It all began for me in late 98-browsing the shelves at the Virgin Megastore, my eye was caught by this large hardback book, its spine decorated in orange & blue chevrons-what the hell was that?
It was The Modern Antiquarian, filled with photos of sites across Britain that I never knew existed. The introduction clinched it, talking about how your history education in Britain starts with the Romans & how everything before was just some subhumans in animal skins, effectively swinging around in trees . This resonated with my experience strongly, I bought the book & never looked back.
If, like me then, you don’t know, the whole of the British Isles is covered from the far north of Scotland, to the Scilly Isles in the south west with thousands of stone monuments, between 3500 and 7000 years old. Most well known are the Stone Circles, but even these have many different forms from the well known Stonehenge to the tiny, unknown, Glassel Dam Wood. In addition to this, there are single or grouped Standing Stones, tombs of many different kinds, cairns and souterrain.
The reasons behind their construction are uncertain at best, and for the massive effort involved in construction, you almost wonder why they bothered. But, for me there is something incredibly evocative about the sight of these stones, still standing after thousands of years. Their builders had an obvious eye for location, design and colour, when I see one it just gives me an itch at the base of my skull which says that these places are special - a racial memory? Or just a romantic imagination?
Whatever, visit one of these places, especially if you can get a quiet site to yourself, and you may feel it too.
For more information, please have a look at my Stone Circle Website: Bigstone?
Entries (RSS)