The King Stone of Rollright (photo by Sir Wilson III)
If you’ve reached the impressive Rollright Stone circle, simply cross the road, go through the gate and into the field, then up the gentle slope to your right. Y’ can’t miss it! If though, by any chance, you can’t find the Rollright Stones, get to Chipping Norton and ask a local!
Archaeology & History
An integral part of the Rollright Stones complex, this gnarled almost moth-eaten-looking standing stone, whose edges were cut away for medicinal properties in earlier centuries, still awakes each morning beside the small rise in the field, long thought to have been the remains of an ancient tomb — much to the archaeologist’s opinionated disdain in bygone years. Yet they had to swallow their pride…
This is an eight-foot-tall standing stone made from the same local oolitic limestone as the King’s Men and overlooks the village of Long Compton on the northern side of the ridge. It actually stands besides an artificial mound which has been identified as a Bronze Age cairn—known in times past as the ‘Archdruid’s Barrow’— and suggested by Lambrick to date from around 1800 BCE. More recently however, the world’s leading authority on stone circles, Professor Aubrey Burl, has given the King Stone a more probable construction date of 3000 BCE. The date is consistent with other Neolithic finds in the adjacent fields. This old standing stone has suffered much down the centuries, with bits of it being chipped away to such an extent that it has been reduced to the novel shape we see today.
Looking up at the King (photo by Sir Wilson III)The King in dance
A little-known but important piece of megalithic history took place here in the 1970s and ’80s. It centred around an idea to investigation so-called “mysterious events” that are commonly reported at standing stones—and the King Stone has its own CV when it comes to such things. Curious stories have been described by people from all walks of life. Down the years, a number of people have told me of feeling some strange and powerful ‘energy’ at these places and stories of such things have filled many volumes, along with being the subject of many a folktale. So one evening in November, 1977, the then editor of The Ley Hunter, Paul Devereux, convened a meeting where twenty people from differing backgrounds gathered. At this first meeting were people from a variety of professional backgrounds: archaeologists, dowsers, chemists, biochemists, biologists, electronic engineers, geochemists, geophysicists, zoologists—and ley hunters of course. It was time, they thought, to address this issue of anomalous energies at stone circles and other ritual sites.
After some discussion about what they should call their investigations, “the long association of the dragon with some kind of earth force made it a fitting symbol.” And so, the Dragon Project (DP) was born…
On the misty morning of Saturday, 24 October, 1978, research scientist Don Robins—in the company of his dog and young son—drove the hundred miles from London to the Rollright Stones armed with a simple ultrasound detector. He didn’t know what he would find there, and his scientific training told him there shouldn’t really be anything untoward.
King Stone, looking W (photo by Sir Wilson III)Stukeley’s 1743 sketch showing the King Stone
Arriving around dawn, Robins took several background readings along some of the lanes a mile or so away and found the usual expected background levels (on a scale of 1-10, the background flickers between 0 and 1). When he eventually walked into the Rollright stone circle with his ultrasound monitor, no undue perturbations were found. He spent thirty minutes here, but at no time did he record anything other than background readings. So he crossed the road and tried the same at the King Stone—where a big surprise awaited him.
Switching on the detector he found an anomalously high reading, beating every minute or so, not unlike a heartbeat, more than five times above the background ultrasound!
“This was really peculiar,” he wrote, “in that the pattern was spread over about a minute and then commenced again after about 10 seconds, endlessly repeated.” Robins spent some time here and found that the strange ‘pulse’ wasn’t solely confined to the King Stone, but spread some distance around the old standing stone and onto the road itself.
Investigation of potential radiation anomalies was another avenue of enquiry explored by the Dragon Project, and although thousands of hours of monitoring were done at the three focal sites, there were few anomalies to write home about. Two however, were recorded in March and August, 1981, when radiation levels were twice the normal background rate for short periods of just a few minutes each. More puzzling was the finding—which can still be verified today—of radiation levels three and four times above background on the road between the circle and the King Stone.
Next on the list was an attempt to monitor the Rollright stones with infrared devices. This proved to be a potential goldmine, as there was the chance of photographic imagery. So early one morning in April, 1979, Paul Devereux readied himself at the King Stone. He took a number of photos at five minute intervals either side of sunrise. This time of day was chosen because of the repeated anomalous ultrasound emissions from the King and it was thought that this, if any, would be the best time to capture something on film.
“When the first roll of black-and-white IR film was professionally developed,” he wrote, “I was astonished to see a curious ‘glow’ effect around the King stone on the frame taken at sunrise.” His first account of it appeared in The Ley Hunter, where he described how “a hazy glow can be seen clinging to the sides and upper parts of the megalith. This glow becomes much stronger at the top of the stone where it looks like a cap of light.” Although the sun had risen, it was off to the left of picture and apparently no satisfactory explanation can be given to the effect on the plate. Research physicist Simon Hasler—who worked for Kodak—closely studied the negatives of this image and found the evidence for a simple explanation “weak.” A possible explanation of the mysterious glow was propounded by Don Robins, who suggested that an emission of microwaves from the stone may have been responsible, and although this sounds promising it has yet to be proven.
Folklore
(photo by Sir Wilson III)
Amidst the mass of modern lore, dowsed energy lines exceed here — although to be honest, most of them are little more than bullshit. Old school alignments in the form of leys that can be walked along are more credible, and one or two have been noted here. Dowser Laurence Main found a ley running between Broughton Church, “the old White Cross, the Victorian Cross and the old Bread Cross in Banbury. In the other direction the line led straight to the King Stone.” Although this line accurately links up these sites, other ‘ley points’ are utterly necessary between Broughton Church and the King Stone to give the alignment any real credibility. In a concise survey of the megalithic remains of this region made by Tom Wilson and myself, no other ley-points were found along the line.
In more traditional animist-based folklore, the creation myth here is well known. The famous, oft-repeated tale recites how a King and his men were marching across the land intent on conquering it when he came across an old hag, or witch near Rollright who offered the regal figure a magickal challenge. Some accounts name the witch as Mother Shipton—not the famous Yorkshire seer of the same name, but her less powerful (obviously!) southern counterpart. The old witch said to the King:
“Seven long strides thou shalt take, and
If Long Compton thou can’st see,
King of England thou shalt be.”
His majesty took this as a simple task and, with contempt, said to the old witch:
“Stick, stock, stone,
As King of England I shall be known.”
From where he was standing (which is never told, but presumed by most as the stone circle) the King then took seven long strides in the direction of Long Compton. As he was taking his seventh step the witch made the ground in front of him rise up, hence blocking his view of the village in the valley below. The old hag then said:
“As Long Compton thou canst not see,
King of England thou shalt not be.
Rise up, stick, and stand still, stone,
For King of England thou shalt be none;
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be
And I myself an eldern tree.”
Thereupon, the King’s men who were waiting behind their master, the five knights in the field who were said to be conspiring against his majesty, and the King himself, were all turned into stone where they stood. The elder tree that the old witch turned herself into, was said to have grown along the old boundary close to the roadside, but this can no longer be verified. The folklorist Arthur Evans described several spots where the famed elder tree was said to have grown: one in the field close to the Whispering Knights, and another in the same field as the King Stone, close by another large stone that has long since gone.
When William Stukeley visited the area in the 18th century and heard about the legendary origin of these great monoliths, he told how “the country people for some miles round are very fond of, and take it very ill if anyone doubts it,” telling later, “The people who live at Chipping Norton and all the country round our first described temple of Rowldrich affirm most constantly, and as surely believe it, that the stones composing this work are a king, his nobles, and Commons turned into stones.
Another piece of animistic lore 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 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.
A variation of the same tale was told by T.H. Ravenhill, who wrote:
The old King c.1945King Stone, c.1920
“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.”
Evans also wrote about an eighty-year-old local woman who told that her mother visited the King Stone on Midsummer’s Eve, along with many other locals, when the elder was in full bloom and they would stand in a full circle around the tall monolith. Ritual of a sort was performed then the elder tree was cut and, as it bled, “the King moved his head.” This annual rite was said to partially disempower the witch of her magickal hold over the King when her blood trickled from the tree. Some locals believed that if but a pin-prick of the witch’s blood was drawn, she would lose her power for all eternity.
Beneath both the Rollright stone circle and the King Stone, legend reputes there to be such a cavern where the little people live. In some accounts they are said to dance around the old King.
Arthur Evans told how one local man, Will Hughes, actually saw the faerie dancing round the King.
“They were little folk like girls to look at,” he said.
Old postcard, c.1910Sketch from 1904
Will’s widow, Betsy Hughes, told Evans that “when she was a girl and used to work in the hedgerows, she remembered a hole in the bank by the King Stone, from which it is said the fairies came out to dance at night. Many a time she and her playmates had placed a flat stone over the hole of an evening to keep the fairies in, but they always found it turned over next morning.” This curious entrance was a neolithic burial mound. Mark Turner described how the little people were “supposed to come out and dance around the stones by moonlight.”
As we have already seen, people used to take chippings off some of the old stones here—primarily the King—supposedly for luck, protection and good fortune. Local people used to blame Welsh workers more than anyone, but they wouldn’t be the only ones! Although those who took such chippings believed the pieces brought them luck, more often than not it was the opposite that happened. One local woman told Evans about her son who went to India as a soldier in the 19th century with a piece of the King Stone in his possession, but it did him no good whatsoever. He died of typhus! The Oxford archaeologist George Lambrick (1988) highlights in his book on the Rollright stones the extent of damage that has been done to the King Stone since 1607.
References:
Anonymous, The Rollright Stones: Theories and Legends, privately printed, n.d.
Bennett, Paul & Wilson, Tom, The Old Stones of Rollright and District, Cockley: London 1999.
Bloxham, Christine, Folklore of Oxfordshire, Tempus 2005.
Cowper, B.H., ‘Oxfordshire Legend in Stone,’ Notes & Queries (1st series), 7, January 15, 1853.
Devereux, Paul, ‘Is This the Image of the Earth Force?’ in The Ley Hunter 87, 1979.
Devereux, Paul, ‘Operation Merlin,’ in The Ley Hunter 88, 1980.
Devereux, Paul, ‘Operation Merlin 2,’ in The Ley Hunter 89, 1980.
Devereux, Paul, ‘The Third Merlin,’ in The Ley Hunter 92, 1981.
Devereux, Paul, Places of Power, Blandford: London 1990.
Devereux, Paul, The Sacred Place, Cassell: London 2000.
Evans, Arthur J., ‘The Rollright Stones,’ in Trans. Bristol & Glouc. Arch. Soc., 40, 1892.
Evans, Arthur J., ‘The Rollright Stones and their Folklore (3 parts),’ in Folklore Journal, 1895.
Lambrick, George, The Rollright Stones: The Archaeology and Folklore of the Stones and their Surroundings, Oxford Archaeology Review 1983. (Reprinted and updated in 1988.)
Michell, John, Megalithomania, Thames & Hudson: London 1982.
Pennick, Nigel & Devereux, Paul, Lines on the Landscape, Hale: London 1989.
Ravenhill, T.H., The Rollright Stones and the Men Who Erected Them, Little Rollright 1926.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SP 2946 3090
Archaeology & History
Only known drawing of Gough’s Barrow
In days of olde there were heathen sites around the edges of the beautiful Rollright Stones complex that have sadly fallen prey to the intensive agriculture of more modern ‘civilized’ times. It’s become the way of things….. One site of importance in this geomythic pantheon was the ‘Gough’s Barrow’—so named after a drawing was done of the site by Richard Gough, editor of the 1789 edition of Camden’s Britannia. As far as I’m aware, it is the only one ever done of this monument. The Oxford archaeologist George Lambrick (1988) saw “every reason to accept the position and details of the barrow”, upon which stood at least two large stones—one of which gained the description of a ‘druidical pillar.’
Stukeley’s 1743 drawing
The same barrow may have been recorded in one of drawings of the great William Stukeley, who visited the Rollright Stones in 1710 and then again in 1723. On the left-side of the adjacent drawing you can see a denuded mound close to the edge of the picture, similar in shape and form to that drawn by Richard Gough. It is probably the same tumulus or barrow. Trial excavations at the site in 1983 looked for any remains of the old tomb, but nothing significant was uncovered. Lambrick estimated that the site probably measured “about 18m wide and 20m long east-west,” and “was a megalithic barrow and was therefore probably Neolithic in origin.”
References:
Bennett, Paul & Chanter, James, The Complete Rollright Stones, forthcoming
Bennett, Paul & Wilson, Tom, The Old Stones of Rollright and District, Cockley Press: Chipping Norton 1999.
Burl, Aubrey, Great Stone Circles, Yale University Press 1999.
Lambrick, George, The Rollright Stones, English Heritage 1988.
Standing Stone (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SP 257 282
Archaeology & History
We have found only one reference to this lost standing stone that could once be seen adjacent to the very well-preserved Chastleton Barrow Camp to the east of the village. In her scarce little work on the history of Chastleton House, Margaret Dickins (1900) told that,
“the oldest thing to be seen at Chastleton is the prehistoric stone, which till lately served as a field gate post on the Barrow Hill.”
This monolith was one in a series of megalithic sites in and around the village that have been destroyed due to the actions of ill-informed land-owners. In this case, the standing stone was in close association with the subsequent Iron Age encampment (this missing stone should not be confused with the nearby Goose Stones, greatly damaged).
References:
Bennett, P. & Chanter, James, The Complete Rollright Stones, forthcoming
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.
Whispering Knights, 2016
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
Whispering Knights, 1829
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 Stone).
Whispering Knights, 1841
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.”
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.
Pretty simple this one. From Chipping Norton, head west on the A44 for a coupla miles till you hit the lovely Salford village. The church stands out, so head for it and, as you walk towards the building, watch for the small stone cross in front of you.
Archaeology & History
Salford Cross cup-markings
This is curious. Very curious! We might expect to find cup-markings occasionally on some of the cross-bases or other early christian monuments in northern England and Scotland, but to find them in the heart of a small Oxfordshire village where the tradition of cup-marked stones is unknown, was something of a surprise when Tom Wilson and I (1999) found it, to say the least! But this is what we’re looking at here.
Salford Cross remains
On the remains of an old medieval cross, whose broken shaft has seen better days, as the photo shows — and as a personal viewing shows even clearer — there are 3 simple cup-markings etched on one side of the cross-base in Salford churchyard. The cups certainly aint natural, but then also they don’t have the archaic looks of the prehistoric carvings from Yorkshire to Scotland. It would be good if we had a more extensive history of the cross monument itself, perhaps saying precisely where the stones which make it up came from, but local records tell us nothing it seems. If we could ascertain that parts of it were made up of some remains taken from some local prehistoric ‘pagan’ tomb (and a number of tombs have been found in and around this area), then some sense could be thrown upon its position here. But until we can ascertain more about the history of the cross, the three clear cup-markings on the cross-base remain somewhat of a mystery.
Folklore
Lovers of ley lore will be intrigued to find this carved cross-base is on a very accurate ley linking the King Stone, Rollright stone circle, Little Rollright church (where a standing stone can be found in the walling just before it), the Salford Cross and the site of another cross on the hill outside the village.
References:
Bennett, Paul & Wilson, Tom, The Old Stones of Rollright and District, Cockley: London 1999.
