Rollright Stones
We accidentally stumbled across the Rollright Stones 2 days before we had planned to see them! We were on our long weekend away in the general area and were trying to make our way to Gloucester Services for some lunch from wherever we were, only we were forced to take a diversion and this diversion led us here. We didn't realise until we drove past, then we double took, turned around, and braced the freezing winds to take a closer look at these legendary cursed stones.
This is a megalithic monument, although technically it is three megalithic monuments, which stand on the boundary between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. Although each set of stones are obviously connected, they are all from different periods. Much like Kit's Coty House, The Countless Stones, and even Nympsfield Long Barrow, the Rollright Stones are Neolithic burial chambers, or at least part of it is.
The oldest set is the Whispering Knights which dates back to the early Neolithic period and is the remains of a Portal Dolmen which is basically what Kit's Coty House looks like, it's just the capstone looks to have collapsed at some point making a 5th standing stone.
You then have the King's Men which is the stone circle which came in the late Neolithic period. There are seventy seven stones that we understand would originally have formed a perfect circle-barrier as all the stones would have been touching but have grown apart with age.
Now the King's Stone is actually the youngest stone here and is a monolith as it is the single stone in this part of the set. This one dates to the Bronze Age, but only just.
All three sets of stones are made of Jurassic Oolitic Limestone which can be found on the Cotswold hills so we know that they were all formed well within the area unlike Stonehenge. The professionals have already noted that there had been human activity at the site prior to the stones being set, but obviously the majority of finds date to the settlements that erected these stones. However, different things were found around each stone. The King Stone when excavated revealed snapped flint bladelets and a broke arrowhead, all discarded as rubbish as otherwise they'd have been reused. You can tell this from the lack of joins to the flint apparently. They also found a cremation that had been marked by an upright post close to the King Stone and then the 18th century brought a discovery of a small barrow to the north west of this stone which was later destroyed by a plough. When they excavated in the 1980s they found several human cremation deposits and a 'tunnel' cremation that had been marked by a large rectangular post. This unusual cremation was a mixture of cremated bone and charcoal in a small cave like hole that had been hollowed out of the side of a rock pit. This was then blocked by another stone and the post placed in the pit. To the west of the King Stone it was found that a new agricultural settlement had been established due to the pottery found.
The Whispering Knights is not a long barrow, but it is a circular burial cairn. It was a natural knoll that the settlement seemed to have taken advantage of. While the central chamber has never been investigated it as been found that there was secondary cremations on top of the cairn and a child's tooth survived cremation and was found.
Saxon Cemetery and Meeting Place
Prehistoric monuments were often recognised as special places by pagan Saxon
communities who settled in Britain after the Roman period. Rollright was no
exception. In the mid 19th century stone quarrying near the Stones revealed typical
grave goods of an early Saxon cemetery, c. 700 AD, including a cremation urn,
beads and a bracelet. In 2015 further finds were made. Excavation revealed the
burial of a young woman in her twenties (see left) with some exceptional grav
e goods, including a long-handled bronze pan and traces of a wooden box with
silver mounts. She is likely to have been an important person in the community.
The cemetery is at the junction of what later became three parishes, typically
reflecting the importance of such boundary locations — especially in the vicinity
of ancient sites. It is likely that the Stones themselves were once again an important
meeting place.
Little Rollright, the parish in which the Stones are located, is first mentioned in
the Domesday Book (AD 1086) when it was valued at £5 and was held by Columba
the Monk under the tenancy-in-chief of the Bishop of Lincoln. At that time there
were 12 villagers, 3 smallholders and 2 slaves. There was land for 6 ploughs and
25 acres of meadow.
The Rollright Stones themselves are first referred to in a late 12th century account
of the Wonders of Britain, which says “In the region of Oxfordshire there are great
stones disposed as if by the hand of man. But at what time, or by what people, or
for what memorial or significance this was done is not known. However that place
is called Rollendrich by the local people."
Medieval and Later History
Later in the middle ages Little Rollright became one of the farming estates of
Eynsham Abbey, which relied on it for income. In common with many Cotswold
landowners in the late 15th century, the Abbey saw sheep farming as the way to
make money. In the decade 1496 to 1505 400 acres of arable were enclosed and
converted to pasture with the loss of five village landholdings and the eviction of
36 people. In effect the village was all but deserted and it never recovered as a
settlement.
The boom in the wool trade did not last, and by the 17th century (the date of the
first detailed map of the estate) a balance had been restored between arable on
the well-drained hillside, pasture on the lower slopes below the spring-line and
meadow on the valley floor.
Other important features of the manorial economy were a series of triangular
fishponds, a water mill and a windmill which stood close to the Stones. This was
a post mill and is shown on late 16th century tapestry maps of the surrounding
counties, commissioned by Ralph Sheldon, which is also the earliest depiction of
the stones. It is also shown in the first published drawing of the Stones in William
Camden’s Britannia (1607). But by the time of the first estate map in the later 17th
century the windmill had been moved and the field by the Stones is called ‘Old
Windmill Hill.’
The very big fields created by Eynsham Abbey were subdivided in the 18th and
19th century, and the open common land of Long Compton on the other side of
the road was enclosed for the first time. Together these changes created the
structure of the fields and hedges that we see today, only the Stones themselves
remaining unchanged.
In the mid 19th century a group of larches was planted within the King's Men
stone circle which lasted till the second world war. They were replaced by the
two copses either side of the stone circle that survive today.
Royal Signals and Anti-invasion Defence
The prominent location of the Stones on the crest of the Cotswolds means that
the site is a good vantage point to see in all directions. During the Second World
War a Royal Signals Corps post was sited on the natural rise by the King Stone to
watch for enemy aircraft. In order to obtain a clear 360 degree view the ring of
very large larches in the Stone circle was felled. During the Cold War the post was
still relevant to Britain’s defences, and what had been a simple hut with a telephone
connection became an early warning post with a subterranean chamber. The bunker
was decommissioned and capped off in 1992. All surface remains were removed
but remains of the concrete access shaft are visible nearby.
This ceremonial stone circle was erected around 2,500BC. At present there are
seventy-odd stones of heavily weathered local oolitic limestone (see Geology) set
in a rather irregular ring about 31m across. They were poetically described by
William Stukeley as being “corroded like worm eaten wood, by the harsh Jaws of
Time”; they were said to make “a very noble, rustic, sight, and strike an odd terror
upon the spectators, and admiration at the design of ‘em”. More recently, Aubrey
Burl called them “seventy-seven stones, stumps and lumps of leprous limestone”.
The number of stones has changed over the years. Legends refer to stones having
been taken away (to make bridges and the like), and it is likely that this created
most of the gaps now visible. The stones are famously uncountable, but originally
may have numbered about 105 standing shoulder to shoulder. At the time the
Stones were first protected as an ancient monument (1883) the owner was reported
to have “replaced all the fallen stones in their original foundation.” In fact the
restoration was far from exact: most of the stones that are known to have been
standing in their present positions since the 17th century show that it was originally
built as an accurate circle.
The form of the stones
Two stones immediately outside the ring (one fallen) mark the portalled entrance
to the circle opposite the tallest stone. The Stones stand in a very low bank with a
wide gap on the same side as the entrance, possibly resulting from the interior being
levelled.
This form of design with close-set stones, a portalled entrance and levelled interior
is very characteristic of stone circles in the Lake District – such as Long Meg and
her Daughters near Penrith, and, even more similar, Castlerigg near Keswick, and
Swinside north of Ulverston. There are also a few in eastern Ireland. It is therefore
likely that the people who built the King's Men came from one of those areas.
When they felt the need to build a stone circle for ceremonial gatherings, they
designed it to be in the architectural form that was most familiar to them.
Events are regularly held
for the summer and winter
solstices and other seasonal festivals. The site has been used to exhibit modern
sculptures, including Anish Kapoor’s Turning the World Inside Out, and for drama
productions, notably Mark Rylance’s production of The Tempest (1992).
The Stones are also regularly used for private wedding and naming ceremonies
and other celebrations.
The site is a Dark Sky Discovery Site and is regularly used as a field observatory
by the Chipping Norton Amateur Astronomy Group. The Stones have been used
as a location for a wide variety of TV drama and documentary films, from Dr Who
to Stargazing Live. In recent years the monuments have come to be valued by
local primary schools as an outdoor learning resource.
Downloads
The origins of the name
The origin of the name ‘Rollright’ is somewhat uncertain. One interpretation is that
it is derived from the Old English ‘Hrolla’+ ‘landriht’, the land-right or property of Hrolla. Old English is the earliest historical form of the English language brought to England by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century.
Another theory is that it is derived from an even older Celtic language ‘rod’ + ‘land’ + ‘ricc’ meaning the ‘ricc’ (groove, gorge or steep valley) by the ‘rodland’ (wheel arena) – i.e. the stone circle.
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