far subtler, moving with the curves of the land.

Still this stone unquestionably points straight at The Longstone. The presence of two tumuli a few hundred metres east points to a real continuity of ritual focus here.

And I start to really wonder about the ‘fort’ just up the hill. It’s a gentle sloping hill, so although it’s the highest ground hereabouts it’s still not the best site for a defensive fort. Furthermore, from up here there’s a great view of the bay to the south, and once you get to the top of the hill where the ‘fort’ is there’s that on one side and Mynydd Preseli on the other, a place of tremendous significance.

The stone’s very weathered, not made of the same stuff as the Longstone. It’s been used as a livestock rubbing post, but even so it’s very lichened and it makes me doubly suspicious about the shiny new look of The Longstone.

visited 26 Aug 04

How thoughtful that the good burghers of the village have, like those of Avebury, named their hometown after its Neolithic monument. Makes it so much easier to find on the map. More towns should do this.

It’s just over 4ft high and nearly 3ft wide at the base, about 1ft thick and aligned with the thin edge facing roughly north-south. The southern side is vertical, and it curves down to the north.

The material is brown and grey, tough and quartzy crystally stuff. It is amazingly jagged and unweathered, and we thought perhaps we’d found something altogether more modern, but the map insisted that this must be the place.

The stone stands 50m or so from the road in a field bounded by a thick hedge. The village of Longstone is basically a crossroads. The stone is found off the road south from the crossroads (signposted Amroth), a few hundred metres along in the first field on your left.

The stone is directly opposite a house called Longstone Manse, although the entrance to the field is a bit further along.

It stands on a north facing slope just as it levels to flat land, looking up to a hill at 147118 which is the high point of the horizon and has ‘Fort’ marked on the map in olde lettering. These places are often a fort, though sometimes they’re ancient ritual enclosures. Even when they are forts, these were sometimes built on top of older ritual enclosures (maybe cos the work’s already half done, maybe to add extra imposing meaning by controlling formerly revered ground, maybe both).

There’s a probable sightline with Parc y Garreg, the menhir about a mile away on the SE side of that hill.

visited 26 Aug 04

Made of the same rich burgundy sandstone as the Devil’s Quit cromlech, the similarities continue with a collapsed upright giving it a great protruding from the earth feeling.

The vertical red stones behind the cromlech are very striking – was this originally considered part of the tomb?

The big capstone has three flat sides, with the pointy end aiming inland at the bay. There are views over a stretch of sea and bays several miles to the west.

It’s a fine and beautiful place to be.

Directions: King’s Quoit lies on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path at the junction with another footpath. It is clearly visible halfway up the cliff on your left as you stand on the beach at Maenorbyr / Manorbier.

visited 26 Aug 04

As if this land was originally inhabited by the cast of Monty Python’s Bruce sketch, the Devil’s Quoit is another name like Carreg Samson and Castell Coch that’s used for several different things in the same area. Surely it defeats the point of things having names if they all have the same one.

We cycled hard into the late afternoon sun, the wind shredding our faces for mile after mile to get here, making it feel like we’d just run off the end of the world eventually. The farmhouses become fewer as you approach the point of the peninsula, the dunes appear in front of you, how much longer can there be?

Like Kammer, we found this to be in the midst of crop behind an electric fence. However, unlike him we have a history of aggravated trespass and a higher general degree of naughtiness, so we bunked in. That overlooking house can’t be the farmhouse – too small neat and modern with no yard, no other obvious place to ask permission.

This big mutha of a cromlech is made from the most alarmingly rich deep burgundy coloured sandstone and commands an amazing view of the fertile lands to the east and the wild Atlantic crashing in from the West.

I thought it’d feel massively oppressed by the unholy industrial megalopolis of the oil refineries to the north-east, glowering as Sellafield does over Greycroft stone circle. But up here it feels amazingly open and clear, the gargantuan breadth of the open ocean dwarfing even the refineries, so somehow Milford Haven doesn’t eat any of it away for me.

The capstone is a classic D-shape, the flat end on the ground at the western end. As Kammer says, the assertion that it’s earth-fast by GE Daniel (and others such as Children & Nash) seems improbable. There is a northern stone that was clearly an upright which the capstone no longer rests on. If it were put back on that upright, it wouldn’t be earth-fast.

Furthermore, the side that touches the ground rests on a flat stone about 5ft long, seemingly another fallen upright. There’s no trace of a covering mound, but the field is likely to have had an increase in ground level over the centuries (all that sand blowing in), and the field has clearly been ploughed right up to the stones countless times. As I site here, rye is planted right up to it on all sides.

The area of dunes to the south-east, Broomhill Burrows and Kilpaison Burrows, is thought to perhaps be comparatively recent and during the Neolithic it may well have been a sea inlet, giving this cromlech a dramatic peninsula position. Children & Nash (1997) say it’s not oriented towards the sea but to Milford Haven Sound, but it appears to me to be clearly sited at a point where you can see both.

visited 25 Aug 04

With a tremendous commanding view south over a valley of multiple river confluences, the cromlech has a fat capstone on three uprights in the Llech-y-Tripedd style.

Despite Children & Nash (1997) saying there’s no trace of a mound, there is the clear remains of a mound higher than the chamber, with many cairnstone-sized stones poking through the surface of the immediate surroundings.

A fat capstone sized stone lies immediately adjacent in a field wall, along with two upright-sized stones. This is thought by WF Grimes (1939) and FM Lynch (1975) to be the remains of an entrance passage.

However, Children & Nash (1997) confidently assert it is the remnants of a second cromlech, in the St Elvis double-dolmen style.

As at Mountain cromlech in Mynydd Preseli, the incorporation of material in situ in a stone wall is actually a blessing as far as preservation is concerned, as the stones and any remains they cover are unlikely to be messed about.

The house adjacent has put an outdoor light facing the cromlech!

Directions: The village of Sardis is built on a 5-way crossroads. Take the south road, Thurston Lane, out. Just after the crest of the hill a footpath is signposted left down a track with double concreted tracks. Park here if you’re in a car (don’t worry about blocking the entrance too much, it’s not needed by farm vehicles, just cars from a house). The cromlech is a couple of hundred metres along.

visited 25 Aug 04

Marked as the singular ‘Maen Hir’ on the OS maps of 1912 and 1919, on more recent editions they’re marked as ‘Standing Stones’ either side of a house called Tremaenhir (’place of the standing stones’).

The first one is easily found, right beside the road and just over 6ft tall. Batman-ear shaped bluestone, like many stones in the area it’s got 3 faces. It has ‘1850’ carved about 3ft up on one side, an act superseded 10 years and 3ft later by a tosser called CG carving their initials and year of vandalism inside a square border.

The other stone isn’t obvious. It clearly must stand on private farmland behind the house. We had a poke about and found a likely candidate, a 3-faceted pointed bluestone (like many of the menhirs in the area), heavily weathered and lichened and in the right place according to the Landranger map.

Archaeologia Cambrensis (1974) says there are two stones over 6ft high, but our candidate was only about 4ft. It’s been incorporated into a wall and has been drilled to hang a gatepost hinge.

The fact of the farmhouse blocking the unquestionable landscape interrelation doesn’t help with the sense of place.

visited 24 Aug 04

I can’t believe I’m the first person to list this site. It’s in such a megalithically rich region I felt sure other stones tourers would have visited – how can anyone stay away with a name like this?

Indeed, as we started our tour at Mynydd Preseli and are now here, by my calculations that makes it an Elvis-Preseli holiday (rimshot, cymbal, thankyou).

Located on a public footpath through St Elvis Farm, this is an utterly extraordinary site – two cromlechs side by side. Both are damaged, the east side of the eastern cromlech has been drilled to hang a gatepost in the past, and both capstones lie on the floor of the chambers, but enough of the components remain to give a tremendous sense of the monument.

A clear mound of cairnstones rises up around the base. On the presumption that it was originally covered, it must have been by a single mound.

The nearby wall contains stones possibly removed from the cromlech.

Unusually for West Wales cromlechs, the site has no sea view, being on a north-west facing slope just over the crest of the hill from the epic clifftop view south over St Brides Bay a few hundred metres away.

The landowner is now the National Trust, so the cromlech is fenced off to protect it from livestock and has a little info board.

The folklore and power here is strong. According to the present farmer, a few metres away stood the parish church of St Elvis (last wedding 1820, last funeral 1850). Just beyond the site of the church before the farmhouse is an ancient well, supposed to be used by St Elvis to baptise St David. A pagan site usurped by a Christian one, yet the Christians have gone and the older stones remain.

visited 23 Aug 04

Not to be confused with several other monuments in the area of the same type and name, this is absolutely stunning, a dramatic monument in a huge top-of-the-world setting.

Coming round the coast path from Porth Mawr / Whitesands Bay, this cromlech stands boldly silhouetted against the sky for quite some distance.

It’s placed in the lea of two outcrops high on the headland, just at the point where you can see the sea both sides.

It’s thought by some to be the fallen remains of a conventional dolmen, a view supported (no pun intended) by two possible uprights lying near the edge of the capstone.

However, others believe it to be an ‘earth-fast’ tomb like Garnwnda, ie that it was built with one end of the capstone touching the ground and never had a covering mound.

This idea gains credence when you bear in mind that most earth-fast tombs are sited on or immediately beside a natural rocky outcrop. Your first thought for Coetan Arthur is that it’s the outcrop on which it stands. However, the view is across to the outcrop of Carn Llidi, and the possibly tooled flat side of the capstone faces it in the same way others face their outcrop (eg Ffyst Samson).

Furthermore, the capstone appears obviously shaped to mimic the shape of Carn Llidi. That being so, the capstone is surely in its original position – if it were raised level on uprights, the contour emulation effect would be lost.

The considerable prehistoric remains along this little stretch of coast, from Mesolithic to iron age, show it to have been hugely important for a massive period of time.

But even if none of this were the case, it is still wonderful to climb up here and be buffeted about by the wildness of the elements and made to feel very very alive.

Today the sun shines bright and the wind blows hard, and a horse and her foal stand beside the cromlech, the waves build, smash, drop and build as they have done ceaselessly since long before the monument was here and it all combines and piles on levels of the birth-death meaning of the place.

Perfect.

visited 23 Aug 04

Carreg Samson has a wonderful epic sense of place, a total must-visit.

The cromlech has three uprights of tough granitey stone, with three of another stone that, like the monstrous capstone, captivatingly glitter with quartz. The dumped stones that lie recumbent in the field also have quartz in them, which you can see once you move the indolent cudding cows and mellow sheep out of the way.

Like many of the cromlechs hereabouts, Carreg Samson’s stones are fat and rounded, so it looks squat and almost cuddly until you realise that because the stones are fatter they are also heavier, and this means a greater weight and corresponding effort in moving them into place.

Carreg Samson stands at the head of a small valley several hundred metres long leading down to the sea and straight over to a small island called Ynys Castell (’Castle Island’). The Modern Antiquarian recounts a legend that the capstone of the cromlech was flicked into place from the island may be a garbled clue that the island was a focus for the siting of the stones. To get here we came through the village of Abercastle (’River mouth by the castle’), which runs out to a harbour protected Ynys Castell, again suggesting the island as a focal point (there is no castle here).

From up here at the stones, as well as facing north to the sea, the view extends east to the cromlech-sited outcrops of Pen Caer peninsula, and beyond to the rich megalithic zone of Mynydd Preseli. There’s a clear sightline to Ffyst Samson cromlech.

Carreg Samson’s chamber contains a sheep that seems unfazed by anything and lets you come in there with it, although this is thought to be a recent feature.

Children & Nash (1997) say excavation found there to have originally been a 2 metre long passage entrance, and there were three pits, two inside the chamber and one a metre outside. If there was a covering mound, it means the pits predate the cromlech, as the mound would have covered the area of the outside pit.

The stones are used as rubbing posts by livestock and as a shelter, causing the chamber ground to be continually churned up. It amazes me how many megaliths continue to be damaged by farming. At St Elvis Farm the landowner is the National Trust, so there’s a small fenced to protect the monument from livestock. But at so many others, even here at the showcase, postcard model, book-cover adorning Carreg Samson, the problem continues. We bemoan the appalling losses to agriculture of the 18th-20th centuries, but the lesson hasn’t been learned and the damage – so easily, quickly, simply and cheaply averted – continues. Frankly, after 50 years of the tractor it’s amazing there’s any megaliths left at all.

If you choose to ignore Lotty’s sound advice to approach from the coast path from Abercastle and instead approach from the farm, be sure to walk on past the stones to see the amazing dramatic view from the headland overlooking the sea.

A tad difficult to find if you’ve only got the map. The footpath marked is not marked or obvious on the ground. There’s a footpath sign a few hundred metres further north along the road by the houses, but it points straight into a 6ft wall!

The presence of the furious gorse that grows all over so many of the cromleched outcrops was off-putting, but we persevered and it paid off.

It stands with the capstone on two remaining uprights, with such squared angles involved that it looks for all the world like a mini-Stonehenge.

As with so many cromlechs in the area, the capstone is a fat-spearhead like D-shape. The possibly tooled flat end faces the pillar outcrop. There are clear views to the same three peaks of Mynydd Preseli visible from most monuments hereabouts, to all the northern outcrops of the Pen Caer/ Strumble Head peninsula, Carn Gelli (the outcrop above Ffynnon Druidion), and a clear sightline to Carreg Samson cromlech and the peaks around Pen Caer Dewi/ St David’s Head.

Glad to see that somebody’s been deliberately clearing the cromlech of gorse.

Directions: From the road at the western side, head up the hill towards the rocky outcrop. Once above it, you see a dramatic towering pillar of outcrop beyond – head towards this. The cromlech is in the same fence boundary as it, 60metres below, SW toward the houses.

visited 22 Aug 04

Another of this region’s triangular stones, this solitary menhir stands on a public footpath with a clear line of sight to the site of Ffynnon Druidion cromlech and the significant outcrops of Carn Gelli and Garn Wnda.

No sea view here, but here’s the same horizon of Mynydd Dinas and Mynydd Preseli that is common to the majority of megalithic sites in the area. For this part of the world, the megaliths are all about Mynydd Preseli.

Here, as at most of the Pen Caer/Strumble Head sites, the design of the three outcrops on Mynydd Dinas is repeated to the right as the three peaks of Mynydd Preseli.

This menhir stands on a level plateau (as with the Ffynnon Druidion standing stone), with the hills cosily close in to the West and South and a feeling of expanse to the North and East.

A tumulus stands adjacent only a few metres away to the south, showing the prolonged importance of this landscape to the ancients.

visited 21 Aug 04

Around 7ft tall and 3ft wide, this is another of the area’s 3-sided standing stones. Standing on level ground – a rarity in this landscape – the views are up to Carn Gelli and Garn Wnda. Just a couple of hundred metres north is the site of Ffynnon Druidion cromlech.

There’s a possible sightline to Rhos y Clegyrn standing stone and its tumulus approx 1km SW, on the side of the hill that bears the Ffyst Samson cromlech. The view also includes, as per 95% of the monuments round here, Mynydd Preseli and the sea.

With the tumulus, two standing stones, cromlech, and Garn Wnda this stone sits at the centre of a landscape bowl filled with monuments built over several millennia.

visited 21 Aug 04

Just the other side of the outcrop from the spectacular Garnwnda cromlech, this solitary menhir is a bizarre shape.

Sporting five different triangular faces, it stands abut 7ft tall and 3ft broad. Triangularity is a common theme with menhirs in this region, a serious proportion have three faces.

The view east is Bae Abergwaun/ Fishguard Bay and the open sea, Mynydd Dinas and Mynydd Preseli, the view north is the nearby rocky outcrops of Y Garn and Garn Folch, but it’s set just far enough down the slope that the sea to the north and west and Garn Fawr and Penmaen Dewi/St David’s Head are out of sight.

It’s in a level field, four-fifths of the way from between the abandoned Hennen School (we went into a detailed daydream about moving in there) to the Garn Wnda outcrop.

visited 21 Aug 04

This is an absolutely staggering place. It’s not just the fact that the rain’s abated and we’re in the first glorious sunshine of our tour, there is something a lot more, a solid, strident magnificence to this place and its view.

Our theory that the burial chambers with names on the OS map (Gwal-y-Filiast, Pentre Ifan, etc) are generally in better nick than the ones merely marked ‘Burial Chamber’ is once again confirmed here.

Our other theory of the Pen Caer cromlechs being Calanais-style orientated on rock outcrops is rammed home hard – this cromlech is literally sticking out of the outcrop!

Looking up the hill from the south there’s a weird flat slab of capstone jutting out. Get up here and it’s resting on a single upright, 12ft long bluestone at a 45 degree angle, facing out at a rugged horizon around Garn Fawr. There was some encroachemnt from ivy and bracken., which we removed.

It’s an ‘earth-fast’ cromlech, one side of the capstone resting on the ground. It can clearly never have had a covering mound as it’s so hard against the outcrop. Children & Nash (1997) say these cromlechs came later than the others.

In The Modern Antiquarian, Cope refutes the idea given by some (such as Chris Barber) that those others were never covered, and suggests a later cult of uncovering the mounded tombs. Could the earth-fast builders, with their belief in cromlechs of stone open to the sky, be that later cult?

Climb the extra few feet to the top of the outcrop for the most amazing panorama. To the west the outcrops of Garn Fawr, Garn Fechan, Garn Gilfach and Garn Folch form a serrated skyline; scoop clockwise past the Pen Caer lighthouse; Carreg Wastad Point where the French invaded in 1797; the sea coming in to the village of Llanwnda (whose churchyard apparently has an ancient holy well); round to look east with the foreground showing the outcrop by the Penrhiw cromlech, the background being the view from those cromlechs of Bae Abergwaun/ Fishguard Bay and the mountains of Mynydd Dinas and Mynydd Preseli. Turn further to see Carn Gelli outcrop, which presides over the Ffynnon Druidion burial chamber, then the sacred mounds along Penmaen Dewi/ St David’s Head and two islands in the open sea.

It’s an utterly amazing view, a total must-visit of a place irrespective of the great megalithic value. The sun is out now, the sea a rich grey-blue and I wouldn’t be anywhere else.

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A few people have had problems finding it, so here’s directions: Just before you descend into Llanwnda you see the outcrop above you on the left. Then there’s a turning marked Garn Gron and Garn Fach on the left, and a wooden public footpath sign. Take this and keep going till you run out of road at the last house, Garn Fach. The footpath runs in front of you to the left of the house. Look up to your left and there’s an obvious flat slab just below the summit. This is it!

Take the footpath 30 metres or so, then there’s one that goes straight up to the cromlech. If you’re coming by car, go beyond the Garn Gron turning to the village, park by the church and walk back up.

Incidentally, the footpath loops right round the outcrop, and in a field off the south side is Parc Hen standing stone.

visited 20 Aug 04

This battered and patched-up cromlech stands barely 600 metres from the treble cromlech of Carn Wen to the east and 900 metres from Carn Wnda to the west. All these monuments are clearly sited at the foot of a natural rock outcrop.

GE Daniel (1950) says the capstone was only resting on two uprights. A third upright has been put in place since then.

The capstone rests on uprights that are wider than they are tall, like menhirs lying on their side. The tooled flat end of the capstone faces the outcrop (now hidden behind a small copse).

Capstones are generally assumed to be orientated towards where the pointy end faces; but if there’s the effort gone into tooling an end flat, perhaps that side is a ‘facing’ direction. The fact that this capstone has the possibly tooled flat end pointing toward the obviously significant outcrop certainly suggests this.

Barber & Williams (1989) report there being an 1865 photo of this cromlech in Carmarthen Museum. Anyone fancy hunting a copy and seeing what state it was in then? They also say that the Royal Commission of Ancient monuments No.458(a) of Pembroke reports the capstone of 14ft x 8 ft was overthrown. This is certainly not the stone I see in place here, which I’d guess is roughly 8ftx5ft. Has it been broken? Replaced entirely?

There is a ragged, botched feeling to the state of this cromlech. But it’s an essential part of the composite picture of the fantastic array of Pen Caer cromlechs.

The three outcrops over the bay on Mynydd Dinas constantly draw the eye, with the three peaks on Mynydd Preseli right behind. The sea is just out of view.

The monument stands on organic farmland just off a public footpath. Ask permission from the farm and give them big respect for their organic status.

visited 20 Aug 04

Despite being marked on the OS map as ‘Burial Chamber’, it is in fact three, in the ‘sub-megalithic’ design of a chamber half above and half below ground level. They stand in dogshit-ridden semi-municipal paths and gorse and heather with an astonishing view to the sea.

Although clearly sited to look across Bae Abergwaun/ Fishguard Bay to Mynydd Preseli, they are not bluestone. The view is obscured by a development of houses, and all three are only just over the fence from back gardens.

However, from the Penrhiw cromlech 600 metres away there’s a clear version of the view. The three outcrops over the bay on Mynydd Dinas constantly draw the eye, with the three peaks on Mynydd Preseli right behind. Could this somehow tally with the decision to build three cromlechs here?

The southernmost (yet another place known as Carreg Samson) is the largest and best-preserved of them. The capstone is a white quartzy rock, 10ftx6ft, with edges so sheer they’re surely tooled. It stands on three sidelong uprights, while two more lie beside and another serves as a gatepost. The back-of-the-houses vibe of the site is present here in force. We removed the binliner of domestic rubbish that was in the chamber of this cromlech.

About 50 metres north, the middle one is propped 2ft off the ground, again crumbled but not destroyed. The capstone is the same white stone, slightly smaller than the southern one.

The northern one lies only 6 metres from the middle one. This one’s the smallest, a 6ft x 8ft capstone (white stone again), all overgrown with ivy. These two stand at the very foot of a prominent rocky outcrop; all the cromlechs on the Pen Caer/Strumble Head peninsula seem to be – Calanais style – focussed on a rock outcrop that was perhaps the original temple predating the cromlech.

Rhiannon’s note that they were covered by a single mound is highly doubtful – they are spread over about 50 metres!

Children & Nash (1997) say they were individually covered by round mounds. They also suggest the remains of a fourth cromlech lies to the north, in line with the other three. The Pembrokeshire Archaeological survey (1897-1906) reported nine! There are many natural slabs that look like capstones, so their confusion is understandable.

The multiple-cromlech is not unique to this site. There are several double cromlechs around West Wales (such as St Elvis Farm), a possible triple one at Eithbed, and a quadruple at Morfa Bycham.

The nearby info board is not particularly good, giving a load of West-Kennet style ‘burial of VIPs’ guff.

visited 20 Aug 04

Barely a mile west of Llech-y-Tripedd lies this crumbling cromlech. And here too the Mynydd Preseli arcs to the south and the tiniest V shape of Bae Trefdraeth/Newport Bay is showing.

The stones are a sorry jumble and a bit difficult to make sense of at first. There’s a grassy mound at the northern edge with cairnstone-sized stones and two thin upright-sized ones that feel like the original site, though most of the stones are piled a metre away. Children & Nash (1997) confidently suggest this is because it was a double-chambered dolmen (a common design in North Wales but a rare thing in this part of the world).

There are a couple of bulky boulders that feel wholly unlike cromlech stones, and I’d suggest they might be field clearance. Proper orientation is gone, but we still have the site and the constituent stones.

The one on top is clearly a capstone – about 7ft x 6ft, flat-topped, sheer-ended and fat-spearhead shaped. It has over 30 pits on it, which many credible researchers credit as cup marks (the more straight-laced Welsh Commission on Ancient Monuments says that as the marks are of varying size and randomly distributed they are natural. Perhaps they’ve yet to understand the nature of cup marks).

The site is clearly visible from the road, but it stands some distance away on private farmland with no right of way, so do ask permission from Trellyffant Farm. We did, and despite being very busy the farmer was gracious and generous.

visited 19 Aug 04

This is a cromlech in the Carreg Samson style – an outrageous fat capstone on tiny uprights about 3ft tall. The northern upright has a serious crack in it, apparently from recent-ish fire damage.

The capstone, like many in the area, has a sheer flat (tooled?) end to it, giving it a fat spearhead D-shape. Although the underside is roundedly level, the top is a sheer flat face tilting at 45 degrees.

Ten inches or so of discernable mound surrounds the monument.

The site has a tremendous high-up feeling. The view out is of the huge sweep of Mynydd Preseli to the south, a glimpse of Bae Trefdraeth/Newport Bay to the west, the imposing whoop-up of Carn Ingli between the two and just in view to the north is the shimmering expanse of the open sea.

Children & Nash (1997) say that a 1693 description reports the nearby fallen upright as still in place.

The Modern Antiquarian’s note that it’s ‘difficult to find even when you’ve been there several times’ is just plain wrong. On the coast road between Trefdraeth/Newport to Trewyddel/Moylgrove, follow the concrete track on the south side signposted Penlan Farm. After it turns to gravel, keep going for 500m, then it turns sharp left. The cromlech is about 200m further on over a stile in a field on your right.

Penlan Farm also offers B&B facilities, by the way.

visited 19 Aug 04

As with Eithbed, you’d not know there was a public footpath here if OS didn’t tell you so. About 100m in from the road and lay-by, the enormous capstone lies over its chamber, built into a field boundary wall. Five fallen uprights, all about 6ft tall, lie around, four on one side of the wall and one on the other.

There are other smaller stones around and under the stone that are very likely to have been part of the construction. The capstone is a monster, about 10ft across and like many in the area there’s a notable flat end (tooled?) giving it a sort of filled-in D shape, like a fat spearhead.

Although it’s in a sorry state, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to get a vibe for its basic orientation and structure.

Although the siting in a field wall gives you problems in fully appreciating this massive cromlech, it might actually be doing us a favour – it is unlikely to suffer the usual farmer assaults, either being moved or ploughed, and so the archaeology and any burial contents may well be being preserved.

visited 18 Aug 04

Standing on boggy land at the foot of the basin of mountains you see when looking north-west from Gors Fawr, Cerrig Meibion Arthur is two tall stones barely 6ft apart on an east-west axis. One 6 and a half ft high, only 1ft thick and two and a half feet broad, the other the same depth, marginally taller but much fatter.

Both stones have deep puddles of water at the base, more so with the thin stone, which is now leaning over.

There’s probably a sight line on Glynaeron 1 & 2 standing stones if they weren’t buried in hedges. Didn’t check it out due to the furious drenching we’ve received thanks to being here during Pembrokeshire’s monsoon season. Droplets of rain jumping several inches back out of the puddles as we huddled behind the stones!

The house in the middle is called Glynsaithmaen – ‘glen of seven stones’.

visited 18 Aug 04

Marked on the OS map as Burial Chamber – just as the pristine Gwal-y-Filiast is – there’s not only no cromlech there, but we also failed to find any clue as to the whereabouts of the public footpath promised by OS.

Eithbed was either two or three cromlechs; nobody’s really sure which, and there are examples of double-dolmens in the region such as St Elvis Farm, and triple ones such as Carn Wen.

According to Children & Nash (1997), in 1871 Gardner-Wilkinson reports two out of three cromlechs as ‘fallen’, and in 1911 Done-Bushell recognised three capstones.

The northern Cornel Bach stone – another probable cromlech – is clearly visible downhill.

Many of the fields have large stones lying around their boundaries, however the biggest cluster is, surprise surprise, where the burial chambers should be.

An astonishing stone identified by Children & Nash as a capstone – 10ft x 5ft x 1ft and shaped like the Pentre Ifan capstone – is here looking very recently moved, and a few metres away to the east is one likely site, a jumble of stones about 6ft long, covered in weeds and the remains of farm product plastic.

Another stands in long grass a few metres further along in the next field.

Utterly destroyed, disrespected and fucked over. Fucking farmers.

visited 18 Aug 04

Here we are now, right at the foot of Mynydd Preseli. Yet another menhir site near Maenclochog (the village pub, despite being called the Globe Inn, has a painted sign showing a standing stone in a field).

The stones lie on an NNE/SSW axis, although they do not seem to be oriented towards each other.

The northern stone has four faces, yet feels triangular when viewed from any angle. It’s about 5 and a half feet tall, oriented NNW/SSE and, like the other, has some smaller field clearance boulders dumped beside it including a startling great white quartzy one.

The south stone lies on a parallel axis, a big fat boulder of a thing. About 80 metres separates them.

It has a clear line of sight to the Eithbed burial chambers.

visited 18 Aug 04

In a field behind Prisk Farm (anglicised spelling of Prysg), about 40m from the road east out of the village stands this solitary stone, shaped to a pointed tip in that Batman’s ears/ Aberdeenshire flanker style. It’s about 6ft tall, 3ft thick at the base and nearly 2ft thick.

Marked as Standing Stone on the OS map, Children & Nash (1997) list it as a the remains of a cromlech.

Erected a little way down from the crest of the hill, the vertical edge faces SSW down the valley, the curved edge NNW over the crest of the hill to Cerrig Meibion Arthur and the Western end of Mynydd Preseli.

That side has a 2 inch circular hole bored in several inches, surrounded by a 10 inch circle of tooled appearance. This is modern (although old enough to have a hefty build-up of lichen) and I’d guess the ‘tooled’ bit is where a chunk of stone came away when whatever was anchored in the hole got pulled out.

As with many stones, it’s been seriously utilised by livestock as a rubbing post.

The stone’s influence shows in the names of the houses; the main house in the village is called Temple Druid, the new one that backs on to the field is Maes-y-Carreg (Field of the Stone).

visited 18 Aug 04

Having done a minimum of research beforehand (always like to do a first visit to an area ‘blind’ with just an OS map, it encourages more wandering and pondering), I’d no idea what to expect. The OS map marks it with that little crown logo used for tumuli, but this site is the remains of a stone circle unlike any other I know of.

The stones were of varying height, with an entrance avenue of four stones a side, side on and touching as a wall. The circle was surrounded by a bank 3ft high and 120ft in diameter, but with no ditch. There was a stone curb leading away from the entrance round the bank for about 30 foot each side.

According to the 1938 excavations, the stones were all placed not vertically but leaning inwards. The field boundaries are full of massive bluestones, surely including some of the fifteen missing circle stones.

This is a major complex built and used over a very long period – there are a dozen round barrows, another stone circle, several standing stones, a henge and a cromlech all originally within a few hundred metres.

We’re only a mile or two from the Gors Fawr megalithic landscape and just beyond that the source of the Stonehenge bluestones.

The richness of the Glandy Cross megalithic landscape, the scale, effort and sustained time period of focus here, and the arresting unique design, make it an essential visit. It seems utterly ludicrous it wasn’t included in the TMA book.

Props to Dyfed Archaeological Trust Ltd for the fine info board at the entrance, detailing a lot of the monuments now destroyed and/or not listed on the OS map.

visited 17 & 18 Aug 04

This is an intact cromlech in a beautiful and enchanting place.

Although built as a Preseli dolmen in the Carreg Samson style (smallish, enormous fat capstone), because of its location this feels unlike any other site I’ve been to. Megalithic sites tend to have such a grand sense of place, so clearly built into their landscape with the horizons and far contours in mind. This place, though, is secluded, standing near the top of a steep riverbank above the Afon Taf.

The sense of intimacy is not just to do with the relatively confined landscape, but in a large part it’s the woods too. It stands in a small clearing among old mixed woodland, in a possibly deliberate perfect circle of beech trees.

The builders worked among trees like those around it today, and all the construction and usage took place to a soundtrack of the riverflow, continuous from before they first came until after we leave.

This setting profoundly triggers the imagination because so many ancient monuments must have been built in woodland. West Kennett longbarrow was built in an oak forest, not the monoculture agri-desert we know today.

For so many Preseli cromlechs to be built with a seaward orientation, it’s got to be the river that is the focus of this one. The apparent entrance faces SSW down to the river.

The three side uprights are about 4 and a half feet high, the fourth, at the back, is smaller but even with the extra width of the capstone at that point there’s still a clear uptilt to the entrance.

A single outlier stone, presumably displaced from the cromlech, stands 3 ft high and 5 ft long about 5m to the north.

According to Children & Nash (1997), in 1872 Barnwell wrote that the chamber and capstone were still covered by a mound and at least 32 outer kerbstones were visible. However, given the scarcity of covered barrows in the region and the serious work that would’ve had to have taken place in the last 130 years to get it to its present bare state, I’m tempted to suggest Barnwell was either exaggerating or confused in his description.

This really is a beautiful mesmerising site, do make the effort to visit.

visited 17 Aug 04

Coming north from our starting point of Hendy-Gwyn/Whitland, we crested the hill and Mynydd Preseli comes into view. On this landscape, megalithically speaking it’s all about those mountains and it’s at this point on the journey that the density of monuments kicks in.

Marked as ‘Standing Stone’ on the current OS map, according to Barber & Williams (Ancient Stones of Wales, 1989) it was marked as ‘Burial Chamber’ on the 1952 edition. Indeed, there are clearly two stones, and a very probable third one lies fallen.

The stones stand in the hedge at the back of the garden of a new-ish house called Maes-yr-Haf, utterly covered in ivy so that we were 2 feet away and didn’t spot them until coming past a second time. They’re a grey-white colour, one about 6ft tall, the one immediately adjacent about 4 ft tall. The fallen one lies about 15ft west under a tree in the garden.

All three lie at the perimeter of the back garden, with the two standing ones accessible from the field behind.

It’s so overgrown, and now down to two stones, that it was difficult to get any clear orientation or vibe for the place, save for the way Mynydd Preseli dominated the horizon to the north.

Barber & Williams (1989) say the site is listed in the Welsh archaeological journal Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1865 (page 91) and again in 1871 (page 133-136 with illustration on page 152). It would be interesting to see if the cromlech was in a better state of repair in that illustration.

The alternative name of Arthur’s Table is a straight translation of Bwrdd Arthur, (reference to the flat top look of a cromlech?), and ‘Bwardd Arthur’ is presumably a mis-spelling that’s passed into use.

Visited 17 Aug 04

Requiring an OS map and a good deal of poking around among the gorse and bracken to find it, this small chambered round barrow is presumably like what many others are under their earthen mounds, or what the ruined ones were before desecration.

But this one was intact until an excavation in 1984, and it stands today with all its stones in place.

I’ve never seen a round barrow in this state before. Imagine if there were no West Kennett or Wayland’s Smithy and all we had were covered mounds or stacks of slabs to fuel our imagination.

This great state of preservation gives a strong feeling of connection, the sense of what these barrows were is immense, I have never been so struck by a later Bronze Age monument. It almost feels like the builders could turn up any time with the remaines to be interred.

Well worth the trek!

Despite being merely marked on our OS map as ‘tumulous’, this site was a superb long barrow, at the foot of the hill that has Merry Maidens circle on one side and the Pipers menhirs on the other, with the Gun Rith menhir just metres away to the north.

Quite incredibly, the construction of the road in 1840 decided not to go straight through this long chambered barrow nor to leave it intact, but to bend so as to obliterate half of it!

Covered in turf before 1840, the remaining half stands as bare stones. The largest of the capstones is thought to be a displaced menhir, and the others to have been moved from other parts of the monument.

There are madly large and deep cup marks on one of the entrance stones which appears to be made of very unusual rock. Which is indeed true, it’s concrete as the original stone is in Truro County Museum.

Inside, an Iron girder supports the rear stone. And all the while traffic zooms by at speed.

And yet despite all of this, and the total loss of the northern half of the barrow, it still has strong presence and it is a very small task to imagine it in its original splendour.

Uniquely on this landscape, the monument has an explanatory plaque.

I strongly recommend Ian Cooke’s ‘Merry Maidens Stone Circle and other nearby ancient sites’ pamphlet, available from local tourist info places, which provides a map, a suggest walking route and loads of history on this rich megalithic landscape.

From Avebury, the gentle rise of Windmill Hill is so slight as to barely catch your eye. And indeed, when there’s so much razzle-dazzle in the great henge, this place is usually overlooked.

But it was here that the first henge was dug on the Avebury landscape. And, all these thousands of years later, if you want to find it you can still trace the three concentric rings of ditches, marking out the ritual areas.

The trick is to think BIG – the outer one is simply enormous, almost clipping the trees on the western slope.

A lovely feature that messes with the modern mind is the cetring of the areas. It’s slightly off-centre, going down the north side. Despite what Cursuswalker’s notes suggest, this cannot have been an accident. The ancients weren’t stupid, and they could feel gravity just as well as we can.

No, like the siting of long barrows and other monuments of the earlier part of megalitihic times, this is from a time before we were needing to bo the biggest, highest, grandest.

And although the hill looks like nothing from Avebury, once up here the view is a commanding one out to the henge and Silbury.

There are two massive Bronze Age barrows on the eastern side, and a bit further out, just outside of the National Trust land, two more are under the plough and getting smaller every year.

The lump on the northern side that looks like a barrow with a tree growing out of it is actually a mini reservoir.

Visiting this and proplerly figuring it out for the first time has given it a place in my understanding that East Kennett long barrow has just acquired. Both looked so trivial from the viewpoints I’d seen them from before, but once you’ve walked round the other side, and once you’ve been up here and seen the view from the top, its place on the landscape becomes paramount.

Try walkin the Ridgeway south past East Kennett long barrow. Try walking the path west out of Winterbourne Monkton and see how Windmill Hill looms and broods at everything.

Going out to West Kennett, Windmill Hill just covers the backdrop of the view. Getting up in the morning when camping at Avenue Farm I will always look for a moment at the earthworks up here.

Incidentally, what a shame Cursuswalker hasn’t put more posts up on this site – the notes for Windmill Hill are superb; historical, intuitive, personal, informative.

(visited 5 April 02)

How strange that a stone circle only 500 metres from the great henge at Avebury should be so unnoticed.

Every day dozens of people walk down the West Kennett Avenue, unaware that this circle was ever here, let alone that a stone still stands.

The OS map marks it as ‘Stone Circle (rems of)’, with a single black dot to indicate the remaining stone.

If you come down the Avenue from Avebury, look across the road to your left. About 200 metres along the tree line in the field you’ll see the stone. If you go to the end of the stones (as they stand today), cross over and follow the hedge/fence.

At a bend in the tree line there’s a gap in the hedge for access between the fields. This access runs right through the site of Falkner’s Circle. A small wooden sign is nailed to the fence post to mark the spot, and several large sarsens lie around. The one remaining stone is wider than it is tall, being about 6 feet by 4 feet. Sadly, it lies just on the north side of the field boundary, i.e. just outside the National Trust owned land, and so vulnerable to farming mistreatment.

And what a strange spot. Right on the valley floor, the squat stone suits the snug location.

But what was this place? Some two hundred metres off-route for the Avenue to Avebury lacking the commanding and/or central feeling that is so common in other stone circles.

In ‘The Avebury Cycle’, Michael Dames suggests that it is perhaps to do with the midsummer sunrise. The sunrise would come over the eastern horizon (directly between two Bronze Age barrows), and a line could come through this circle, the stone in the Avenue known as 35N (uniquely not set flat-side inwards, but at a right angle to the others with a pointing edge to the east), across Waden Hill and to the summit of Silbury.

To me, this place is another discovery that makes me believe I really will never be fully familiar with all the monuments and features of the Avebury landscape, let alone divine their purpose.

(visited 4 April 02)

notes from the stones, 4 April 02:

Rarely referred to, yet obviously once an integral part of the Avebury complex of monuments, Little Avebury stone circle stood on Cow Down at the base of Furze Hill, at the point of two beautiful narrow sheltered valleys.

What a confounding and enigmatic monument in such a beautiful setting. Heading from the Sanctuary through East Kennett we took the Ridgeway south. The views back to the imposing East Kennett long barrow and Silbury gave a whole new spin on my understanding of the layout of the Avebury landscape.

After a mile or so we arrived at Cow Down (no cows, but plenty of sheep). The Modern Antiquarian marks this as the site of a stone circle ‘destroyed’. Having visited the ‘destroyed’ Falkner’s Circle earlier today and found the site clearly marked and a stone still standing, and having previously been to several ‘destroyed’ stone circles in Aberdeenshire that are still readily identifiable, I had no idea what to expect of Little Avebury.

The OS map did a great job of pinpointing Falkner’s Circle for us, but it marks nothing here.

There’s a rough circle of about 8 recumbent and broken stones – with three more heading out in a line to the south – on the valley floor at 118654, between the Ridgeway and Furze Hill.

At the end of Furze Hill there’s a *really* weird thing – a modern 12 foot tall pillar of rough white marble with a horse’s head carved in the top. About 30 metres north of that is a bit of rough ground, littered with large sarsen boulders, some fifteen of which are in a neat north-south line. If I didn’t know better I’d say it was a ruined barrow, but the lack of any MA reference and the valley-floor siting means it can’t be.

Ten metres west is another small rough circle of small recumbent sarsens.

What confuses me is none of these three sites make sense as field clearance stones. A farmer would move stone to the edge of tillable land; the side of a field or the start of a steep slope. I can see no reason why any of these stones would have been cleared to their present positions, yet none of this is an obvious circle.

Does anyone know when it was destroyed? Or of any other clues to the exact siting? Can Stukeley perhaps help us out on this one?

Still, for all this confusion I’m calmed by this hazy heat and the beautiful steep green curved valleys here.Stones or no, this place has a rich magical air.

The three-mile walk from the Sanctuary to Adam’s Grave is an essential thing for anyone wanting to get a handle on the geography of the Avebury landscape.

The Ridgeway – although all the books give it as ending at the Sanctuary – goes south past Overton Hill and carries on south, coming out of the magical rolling chalk hills between the 2 MA sites of Knap Hill and Adam’s Grave into the Vale of Pewsey, seeming to end at the foot of Woodborough Hill.

As you come into the village of East Kennett, the tree covered long barrow on the hill looms large and forboding. It had always seemed such a speck when seen from West Kennett, but from the east and south it shows itself as the big monstrous mother it really is.

Passing the site of the destroyed Little Avebury stone circle on Cow Down, you come up the hill to the Wansdyke, and out to a spectacular view of Adam’s Grave and Knap Hill. on the horizon in front.

The climb is tough but short, and the view from the top is incredible. Up here is another one of those places that makes you glad you brought the tombstone-esque bulk of the Modern Antiquarian, for only when here can the true accuracy of Julian Cope’s poetic writing really come clear. You do glimpse forever.

The plain in front drops away, and it’s one of those places like the top of Glastonbury Tor where you feel like you are looking at the whole world.

Such a magnificent place compels you to stay for hours.

The view stays wonderful if you walk the hilltop path to the west, along to Tan Hill, a site of Lammas celebrations in sight of Silbury from time immemorial until 1932.

The edge of the Avebury landscape up here, and somehow also the heart of everything.

visited 4 April 02

There’s so much to see on the Avebury landscape that you really shouldn’t make do with the OS Landranger map. Splash out on Explorer 157. It’s twice the scale, so you can easily find everything, and they’ve coincidentally put Avebury in the centre. If you have this map you’ll find otherwise fiddly things like the Mother’s Jam really easily.

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Head east out of Avebury on the trackway that was, until 200 years ago, the main London to Bath road. It takes you over the Ridgeway, across the top of the hill, and then you cross a mad horse track and go downhill, with the trees of Delling Copse on your left.

And as you go down, you see them on your right. recumbent sarsens, littered across the ground. At the valley floor turn right and walk along. And there it is, the vast oracle stone of the Mother’s Jam. The hill to the west is bare, except for it’s cleft with a trickle of stones leading to the biggest of all at the bottom. The slope to the east is covered in sarsen. It is totally weird. You cannot believe this is natural, it feels so arranged, so ordained.

The few bushes and trees that grow there are weird to, all intense and twisty.

This would be worth visiting just to see the place where the Avebury stones came from. But it would also be worth visiting even if it were not. The weird crackling magic is tangible here, every time you visit.

Truly, the strangest and most intense place in all the natural world I have ever seen.

The centre – the big stone – is at grid ref 135708

Notes from the stones, 31 Aug 00

Harold’s Stones or The Three Stones stand just south of the village of Trellech. While it’s common for towns in Wales to have two spellings (or two different names) to relflect the two common languages used there, on the six mile road from Monmouth to Trellech we saw the roadsigns spelling the town’s name four different ways! Local historians say there are eighteen spellings. The Modern Antiquarian says the name means ‘three stones’, but ‘tre/tri’ means ‘place of’ as well as ‘three’ (as in Treherbert, etc). Either way, the village is clearly named after the standing stones.

The stones are in ascending order of height and stand in a line about 5 metres apart, very close together for an alignment. The small one is a ‘normal’ standing stone – it stands perpendicular to the ground and has a wide edge and a narrow edge. The narrow edge faces the other two.

The other two are squared, having no obvious edge-face and flat-face. As I stand here with my back against the smallest one, the middle one is leaning out to the right at an angle of about 75 or 80 degrees, and the far one leans to the left at about 60 degrees. It doesn’t feel like especially boggy ground or a field that gets waterlogged much (it stands above the adjacent road), so it seems doubtful that the stones have tipped, and quite possible that they were placed at these crazy angles.

The base of the almost laughably phallic tall stone doesn’t lean at the same angle as the rest of the stone; even if this first metre and a half were at 90 degrees, the main part of the stone ould still be leaning at 70 degrees or so. This one has clearly been designed to be leaning, which suggests that the middle one was too.

The puddingstone they’re made of is pebbles held together with a natural cement. The amount of pebbles in each stone varies; The small one looks like sandstone with the occasional pebble, there are far more in the middle stone. The tall one has so many that it looks like a 1970s council pebbledashing job.

It’s been suggested that the stones are aligned with the winter solstice on the holy mountain of The Skirrid.

The church in Trellech is also a curious place. There’s a sundial at the back by the vestry (an indoor sundial?!) whose base is a lot older than the sundial part on top. Three sides of the base are carved. One side has the three stones and the legend ‘Maior Saxis hic fuit victor Harald’. A second side is carved with a circular dip representing The Virtuous Well, an ancient holy well just east of the village. On a third side is carved a rounded lump and ‘magna mole’, representing Tump Terret, 300 metres south of the church along the ancient trackway that is still a public footpath. Coming from the stones, it’s just over the road and behind the cattleshed of the farm. The Modern Antiquarian says it is a ‘likely prehistoric mound’, but given its dimensions, I’m inclined to agree with local historians that it is a Norman motte.

Even the embroidered prayer cushions in the church are interesting – featured designs include a Celtic cross, and on another the Three Stones.

The red stone cross in the churchyard is also extraordinary. The church itself dates from the 13th (or possibly early 14th) century, but there was a wooden church on the site since at least the 7th century. Church historians confidently speculate that the stone cross predates even the oldest church building here, and write, ‘romantics may picture priests of the Celtic church (continuous in this area right from Roman times) ringing their handbells to summon the faithful to open-air worship inside the holy enclosure’. Beside the base of the cross is an ancient altar carved with Celtic crosses.

The base of the cross is five concentric layers of stone blocks ascending in a pyramid. The cross and the base stones contain white rocks, like the standing stones. Clearly this place was still of great religious significance, because the Christians made it such a constant focal point.