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Tuesday 11th July. This was the day the weather
changed with a vengeance. No more jackets !
Maggi's friend had told her about this lesser-known
stone circle close to
where she lives. I kept wanting
to call it The Rolling Stones. There is a
similarity... both are equally ancient !
The History
pages are particularly interesting,
and here's an intriguing account of a
Samhain celebration at Rollright.
The King's Men form a
perfect circle 104 feet (38 Druid's Cubits or megalithic yards)
across and stand on a prehistoric trackway at the edge of a ridge.
The hill falls steeply away to the north towards the village of
Long Compton which, in days gone by (and maybe even today), was a
stronghold of witches.
At present there are 77 stones of heavily weathered local oolitic
limestone, which were poetically described by William Stukeley as
being "corroded like worm eaten wood, by the harsh Jaws of
Time", which made "a very noble, rustic, sight, and
strike an odd terror upon the spectators, and admiration at the
design of 'em".
Aubrey Burl has, in a more down to earth way, called the
Rollrights "seventy-seven stones, stumps and lumps of leprous
limestone". This number seems to have altered considerably
over the years - drawings from the tail-end of the 19th century,
just before the Stones were scheduled under the 1882 Ancient
Monuments Protection Act along with Stonehenge and Avebury, show
about 25 stones in the Circle. "In the year 1882 the
proprietor of Little Rollright replaced all the fallen stones in
their original foundation."
The Rollright Stone Circle is the southerly cousin of the Cumbrian
circles such as Swinside and Long Meg and her Daughters in the
English Lake District. Family traits include similar size, shape,
close-set stones (it is believed that there originally some 105
stones standing shoulder to shoulder), astronomically-aligned
entrance and a pair of outlying portals where gates were hung to
stop the sheep from straying into the road.
Borrowed
from The
Rollright Stones |
You need to imagine you're standing inside the circle in this series of
pics.
Bill took this one
looking back on the entire circle afterwards.
He also took these
next two. The big stone on the left reminded me of a one-eyed frog.
Maggi's friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, was standing between us
in this one,
so I performed a little Photoshop magic :o)
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