The Rollright Stones

The Rollright Stones are situated on the Warwickshire-Oxfordshire border, at a sacred site, on a hilltop, above the Warwickshire village of Long Compton.

The Rollright Stones were erected between 2500-2000BC. There is also evidence of some other settlements in Warwickshire at that time, from pottery discovered between Warwick and Coventry. The stone monuments at Rollright and their nearby burial chambers,
are characteristic of some Neolithic peoples, who had sophisticated beliefs about the afterlife.

We sometimes think of British history as beginning with the Roman conquest, and many history books begin around 100 BC. But these monuments were already 2000 years old then. They stretch back over an immense span of time, as far back again as the Roman conquest is from us.

The Rollright Stones is a group of 3 separate stone monuments, within a few hundred yards of each other. The monuments are all constructed from large pieces of local Cotswold limestone.

The King's Men
The most extensive monument is a ceremonial stone circle known as the King's Men. This is a ring of 77 stones, about 100 feet in diameter. The stone circle is currently surrounded by a slightly wooded glade of fir trees.

The trees around the stone circle are open on the Eastern side, allowing a view to the horizon. The rising of the Sun and, more importantly, the Moon, had special meanings to some ancient peoples. From one spiritual perspective they symbolised the resurrection of their King. That idea may have had greater importance for the society, and a deeper meaning, than it does today.

The King Stone

About 100 yards from the King's Men, across a road, and overlooking the village of Long Compton, is a single large upright stone, the King Stone.   The stone was erected beside a long barrow, an ancient burial mound, which was built on the top of the hill.  We also walked down the road to look at the Whispering Knights. 

The Whispering Knights
About 400 yards from the King's Men, in a location that doesn't seem to have any special significance today, is a group of 5 large stones, known as the Whispering Knights.


The Whispering Knights formed a Neolithic burial chamber, a long barrow. These stones were originally erected in an arch-like structure, the stones forming walls, with a roof slab. The structure was then covered with earth to form a chamber inside a long barrow. Over the course of millennia, the chamber has been looted, the soil removed, and the stone structure has collapsed.

What Does It Mean?
You may wonder about comparisons with other ancient stone monuments, Stonehenge and maybe Egypt, which were also built at roughly the same time, and may have been built for similar enigmatic religious purposes. What did these people believe, and how did they arrive at their beliefs? Were similar beliefs universal, and how did they come to be that way? We may never know.

THE STORY OF THE STONES

At times the Rollright Stone Circle radiates a feeling of timelessness and exudes an atmosphere of mystery and magic.  This feeling is enhanced by the folklore, myth and tales of strange goings-on associated with the Stones.

Many Stone Circles and standing stones in the British Isles are said to be the stony images of impious revellers petrified by the hand of either God or the Devil for wickedly dancing and fiddling (or picking turnips) on the Sabbath. These legends may have originated at a time when Christianity was struggling to win over (or frighten) the hearts and minds of the largely pagan populace, or they could date from the righteous maelstrom created by the Puritans.

The Rollright stone story is somewhat different.  It was first put into print by Camden in 1586 and since then the tale has become considerably more elaborate.

Turned Into Stone

A King with ambitions to conquer all of England had got as far as the Rollrights when up popped a witch. According to some accounts she was Mother Shipton of Shipton-under-Wychwood (c.1488-1551). She challenged the King with these words -

"Seven long strides shalt thou take And if Long Compton thou canst see, King of England thou shalt be."

Off went the King, shouting -

"Stick, stock, stone As King of England I shall be known."

On his seventh stride the ground rose up before him in a long mound sometimes known as the Arch-Druid's barrow. The witch laughed and declared -

"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."

And so it was that the King became the King Stone, his men the King's Men Stone Circle, and his treacherous and conniving knights the Whispering Knights, although some say that the knights were actually at prayer.

Tradition has it that one day the spell will be broken. The King and his men will return to life and continue with their conquest of England. (Unless they meet another witch).

What the unfortunate King had done to incur the wrath of Mother Shipton is not known. Even less clear is why the witch should have turned herself into an elder tree - maybe she was keeping an eye on the victims of her magic. The witch-elder is said to be in a hedge between the King Stone and the Stone Circle, and if cut when in blossom it will bleed. Once upon a time people would gather round the King Stone on Midsummer's Eve - when the elder was cut the King would move his head.

Drinking and Dancing with the Stones

Mother Shipton's spell is temporarily broken at midnight when the King's Men come back to life and, joining hands, they dance in a circle. Also at the witching hour the Stones go down the hill to drink at a spring at Little Rollright spinney, although the King only goes when he hears the Long Compton clock striking twelve.

Anyone witnessing these scenes will either go mad or die. Tales of madness or death must have been very useful to people (witches or otherwise) who wanted to keep prying eyes away from the Stones, in much the same way that Cornish smugglers used to spread gruesome ghost stories.

There are also stories about the consequences of moving or damaging the Stones. A man from Banbury took a chipping from one of the stones - on returning to his cart he found that the wheels were solidly locked. A young soldier took a chip with him to India where he promptly died of typhus.

A farmer from Little Rollright is said to have removed the capstone of the Whispering Knights to build a bridge across the stream. It took a score of horses (and the death of two men) to drag the stone down the hill. Strange and eery noises gave the farmer no peace -
every morning the stone had turned over and lay on the bank. The farmer finally decided that enough was enough and that he had to take the stone back. With the greatest of ease one horse pulled the stone back up the hill.

Counting the Countless Stones

Legend has it that it is impossible to count the King's Men. A baker swore he could count them and and to prove it he baked a number of loaves. He placed one on each of the stones, but each time he tried to tally them up some of the loaves were missing, spirited away either by the Devil or by faeries. It is said that - The man will never live who shall count the stones three times and find the number the same each time.

In complete contrast it is also said that anyone who thrice counts the same number will have their heart's desire fulfilled.

Even to this day it it genuinely difficult to count the Stones, and modern accounts seem to vary in the numbers they give, especially as it is not known exactly which of the Stones are original.

Faeries

Underneath the King Stone and the King's Men there are caves which are the haunt of the faeries, or little folk. At midnight the faeries come out of a hole in a bank and dance around
the Stones by the light of the moon - if the hole is blocked up with a flat stone it will have been turned over by the time the morning sun rises. At other sites across the country where faeries are said to live there are reports of people disappearing into faerie holes for what seems like many years. When they re-emerge, however, they find that they have only been gone for a matter of hours. Tradition has it that it is good luck to leave a small gift for the faeries, who could well be a lingering memory of pagan deities.

We heard a story recently about a four year old girl who visited the Rollrights for the first time. Although she couldn't say why, she was frightened by the atmosphere of the Stones. Since then she has had a recurring dream in which she sees a woman entering a cavern
underneath the Circle and turning into a serpent. This young girl has never been told about the faeries who live under the Stones - maybe children possess a knowledge or intuition that we lose as we grow older? Young children certainly have a wisdom that goes beyond
their years.

Witches

The Rollrights have been a traditional meeting place of witches since at least Tudor times and probably long before that, presumably because of the Stones' mysterious power and their pagan origins. One Good Friday a labourer met a farmer who asked him where he was
headed. He replied, "Why, I be a-going to the King-Stones, for there I shall be on holy ground."

Long Compton, a mile away from the Stones, has a centuries old tradition of witchcraft. Unfortunately in 1875 this led to the murder of 80 year old Anne by James Heywood, who believed that he had been bewitched by Mistress Tennant. For Heywood the fact that
his neighbour kept toads in her garden was probably ample evidence of witchcraft. He was quickly apprehended and readily confessed. He added that there were 16 witches in Long Compton and said "If I had my way, I would kill them all". At his trial he asked the judge to
weigh Anne Tennant's body against the church Bible - an old test of determining a witch. Heywood was judged to be insane and was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in Warwick jail. Still believing himself to be bewitched, Heywood refused to eat or
drink and died a few months later. What comes around, goes around.

Maybe Heywood had been influenced by the well-known local saying that "there are enough witches in Long Compton to draw a wagon-load of hay up Long Compton Hill". (Surely if they were proper witches they wouldn't have had to push?)

Fertility and Fortune Telling

The Stones, and in particular the King Stone, are supposed to have the power to promote fertility. Young women would go to the King Stone at night to touch it with their breasts. William Stukeley in 1743 related a tale of young men and maidens gathering on a certain
day of the year to "make merry with cakes and ale."

During the last century the Whispering Knights were often visited by girls and young women who would put their ears to the Stones to hear them whisper the name of their future husbands.

References:

George Lambrick "The Rollright Stones" (pamphlet) 1983
Janet and Colin Bord "Mysterious Britain" 1974 Ed.
Chris Morgan "Strange Oxford" 1987
Doreen Valiente "An ABC of Witchcraft" 1996
Mark Turner "Folklore & Mysteries of the Cotswolds" 1993

WHITE HORSE OF UFFINGTON

We then drove to The White Horse of Uffington and Uffington Castle.  Uffington Castle is a stone age hill fort and on the side of the hill, is The White Horse.   Lady Cerridwen spun around in the eye of the horse and received a wish.  I won't tell you what it was.  You will have to ask her.   It is located near The Ridgeway, a Leyline running from Beacon hill in Buckinghamshire to Overton Hill in Wiltshire.

The Ridgeway is one of Britain's most ancient highways, once a migratory route for, wild animals, then a highway for Iron-Age traders, and now a favourite footpath used by recreational walkers.  Along the way it pierces the chalk hills of the Chilterns, and there it passes near two of England's, most puzzling ancient monuments, Uffington Castle and the White Horse.

The presence of these prehistoric constructions has suggested to some researchers that this spot may once have been a tribal boundary. The 375-foot- long chalk figure, if the supposition is true, would have been a marker to warn away trespassers (although the 30-degree slope of the hill makes the figure difficult to see from the valley below), while the fort would have provided a more tangible means of repelling invaders. The fort, however, is older than the horse, and so the link between the two may be less direct. The chalk horse resembles the stylized animals found on Belgic coins used by local tribes and may have been a recognized emblem of the local inhabitants.

The disjointed, abstract figure scarcely resembles a horse, but in fact the depiction very effectively conveys a sense of elegance and motion. The figure represents the Celtic horse-god Epona, (a name from which the English word 'pony' derives) but this identification, even if certain, would still not pin down an exact date of origin for the White Horse, because the later Romans adopted the horse-god into their pantheon. Unlike the other famous chalk figures, no one seriously doubts such ancient origins for the White Horse, but the first known literary reference to it was made only in the 12th century, in the chronicles of Abingdon Abbey.

Given the passage of so much time between its creation and the first recorded description of it, it is hardly surprising that alternative explanations for the horse took root. The most entertaining of these suggests that the chalk figure does not represent a horse at all, but rather a dragon; specifically, the dragon slain by St. George. Near to the chalk figure lies a mound known as Dragon Hill, where George's heroic feat supposedly occurred. The hill, which some believe to be an artificial monument similar to Silbury Hill, is most famous for a patch of chalk on which grass reputedly will not grow because the dragon's blood spilled there.

The I7th century antiquarian, John Aubrey, attributed the White Horse to Hengist, a 5th century jute leader, 'who bore it on his arms.' Hengist and his brother Horsa, whose names mean 'gelding'and 'horse' respectively, invaded Britain in 449, and the figure would have been an appropriate symbol for either of them, but this theory is not much favoured.

Another nearby ancient monument also has links with the chalk figure, although, like the hillfort, it is not strictly contemporary. Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic barrow, is said to be the workshop of the ancient blacksmith who made the white horse's shoes. Legend has it that any traveller whose horse throws a shoe while passing through the area need only leave a coin on the barrow's capstone, and the horse will be miraculously reshod.

Uffington White Horse and Castle aore situated south of the B4507 rood, 7 mies west of Wontoge in Berkshire, Open any reasonable time. The site is managed by the National Trust. Entry is free. Parking is available.

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DRAGON HILL