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St Bartholomew's Church (Newbiggin by the Sea)
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Ancient Cross
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
St Bartholomew's Church (Newbiggin by the Sea) submitted by Anne T on 26th Sep 2018. This unusual fragment is built into the southern end of the east wall, near the altar (inside). It has been interpreted as "a net with entangled fishes" (the fishes head can just be seen towards the top of the stone). This fragment is dated to the 12th century and is said to have been part of a column capital.
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The Devil's stone (Kent)
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stone (Menhir)
Country: England (Kent)
Visited: Yes on 7th May 2024. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 4 Access 5
The Devil's stone (Kent) submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. Despite living just a few miles down the A2 from here, I never knew this little menhir existed until seeing a tweet by Mr Burnham (with vegetable soup offering) in spring 2024. So I whizzed down the road and said hello.
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Log Text: Despite living within 10 miles of this site I had never heard of it until I saw a Twitter/X post in April or May of 2024. I overconfidently set off in utterly the wrong direction at first. Eventually the penny dropped; I'd passed by just yards away on the A2 many times. (If 'nearest town' attributes are calculated as the crow flies then it is certainly possible that Faversham is nearest. But I'd suggest Rainham is quite a bit nearer really, otherwise.
It's a cool little menhir that has stood up to a lot of change over the years, I'm sure. I forgot to check the second stone (or the vege soup can). The boot print looks like it might be an area that was once abutted next to another stone and hence not as weathered as the rest of the surface. But that doesn't explain why it stands proud of the rest of the stone. Maybe that was covered in (for example) lichens and then cleaned rather too eagerly, stripping off some of the surface?
Anyway: now I've seen it.
Stanton Drew
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Somerset)
Visited: Yes on 10th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 3
Stanton Drew submitted by wildtalents on 15th May 2024. Stanton Drew doesn't do half-measures... some of the mighty boulders at this complex and fascinating site.
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Log Text: I really hadn't appreciated how vast the main circle is and this can be a tricky site to make sense of. A few stones here and there suggestive of an avenue, smaller circles off over yonder, lots of prone or semi-prone boulders, weird clusters of stones that might have been a dolmen, or even a deliberate rectangular setting like the one at Casterigg. (Not forgetting the cove stones over by the pub.) Stanton Drew has to be seen to be believed and I think I will look out for a guided tour, if there is such a thing, to grasp the real context. I can't quite put my finger on it but the individual boulders are very distinctive with their grey-red hue.
Merrivale Menhir
Date Added: 16th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stone (Menhir)
Country: England (Devon)
Visited: Yes on 22nd Apr 2023. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 2
Merrivale Menhir submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. There's so much to see at Merrivale but don't rush off without seeing the elegant menhir on the edge of the site furthest from the road.
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Log Text: Although I visited the site less than a year ago for some reason the first visit, twenty years earlier, sticks more firmly in my memory. This spindly menhir is just visible from the hut circles unless my memory is deceiving me, but you'll have to cross all of the rows, one or more leats, and some quite boggy ground to get to it. Nearby there's a neat little stone circle and then this really pretty outlier. I have a feeling it has been toppled and re-erected once or twice at least. Depending on weather conditions and whether the stone is wet it can take on quite surprisingly dark shades even though it is - I'm guessing - mostly quartzite and light in colour. The stone looks very much like a sundial gnomon and I think I read a book where a moors aficionado made very regular recordings of the shadow of the stone and posited it as a Uriel's Machine of a sort.
Mitchell's Fold
Date Added: 16th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Shropshire)
Visited: Yes on 23rd Jun 2018. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 3
Mitchell's Fold submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. Looks like the weather was beginning to close in at Mitchell's Fold. I have been there in bright sunshine, once, but I don't think it was this time!
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Log Text: I first visited Mitchell's Fold in the summer of 2007 when a great deal of the countryside was closed down by foot-and-mouth disease. There were guys in white plastic overalls in the nearest town. Stern signs warned against it, but we snuck onto the site anyway. If there had been any animals we could turn back, but there weren't. (In normal times you will always meet one or two dog walkers, loads of space for the most energetic pup to wear herself out.)
Since then I've been back a couple of times, both times in 2018.
There's a few ways to get to the site and there is a disabled parking space very nearby if memory serves. The last time I visited, in June 2018, a bunch of about ten or twelve of us walked there from the Satipanya retreat centre, about a mile-and-half away, bang on the border between Wales and Shropshire.
It's a very pretty part of the country and makes for a splendid location even if the circle itself has been tampered with considerably over the years. The setting is worth a visit on it's own and the stones have a real sense of resilience. I seem to remember that Paul Devereux and his team did some of their research there and the suggestion was that the most prominent stone had unusual electromagnetic properties.
I'll check Places Of Power and edit this entry if it needs clarification (the book is currently in a box somewhere while I prepare to move house).
Fernworthy
Date Added: 16th May 2024
Site Type: Multiple Stone Rows / Avenue
Country: England (Devon)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Jul 2023. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 3
Fernworthy submitted by wildtalents on 15th May 2024. The Fernworthy (aka Froggymeade) stone circle looks nearly complete. Mostly quite small stones, standing on the edges of the forest.
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Log Text: On a cold grey Dartmoor day the Froggymeade circle was a real treat. Apart from a pony and her foal there was not another creature to be seen.
Initially, I parked near the reservoir and set off on foot but after about ten minutes the driving rain really intensified and I turned around. A small Peugoet passed me on the road and before I made it back to my car (another small Peugoet) the young woman driving the car motored past the other way, giving a friendly wave as she went. I encountered her twice more that same day as we meandered around the forest: almost old friends by then.
Anyhow I set the sat nav more in hope than expectation and drove off around the reservoir until a fork in the road had me flummoxed. (No satellite or phone signal.) I gazed at the map on my phone but it didn't make much sense either, so I opted to park left and walk right. By now the sun was out. This turned out to be a good guess as, finally, when I was starting to lose heart, the stones became visible on the right.
It's a compact circle on what seems to be a natural bowl of land. There might be a stone or two missing but the ring is pretty much complete and worth a few wrong turnings.
The Greywethers were to be my next port of call but that didn't quite work out!
The Hanging Stone (Haydon)
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stone (Menhir)
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
The Hanging Stone (Haydon) submitted by Anne T on 7th May 2019. Standing just behind the stone looking north east. The stone is in a slight dip in the landscape and a (water?) channel runs almost from the base of the stone to the north east, where it joins another small stream. I wondered if at some point the stone marked the location of a spring, although this is not shown on the early OS maps. From here, it looks as if the top half of the stone is 'hooked'
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Kirkhaugh Stone Circle
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
Kirkhaugh Stone Circle submitted by David on 1st Feb 2022. Some bits are very well preserved. The outer ditch imay be debateable but this is what looks like a southern entrance.
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Tot's Four-Poster
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
Tot's Four-Poster submitted by David on 26th Jan 2022. Three stones here - the fourth under the adjacent fieldwall.
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Slaggyford Stones
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stones
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
Slaggyford cup-marked stone submitted by David on 6th May 2002.
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Slaggyford Stone Rows
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Row / Alignment
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
Slaggyford Stone Rows submitted by David on 1st Feb 2022. Stone row 1 looking south - but a different time of year and standing a bit further back. It's a fair length and has a carved stone down at the end, this way.
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Milfield Reconstructed Henge at Maelmin Heritage Centre
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Henge
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Would like to visit
Milfield Reconstructed Henge at Maelmin Heritage Centre submitted by Modern-Neolithic on 15th Oct 2013. Milfield Reconstructed Henge in Northumberland.
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Avebury - The Cove
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stones
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 1st Aug 2001. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 4
Avebury - The Cove submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. I can't remember when this photo was taken but it was some years before the last time the Cove stones were caged off for stability works, early 2000s? These two stones can look so radically different from various angles and depending on the light, or time of year. Such mighty boulders!
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Log Text: On one of our visits to the village, in August 2001, the Cove was caged within some Heras fence or something of the type as works to stabilise the stones was being carried out. Or had been carried out. I think on at least one other visit a similar structure was in place too. So I chose a photograph taken in, I think, 2004. The mighty Cove stones are a monument in themselves. I might be dreaming this but I'm sure someone had a chicken run or a barn built up against one of the stones, maybe even as recently as Keiller's 'renovation'. (I'm moving house soon and my books are all packed in cartons but seem to remember there's a sketch, one of Stukeley's I think, in one of them. When the dust settles I'll see if I can find it.)
Much as I love Avebury as a whole, and the Cove in particular, my favourite part of the monument is the so-called Z feature, that fairly straight row of stones near the old Methodist church. How I wish the Obelisk stone was still there, not that vile concrete marker.
Avebury
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 5th May 2016. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 5 Access 5
Avebury submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. The missus (foreground) referred to this as The Elephant Stone. While I see the resemblance, it looks more like a knight (as in the chess piece, Staunton design). But either way it's certainly one of the more evocative shapes of sarsen.
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Log Text: Having visited Avebury numerous times I've chosen the date when I last visited, which was already seven years ago. Each time we visited we would take a photo of one of us, or one of the kids, sat on the Devil's Chair, and by estimating ages (if the images themselves aren't dated) could come up with a chronology of some kind.
In 2004 we rented a cottage in the village for a week and that gave us a really good chance to explore more fully. When the kids got bored of that we took them to Swindon for the day. They liked it lol.
We walked the putative route of the Beckhampton Avenue one evening. There really are a lot of sarsens at the sides of the road, incorporated into walls, half-buried at the side of the road and so on. Pete Glastonbury's CD captured these very well.
The walk petered out at the Longstones, Adam and Eve, isolated in their field about two miles or so from Avebury village.
Bryn Celli Ddu
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Passage Grave
Country: Wales (Anglesey)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Apr 2013. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 4
Bryn Celli Ddu submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. I've plenty of better shots (somewhere) but the wonderful ziggyzag pattern on the stone in front of the portal is captured fairly well here.
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Log Text: A few miles away the Snowdonia peaks were still covered in snow and the lake at the foot of Snowdon was still frozen... but the first signs of a belated spring were all over Anglesey. Which made it a perfect day to visit and appreciate Bryn Celli Ddu, an absolutely perfect chambered tomb that you have to see.
Longstone Cove
Date Added: 14th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stones
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 6th Jun 2004. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 3
Longstone Cove submitted by Humbucker on 5th Jan 2019. Longstones Cove basking in the sunlight on one of the last bright days of late Autumn 2018. The Ridgeway looms if the background.
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Log Text: In 2004 we rented a cottage in Avebury village for a week and one evening when the boys weren't complaining too much about tired legs we walked the putative route of the Beckhampton Avenue. There really are a lot of sarsens at the sides of the road, incorporated into walls, half-buried at the side of the road and so on, as well as some very swanky houses. We ended the walk near the duck pond with a fairly distant view of the Longstones, Adam and Eve, isolated in their field about two hundred yards away. By then the kids were all walked out so it seemed reasonable to turn around and leave the trespass onto the site itself for another time. They're an impressive pair of stones, on a par with the Avebury Cove stones.
The Sanctuary.
Date Added: 14th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 5th Aug 2001. My rating: Condition 2 Ambience 4 Access 5
The Sanctuary. submitted by Humbucker on 31st Oct 2020. Western section of The Sanctuary. Not the easiest of sites to photograph, hopefully shadows from the late afternoon sunshine help the markers stand out a bit.
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Log Text: I feel a little fraudulent rating The Sanctuary 4 for Ambience: it's essentially a complex of stone markers with no real vestige of what may have stood at this site. (Excarnation complex, for example?) But for all it's forlorn air, and the constant roar-hiss of the cars speeding close by, when seen and respected as part of the whole sacred Avebury landscape it still has a distinct atmosphere all it's own.
If you know where to look you can see elements of the rest of the landscape, Avenue stones for example.
Stukeley's sketch of the site - which was already being ruined at that very time (I seem to remember he names the guilty farmer) - captures something of what was once here. But not necessarily what was always here. I think it has probably been through many iterations and sad though the current one is I would still recommend a visit to any serious megalithomane. It's a way of making a connection to the distant generations who revered this place.
Whispering Knights
Date Added: 14th May 2024
Site Type: Portal Tomb
Country: England (Oxfordshire)
Visited: Yes on 6th Apr 2013. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 4 Access 4
Whispering Knights submitted by wildtalents on 12th May 2024. Huddled conspiratorially in their cage the Whispering Knights hold their peace during the daytime as the visitors ebb and flow. Later on they gossip: "...did you see that bloke in the Modern Antiquarian t-shirt!? Could do with some slimming down!"
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Log Text: Hemmed in by the iron railings, the Whispering Knights are composed of the same gnarly rock as the Rollrights across the way.
Rollright Stones
Date Added: 14th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Oxfordshire)
Visited: Yes on 6th Apr 2013. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 5
Rollright Stones submitted by wildtalents on 12th May 2024. The gnarly King's Men tolerate the steady flow of gawkers, day after day, year after year. They're glorious.
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Log Text: Although it can get quite busy (but deservedly so: this is a place of great magic) the Rollrights have to be seen if you're in any way serious as a megalithomane.
It's quite easy to park alongside and then it's a very easy walk to the stone circle. The boulders have a unique gnarly quality and are bunched up close, apart from some gaps here and there. One or two of these are by design I'm sure.
The other two monuments are relatively close by (logged separately)
King Stone at the Rollrights
Date Added: 14th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stone (Menhir)
Country: England (Oxfordshire)
Visited: Yes on 6th Apr 2013. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 4 Access 3
King Stone at the Rollrights submitted by wildtalents on 12th May 2024. Ringed with iron railings, the King Stone has a bit of a room for a crafty stretch when no one is watching. This hefty chunk has seen them all come and go over the long centuries but still holds his head up high. A characterful outlier to the magical Rollrights.
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Log Text: Although caged with the same iron railings as the Whispering Knights, the King Stone has a bit more room for a crafty stretch of a lonely midnight when no one is watching. He's a hefty old chunk and has seen many tos and fros over the long centuries but still holds his head up high. A characterful outlier to the magical Rollrights.