Wading through the wet bracken, we knew, would be worth it, for on the other side of the green fronds there is a stone…and it is something a bit different, in more ways than one. Several examples of Neolithic rock art, or petroglyphs, have been found on this part of the moor. One we have yet to locate, another, found during the excavation of a cairn, has been moved to the museum in Sheffield, and one… a huge, earthfast boulder… remains where it was found. But all is not what it seems.
Gardom’s Edge carved stone.
The stone, one of the best we have yet to see in the area, was discovered in the 1960s, but it was soon noted that the carvings were rapidly deteriorating. This, sadly, is the case for many of the remaining petroglyphs that have withstood natural weathering for thousands of years, only to be almost…
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Helen continues her journal of her first weekend with the Silent Eye…
This is the continued story of my weekend away with The Silent Eye. For the first instalment, please click here.
We left The Fox House in a small convoy of cars, heading towards Carl Wark. It’s a Neolithic site, designated a hill fort despite the fact it is like no other hill fort in the area. As we left the cars and started along the trail, we passed between two large stones. Though they were set far back from the path, they nonetheless felt to me as though they marked a gateway of sorts, the beginning of a path.
As we walked the curving path, talking among ourselves, the landscape opened up. To the right the stone was tumbled and jagged, evidence of more recent human activity, blasting into the natural rock for building materials. It felt unnatural, like a scar on the landscape when compared to the sweeping…
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A little over two weeks ago I headed north for a three-day weekend with The Silent Eye, to be spent exploring Neolithic sites and ancient monuments in the Peak District. I travelled alone, meeting most of the group for the first time. And it was… intense. A heady mix of good company, wonderful scenery, and powerful landscapes. I had some interesting experiences – whether they can be ascribed to an over-active imagination, or something else, is unclear. It’s going to take me a few blog posts to write the story of the weekend, and I’ll try to explain things as best I can…
The adventure started early Friday with a train journey into London, then north to Manchester, where I would catch a regional train into the peak district. This was kind of a big deal for me – it had been a long while since I’d had any…
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Sue’s photo-journal of Circles of Time continues…
We had brought the group here for just two stones. Nothing as visually spectacular as the wonderful dolmens we had seen in Wales, but to a quiet, green glade that always feels as if it is waiting and where a single standing stone rises like the gnomon of a sundial from the earth. If you saw only a picture, you would be forgiven for questioning whether or not it was a real standing stone or just an erratic, dumped there by some passing glacier in millennia past. If you walk into its presence, you have no doubt.
Even so, it is good that for those who demand scientific evidence, there is also the archaeological report of this vast Bronze Age site. We’d had no idea when we had first visited how wide the site might be, or what had been found there. Nevertheless, we had recognised this and many of…
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And a heads up on a new book by Stuart and Sue
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And Stuart’s slightly more ‘at an angle’ take…
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Sue’s journal of the Circles of Time weekend continues…
We’d cancelled sunrise. Not literally, you understand, but what with our company, for once, being lodged across a swathe of miles and the weather being singularly uncooperative, it seemed unfair to drag everyone from their beds at some ungodly hour just to get wet and see nothing. It was, therefore, a rested and well-breakfasted company that gathered for the short trip to our next ancient site.
Only two of us had visited the site before. We had found it quite by accident whilst on the track of the infamous wandering stone which, although it remains stubbornly lost, has a habit of revealing wonderful places as you follow its trail. We had come back in winter with author Graeme Cumming and his partner… and more recently to check the site before the workshop when we had been thoroughly drenched by unseasonal rain that had filled my boots until I squelched with…
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In response to Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt.
All the Darkness – #writephoto
What the hell, he muttered. And it was the equinox, after all.
He’d thought that he would give this one a miss; but then came the drive to his mother’s house and the usual time-slip as the joys and labours of caring took far more time than they should.
Sometimes, he would drive the first part of the way home to Cumbria on the A-roads, swooping over the moors with his favourite rock tunes playing, reliving his youthful days when they all used to come up here, laughing and joking in two beat up old Minis on the way to the pub.
Sometimes, he’d do it for them, just to send a flash of a loving and remembered message. He’d lost touch with most of them. He suspected a couple were dead. Life just did that – passed though at light-speed, convincing you, for a while, that you had the star role, and then dumping you, staggered and gasping for air, at some lay-by as you watched the young-bloods race past on the moorland roads over which you used to be the man.
Which is probably how he ended up, parked at forty-five degrees to the norm, looking up at the little town’s welcome sign with the old beacon in the background, wondering…
Forty five degrees to the norm, he thought, looking out of the car at the crooked view. That would be a good name for a club of the old vets–those that were left. See, he thought loudly, calling them. I’ll start it off, from here, right now… Something creatively stupid, in a wonderful way, four times a year.. and today’s the Equinox!
The bag from the weekend was in the boot of the car. He had everything he needed…
Up above, there was an old road. It didn’t go anywhere but the ruined gardens near to top of the hill. But that was close enough; and that wasn’t really the top of the hill. Right on the top – and the reason the town had a model, below – was a Beacon Point from the English Civil War, far back in time when the Royalists, who had support and strongholds in these parts, needed to alert each other to the approach of Cromwell’s feared Roundheads. The sixteen-forties were a dangerous time, and the blazing fires, strategically placed on such hills, formed a chain of both warning and defiance.
Defiance, he thought, twenty minutes later, and beginning to sweat, as he forced his legs to push him, ever faster, up the hill. Used to cycle up here as a lad. Didn’t get out of puff, then.. come on, bloody limbs, work faster, he said, gasping and laughing at the image of the abandoned and warm, white car, far below. Late enough, already, he chortled, breathless. What’s another forty-five minutes…
The old stone tower that marked the site of the Beacon was waiting in the gloom. Thankfully, no-one else was around. Me, mate; how you been? he said, breathless, resting his hands on the Millstone Grit, not letting himself rest, but seeking the old toe-holds that were known to very few. A tingle ran up his spine as he found that most of them were still there. Not really vandalism, he rationalised, out loud, choking for breath. We didn’t tell anyone else, did we!
Hope you’re watching, Tank, Chanie, Huckie, Barlow, Cloughie, he said as he lit the flame. This is for you…
Once he’d done it, he sat for a time looking down at his handiwork, marvelling at the mild night.
His shoes were damned near ruined by the time he scraped down the stone face and jumped back onto the muddy grass.
It took him a lot less time to get back down to the car. He didn’t look back – not then. Still sweating from his exertions, he calmed himself before starting the engine and driving over the dark road with the thousand potholes that prevented most drivers from using the old high route that went nowhere… nowhere but the Beacon and the top of the derelict gardens.
Soon, he was back in the little town and turning off the main road to park, this time deliberately, at the sign of the Beacon, at forty-five degrees to the norm. He didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see his folly written in darkness.
When he did, he swore with delight. Bloody hell! Who’d have thought, he whispered to the windscreen. Tears formed in his eyes as he stared at the tiny, distant, flickering light of the single candle he had placed and lit, jammed into a gap of the small tower’s crenellations.
All the darkness in the world… and I can still see you…
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©Copyright Stephen Tanham, 2016.
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It is difficult to describe the feeling when we arrived at ‘our’ stone circle. The last time we had been there, we had spent hours in the landscape, just sitting and absorbing the feel and the vibrant serenity of the place. Looking at the devastation we found when we arrived to check the site prior to the workshop, it was as if that previous visit had been in a different time-frame altogether… as if centuries, rather than months, had slowly eroded the memory of joy and left the site bereft of presence. Or as if the hours we had spent had been passed in some ‘otherwhere’ that took no account of the passing of time.
It is even more difficult to describe why it should be so. The stones, small and typical of Derbyshire’s circles, are always half buried in the grass. The reeds that have begun to invade the…
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‘Earth’s-Pyre’…
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‘Hearth’s-Fire’…
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‘Heart’s-Higher’…
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‘March of Time’…
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‘Oracle-Stone’…
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Sun in Gemini 
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