Medway & Bucks

It's been a few weeks since I've had a serious stone-chasing trip. This week was no exception. However, our various travels did afford an opportunity to meet some old friends on Saturday in the form of the Medway sites.

We wandered across the Thames and into the navigational black hole that is South London. Somehow, some way, we emerged near Croydon unscathed by the journey and with our passporst intact. Being gluttons for punishment we headed back in toward Beckenham to feed Mikki's retail leanings. After this came a bit more wandering, trying to rely on my unerring navigational ability, which sadly found us near another of her preferred outlets in the lovely village of Shoreham.

But at least I knew where I was now. We headed off down the A20 and were soon passing the bulk of Oldbury Camp, towards Addington, with Coldrum off to our left. My objective today, if I were to admit having one, was to finally see the Coffin Stone.

I looped up through Aylesford then off toward Eccles before heading back across toward Kits Coty and the area known as Great Tottington. Whilst in the area, I also visited the Countless Stones and Kit's Coty, just to say hello again.

About 25 yards south of the Countless Stones is a turn off. I precariously parked here and crossed the road to an entrance to a bridleway to see if I could see the Coffin Stone in it's field. Luckily, the crop had been harvested, and the stone(s) stood proud of the field, in full sight. I didn't approach the stones on this ocassion, being contented enough just to see them, and not wanting to encroach on what is obviously a cropping field. A couple of hundred yards further south is an entrance to Great Tottington Farm. I may ask here next time for permission to actually visit the stones.

There is also supposedly a circle, or ruined circle of stones (The Tottington Sarsens) at the head of the stream on the farm. It would be interesting to see if anything remains of this site/monument.

We then popped into Rochester to browse the bookshops there and have a bite to eat before heading home. Baggins books has a good selection of archaeological books, but they don't discount, even for bulk purchases, so I left empty handed.

On Sunday, we headed up toward Whipsnade and checked out the Tree Cathedral, which was very peaceful and had a wonderful atmosphere about it for a couple of pagans like us, even if it is laid out in the form of a mediaeval Christian Cathedral. The chancel would be ideal for our handfasting...

From there, we headed off (the Whipsnade Lion could do with a good scouring!) past the car park for Ivinghoe Beacon and made our way across country, roughly following parallel to the route of the Icknield Way to Aston Clinton. From here, it was a short drive down country lanes to take a look at Cholesbury Camp, an interesting site, where one quarter of the fortifications have been taken away to build a small housing estate, and a church resides in the fort itself.

Finally, the call of food won us over and we headed for Berkhamstead for a meal before, once again, heading for home.Only three weeks before we hit Cornwall again...

Pottering about for new sites

I've been particularly taken with the MAGIC web site just recently. Whenever Mikki wants to go to a new shop now, Magic is my first port of call. Many of the Scheduled Monuments on there are out of our timeframe, but there are occassional goodies that pop up. This weekend was a Glocs and Oxon weekend again, so I checked out the site as usual. I *think* I've seen most of the major Oxon sites now, though there is always new stuff to see.

I decided on three potentially easy sites, Lad Barrow, New Street Stone and the Burnt Hill Dolmen for this week's excursion.

So off to Glocs, and after some heavy retail therapy I checked the map. We were very close to Barrow Elm barrow, just outside of Hatherop, so I checked there first. Very little to see, and so damaged/unrecognisable that I didn't feel it was worth adding to TMA. So we made our way up to Lad Barrow.

Not much to see, to be honest.

Parked at the bottom of the hill, there's a parking area at the junction with the main road. Pleasant enough walk up the hill (the road is marked as no through route for motor vehicles) - very quiet, even the traffic noise was negligable, so very peaceful.

If you walk up the road and reach the pylons, you passed the barrow. It's in a field to the left - no obvious way in and it's in the middle of a cultivated field so I didn't trespass to get to it at all. All that can be seen is an uncultivated 'lump', although there are apparently a couple of possible entrance stones to be seen.

There are good views all around. 2-300 yards difference in the location and it would be a different story though.

After the brisk walk up the hill, lunchtime beckoned, so we worked our way up toward Stow and Chipping Norton. Burford and Stow were both officially FULL - nowhere to park at all in either town, so we continued up toward Chastleton to search (unsuccessfully) for the Burnt Hill Dolmen.

The EH Monuments record describes the site thus:

The site lies on a gentle south east facing slope at the north east corner of a small wood.The portal dolmen has one large upright and one adjacent inclined stone, together with a number of smaller stones on the northern side of a roughly square depression which measures 3m across and 0.2m deep. The upright limestone block measures 1.54m long, 0.72m thick and stands 0.94m high above the present ground level. The inclined stone immediately to the east measures 1m long, c.1m wide and 0.5m thick. Surrounding the central depression is a circular bank of small stones which measures c.10m in overall diameter. The bank is 2m wide and stands 0.4m high to the south.

I could see two possible candidates for the 'small wood', but couldn't find a way through the hedge from the road (which is a bit of a racetrack!) I'll have to leave this for someone more local to investigate further.There is also a possible Long Barrow in the same vicinity, which is close to Chastleton Barrow Fort and the Goose Stones, so lots of evidence for this being an important centre at one time.

Heading for Chipping and our usual ports of call there - the New Mill Cafe, and the Old Bookshop, we briefly paid our respects to the New Street Stone which was just around the corner, then had a wonderful lunch and bought several books.

It's almost totally hidden and you wouldn't know it was there unless you were specifically looking for it.

"You didn't see me, right?"

To finish the day off, we headed for Jane's abode. A wonderful afternoon of stones chat ensued, with Jane, her partner and the additional bonus of Treaclechops(!) before finally heading off home.