Prehistoric Remains Summaries

Castlerigg Stone Circle

[This is an extension of the Grobius Shortling Web Page "Castles, Stone Circles, and Ancient Monuments." All of the sites listed here have been personally visited (except for Callanish), and any factual errors or wrong-headed opinions are my own fault. --Grobius Shortling, Feb 1997]

There are a lot of pictures on this page, so to make it easier to view, I have reduced them all to thumbnail size. If you want to see an enlargement or in some cases go to a supplemental web page, click on the thumbnail picture. [G.S. April 1998]

(Added Sept 1998): The Ancient Monuments Picture Gallery

Stone Circles and Other Ancient Remains

• Castlerigg (Lake District) -- beautiful setting in the mountains; awesome place (pictured above). The area of this stone circle and the field it stands on is rather large, but the stones themselves are pretty much shapeless, unlike Stonehenge. This looks to have been a tribal center or meeting place, for religious use, political and social gatherings, and trading and produce marketing -- at least that is the impression it gives one. For it to have been just a private "Druid" place for whatever arcane stuff they got up to doesn't seem apt. For another picture, click here. This shows the square structure, which is unique to this type of site, that was attached to the stone circle; my opinion is that it was a temple (excavation found no bones, just bits of charcoal, so I don't believe it was a burial chamber as some antiquarians speculate).

  

  Long Meg & Her Daughters

• Long Meg and her Daughters (Cumbria) -- also near the Lakes, but in the middle of a farm village and rather difficult to find as it is on back roads, away from the tourist areas (great name, by the way); and watch out you don't tread in cow shit. Long Meg is the name of the very tall outlying 'pointer' stone, the Daughters being the stone circle itself. It is a very large stone circle, and like Castlerigg, being in an agricultural district, it would seem to have been a tribal center and not just a religious site. They probably had periodical Fairs here -- May Day, Midsummer, etc. -- there not being any other reasonable explanation for its size. One can imagine it on such an occasion full of cattle, sheep, vegetable stands, cloth merchants, jugglers, musicians, beer tents, etc. etc. etc. (I'd prefer to think so anyway, rather than imagine a bunch of mystics in white robes performing human sacrifices under the Harvest Moon.) That Stone Circles had a religious function is not in doubt, but they must have had a community function as well, and what better explanation than this?

  

  Stonehenge
  (Click picture to link to Stonehenge web page)
  Jeeze, as badly wrecked as she is, this is a mighty fine monument!

• Stonehenge (Salisbury Plain) -- before it got touristized, and protected by bureaucrats and police from nut cases, it really was incredible (first saw it the the 1950s, when you could park your car in the nearest farm access lane, no bus park or fast food concession then). It's a damn shame that it has to be cordoned off from the casual wanderer these days. (Do you remember the end of Tess of the Durbervilles? That was powerful, when she ended up, pursued by the police, spending her last night of freedom in Stonehenge.)

  

  Avebury
  (Click picture to link to Avebury web page)

• Avebury (Wilts) -- so huge they built a village inside it later; great pub there, right in the center of all those ley lines; this was the capital of whatever you want to call those ancient Britons, all sorts of prehistoric things around there, including the largest man-made tomb/hill ('pyramid') north of Egypt at Silbury. When superstitious religious fanatics started to topple the stones in the Middle Ages, they gave up after one of their number was crushed beneath one (his skeleton was found under it in a later archeological dig) -- serves them right!

  

  Wayland's Smithy
  (This will also link to a web page with further comments on burial mounds)

• Wayland's Smithy (near the Uffington White Horse -- you've seen pictures of that Picasso-like chalk carving on the hillside) -- remains of a rather large and well-constructed burial monument on an ancient highway that predates the Roman roads; place is infested with thousands of tiny hatchling spiders when visited in late fall. This site has nothing to do with Wayland, the blacksmith god of the Anglo-Saxons, but that's what they called it because they had no other explanation for its existence when they took over these parts. Maybe, denuded of its infilling of earth, it does resemble some sort of troglodytic smithy -- encountering this place, you would think of trolls rather than a catacomb. Because it is so elaborate, with underground burial chambers, it must have been an interment place for some unknown and unknowable royal family back in the Stone Age. It is one of those places that is incredibly haunting, and where you can feel 'vibes' if you are sensitive in that way. But the picture shows the dog Chloe (long gone but still remembered with great affection) that belies all the nonsense on this page about their sensitivity to the auras of ancient sites -- dogs just love these places because they are out in the open country and are full of animal spoors and neat little holes and things to investigate.*
• The Cerne Abbas Giant (Dorset) -- another objet d'art etched in the chalk on a hillside, not a horse but a man with a club, and a phallus just as big as the club (note that the grass would have overgrown this if the local people hadn't maintained it for 2000 years or so, although nobody admits to doing it -- so much for Christian puritanism); there was a sign there not long ago that said your dog would be shot if you let it go on Giant Hill without a leash. The Giant is not pictured here, since it is very hard to get a good shot of it without being in a helicopter.
• Cornwall -- has hundreds of remains from the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages; can't begin to list them all, but would recommend Chysauster (a stone village built in trenches -- by troglodytes?), the Nine Maidens (supposedly foolish village girls that got turned to stone for dancing on the sabbath -- well, when the priests took over the area, they had to come up with some explanation that didn't involve Druids), and Boscawen-Un, which is very phallic but also surrounded by cow shit and right under the flight path of the helicopters to the Scilly Islands (don't think of making love there, well, DO think it but don't do it). There is also Men-an-Tol, which has a rock donut set on edge; if you can squirm through it, all your back pains will be gone forever, or at least for a long while -- this actually works, by the way (spoken from experience).

  

  The Rollright Stones

• The Rollright Stones (near Oxford) -- hard to find since they moved the old main road; this is upper-management commuter land now, and probably most of them don't even know that this incredible place is nearby; it is NOT haunted like a lot of similar sites (such as Wayland's Smithy), because dogs love to romp around in it, and dogs are very sensitive about this sort of thing -- give them moles and such to dig up and they don't care about local evil influences.* (Played rough-and-tumble in the middle of this circle with a Yorkshire terrier named Katie; there were no other visitors there who might have been offended. An hour after the total privacy and serenity of this place, we were stuck in a 10-mile-long traffic jam trying to get past Oxford and back to London.) And here is a picture of the outlying pointer stone.

  

  Arbor Low Recumbent Stone Circle

• Arbor Low (Derbyshire) -- a nice big stone circle in the Peak district (which is better known for Chatsworth and some big theme parks, but also for its prehistoric hill forts, such as Mam Tor, where people go hang-gliding in a very scary landscape); this was never a hospitable place to live, unlike Dorset, etc., so you wonder how the local tribes were ever able, economically, to build a place like this -- possibly they were ruled by a tyrant, because that's the impression this place still gives (it takes all types to make a stone circle, ranging from the Vatican of Stonehenge to the bucolic simplicity of Long Meg -- each has its own 'personality'); this is the 'coldest' of the stone circles I've seen, no good vibes coming out of it; but it IS impressive (dogs will not enjoy this place -- well I'm wrong about that, see the web page*). To get to the circle you have to pass through an extremely messy and smelly farmyard -- be sure to wear boots. Here are some more pictures

  

  Nine Maidens Stone Circle

• Stanton Moor (Derbyshire) -- a beautifully sited, but small, stone circle in the precincts of a large neolithic settlement. The woodland setting is wonderfully evocative, even though the stones are no more than three feet tall.
• Orkney Islands -- very rich territory for a poor country; there is Maes Howe, one of the most impressive 'pyramid' tombs in Britain (also interesting because the Vikings broke into it looking for loot, and left "Erik was here" grafitti inside in Runes: e.g., "Thorny was bedded - Helgi says so"). Two stone circles of the first rank (Ring of Brodgar and Stenness Stone Circle) face each other across an isthmus between two large lakes, very close to each other and distinctively different in 'style'; presumably there were two rival tribes trying to outdo each other--there is even a large menhir on the isthmus that possibly was their Checkpoint Charlie (Hatfield/McCoy sort of thing or just a friendly rivalry?). Brodgar impresses with the height and shape of its stones, Stenness with its great size and beautiful siting -- one can get a Pulitzer prize photo op catching this against a sunset, provided there is one in the rainy Orkneys. The local stone makes for fine slabs, having seams that slit easily into long flat slices, with angular splits along the other axis at a 45 degree angle. One can see this in its natural state along the thousand-foot-high cliffs of Hoy coming in on the ferry.
• Scara Brae (Orkneys) -- an absolutely amazing Bronze Age village made entirely of stone, including the furniture (cupboards, clothes presses, shelves) -- they had no wood for building in the Orkneys. On the beach, this village was smothered over by a sandstorm a few thousand years ago, then uncovered by another storm earlier in this century, and so it is almost intact, except for the roofing (whatever that was -- seeweed?); nobody knows really what these people did for a living, to have a compact village but not much in the way of farmland, very sophisticated building techniques and materials, no remains of major weapons (so they weren't pirates), not much evidence of fishing on a large scale -- could they have been the Swiss bankers of their age?
• Scottish Remains (the Orcadians are NOT Scots) -- plenty of minor but picturesque stone circles (or chambered tombs that have lost their earthen covering, as a lot of the so-called stone circles are), but they are almost impossible to find!--way off the beaten track (well, the narrow tarmacked roads that replaced the beaten tracks). The Pictish brochs (here is one) are interesting but are actually castles in a sense (fascinating subject in itself: Who built them, why did they build them, why do they follow a standard pattern? Were they built by local tyrants to dominate, or by some King Arthur-like figure to protect against the Roman slave raiders? -- who knows, because these folk couldn't read, or write their histories, and the Romans never wrote it down for them even in summary as they had done for Boudicca and the southern Brits).
• Callanish -- Judging from the pictures, this is one of the most impressive stone circles in the world apart from the ones in Southern England and Brittany. It is on the Isle of Lewis, not Harris of tweed fame, and I have never been there, more's the pity (Lewis & Harris is actually one island, but one half is Catholic, the other Protestant -- don't know or care which is which, because that stuff is silly unless you make it an issue). Judging from pictures, I would say this is one of the best stone circles in existence, although it is apparently rather small in spite of the height of its stones. It looks to be almost an Easter Island sort of accomplishment given the inhospitablility of the place. I REALLY want to see this place some time (how about setting up a Web Ring lottery -- first prize, visit the Stone Circle of your choice?)

  
  

  Sueno's Stone, Forres, Scotland
  (This fine Pictish monument is 9th century, not prehistoric. It is 22 feet high and elaborately carved)

[This is just a partial list of places of this sort. If you have other recommendations or comments, please let me know. Write to: Grobius]

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STONEHENGE One of many such sites (contains several links)

ANCIENT SITES DIRECTORY An excellent site by an enthusiast, with his own photographs

STONE PAGES By far the best web site on this subject, with beautiful photographs

NOTES

Earthworms

There are a lot of homilitic phrases in literature about humankind succumbing to the worms after death, no matter how proud and glorious they were in life. This also applies to the monuments of man, especially the ones that are over a thousand years old. Soil erosion and shifts in the bedrock and the wear and tear of weather and the acts of vandals and treasure hunters (or just farmers looking for building material, or wanting to get rid of something that interferes with their ploughing, or religious maniacs who think these old places are the work of the Devil) -- all of these contribute to the dilapidation of prehistoric sites. But the biggest vandal of all is the common earthworm.

Romans were noted for their architectural skills and careful foundation building. You look now at some of their famous sites, such as the Corbridge legionary supply town near Hadrian's Wall, and just see the stumps of the foundation walls (this was once a thriving military supply base, with granaries, weapon forges, inns, taverns, and brothels) -- the first thing you will notice is that these walls and the ground itself undulates; the walls themselves had to be dug out by archeologists from under a couple of feet of topsoil in the last century or so. It was all graded and flattened land in its time. What happened? In a word, earthworms -- they eat from underground and deposit their excretions above ground. Within a century or so, without maintenance, the garden wall you build, no matter how solidly, will warp and topple for the same reason unless it is founded in bedrock -- it will literally sink into the ground because of wormish activity. Well, that's good for the environment, otherwise fertile land would turn to desert: Worms renew the earth as long as there is enough water to sustain them and make the soil permeable. However, that is a phenomenon people who build monuments for 'all time' should keep in mind. Look at the picture of Arbor Low. Worms did not topple the stones, they were laid flat to begin with [people disagree about this, but why else are these stone circles called 'recumbent' except for the fact that they are?]. That they are all higglety-pigglety now, and the embankments are no longer uniform in height and slope, is not the fault of the constructors, who must have had everything 'just so' when it was built, but is a result of the natural phenomena just mentioned. The fact that the stones weigh tons just made the process slower -- a modern cinder-block foundation wouldn't last for more than a couple of hundred years. (Graveyards are especially susceptible to worms, hence the leaning tombstones in any old cemetary.)

What Were They For?

There is a lot of speculation about astronomical alignments, and there is no doubt that they exist, especially the placement of outlying 'pointer' stones at some distance from the circle itself that line up with the solstices of the setting sun at the changing of the seasons. So surely there was some religious involvement of a caste of priests (not Druids, because the stone circles were built long before the rise of Druidism among the Celtic people who displaced the 'Basques' or whatever you want to call the people who constructed them). I believe that this was done to determine when to hold seasonal 'market fairs', and that the stone circles themselves marked the precincts in which these fairs were held. As simple as that -- no mystic nonsense about magnetic earth lines and human sacrifice to the Corn Goddess (though they might have done things like that during a Fair -- we just don't know). Even in parts of England where there are no stone circles, such as near Chichester, there is an ancient ground where they have held the annual Sloe Fair for something like a thousand years, probably more. Travelling carnivals, with kiddie rides, still come around to these fairs, and there is lots of food, things to buy from stands, a circus-comes-to-town atmosphere -- I betcha this is what the great stone circles were all about.

On the other hand, I could be totally wrong, since archeological digs would probably have found the remains of all the garbage that gets generated by the congregation of masses of people doing this sort of thing over a period of time. That doesn't disprove my theory, because the leavings back then would have all been organic (no plastic!) and long vanished -- they didn't even have coinage in 3000 BC, so you wouldn't find scattered lost pennies.

Vibrations

Some Stone Circles are awesome, either in size (Avebury), architecture (Stonehenge), or siting (Castlerigg). Others are 'haunting' or spooky in some other way (Wayland's Smithy). Can you feel the energies of the planet Gaia crossing some mystic line through the stones when you touch them? Well, no I can't, although my wife claims she can as she methodically communes with each stone (widdershins? don't know). What I can feel, however, is a sort of throbbing awe at the damn antiquity of the place. But the closest I ever came to that Earth Magic communion was at the Brodgar/Stenness complex in the Orkneys -- the esthetics of the siting was just so awesome, that maybe it was a matter of getting stoned on beauty, which is a phenomenon that really does occur if you are lucky or are in the right mood. [Actually, you don't need a stone circle for this -- a great sunset, a rainbow, a conjunction of moon and planets, a comet, etc. can do it -- for me its visual, not tactile.]

Dogs and Stone Circles

This is a repeat of the note on my English Castle page; just substitute Stone Circles where appropriate (although they don't have privy pits).

There is no more appreciative companion than a dog to take to a castle (small children complain too much and don't respect your urge to poke around and linger over details). Of course, it has to be a castle where the dog can be let off the leash -- not one of those National Trust places where you are confined behind ropes with a hawk-eyed harridan making sure you don't touch anything. There might be heart-stopping moments when the dog leaps up on a wall with a 300-foot precipice on the other side (as at Beeston). And it might be hard to drag it away from the local inhabitants (such as the moles at Minster Lovell). They love dashing around and are especially enthusiastic about investigating the Garderobes (privies), which were usually little dead-end passages in the walls with a stone toilet seat and a shaft dropping down to the outer ditch or moat. [Don't worry about the precipice bit when it comes to stone circles. Do, however, worry about the presence of any sheep -- make sure your dog doesn't harry them.]

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