Implied Cosmologies

Dartmoor, 2024 Ten feet of mildly phallic menhir that guards, or points the way, to the north-western Dartmoor monuments, sometimes called the Shoveldown complex. And some even bigger knob has graffitied it. 

Dartmoor, 2024 This is a local speciality, and there are dozens of them on Dartmoor, Parade grounds for somebody, at some point. Possibly connected several of these monuments together. Also used by local cattle as scratching posts. Also used to make terrible ‘Stone Row-ses’ jokes to distract us when our feet hurt and we’d run out of Fanta. There were probably many more, they have been broken up or sunk into the peat. They don’t appear to be lined up astronomically, and most are associated with a cairn or burial. Why? You tell me. 

Busy setting, near a burbling river and, has a chaotic, familial feel, situated squarely on a natural pathway (it’s a notable feature of stone circles that they often seem to be on the way to somewhere, rather than a destination in themselves). The flatter, softer, topographic megaliths of most Dartmoor circles are here mostly jagged teeth. There were once many more stones. What it is now was is not what it was in the Bronze Age. What was it then? I don’t know. 

Not far from the Greywethers, this circle was only discovered in 2007. This seems ridiculous. How could you miss one, even recumbent? When you get here, and see the endless sweeps of moorland and the thick grass, ferns and heather that blanket the peat for miles in all directions, you realise why. Apparently found after a moorland fire, this is now recognised as the highest stone circle in southern England, You could lose a lot of things here. It may have been here for 4000 years, but we only find it because of Google Maps, where someone has handily dropped a pin. A single, leaning stone ponts the way: at the moment, we are on sodden, marshy, miserable ground, you literally leap from stone to stone with pools in between. In some settings, the stone has sunk into the ground, leaving an odd, grave-like hole. The stones you can see are grand, flat orthostats, quite similar to the GreyWethers.  It was once something very beautiful, and sited spectacularly, now it is asleep and quiescent. Ozymandias time. The rolling moor stretches far away. 

The most obvious question is ‘why two?’ Building just one would be a pain in the arse, so somebody must have had a bloody good reason for doing two. One of the finer antiquarian websites pontificates about the GreyWethers like this: “Could the fact that they stand on an almost north-south axis be important, or was it that the two valleys on either side marked an ancient trackway or trade route with each valley belonging to separate family or tribal group? Did they form the separate meeting place for men and women before some kind of wedding ceremony, perhaps on Sittaford Tor, or were they a place where the recently deceased passed from the land of the living in one circle to the realm of the ancestors in the other? This is a site that poses many more questions than it answers.”  Yep.

You see and feel the desire to make a permanent record, as well as a connection to place and landscape which is often overlooked. The more I go and visit this stuff and read about it, the less I think that these things are driven by some kind of Spinal Tap-esque Druidic or mystical impulses, and more by things which are very, very human. 

Yellowmead Down quadruple stone circle Dartmoor, 2024 We can only find what there is to be found. While stone survives, sadly wood and bone doesn’t. In the shadow of the slightly boringly named Sheep’s Tor, just above a valley. You get a package deal of not one, but four concentric stone circles, their flat sides all reflecting towards the central space, six metres wide. The less monumental proportions leave a bit more room for people. It appears to be designed to keep something in, to reflect and concentrate. If other circles appear to mirror, in some way, the surrounding landscape and our perception of that landscape, Yellowmead feels like less about timeless or mystical aesthetic considerations and more about the here and now. Something happening that needed all the power the group could muster up. You don’t need to believe in earth energies (and I don’t) to see why doing things here would matter slightly more than elsewhere. 

Down Tor stone row & cairn circle Dartmoor, 2024 Featuring that most Dartmoor-y of megalithic statements; the stone row, this one a dragon’s tail of 157 stones, leading over a thousand feet west. This one is a single row, more common are the double rows, perhaps six feet wide. There are triples, too. This one leads to a cairn, or maybe a burial circle. It’s a problem of definition. If circles imply a static viewpoint, rows imply movement and procession. If a circle is a place to contemplate, a row is a place to parade, to approach. This is one of the more spectacular rows, with the stones getting bigger leading up to an absolutely beautiful carved megalith, and tipping upwards into the distance. As is usual, it sits in a spot within site of landmarks and higher hills (you tend to find megalithic things on higher ground, but not the highest in the area – they’re not on top of hills). It may have commemorated somebody. It’s quite the statement. Why wouldn’t you. There’s no Druidic dragging of Preselli bluestones hundreds of miles like that nonsense on Salisbury Plain, there’s bloody rocks lying around everywhere. We’re giving him or her the sendoff they deserve. Right here. 

Avebury Neolithic henge monument Wiltshire, 2019 Antiquarian John Aubrey said this about Avebury : "it does as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge as a Cathedral doeth a parish church". It doesn't matter how many times you go. There's always more to gather. A genuine place of magic.

Am increasingly thinking there’s less mystery about these things and that their construction and use can be explained by more human and less esoteric and religious impulses. But we don’t know, and we never will. It’s a piece of mark-making that mattered hugely once, and has essentially time-travelled through to today. Megalithic Britain is an indelible reminder of collective effort, of art, of magical thinking, of community. No wonder so many of them have been destroyed.

But with all the people and the kids comes noise. That’s OK too, but the invitation here is towards the sublime. The reverent. The quiet. It’s trickier to appreciate what Wordsworth must have when some kid is running past you watching loud videos on his phone. People leave witchy and sentimental tat there and stuff, in a desperate search for meaning. I get it. Completely.

Both of these monuments, even more than most of these things, are both a part of and a human interpretation of the landscape. When you read about some tosser architect and how they are using local materials and making sure that what they are doing is harmonious with the local environment, you can feel smug in knowing someone was doing exactly the same thing 5000 years ago.

Nine Stones Close stone circle Derbyshire, 2024 One of the largest stone circles in Derbyshire. Other stones nearby seem likely to have once been part of the circle, but there's only four standing, and indeed, a total of nine stones have never actually been recorded by antiquarians. Just one of those names. Seems to be related to the nearby rock outcrop Robin Hood's Stride, one of several interesting natural features in among a rich seam of standing stones in this stretch of the Peaks.

Nine Stones Close stone circle Derbyshire, 2024

Nine Stones Close stone circle Derbyshire, 2024

It’s mildly annoying, but I understand it in the desperate search for ritual and meaning, and in the turnover of function which all these places must have experienced – combined of course, with the fact that people are awful.