Map of Stanton Harcourt and Sutton
Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 2 Comments
I so enjoyed making my map of Eynsham last month, I thought I’d have a crack at the beautiful neighbouring villages of Stanton Harcourt and Sutton, where my family live. Click on the map to enlarge it.
I have emphasised the natural history of the place, as well as the many gorgeous historic buildings, ancient cottages and prehistoric sites.
I have included the Devil’s Quoits stone circle, which is now re-constructed after almost being lost in the 20th century. And I have put back on the map – quite literally – the remarkable bronze age burial mound of Gravelly Guy which was destroyed after it was excavated to make was for gravel extraction and subsequent landfill.
I’ll be getting some copies made in the very near future, both as flat maps and folded.
Rollright owl
Posted on | November 9, 2009 | Comments Off
We are lucky enough to get a lot of barn owls Tyto alba round here. Usually I only get a fleeing glimpse as they swoop past when I’m driving home. So I was very happy to have seen one very close up back in August at the Yorkshire Dales Falconry Centre. Since then I’ve been thinking about doing a painting of one in some detail, using some of Moth’s photos as reference material.
I thought it would be nice to compose one flying over the Rollright stones, not least because the colours on a barn owl are similar to the stones themselves, all soft smudgey greys and whites with accents of yellow, but also because they share a mysterious silent beauty. I hope you like it:
Stone circles of Cumbria: a short movie
Posted on | June 19, 2009 | Comments Off
Running rings around the Lake District, part two
Posted on | June 18, 2009 | Comments Off
13 June 2009
Today we were to meet up with a few people at Long Meg, a huge menhir in Cumbria. But before we did we thought we’d first swing by Glassonby cairn circle, which is dead easy to reach from the lane in a field, today policed by young Holstein bullocks with only one thing on their minds- to practice close surveillance on us. I armed myself with a large branch, just in case things got nasty. But it turned out these boys didn’t have the balls.
As we arrived to inspect the site, so did our mate scubi! “You two get everywhere†he said. Yep, we certainly try.
Glassonby is a very sweet little circle with plenty of brick-sized stones and rubble left in the middle and a good ring of medium sized kerb stones forming the circle. Now it is inhabited by rabbits, some of which scattered down the field while others disappeared into holes dug into the cairn as we approached. Its bucolic hillside setting and tiny diameter makes it particularly charming.
We stopped off to see Little Meg on way our back from Glassonby, carefully dodging the coast-to-coast bicyclists which swarmed round these lanes. It was far less overgrown than when I was last here in 2003. This, is also a cairn circle, but its stones are far larger than Glassonby’s, and one, famously, has spirals carved into it.
As we arrived at Long Meg and her Daughters , the light on the pointy menhir showed up perfectly the spiral carvings on the flattest face of the menhir. I’d been here before but could hardly see the rock art then; this time it was as clear Catherine wheels in November.
Scubi arrived, then Vicster and her mate Vick, then pebs. We cracked open the picnics and sat in the hot sunshine by Long Meg and feasted on cheese, very garlicky hummous, smoked salmon, pebs’ homemade olive and ham bread and strawberries.
Like Avebury, this place is so massive you can’t stand far enough away to get it all in one view. Also like Avebury, it has a road running through the middle. And also like Avebury some people will insist on tying pieces of tat as so-called ‘offerings’ to the lowest branches of the nearest ’sacred’ tree. There was a broken child’s toy lorry lovingly suspended by a piece of carefully selected baler twine, an enchanting old stripey sock, a badge with the legend ‘I’ve been to Ostrich World’, some strips of sacred plastic bag, a faded old ribbon, and a red plastic fake crystal heart – no doubt harvested from a Christmas cracker – bobbled around in the breeze.
Its enormity alone makes Long Meg and her Daughters a very special place. The large stones which form the circle are evenly spaced and despite many of them having been toppled, are so big they still look like they’re standing. I defy anyone not to be impressed by Long Meg and her Daughters. Just don’t let this impressiveness move you to tie offensive rubbish to the trees. Jack-in-the-Green wouldn’t approve.
Scubi, Moth, Jane, Vicster, pebs and Vicky at Long Meg
Replete, and with the sun beating down and tiny high clouds scudding overhead in the bluest of skies, we all decided to head as a convey over to Moor Divock, just 14 miles away to visit The Cockpit stone circle. This involved a walk of perhaps two kilometres over a track on the moor. The company was so good I hardly noticed the walk and only stumbled about twice.
Once at the circle, we sat together in the sun and watched exaltations of larks rise out of the moorland.
14 June 2009
Next day we arranged to meet again at Copt Howe, the Langdale boulders, in Great Langdale near Grasmere. We watched as the sun swung round in the sky to until the light was at the right angle to reveal the extraordinary rock art carved on the flat surface of one of the largest boulders. I made a little sketch.
Photos: Moth Clark
Running rings around the Lake District, part one
Posted on | June 18, 2009 | Comments Off
12 June 2009
It’s amazing just how many wonderful prehistoric sites you can cram into one short trip if you’re so inclined. Cumbria has many stone circles, some of which I had not yet visited.
Moth peruses Julian Cope’s epic tome The Modern Antiquarian
As we drove up the M6 we listened to the Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie show on the radio. They were encouraging listeners who may be pop stars (current or ex) to text in to the show. Many were spoofs texted in by naughty listeners just pretending: “Ayup! Elton John here…†Mark and Stuart were guessing which texts might be real. I thought I’d try to fool them. I texted in: “Yowzah drudes, Julian Cope here watching the sun set over Silbury Hill. Awl love from the Archdrudeâ€. They were certain it was really Julian.
Next morning, we headed west from the Travelodge in Penrith where we were staying and where Julian stayed during filming his televisual version of The Modern Antiquarian for the BBC, towards Castlerigg stone circle.
Moth poses outside Penrith Travelodge
I was last at Castlerigg in August 2003 with my late friend Bec. This was one of her favourite prehistoric sites, and a photo she took of it back in the early 90s has both graced my walls and been etched into my heart for many years. The monument itself is marvellous enough, but the natural amphitheatre of the fells, soft and green all around in the bright sunshine combined with the added poignancy of the loss of Bec made the place today seem more dramatic than ever. In my mind I could hear sweeping, heart-string twanging orchestral music and the sound of her dirty laugh.
a little sketch of Castlerigg
Next we were off to Blakeley Raise stone circle
It is quite charming and in a satisfyingly remote moorland spot but right next to the lane. The stones are small and whether they were re-erected in the right holes or not didn’t matter to me. I cleared the centre of the circle of the empty crisp packet, rusty horseshoe and Remembrance Day crucifix and stood back and admired the stones. I loved it here. The sky seemed very big.
Poor Greycroft! This once magnificent stone circle is much neglected, hideously overgrown with thick unmanaged grasses and weeds, fenced in like a prisoner and overlooked by its neighbour, the industrial nightmare of the Sellafield nuclear power plant. But it’s not all bad. At least the fence prevents sloppy tractor drivers from bumping into the stones, and at least the weeds offer some kind of untouched habitat for birds, insects and small mammals. The view down to the sea is gorgeous and my one crumb of comfort is that despite everything, it is still here, it’s pinkish stones glinting in the sunshine.
There’s not much left of Elva Plain stone circle. Its 14 small stones are all down and it seems to be melting back into the gentle slope of the field, overlooked by distant fells. But like Greycroft, the miracle is that it’s still here at all.
Mighty Mayburgh henge is slap bang next to the M6 at Penrith, but don’t let that put you off – indeed, let it encourage you to visit! The henge’s grassy rubble banks rise 20 or 30 feet all around to form a giant cup with a vast menhir in the middle. The last remnant of what, I wondered? A few mature trees grow randomly out of the humungous banks, but the henge is so impressive they seem tiny even though they must rise 60 feet or more. Inside the henge there is no internal ditch, which is a bit weird, but this seems to add to the enclosedness of the site. What was if for? Private events? Fortifications? Sacred ceremonies? Trading? Cattle market? A sports arena? What WAS it for? To me this henge is way more impressive than Avebury.
Quoit a resurrection
Posted on | July 5, 2008 | No Comments
Neolithic and bronze age ancient monuments have been destroyed down the ages. Medieval farmers cleared them from fields, christians tore them down for being pagan, and now they are neglected and damaged by modern farming practices. We seem only to value the Aveburys and Stonehenges.
But the story I want to tell you is a beacon of hope for our ancient past.
The Devil’s Quoits at Stanton Harcourt (just down the road from where I live) was once the eighth largest stone circle of the hundreds we have in Britain, part of a huge ritual complex. Down the centuries it was deliberately trashed as the work of the devil, its stones raided for building material. At the end of the 19th century only three stones still stood in their original positions at the Quoits. And in 1940, when Winston Churchill ordered the building of a wartime airbase whose runway cut straight through the monument, it seemed as if, after 5,000 years, it was game over for the Quoits. After the war, the airfield became a gravel quarry and now it’s the county landfill site. But the Quoits is a site that refuses to die.
Excavations in the 1990s (I think) revealed some of the original stones and the positions where they once stood. And visionary plans were made to rebuild the stone circle and its remarkable henge (a bank and ditch). For the past seven years, I have been watching the work progress steadily and slowly.
I watched as the massive henge earthwork was rebuilt in March 2002:
I watched as some of the original stones were piled up in November 2003
I watched when in October 2005 some of the original stones were moved into position:
… and new stones were erected to replace lost ones.
And last month, I watched as freshly dug post holes appeared…
My kids live about 800ms away from the site and take their dog for walks around the bottom of the lake next to which the Quoits stand every day. On Wednesday afternoon Cleo walked Jas up to the Quoits and was surprised to see men working at the site and that as far as she could see, all the stones were up!
So yesterday me and Rupe took Jas for a walk and found this:
A complete stone circle! As well as the stones going up, the henge had been mown and looked all ‘coifed’ and magnificent, and the hundreds of rabbits I saw last month were all gone.
We paused by the biggest of the original stones – it was thrilling to see it back up again, looking just like in the 1882 photo by Henry Taunt.
I took a photo, as the shadows looked remarkably similar to that in Taunt’s picture.
As we were leaving, two blokes wearing florescent yellow jackets and hard hats from the portakabin at the dump approached us. They had seen us as we walked round the top of the bank. One wore a tie and had clean hands (obviously the site manager) and the other wore a sweaty T-shirt, big shit-kicking boots and had dirty hands (obviously a workman). They asked what we were doing there as there is no public access. I told them the dog gets walked up there every day as we only live ‘over there’ points towards the village. I enthused about the stones and how excited we were to see the stones go up.
The man in the tie gently told me off for being there: “there’s no public access†(which I knew, but dog-walkers, bird-watchers and small boys wanting to make dens can’t be kept down). He also told me that once it was open, they planned to limit access to it with a fence “like at Stonehengeâ€, he said, to stop people walking all over it, wearing it down and to prevent rabbits recolonising it and denuding it. “Like hell that’s going to happen†I thought. He said that all the rabbits had been gassed last week and they were keen to keep them off – they were damaging the ditch and bank very badly, which I could see for myself.
I asked the man with the dirty hands if he was part of the team who put the stones up. He was! He said it felt pretty special to be part of it, which I thought was nice.
To my knowledge this complete reconstruction of a site using what is left of the original stones, plus some new ones, is unique. Interesting that it’s not English Heritage, the so-called guardians of our past, who have made it happen, but the painstaking excavation and enthusiasm of both Oxford Archaeology working with site owner Hanson. Congratulations to them for having the vision to plan it and resurrect it! Bloody marvellous.
Please remember the Devil’s Quoits are on private property. An official opening is planned for August or September, apparently and ‘official’ access to the site will be from the top of the lake by the recycling centre.
Photos: me, Moth Clark, Alan S, RiotGibbon
A faithless dowser
Posted on | June 30, 2008 | Comments Off
You probably already know that I am not superstitious in any way; I do not believe in gods, faerie folk, Santa Claus, the soul, the flying spaghetti monster, an afterlife or indeed any of that stuff. And while I do not pretend to understand electricity, gravity, light, radio waves, kinetic energy or other natural forces, I accept that these things are scientifically proven and are measurable, repeatable phenomena. So I was momentarily thrown into a spin on Sunday while enjoying a day out among the menhirs at Avebury with some fellow stone-huggers, when a dowsing rod moved in my hand.
My friend Hamish had brought his dowsing rods with him. I watched as he gripped them firmly, held them out in front of him and walked towards a megalith. As he approached the stone they swung apart; the right one swinging to the right, the left one swinging left, as if moved by an unseen force. Blimey! That’s a bit WOOOO!
I was curious to understand. I asked if I could have a go.
I was in safe hands with Hamish; he wasn’t going to try to lure me into a yogurt-weaving commune to gaze at crystals and worship invisible tree-spirits. He couldn’t explain his ‘gift’ (a word we both giggled about) and remained rational, even skeptical about the whole thing.”I just do it” he said, “my mum could do it, but my sister can’t”.
He showed me how to hold them, and I started walking. Nothing happened. I approached the stone in the same way as he had. Nothing. He took the rods back and paced along a line which bisected a ‘well-known line of energy’ (apparently). The rods moved for him! So I tried. But got nothing again. I really wanted the rods to move for me. I mean really, really, REALLY! I tried to clear my mind, relax, close my eyes, breathe deeply… But it didn’t work. Perhaps my deep-seated cynicism and lack of faith over-rode any ‘really-wanting-something-to-happen’ vibes.
I was disappointed. But strangely also quite pleased that here was ‘proof’ that I – a spirit-free, faithless, rational cynic – couldn’t dowse, whatever dowsing is.
I thought about it a lot as the afternoon progressed. There was one way that I could test something about dowsing…
A year ago we scattered some of my friend Bec’s ashes at Avebury, among the gnarled roots of the huge beech trees growing on the south of the henge, a place she loved so much. 
Perhaps I could dowse for Bec! There is no doubt about how much I loved her and how much I now miss her. Those things are real to me. Maybe the power of love and of the human mind would work?
I suggested it to Hamish. “Let’s try it” he enthused. As we approached the trees, we tried dowsing up to the nearest huge stone, ‘The Chair’, but the same thing happened: when Hamish approached the rods swerved, but with me, nothing. I tried it with eyes closed, concentrating hard. But still nothing.
We reached the trees and I took the dowsing rods. I walked along the chalk path by the trees and nothing happened. I tried again. Hamish said “talk to her”. I called her name: “Bec, show me where you are” I said, remembering exactly where we scattered her ashes, “remember where we put you?” To my utter astonishment, the rod in my right hand swerved sharply to the right, pointing at exactly the place where we scattered her ashes! (The rod in my left hand stayed put, but then my left hand is normally quite useless for anything requiring dexterity or co-ordination.) I took a couple of steps backwards and the rod moved again, continuing to fix its point on the place where we put her ashes.
I wanted to test what had happened – could I repeat this phenomenon? So I walked down the path from the other direction, closing my eyes, thinking of Bec, remembering all the truly magical times we spent at Avebury. Again I called out “Bec, show me where you are, you old tart!” and again the rod in my right hand swerved sharply and to point definitively towards her resting place.
I’ve been thinking about what happened and while I can’t explain it rationally, I do know that love and the power of the human mind to influence events is so-far scientifically unmeasurable (as far as I’m aware- please correct me if I’m wrong.)
So do I ‘believe’ in the soul, an afterlife, spirits of the dead remaining in this world? Well no. A rod in my hand spontaneously pointing on its own at the resting place of my dead friend proves nothing whatsoever.
Perhaps through the power of the human psyche, dowsing simply proves what you want to prove or shows what you want to find.
Here’s a photo that Bec took in 1991 of one of the places where she would eventually be laid to rest.
The hills are alive with the sound of birdsong
Posted on | June 1, 2008 | Comments Off
We got back from Sardinia at the end of last week after nine fascinating days. From my point of view there’s plenty to see and do. We did a good deal of stone-hugging; ancient monuments litter the mountainous landscape. Here’s me at Li Lolghi tomba di giganti:
And this is Coddhu Vecchju:
But rather than bore you pictures of the zillions of monuments we visited which you can read about here, I’ll tell you about the marvellous things you can see in the remote places where they are located. In late May, the grasses are tall, lush and green and filled with flowers:
How lovely is this?!
…and of course with all those blooms the place is crawling with birds and insects:
Darwin would have had a ball collecting all the beetles we saw.
I lost count of the different varieties of grasses I saw…
…but I was most inspired by the delicate beauty of the quaking grass:
Check out this lime green crickety thing:
Chunky or what!
And with Sardinia being so hot and rocky, it was no surprise to find that the lizards ruled:
We saw hundreds of these.
The soundtrack to our travels was the constant birdsong – I’ve never heard anything like it. The nightingales especially made a big impression on me. Never saw one though.
And of none of that interests you, you can always get your teeth into some teenagers:
Midwinter solstice at Abu Simbel
Posted on | January 8, 2008 | Comments Off
This blog contains human remains which some readers may find disturbing
At 5am on midwinter’s day 2007 we rose happily from our beds in Aswan, Egypt, to catch the plane for a half hour flight down to see the temples at Abu Simbel, just 20 miles from the Sudanese border.
The temples were built to aggrandise pharaoh Ramses II in 1265 BC, but when they fell out of use, they became lost in the shifting sands. An archaeo discovered them in the 19th century and dug them out.
As we flew south I watched the sun rise over the waters of the gigantic Lake Nasser, formed by the mighty dams at Aswan. It was these rising waters which threatened to inundate Abu Simbel, so in the 1960s a massive project was mounted to move them – stone by stone – to a new site on higher ground.
So there are many reasons to marvel at this place; the size and awesome beauty of the temples themselves, and the almost inconceivably ambitious engineering to move them. Saving Abu Simbel is proof that culture and history are important to the world! Hurrah to that! It is a proud testament to humanity – both ancient and modern – that both were achieved.
Though what a shame the British government doesn’t feel the same about sensitively saving Stonehenge for future generations and the Irish government can’t be arsed to save Tara at all!
Knowing all this heightened my expectations and I was prepared to be disappointed. But I wasn’t. How could you be when you’re faced with stuff like this?:
Already at only 7am it was crawling with tourists. Despite the chilly breeze we spent a happy hour and half (not long enough) wandering in and out of the temples, trying to comprehend their size, the complex and colourful bas-relief images on the walls of the internal chambers, just trying to take it all in.
Cleo, Rupert and I pose for the camera
The ancient architects built the temples so that that twice a year, on significant dates, the rays of the sun penetrated the temple sanctuary and illuminated an important sculpture deep inside. Just like at many ancient British and northern European monuments, then, where our own ancestors used the sun – and the moon – at significant dates to create a natural light show.
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I cast my mind towards the tomb at Newgrange in Ireland, 5,000 miles from where I was standing, where exactly such a thing was happening almost at that precise moment.
Photo by Ken Williams with kind permission |
A week later we visited the Egyptian museum in Cairo.
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Despite the huge entry fee, Rupert and I wanted to enter the Royal Mummy Room to see for ourselves the body of Ramses II ‘the Great’, who ruled Egypt for 66 years. |
He wasn’t pretty, lying there like a huge blackened doggy-chew, but it was amazing to stare into the face of this great man, responsible for so many of Egypt’s wonderful temples. His hands were uncovered, curled over his chest, so you could see his fingernails – perfectly preserved. I found myself thinking unRoyal thoughts like ‘I wonder if he picked his nose?’ He was just a man after all.
Photos of Abu Simbel by Moth Clark
Diamond Giza
Posted on | December 31, 2007 | Comments Off
Hello, dear Reader! We’re safely back from Egypt as of yesterday. And – ooh blimey! – we saw some fab stuff!
Egypt is richly blessed with precious treasures, but the diamonds in that marvellous country’s crown – as well as being the ones most people think of when they think of Egypt – have got to be the great pyramids and the sphinx at Giza, near Cairo. So I thought I’d start my Egyptian blogs with those famed monuments which we were privileged to visit on Friday.
Superlatives abound to describe the truly awesome pyramids but it’s hard to convey their sheer bulk. We are so used to seeing massive buildings these days that go up in matter of months, that it would be easy to not truly understand the gargantuan nature of these 4,500-year-old, hand-built structures. Modern buildings may be big, but except for a few tiny entrances and chambers the pyramids are completely solid. Think about that for mo… and now feel your jaw drop!
Made of up layer upon layer of blocks some up a metre and half high it’s not until you get right up close you feel that enormity. These monuments were built by skilled workers, not slaves; engineered by intelligent people just like you and I who came to work on them and make a few piastres during the months when the Nile flooded and agriculture was impossible on the inundated fields of the Nile valley.
As you drive through the bustling, overcrowded streets of Giza, the pyramids lurk and loom behind the buildings in a quite surreal way:
Last time I was at the pyramids in July 2000, the sun was scorching. Fortunately, this trip the weather was perfect, about 24 degrees celcius, and perfect for sitting in to make sketches:
We were travelling as part of a group of five families, including our own, so for the benefit of my travelling companions many of who will be new readers to this blog, here’s a shot of us all:
Welcome to my blog the Hill family, the Wiltshires, the Jeffords and the Clarks.
Sphinx
I love the sphinx, that big-footed leonine sculpture with a pharaoh’s face with stripey headgear. It’s so surreal the way it just sits there, apparently guarding the pyramids which perch on the limestone plateau just behind it. 
I got a chance to make a quick sketch, but sadly the time at this monument was way too short so I had to rush it. I got a bit annoyed with the enthusiastic traders who tried to sell me souvenir tat as I drew. Couldn’t they see I was busy? Anyway this is what I finished with:
Photos: Moth Clark and Tarek Ahmed
shopping basket
