Castlerigg Stone Circle

Castlerigg stone circle lies on the eastern edge of the Lake District near the town of Keswick. Its name derives from Carsles or Carles, a name recorded in the 18^th century and deriving from the French carole, meaning a circular dance. It's interesting how many stone circles are linked to dancing. It was built around 3200BC, making it one of the earliest stone circles in Britain.

The circle is 30 metres in diameter and originally comprised 42 stones, of which 38 remain. The stones are glacial erratics, probably from fairly close by, and most are 1-1.2 metres in height. Two taller stones flank the north-facing entrance, and an offset pillar to the southeast, almost 2 metres tall, aligns to the sunrise at Samhain (1^st November) and Imbolc (1^st February).

A rectangular setting of about twelve smaller stones stands in the eastern part of the circle and focuses on the prominent hill of Clough Head on the skyline.

Another standing stone is found near the western edge of the site. Its original location is now unclear but it may have come from the circle itself or was perhaps another outlier stone.

          The internal rectangular setting

Castlerigg is sited on an area of gently sloping higher ground, surrounded by the settled areas and farmland that have long filled the lowlands of the area. The ring of stark mountains and fells beyond provides a contrasting backdrop and reflects the varied topology and spirit of the Lake District. Thanks to the slope of the ground, fairly little of the immediate area is visible from the circle, and conversely, the circle was perhaps equally hidden until the final approach up the hillside. This would have added an air of magic to the site.

           The outlier stone which is angled towards the Samhain sunrise

Castlerigg, like Mayburgh Henge 15 miles to the east, is linked to the manufacture and trade of polished stone axes which were made from green volcanic tuff found in a few isolated and inaccessible hillsides deep in the Lake District mountains. Three of these axes and an unpolished roughout have been found inside the circle.

The north-facing entrance faces what is now the main road from Penrith to Keswick and what has probably always been the major route into the Lakes. From the circle, the main view is the wide valley to the southeast which leads to the villages of Grasmere and Ambleside and then to the Langdale valley where the axe quarries were accessed. Castlerigg was certainly there to oversee the routeways used by the special greenstone and the people who worked it.

Mayburgh Henge

Mayburgh Henge, near Penrith on the edge of the Lake District, is a stunning monument. It was built in the late Neolithic period and comprises a circular bank of stone, 50 metres wide at its base, 120 metres in diameter, and surviving to a height of 6 metres. It’s estimated to contain 20,000 tonnes of stone, probably carried up from the river Lowther, although it has also been suggested it was reshaped from a natural glacial deposit.

            Mayburgh Henge from the south

The henge is on a knoll of high ground which gives it a natural dominance over the surrounding area, and it would have been clearly visible from the surrounding fells before the grass began to cover it. It’s sited above the confluence of the rivers Eamont and Lowther, and above the ancient lowland routeway to the north and south, which forded the rivers at this point. Mayburgh was probably associated with the trade of stone axes, which were ground from Lake District greenstone and traded across Britain as far as East Anglia.

        The river Lowther, from which Mayburgh’s stones may have been carried.

The bank’s position and height make it impossible to see inside the henge, even from the distant fells, except for a tantalising view of its standing stones visible through the entrance from several hundred metres away down the hillside. This would have enhanced the mystery and power of the site for those who travelled by. It gives the impression of a powerful site and powerful people, a fitting guardian for the entrance into the hostile mountains where the stone quarries were found.

          The view from the entrance. The trees give an indication of size.

Four standing stones were raised in a square in the centre of the circle, of which one survives. Four more were present in the entrance, which faces due east. The stones were destroyed in the 18^th century, after which one of the workmen went insane and another committed suicide. Damaging once sacred monuments always seems to have a bitter price.

 The remaining standing stone, approximately 3 metres high.

Two other smaller henges were situated along the river Lowther, a few hundred metres away. King Arthur’s Round Table is 90 metres in diameter and comprises a circular ditch with an outer earthen bank. Two entrances lay to the south-east and north-west. The latter, which was flanked with two standing stones, has been destroyed, but would have aligned directly to the entrance of Mayburgh Henge, much further up the hillside. The second henge, the Little Round Table, was a similar size and has been entirely destroyed.

Both these henges lack the feeling of dominance and power of Mayburgh, and were perhaps used for more mundane work or trade, with only a select few being allowed up the hillside into the hidden inner sanctum of the greater henge, which still feels powerful after five thousand years.

             King Arthur’s Round Table

West Kennet Long Barrow

West Kennet Long Barrow is situated just south of Avebury in Wiltshire, today offering views of the great Avebury henge, the Sanctuary and Silbury Hill. None of these monuments were present when the barrow was built, although likely the locations already had special significance.

The barrow was built around 3650BC, and comprises five chambers around a central passage, all built of sarsen stone and drystone walling, covered in a vast mound of rubble and turf, 104 metres long.

Like many other long barrows such as Wayland’s Smithy, it is not especially prominent and doesn’t appear to have been designed to draw the attention, respect and admiration of human observers, as later Bronze Age barrows were. It seems more about commanding a view of the land, probably the land the entombed people lived on and farmed, and continued to offer their guidance and guardianship after death.

It seems the barrow was used for little more than a generation – perhaps the ‘founding fathers’ of this farming community – and then the entrance was sealed with the huge sarsen stones seen today. The remains of thirty six men, women and children were excavated. Bones and cremated remains were occasionally added over the next thousand years by removing the roof slabs.

Inside the barrow                                                

The barrow was far more than a tomb. It was a place for the living as well as the dead, and some interesting research has been done into the acoustics of the chambers. Many long barrows of the Cotswold-Severn area were built to similar proportions, incorporating a 4:3 ratio into the chambers, which produces a particular musical resonance when singing or chanting. Infrasound – sound too low for human ears to hear – is also produced by the resonance inside the chambers, and this produces unsettling effects such as the feeling of an unseen presence, a sense of panic and danger, and glimpses of movement. This would all contribute to the feeling of the presence of the ancestor spirits around the living.  

Around 2200BC, the chambers were filled with chalk rubble and the monument abandoned. This time period reflects the arrival of bronze in Britain and a cultural upheaval which saw the abandonment of the old monuments and a surge in the building of new monuments such as stone circles.

But the old ways were never forgotten. Coins dating to the Roman period have been found inserted into the mound, perhaps offerings to millennia-old spirits whose presence was still uneasily felt.

Traitor’s Ford, Warwickshire

Traitor’s Ford is a ford across the nascent River Stour in Warwickshire which eventually joins the Avon near Stratford on Avon. The water today trickles peacefully over a modern concrete crossing but the shallow and stony crossing has been in use for millennia.

The intriguing name is not entirely explained. Local legend states that here were hanged rebel soldiers during the Civil War in the 17^th century, but this is probably a recent invention. An antiquarian wrote in 1908 that he could find no local explanation or story for the name at all. More likely it is a corruption of ‘Trader’s Ford’.

           The ancient, sunken routeway

The ford was the crossing point of an ancient trackway, now partly a minor road and partly a footpath, known for some of its length as Ditchedge Lane. This ditch marks the boundary between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, an indication of its antiquity. The routeway was a trader’s route following the high ground in a near perfectly straight line towards the north and south, linking sites such as the Rollright Stones, Edgehill and the Burton Dassett Hills, all places which have a wealth of folklore and history surrounding them. These routeways were well-used by traders and cattle drovers by the Bronze Age, and are perhaps much more ancient still.

                 Ditchedge Lane

It certainly feels like an ancient and powerful routeway, sunken deep from millennia of feet and hooves, and the entirely untouched woodland in the swampy Stour valley is exactly how the ancient travellers would have known it. It feels like a small part of the past reaching out to touch the present.