From Balquhidder village, walk eastwards along the road for a few hundred yards until you reach Auchleskine Farm on your left. A short distance past here there’s a gate taking you into the rough field on the left. Go through here and note a large clump of rocks diagonally up the slope about 100 yards away. That’s your spot!
Archaeology & History
Very little has been said of this large cup-marked stone, just up from the road near Balquhidder. It was first found and described in J.M. Gow’s (1887) fine essay on the local antiquities of the area, where he told:
“About 400 yards directly east from the farm-house there is a group of three large water-worn boulders of coarse mica-schist, with veins of quartz, the largest of which is about 15 feet long, 7 feet broad, and nearly 5 feet above ground. On the top of this stone there are seven cup-marks of various sizes. The largest are 5 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep; the smaller ones are shallower and from 1½ to 2½ inches in diameter. There may have been more marks on this stone, as a portion of the top near the marks has been broken off, and there are several other faint hollows, but, in my opinion, not sufficiently pronounced to indicate that they ever were cups.”
Cupmarks on top of the rockThe carving from above
Although his caution on the number of cups on the stone is to be commended, it was obvious during our visit to the site a few days ago that there are at least 18 cup-marks on the surface of this large rock. There may be more (the grey cloudy day and misty light wasn’t good in allowing us to see the carving clearly). The most pronounced of the cups are on the very top of the stone, whilst others were carved mainly on the eastern slope of the rock.
At least two other cup-marked stones occur at the farmhouse itself, whilst on the road immediately below was once the cup-marked healing stone known as Clach nan Sul. It’s likely that other carvings are hiding away in the hills hereby…
References:
Gow, James M., “Notes in Balquhidder: Saint Angus, Curing Wells, Cup-Marked Stones, etc”, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, volume 21, 1887.
Looking down Balquhidder Glen from Clach nan Sul’s old home
Apparently destroyed, although some remains of the stone were said to be seen in the walling by the roadside; but when visiting this spot a few days ago the summer vegetation had completely covered any potential finds here. The stone fell foul of the usual self-righteous industrialists when the track alongside which it had sat for countless centuries was turned into a road and the stone was “blasted”. It was found some 20 yards below the large cup-marked stone known as Wester Auchleskine, seen amidst the clump of rocks in the field above.
The stone was described in MacKinlay’s (1893) fine survey on Scottish holy wells due to the healing properties of the waters that collected into the rock basin here. The earliest record of the site that I’ve found comes from the hallowed papers of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, where—in J.M. Gow’s (1887) rambles just east of Balquidder—he told us the following:
“Going still further east to the first turning of the road beyond the farmhouse of Wester Auchleskine, and on the left-hand side, there used to be a large boulder with a natural cavity in its side, famous as a curing well for sore eyes. This stone was called “Clach nan sul” (the Stone of the Eyes). In 1878 the road trustees caused it to be blasted, as it was supposed to be a danger in the dark to passing vehicles. Its fragments were broken up, and used as road metal.”
Whether or not the site known as the Priest’s Basin, or Basan an Sagairt—a couple of hundred yards west by the roadside—was of a similar nature, or an attempt by christians to draw people away from the old healing Clach nan Sul and use this other one instead, we do not know. There are numerous accounts of other stones in this mountainous region of Scotland where rocks-with-hollows filled with water were attributed with healing properties, like the Whooping Cough Stone at Struan, the Measles Stone at Fearnan, and many others.
Folklore
The folklore described by Mr Gow was reiterated in MacKinlay’s (1893) survey. He also told how,
“The hollow in the Clach-nan-Sul at Balquhidder…contained small coins placed there by those who sought a cure for their sore eyes. Mr J. Macintosh Gow was told by some one in the district that ‘people, when going to church, having forgotten their small change, used in passing to put their hands in the well and find a coin.’ Mr Gow’s informant mentioned that he had done so himself.”
References:
Gow, James M., “Notes in Balquhidder: Saint Angus, Curing Wells, Cup-Marked Stones, etc”, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, volume 21, 1887.
MacKinlay, James M., Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs, William Hodge: Glasgow 1893.
Follow the directions to reach Panorama Woods carving 232. Barely a yard or two southwest across the small gap where the kids have their little den or hideout, this long curvaceous rock is the fella in question.
Archaeology & History
Cup-markings on the rock
Curiously not included in the ‘official’ records, this large piece of rock, living right in between the Panorama Woods carvings 231 and 232, has at least two, possibly three faint cup-marks etched in the top northeastern portion of the rock. Of the same style and probably period as the basic designs on stones 230 and 231, this is one in a cluster of petroglyphs that used to live at the edge of a prehistoric enclosure, destroyed at the end of the 19th century.
References:
Bennett, Paul, Of Cups and Rings and Things, unpublished: Shipley 1981.
Bennett, Paul, The Panorama Stones, Ilkley, TNA: Yorkshire 2012.
Take the Wells Road from Ilkley centre up towards White Wells, bending to the right as you hit the edge of the moor. Keep along the road, past the old college building with its lake and turn right up Westwood Drive. Keep going all the way up till you hit the small woodland on your right. Where the woodland ends – stop! Walk into the trees about 10-15 yards and you’ll see the large rocks ahead of you. Amongst other petroglyphs hereby, you’ll find this carving is on one of them.
Archaeology & History
Close-up of deep cups & grooves
Although only given the usual dry description by our academic catalogue chaps, there’s something about this design that I’ve always liked. We first came across it ourselves in the late 1970s, in search of the legendary Panorama Stones, and found instead this large enclosure design with at least three cups inside it, still clearly visible. It is one of a cluster of carvings hereby, all of which were once adjacent to a prehistoric enclosure, described in the 1880s and destroyed soon after. This and the associated carvings very probably had some archaeocentric relevance to the lost enclosure.
Large carved ‘enclosure’, recently chalkedDrawing of the carving (after Hedges 1986)
The carving is sandwiched in between its petroglyphic companions, stone 231 and stone 233. As can be seen on some of the photos here, more recent vandalism has been inflicted on this carving and the recent chalk colouring is what local archaeologists Gavin Edwards and Alex Gibson have termed “social history”, implying fallaciously that cup-and-ring art could be seen as little more than neolithic and Bronze Age scribblings on rock, without any meaning other than it being comparable to “Leeds United Rules OK.” They may be right (highly unlikely) – but in reading copiously about prehistoric petroglyphs in cultures beyond the UK, we find that traditional societies tell such carvings relate to their creation myths, or river spirits, or rock spirits, and are intrinsically related to wider animistic cosmologies and social customs. This indicates, to me at least, that modern archaeologists who think of rock art as little more than childish scribblings still have a great deal to learn and we should beware their uneducated musings about our ancient carvings.
Although the complete carved ‘enclosure’ and its internal cups were mistakenly drawn in John Hedges (1986) survey, he described as being a,
“Roughly incised ‘enclosure’ with five cups in it, twenty eight shallow cups or depressions, one large oval marking, three irregular basins.”
In the later work of rock art students Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003), they simply said of the site:
“Large flat-topped, upstanding rectangular rock. Twenty-eight shallow cups, a few enclosed in two groups by grooves; irregular small basins.”
References:
Bennett, Paul, Of Cups and Rings and Things, unpublished: Shipley 1981.
Bennett, Paul, The Panorama Stones, Ilkley, TNA: Yorkshire 2012.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Follow the directions to reach the Rollrights stone circle, from Chipping Norton. Walk past the entrance to the circle along the road for a coupla hundred yards, keeping your eyes peeled looking into the field on your right. You’ll notice the large rocky mass of these Knights a hundred yards down in the field, which can be reached by a footpath running straight along the old hedge from the roadside straight to the collapsed tomb.
Archaeology & History
The Whispering Knights
A brilliant site—albeit nowhere like how it once was—where I slept a few times when I lived in the old hut at the Rollright stone circle down the road. A field-mouse lived here when I slept at the place and, hopefully, its ancestors still reside hereby (Rollright Trust’s poisons notwithstanding!). On my first encounter with the little fella, I felt him running into my waist-side whilst laying, dozing in the old tomb. He nudged into me—then again —and yet again; before I leaned over to see what was going on! And the little mouse looked up at me, without a care in the world, as if to say, “What are you doing lying on my path!? Can I get past please?” (though I’d not had a bath for a good 3 months, so didn’t smell like any modern human, which I think explained his total lack of fear)
Laying there, I smiled at the little fella, who then decided to jump up the side of my waist and walk over the top of me to get to the other side! He jumped down into the grasses and disappeared! However, a few minutes later, I felt another tiny ‘thud’ at my side and looked down to see the same lovely mouse wanting to go back along his obviously traditional route – and looking up at me again, whiskers twitching inquisitively, realised I was still here; and so once again took it upon himself to climb over the scruffy smelly human-sort who was blocking his route!
He was a gorgeous little mouse and we got to know each other quite well over the unwashed springs and summers I slept here….. But anyway, that’s not what you folks are interested in hearing about! Back to the archaeo-shit
The Whispering Knights is one of the main sites in the cluster known collectively as the Rollright Stones, which also comprises of the standing stone commonly called the King Stone, plus the King’s Men stone circle a coupla hundred yards down the road from the Knights. They all sit atop of the ridge which separates the counties of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire along the edge of the prehistoric road known as the Jurassic Way. The sites are non-contemporaneous having been erected over a period of many centuries. The Whispering- or Five Knights are by far the oldest part of the complex dating from a period never previously anticipated. They comprise of four upright megaliths in close proximity, and a fifth fallen stone which is said to be the capstone on the original monument. This stone alone weighs some 10 tons.
The general archaeological opinion is that the place is a ‘portal dolmen burial chamber’ of which the capstone has fallen. The Oxford archaeologist George Lambrick (1988) postulated the stones to have been covered with a mound of earth, but any evidence supporting this has long since gone.
1920s postcard of the siteThe Knights in 1995
This great monument was initially thought by archaeologists to have been built sometime around 1800 BCE—a favourite date of academics for many an unexcavated site for many decades—until they turned their astute attention to the place in the 1980s. And what they found was astonishing. Well…astonishing for the archaeologists! Affirming the local folk tradition that the Knights were the “oldest monuments in Oxfordshire,” the dates truly went back. Way back! Datable remains at the site gave results from between 3500 and 3800 BCE: two thousand years earlier than anyone had ever expected of them.
Although five stones remain of the site, when the great William Stukeley (1743) visited the Whispering Knights, he described six of them to be visible with the great stones here to be sat upon a tumulus, saying:
“Tis composed of six stones, one broader for the back part, two and two narrower for the sides, set square to the former; and above all, as a cover, a still larger. The opening is full west to the temple or Rowldrich. It stands on a round tumulus, and has a fine prospect southwestward down the valley, where the head of the Evenlode runs.”
O.G.S. Crawford (1932) told us of a description which Sir Henry Dryden gave of the Knights in 1898, when he wrote:
“About 356 yards E from the (Rollright) circle and S of the road, is the dolmen about to be described, called the Five Whispering Knights. It is in a ruinous state. It now consists of four stones, upright, or nearly so, and one prostrate, all of coarse limestone…
Height, 8ft 3ins (4ft by 2ft 6ins)
” , 7ft 3ins (3ft 6ins by 1ft 10ins)
” , 6ft 7ins (3ft 8ins by 1ft 4ins)
” , 5ft 4ins (4ft 9ins by 2ft)
Capstone (then fallen), 8ft 4ins by 5ft 9ins, by 2ft 4ins
“The chamber appears to have been about 5 feet 6 inches W and E, and the same N and S. If, as usual, there was an entrance, with or without a passage, it was probably to the ENE… There is not, so far as I know, any record of remains having been found in this dolmen. In a small stone pit about 700 feet NE by E from the circle it is stated that 12 skulls were found in 1835. In another stone pit near it was found in 1836 an urn and beads…”
1840 plan by Lukis & Dryden
During the last century, very little has really changed at the Knights. The ring fencing surrounding the stones has kept it pretty much protected, despite it ruining all sense of healthy ambience. But they have gained greater and greater attention the older they have got. Archaeologists are not the only ones exploring the site. Fascinated astronomers, engineers and architects have been and seemingly uncovered other mythic ingredients here.
When the legendary Alexander Thom came here, he used the archaeological data that was being espoused at the time, which said the Knights and the Rollright stones had both been built around 1750 to 1800 BC. With these dates as his guide, he found that someone standing at the centre of the Rollright circle, on the morning of the equinoxes—March 21 and September 21—the sun would rise right above the Whispering Knights. And the effect, he thought, was a notable one: with the light from the rising sun going straight through a hole in one of the stones in the circle as it rose up behind the Knights. It would have looked both spectacular and eerie in the rising mists of first light, like a laser cutting through the still morning air… However, although Thom’s measurements were very accurate, the archaeologists had got their dates wrong. Very wrong! For the Whispering Knights were about 1500 years older than the stone circle—and so the alignments Thom pronounced, based on the archaeologist’s erroneous proclamations, were also incorrect.
There may be other alignments connected to the Rollright complex. In a survey of the site as part of the Dragon Project experiments conducted here in June 1980, Leslie Banks and Christopher Stanley flew over the place and found, adjacent to the Whispering Knights, a quite distinct “trace of two dark green parallel lines in a field of ripening corn” running northwest to the roadside. To this day nobody quite understands the nature of this enigmatic alignment:
“In the absence of excavation we can only speculate,” said Stanley. “But the most likely explanation is that it is what archaeologists refer to as a Cursus. Cursuses are thought to be prehistoric religious processional ways.”
As with many of the alignments described here, the jury is still out on this one!
Folklore
The folklore here is prodigious! The prime story of the neolithic tomb of the Whispering Knights tells that originally they were in fact a group of traitors who moved away from a King and his army in ages past, and who were plotting against him, when the great Witch of Rollright (a southern version of the great cailleach, found in more northern counties, Scotland and Ireland) turned them all to stone (this tale is intimately bound up with the King’s Men stone circle and the associated King’s Stone).
Another tale tells how the King Stone and the Whispering Knights venture, at midnight, less than half a mile south to drink from a spring in the small woodland at Little Rollright Spinney, although it is difficult to ascertain precisely which of the two springs the stones are supposed to visit. In some accounts, the stones reputedly drink from the well every night, but others tell that they only go there at certain times of the year, or on saint’s days. When Arthur Evans (1895) wrote of these tales he described there being a “gap in the bushes… through which they go down to the water,” but the terrain has altered since his day.
Other accounts imbuing the stones with life tell how they only ‘awaken’ when disturbed by humans. A story well-known to local people is that of when the Knights had its capstone removed one day by a farmer who used it to build a bridge across the stream at Little Rollright. As Evans told us,
“it took a score of horses to drag it down the hill, for at first it would not move, and they had to strain and strain to get it along till every bit of the harness was broken. At last they got it to the brook by Rollright Farm, and with great difficulty laid it across to serve as a bridge. But every night the stone turned over back again and was found in the morning lying on the grass.”
Three nights of this led the farmer to think he should replace the stone which, so the fable goes, took only one horse to move it back uphill and into position. A variation of the same tale was told by T.H. Ravenhill, who wrote:
“The Lord of the Manor of Little Rollright desired to possess the King’s Stone in order to bridge Little Rollright brook. So he dug it up and tried to cart it away, but found that he had not enough horses. He hitched on more, and yet more, and still he found that he could not move the stone. Finally he succeeded and hauled the stone away to the Manor House. The same night he was alarmed by strange sounds about the house, which he attributed to the presence of the King’s Stone, and decided, therefore, to replace it on its mound. No sooner had he harnessed the first horse to the cart than it galloped away up hill with ease, taking with it the stone, which leapt to position on reaching its resting place.”
There are still more variations that are worth mentioning. One from 1876,
“said that a miller in Long Compton, thinking the stone would be useful in damming the water of his mill, carried it away and used it for that purpose, but he found that whatever water was dammed up in the day disappeared in the night, and thinking it was done by the witches (at Long Compton) and that they would punish him for his impertinence in removing the stone, he took it back again; and, though it required three horses to take it to Long Compton, one easily brought it back.”
In yet another version, the stone was wanted by a local farmer for his outhouse. In taking it downhill, the horses that pulled his wagon died and the vehicle itself was irreparably damaged. It got even worse for the poor chap: his crops failed, his family were taken ill and his cattle died. Eventually when all but his last horse remained, he made another cart and it pulled the stone back uphill with ease. Thereafter, so the tale goes, all his adversities stopped and he lived a normal life. In one version of this tale, the great monolith was said to have been taken north-north-west down to the stream at The Hollows, Long Compton. Tales such as these are, once more, found throughout the world.
The truth of these stories was seemingly unquestionable to some local people in the 19th century,
“one man going as far as to say that there were those now living who had spoken to men who had helped to bring the stone down and up again.”
In William Stukeley’s day, one Farmer Baker was so troubled by his actions that he couldn’t rest until he returned the old stone.
The doyen of the early geodelic sciences or Earth Mysteries movement, John Michell, suggested how the legends of megaliths moving of their own accord harked back to ancient days when the people of those times were more attuned to the terrestrial magnetic flows of the Earth.
The Whispering Knights were also a place where “young girls of the neighbourhood (use it as) a kind of primitive oracle.” One local told Arthur Evans that around barley harvest the young women of the district visited the Five Knights to listen to them whisper. One at a time they would rest their ears against the strange shapes of stone and, if fortune and conditions were right, they would hear the future told. This mass of animistic lore is very revealing indeed, telling us much about the way our peasant ancestors viewed the living world around them. (Eliade 1958)
In more recent times, the site has been explored by dowsers and ley hunters, who claim to have found a veritable bags of fascinating lost material around the Knights. Although originally ‘leys’ were described by Alfred Watkins as quite acceptable prehistoric trackways linking site to site to site, in recent years the original theory has been ignored and superceded with a host of almost incredulous fluctuations. Leys these days can run just about anywhere – and do!
One writer who tells about the leys around Whispering Knights is Lawrence Main. (1997) He dowsed and found a ley running south to the famous White Horse at Uffington. Roy Cooper (1979) was the first person to write about this alignment and extended it further north to the impressive and legendary Brailles Hill. That one seems reasonable. However,
“Other leys I dowsed,” said Main, “Linked the King Stone, the stone circle, and the Whispering Knights with each other; the King Stone with Banbury Cross; the Whispering Knights with Hook Norton church; and the stone circle with the churches at Todenham and Stretton-on-Fosse.”
Another dowsing ley hunter is Dennis Wheatley (not The Devil Rides Out dood). He wrote a couple of short works on his lengthy experiments at the Rollright stones and reported how he found a
“tangential aerial energy course…across the country (which) latches on to a solitary standing stone, six miles south, known as the Hawk Stone.”
Perhaps of greater importance here is that Wheatley also discovered how,
“all of the Rollright ring’s stones engage in aerial energetic cross-talk with the King Stone producing a triangulation of energy lines.”
This cross-talk of Wheatley’s involves more than seventy energy lines running between the circle and the King’s Stone. He tells us that a greater “aerial cross-talk” also occurs between the circle and the Knights; and “a lesser energetic triangulation” runs between the King and the Knights.
Along similar lines are the findings of the dowser Reginald Smith. (1980) Beneath the Whispering Knights he claimed to have found,
“a concealed spring which runs underground to the northwest and may betoken a consecrated site; but 100 feet to the east there seems to be another blind spring with issue to the northeast.”
…to be continued…
References:
Bennett, Paul & Wilson, Tom, The Old Stones of Rollright and District, Cockley Press: London 1999.
Burl, Aubrey, Great Stone Circles, Yale University Press: New York & London 1999.
Cooper, Roy, ‘Some Oxfordshire Leys,’ in The Ley Hunter 86, 1979.
Crawford, O.G.S., Long Barrows of the Cotswolds, John Bellows: Oxford 1932.
Devereux, Paul, Places of Power, Blandford: London 1990.
Devereux, Paul, The Sacred Place, Cassell: London 2000.
Eliade, Mircea, Patterns in Comparative Religion, Sheed & Ward: London 1958.
Evans, Arthur J., ‘The Rollright Stones and their Folklore (3 parts),’ in Folklore Journal, 1895.
Gelling, Margaret, The Place-Names of Oxfordshire – volume 2, Cambridge University Press 1971.
Graves, Tom, Dowsing: Techniques and Applications, Turnstone: London 1976.
Grinsell, Leslie V., The Ancient Burial Mounds of England, Methuen: London 1936.
Lambrick, George, The Rollright Stones: The Archaeology and Folklore of the Stones and their Surroundings, Oxford Archaeology Review 1983. (Reprinted and updated in 1988.)
Main, Lawrence, Walks in Mysterious Oxfordshire, Sigma: Wilmslow 1997.
Ravenhill, T.H., The Rollright Stones and the Men Who Erected Them, Little Rollright 1926.
Robins, Don, Circles of Silence, Souvenir Press: London 1985.
Smith, Reginald A., ‘Archaeological Dowsing,’ in Graves, Tom (ed.), Dowsing and Archaeology (Turnstone: Wellingborough 1980).
Stanley, Christopher C., ‘A Rollright Processional Way?’ in The Ley Hunter 90, 1981.
Stuart, Sheila, Lifting the Latch, Oxford University Press 1987.
This can take a little bitta finding if you don’t know the area. So it’s best starting from Hartshead church, right on top of the hill here. From whichever direction you’re taking to reach Hartshead, ask a local when you get close and they’ll direct you there. From here, walk out of the churchyard and turn left. Walk barely 50 yards and turn left again along Lady Well Lane. Past the old houses and bear right where it becomes a dirt-track. This then turns left, then again right and – with the fields on either side of you – note the single hawthorn tree ahead of you by the walling. Go into the field at the back of the hawthorn and look under its shady bough. Tis there, I assure you!
Archaeology & History
The holy well is beneath this hawthorn tree
Emerging at the edge of the field beneath an old hawthorn tree at the side of the track running to the adjacent church, the waters from here are clean and fresh—though the stone trough into which it flows is constantly clogged up and the ground around it very boggy. The well has given its name to Lady Well Lane, which leads to the 12th century St. Peter’s Church, with its own ancient and legendary history. The well is thought to derive its name from ‘Our Lady’, the Virgin Mary, indicating it would have had considerable importance in the religious traditions of the christians who named it, but moreso the original animistic traditions of normal local people who would have used it for much longer…
Close by this old stone trough appears to be another one, covered by moss and the encroaching field. Whatever medicinal properties the waters may once have had, have long since been forgotten. Around Lady Well is a healthy abundance of flora: elder, chickweed, nettle, clover, bramble, dandelion, sow thistle, dock and shamanic species.
Folklore
The overgrown Lady Well
Marion Pobjoy (1972), like her predecessors, suggested that this was one of many sites in Calderdale used by St. Paulinus to perform baptisms. Local folklore tells that Robin Hood stopped here to drink the waters—but then we find an abundance of the pagan outlaw’s activities all round here. The nearby church of St.Peter is aligned to the equinoxes and may well be an indication of when pre-christian celebrations occurred here. The yew tree in churchyard was where Robin Hood was supposed to have taken wood to fashion one of his bows. Modern folklore also ascribes the well to be along a ley line.
References:
Heginbottom, J.A., ‘Early Christian Sites in Calderdale,’ in Proc. Halifax Ant. Soc., 1988.
Pobjoy, Harold N. & Marion, The Story of the Ancient Parish of Hartshead-cum-Clifton, Riding 1972.
Along the A915 coastal road from Leven to Largo, as you reach Lundin, look out for signs for the Lundin Ladies Golf Course on the left. Go there and then ask someone at the golf course if you need help; but from here you just walk west over the greens till you are ambling along the back of some houses. You can’t really miss the giant stones a couple of hundred yards ahead of you. If you somehow get lost in Lundin itself, ask a local the directions to the Lundin Ladies golf course. You can’t really go wrong.
Archaeology & History
Lundin stones on 1855 OS-map
If you like your megaliths and you venture anywhere near here, make sure you come and visit these stones. They’ll blow you away! The only downfall we have is their location—stuck on the golf course; which, of course, means that meditating here is only possible between sunfall and sunrise (though I’ve usually found that’s the best time to be at stone circles anyway!), or perhaps in the pouring rain. Whichever is your preference, these stones need looking at!
The size of them is the first thing that hits you. They belong more to the Avebury complex than sitting out on their geographical limb near the southern Fife coast. But then, that presupposes other stones of this size didn’t used to be here—and as far as I’m concerned, other giant megaliths and associated monuments must once have stood nearby. But much of the landscape hereby has been taken over by traditional agriculture and any earlier megalithic remains have seemingly been lost.
We know there were at least four stones here in the 18th century and that also, “ancient sepulchres are found near them” according to the New Statistical Account of 1837—but all remains of these burials seem to have been lost or destroyed. These facts are echoed in Leighton, Swan & Stewart’s (1840) gigantic survey. Thought by a variety of archaeological and historical sources to be the remains of a great stone circle “with a diameter of 54 feet”—it’s an assertion that I’m not too sure about myself. They are just as likely to be the remains of a great stone avenue, perhaps leading to a stone circle, long since gone, as much as any small circle of giant uprights.
In 1933, the Royal Commission survey described the size of these great red sandstone monoliths,
“Each of them has been packed at the base with a setting of small stones. Although it is not the highest, the one on the south-east, which stands with a slight inclination towards the north and the east, presents the most massive appearance. The girth at the base is 12 feet 8 inches, but measurements taken at 5 feet from the ground give the following dimensions: north face, 5 feet 2 inches; south face, 5 feet; east face, 1 foot 11 inches; west face, 2 feet 2 inches; girth, 14 feet 3 inches; and the stone becomes even wider as its height increases, until near the top where it again shrinks to a very slightly rounded extremity. The height is approximately 13 feet 6 inches. The surface is pitted by the action of the weather and shows greatest traces of decay on the east, where a crack has developed. The south stone is set with a decided inclination towards the south. It is of very irregular form with a girth at the base of 9 feet 4 inches, expanding to 10 feet at 5 feet higher up, and suddenly becoming gently attenuated at the top. The stone, which does not exhibit the same noticeable traces of weathering as the one first described, is approximately 17 feet high. The north stone, which is set with a slight inclination towards the west, appears to be still taller. It rises to a height estimated at 18 feet and has a sharply pointed top. It shows evidence of weathering at the northwest corner. Like the others, it increases in bulk from the base upwards to the middle of its height, the girth being 9 feet 6 inches at the base, and 10 feet 2 inches at 5 feet up.”
The trio, looking northThe 3 stones, looking south
Big buggers by anyone’s estimation! Not mentioned here is the very distinct anthropomorphism, in one stone particularly—that at the southwest: a slim curvaceous body with neck and head at the top, frozen in stone no less. Surely this was intentional by the people who erected these giants? The southern pairing stand like man and wife, awaiting ceremony and customary servitude from us mere mortals. The single northern stone—whose partner was removed in the 19th century—has a similar slim stature and size, like its southwestern companion. Was its now dead partner a similar shape and stature like the southeastern stone? – another petrified pairing of man and woman? …Tis a curious feeling I have of this place…
Early 19th century drawingPhoto of stones, c.1900
Our megalithic magus Aubrey Burl (1988) did note the “writhing pillars” of stone here, but ventured no further with it. He did tentatively suggest (and include in his work on the subject) that the Lundin stones were one of his “four poster” circles, but thought it “impossible to prove.” He did however revise the Royal Commission measurements on the respective standing stones, informing us that,
“The NNE is the tallest, 16ft 8ins (5.1m) high, the leaning SSW stone is 15ft (4.6m) high, but the lowest, at the SSE, is also the biggest, 13ft 8ins (4.2m) tall and 6ft 5ins (2m) thick.”
He also told that there were little cairns “about 18ins (46cm) high” around the base of each standing stone when he was here in the 1980s. These were not visible when we visited in May 2013.
When the late great engineer and archaeoastronomer Alexander Thom (1971) came here, he found the layout of the stones to have astronomical meanings, telling:
“It was obviously an important site, so placed on flat ground that there was plenty of room for geometrical extrapolation. The alignment is seen to indicate the setting point of the Moon at the minor standstill. Trees and houses now block the view, but as the new large-scale OS maps are now available…it was possible to construct a reasonably accurate profile of Cormie Hill. In good seeing conditions, a large tumulus could have been seen on the Moon’s disc, and the tumulus shown on the Ordnance Survey happens to indicate the upper limb when the declination was -(ε-ι-Δ). When the Moon set on Cormie Hill it would rise on the Bass Rock, and we see how the stones were so placed that the lower limb just grazed the Rock when the declination was -(ε-ι).”
Thom’s lunar alignments
Thom reiterated his thoughts again in 1990, though pointed out that “the measurements should be checked” to see whether they were right. A few years earlier, Dr Douglas Heggie (1981) had done just such a thing and found the alignment seemed to be a poor one. And so it has turned out to be… Other megalithic sites however, have quite definite solar and lunar correlates in their architecture…but it seems our Lundin stones aren’t quite what Prof. Thom had hoped for.
Cup-mark & outer ring/s?
Along the eastern face of the “fattest” stone we see a number of large cup-markings, but these are all Nature’s handiwork. They were mentioned in Sir James Simpson’s (1867) early survey on the subject. However, we did see, near the base of the stone, just above ground level on its southern-face, a very distinct cup-marking with what may be the remains of a broken-ring around it. You can make it out on the photo here, but I wouldn’t stake my reputation on its legitimacy!
Folklore
Described in the Royal Commission (1933) report “as the burial stone of Danish chiefs,” this is a common tale found at other remaining megaliths along the Forth. The earliest account of this fable I’ve found is in the Edinburgh Magazine of November, 1785, where it was written:
“Various have been the conjectures as to the origin of the erection of the (stones); they are commonly known by the name of the Standing Stanes of Lundy, a seat belonging to a very old family of the name of Lundin, now to Sir William Erskine, near Largo in Fife.
“Tradition tells us, they were placed there in memory of that victory gained by Constantine II over Hubba, one of the generals of the Danish invaders, about the year 874. It is certain that battle was fought near this spot; but whether these were in memory of the action or not, I cannot determine: it is more than probable they were of a much older date.”
Legend also told that there was treasure at the stones, which was one of the reasons Daniel Wilson (1863) told the northwestern stone was broken and left only as a stump in 1792.
…to be continued…
References:
Burl, Aubrey, Four Posters: Bronze Age Stone Circles of Western Europe, BAR 195: Oxford 1988.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Burl, Aubrey, A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2005.
Heggie, Douglas C., Megalithic Science: Ancient Mathematics and Astronomy in Northwest Europe, Thames & Hudson: London 1981.
Leighton, J.M., Swan, J. & Stewart, J., History of the County of Fife – volume 3, John Swan: Glasgow 1840.
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in the Counties of Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan, HMSO: Edinburgh 1933.
Ruggles, Clive, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, Yale University Press 1999.
Simpkins, John Ewart, Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning Fife, with some Notes on Clackmannan and Kinross-shires, Sidgwick & Jackson: London 1914.
Simpson, James, Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, etc., Upon Stones and Rocks in Scotland, England and other Countries, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1867.
Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Lunar Observatories, Oxford University Press 1971.
Thom, A. & A.S., & Burl, Aubrey, Stone Rows and Standing Stones – volume 2, BAR 560(ii): Oxford 1990.
Wilson, Daniel, The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Sutherland & Knox: Edinburgh 1863
Acknowledgements: With huge thanks to Paul Hornby, for the photos and the journey! Also a big thanks to Gill Rutter for help in clarifying “Getting there.”
From Fortingall, get to the standing stone of Adamnan’s Cross a few miles down the stunning Glen Lyon. Barely 100 yards before you reach the stone, notice the overgrown gorse-covered rocky rise across the road, just past Craigianie Farm. As you climb to the top of this small rocky rise, you’ll see a cairn of stones on its top. Just below it, into the solid rock, you’ll see a footprint-shaped hollow etched into the stone. If it seems hidden, just keep looking – you’ll find it…
Archaeology & History
St. Palladius Stone, Glen Lyon
When Ratcliffe Barnatt (1944) visited Glen Lyon in the 1940s, this legendary rock was one of his stopping points. “When we have passed by Ruskich and Slatich,” he wrote, “we come to that sacred spot, Craig Dianaidh, the Rock of Safety, where, until about 1480, solemn and judicial meetings were held.” The old rock was known through recent ages, “as a preaching hill, a motehill and a justiciary court,” said Hilary Wheater (1981), and upon its top is the curious ‘footprint’ which Nature’s blood would fill on all but the hottest of summers. It is this geological feature that gave the stone is name, long ago.
Of known historical events here, Wheater further told:
“It was on this rock…that the Baron Courts of Glenlyon were held. Law and order was kept by regular courts held by the Chief or Landowner. The Baron-Bailiary of each area was appointed by Royal Charter. Fifteen men were chosen as a jury and the laird or his baile presided. To this court were brought all the problems and grievances of the people. Here the miller accused several men of refusing to take part in the compulsory ‘hamganging’ of a new millstone; here a man was fined for brewing ale without a license; here a neighbour was accused of putting the ‘evil eye’ on the cow of the croft next door so it produced no milk; and here a man was prosecuted for ‘taking of ane sore horse of his to Rannoch in the summer of 1629 and putting on him ane great burder of timber, and letting him go through the wood where he stuck between two trees all night and the timber on his back.’ However, he was acquitted when he was able to prove that the horse was fit enough after this for another man to be able to take it to Edinburgh soon after.”
St Palladius Footprint
As well as being a moot site, it is more than probable that this footprint, like the one near the top of Dunadd in Argyll—and others scattering the Highlands and beyond—was an initiation stone, perhaps for local tribal elders or ancient kings. Janet Bord (2004) writes about them as places of ritual inauguration in her survey of such places.
Folklore
The legendary site, looking south
This legendary rock would probably have had earlier mythic association than the one ascribing it to St. Palladius—but as yet I have found no written lore telling the nature of such a spirit, so would only perhaps discern the original genius loci by lengthy encounters with the rock in question, through mist and storm and wintry months, alone. It is known in local folklore that Palladius was in fact an urisk: a solitary spirit of steep streams that few humans encounter due to their lonely habits amidst hidden abodes in dark and ancient gorges. Such urisks dwelt in numbers amongst many of the steep falls in this landscape — and still do, if the words of old locals are to be believed. Here,
“St Palladius was a goblin saint, an urisk that dwelt in a mountain burn and was sanctified by the people.”
…and some rocks by the stream up the mountain immediately above this “footprint” was one of the places the urisk was known to dwell.
…to be continued…
References:
Barnatt, T. Ratcliffe, The Road to Rannoch and the Summer Isles, John Grant: Edinburgh 1944.
Bord, Janet, Footprints in Stone, Heart of Albion Press 2004.
Fraser, Duncan, Highland Perthshire, Standard Press: Montrose 1969.
Wheater, Hilary, Aberfeldy to Glenlyon, Appin Publications: Aberfeldy 1981.
Troublesome to get to unless you’re reasonably fit. Probably the easiest route is to get to the Duncroisk 3 cup-and-ring stone. Keep walking along the riverside, climb over the first tall wooden fence and onwards till you reach the rocky crag reaching into the river Lochay. By whichever means possible, get yourself up and round this crag, but keep by the riverside till you get to the easier walkable rocky outcrop protruding into the river on the other side of the drop. Hereby, on one of the stones, look and you’ll find these faint cup-and-ring symbols.
Archaeology & History
Although this carving was first described in Edward Cormack’s (1952) essay on the prehistoric carvings of the district, they have subsequently proved difficult to locate by the Royal Commission lads and other archaeologists. I’ve been here a few times looking for it and never managed to find it — until last week. When Mr Cormack first told of the design, he said:
“On a smooth rock surface just above the mouth of the small burn running into the Lochay, immediately west of the cup-marked ridge, are two cup-and-ring markings a yard apart. The rings are curiously rough edged, and do not give the same impression of weathering as those on the ridge; possibly they have been silted over shortly after being cut, and exposed again relatively recently.”
Flambeau the Cat uses the carving as his bed!
A few decades later, Ron Morris (1981) came across the carving, 10 yards “southeast of an elbow of River Lochay”, as he put it. Described as “hard to find”, he went on to give a basic outline of the design as he saw them, telling there to be “2 cups-and-one-ring, both probably complete, up to 16cm (6in) diameters, with radial grooves from cup to ring—up to 1cm deep.” Or more simply, two cup-and-rings, each with a line running from the centre to the surrounding ring.
After trying to find this carving on several occasions, without success (somehow!), it was brought to my attention under the brilliant guidance of a local cat called Flambeau only last week (no lies!). In a venture down to the riverside, the great cat (in tandem with Pip the dog, who also ventures out with me to find ancient sites in this region) got to the riverside on the rock in question and began rolling about in the dust on the stone, mewing and purring away merrily! It was really brilliant to watch. Sincerely heart-warming (soz…but I can’t help it!).
Primary cup-and-ring at Duncroisk-2
I stepped over and complimented him as he looked superb (hence the photo, above) and he just kept purring. Then, curiously, he stood up and began scratching at the dried earth on the rock, mewing away whilst doing this. Twas very odd indeed. But there, exactly where Flambeau has been scratching and rolling about, it seemed a faint cup-mark was apparent. And such it was! So I got on my knees and began cleaning away the dirt from the rock — and there, right where he’d been purring and playing, was the lost cup-and-ring carving!
Its location would suggest that the carving had some relationship with water: be that the spirit of the place; a good site where fish can be had; a place where someone had drowned, etc. We’ll probably never know… But it’s a beautiful spot, with the impressive Stag Cottage carvings in the adjoining field, and the newly discovered Corrycharmaig East carvings on the other side of the river — plus many others in the area.
Folklore
The River Lochay where this carving is found is named after a dedication to the Black Goddess, according to Prof. W.J. Watson. (1926) The stream by the side of the carving which runs into the River Lochay has been the place where faerie music has been heard by local people in times past.
Morris, Ronald W.B., The Prehistoric Rock Art of Southern Scotland, BAR: Oxford 1981.
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Archaeological Sites and Monuments of Stirling District, Central Region, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 1979.
Watson, W.J., The History of the Celtic Place-names of Scotland, Edinburgh 1926.
From Denholme, take the A6033 Hebden Bridge road up, but shortly past the great bend turn off right up the steep road towards the moorland windmills until you reach the flat dirt-tracked road, past the reservoir below. A coupla hundred yards past the track to the reservoir, take the footpath south into the tribbly grasslands and moor. A few hundred yards down you’ll note the large rock outcrop ahead of you. The rocking stone is there!
Archaeology & History
The old rocking stone
A small moorland arena with a neglected history. Many lost memories surround this site, with barely legible ruins from medieval and Victorian periods prevailing against scanty snippets of neolithic and Bronze Age rumours and remains. The rocking stone here—which moves slightly with a bit of effort—sits amidst a gathering of other large rocks, some of which have debatable cup-markings on their smoothly eroded surfaces.
Our rocking stone, resting 1350 feet (411m) above seal level, was first mentioned in John Watson’s (1775) magnum opus, who gave a quite lengthy description of the site, telling us that,
“On a common called Saltonstall-moor, is what the country people call the Rocking-stone… The height of this on the west side (which is the highest) is, as I remember, about three yards and a half. It is a large piece of rock, one end of which rests on several stones, between two of which is a pebble of a different grit, seemingly put there for a support, and so placed that it could not possibly be taken out without breaking, or removing the rocks, so that in all probability they have been laid together by art. It ought to be observed, that the stone in question, from the form and position of it, could never be a rocking stone, though it is always distinguished by that name. The true rocking stone appeared to me to lie a small distance from it, thrown off its centre. The other part of this stone is laid upon a kind of pedestal, broad at the bottom, but narrow in the middle; and round this pedestal is a passage which, from every appearance, seems to have been formed by art, but for what purpose is the question.”
Dubious cupsWatson’s 1775 drawing of the Rocking Stone
Watson then goes onto remark about other rocking stones in Cornwall and further afield with attendant “druid basins” on them, noting that there were also “rock basins” found here on Warley Moor, a few of which had been “worked into this rocking stone,” which he thought, “helps to prove that the Druids used it.” And although these rock basins are large and numerous over several of the rocks on this plateau, like the cup-markings that also scatter the surfaces, they would seem to be Nature’s handiwork.
Turner’s 1913 drawing
Some 60 years later when the literary thief John Crabtree (1836) plagiarized Watson’s words verbatim into his much lesser tome, it seemed obvious he’d never ventured to explore the site. But in the much more valuable historical expansion written by John Leyland around 1867, he at least visited the site and found the old stone, “still resting on its shady pedestal.” Later still, when Whiteley Turner (1913) ventured this way on one of his moorland bimbles, he added nothing more to the mythic history of these west-facing megaliths…
Folklore
Still reputed locally to have been a site used by the druids; a local newspaper account in the 1970s also told how local people thought this place to be “haunted by goblins.”
References:
Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
Crabtree, John, Concise History of the Parish and Vicarage of Halifax, Hartley & Walker: Halifax 1836.
Leyland, F.A., The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax, by the Reverend John Watson, M.A., R.Leyland: Halifax n.d. (c.1867).
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire – volume 3, Cambridge University Press 1961.
Turner, Whiteley, A Spring-Time Saunter round and about Bronte Lane, Halifax Courier 1913.
Watson, John, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax, T. Lowndes: London 1775.
