In honor of International Archaeology Day, I wanted to post about one of the lesser known Neolithic sites that has had difficulty with tourists and pagans alike trashing the site, from ‘religious litter’ like votives or coins pressed into the stones to yellow paint splashed across the stones, many historic sites around the world are disrespected and need our awareness and help to ensure they are here for generations to come. If you have never heard of the Rollright Stones, I highly recommend them as they are an absolutely gorgeous display of pagan creation.
The Rollright Stones are a complex of three Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments near the village of Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. Constructed from local jurrasic oolitic limestone which forms the bulk of the Cotswold hills, the three monuments, now known as the King’s Men and the Whispering Knights in Oxfordshire and the King Stone in Warwickshire, are distinct in their design and purpose. These local terms have since been adopted by archaeologists and heritage managers. They span nearly 2000 years of Neolithic and Bronze age development and each site dates from a different period. During the period when the three monuments were erected, there was a continuous tradition of ritual behavior on sacred ground.
The oldest, the Whispering Knights dolmen, is early Neolithic, circa 3,800-3,500 BC, It was likely to have been used as a place of burial. the King’s Men stone circle is late Neolithic, circa 2,500 BC, a stone circle that was constructed in the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age; and the King Stone is early to middle Bronze Age, circa 1,500 BC.
The third monument, the King Stone, is a single monolith. Although its construction has not been dated, the dominant theory amongst archaeologists is that it was a Bronze Age grave marker.
By the Early Modern period, folkloric stories had developed about the Stones, telling of how they had once been a king and his knights who had been turned to stone by a witch. Such stories continued to be taught amongst local people well into the 19th century.
The site is listed by Historic England as a scheduled monument and was first designated in 1882. In the 20th century, the stones became an important site for adherents of various forms of Contemporary Paganism, as well as for other esotericists, who hold magico-religious ceremonies there.
During the Early and the Middle Neolithic large megalithic tombs were constructed across the British Isles. Because they housed the bodies of the dead, archeologists have typically believed these tombs to indicate rituals around death and ancestor veneration by those who constructed them. Such Neolithic tombs are common across much of western Europe, from Iberia to Scandinavia. The practice was likely brought to the British Isles along with, or roughly concurrent to, the introduction of farming. A widely held theory amongst archaeologists is that these megalithic tombs were intentionally made to resemble the long timber houses which had been constructed by Neolithic farming peoples in the Danube basin from circa 4800 BCE
There is no doubt that these great tombs, far more impressive than would be required of mere repositories for bones, were the centers of ritual activity in the early Neolithic: they were shrines as well as mausoleums. For some reason, the success of farming and the veneration of ancestral and more recent bones had become bound up together in the minds of the people.
The King Stone
The King Stone is a single, weathered monolith, 2.4 metres high by 1.5 metres wide, standing 76 metres north of the King’s Men. Unlike the other two of the Rollright monuments, it is of uncertain date. Many different interpretations have been made of the King Stone, with various arguments being presented as to what its original function was.
It is estimated that when it was originally erected, the King Stone would have weighed somewhere in the region of 4.7 tonnes, but that much has since been chipped away
Numerous folktales are associated with the stones about a king and his men who were outwitted by a witch and turned to stone. A rhyming version was reported by William Camden in 1610. A king riding across the county with his army was accosted by a local witch called Mother Shipton. She said to him:
Seven long strides thou shalt take, says she
And if Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be!
His troops gathered in a circle to discuss the challenge, and his knights muttered amongst themselves, but the king boldly took seven steps forward. Rising ground blocked his view of Long Compton in the valley, and the witch cackled:
As Long Compton thou canst not see, King of England thou shalt not be! Rise up stick and stand still stone, For King of England thou shalt be none; Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be, And I myself an elder tree!
The king became the solitary King Stone, while nearby his soldiers formed a cromlech, or circle, called the King’s Men. As the witch prepared to become an elder tree, she backtracked into four of the king’s knights, who had lagged behind and were whispering plots against the king: because of the conspiratorial way in which the portal stones lean towards each other, the stones are said to be the treacherous knights conniving against the king, though others think they are praying. Although it looks as if the central slab of the portal should be supporting the pillars either side, they do not actually touch, probably because the limestone has been dissolved over the millennia. She turned them to stone as well. Today they are called the Whispering Knights.
Legend holds that as the church clock strikes midnight, the King Stone comes alive. Similarly, the king and his men were said to come to life on certain saints’ days.
In 2003, an archaeological excavation in the center of the King’s Men circle revealed two recently buried crystals, while in 2011, Doyle White observed flowers inserted into cracks and fissures in the megaliths. Particular concern has been expressed about some offerings and other Pagan actions that damage the stones, such as coins that are wedged into cracks in the rock and fires that damage the rock itself as well as flora and lichen. Some Pagans have also had their cremated ashes scattered at the site.
Many Pagans seek to meditate at the site with the intent of communing with spirit entities believed to reside there, while the American Pagan Diana Paxson has discussed her own performance of seidr at the site. Pagans have also left votive offerings at the site, which includes flowers and fruit, incense sticks, and tea lights, some of which has been characterized as “ritual litter” by heritage managers.
During the late 1970s, the Dragon Project — led by the Earth Mysteries proponent Paul Devereux — carried out investigations at the site in an attempt to determine if any anomalous phenomena could be detected there. They concluded that ultrasonic pulsing could be detected at the King Stone at sunrise, while there were no ultrasound readings in the King’s Men circle at the summer solstice, suggesting that the stones acted as a shield from the low levels of ultrasound found elsewhere in the landscape. Devereux and Thomson suggested that the Stones were also part of another ley line, running from Arbury Banks in Northamptonshire to All Saints Church in Wroxton. A third putative ley line involving the Rollright Stones has also been suggested, running from the King’s Men circle to the Uffington White Horse.
The Whispering Knights
Believed to be the earliest of the Rollright Stones, the Whispering Knights are the remains of the burial chamber of an Early or Middle Neolithic portal dolmen, lying 400 metres east of the King’s Men. Four standing stones survive, forming a chamber about two square metres in area around a fifth recumbent stone, probably the collapsed roof capstone. Although archaeologists and antiquarians had been speculating and debating the nature of the Whispering Knights for centuries, more about the monument was revealed only following the excavations carried out around the stones by George Lambrick and his team during the 1980s. They found that the portal dolmen had never been a part of a longer cairn, as had been suggested by some earlier investigators. In addition, they uncovered a few pieces of Neolithic pottery around the monument.
By analogy with other such monuments, the Whispering Knights was probably one the earliest funerary monuments in Britain, perhaps built around 3,800 BC and the c.2m square chamber would have contained the disarticulated bones of several individuals. Early Neolithic, Beaker and early Bronze Age pottery found in the immediate vicinity suggests that the tomb was venerated over many centuries and a piece of human bone washed out from the chamber was radiocarbon dated to c.1700BC.
The King’s Men
The King’s Men is a stone circle 33 metres (108 ft) in diameter, currently composed of seventy-seven closely spaced stones.[21] It was constructed during the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age.
After undertaking limited excavation at the circle in the 1980s, Lambrick concluded that when it had been originally erected, it would have been a “more perfect circle” than it is today. He thought that each of the stones would have touched one another, creating a continuous barrier all the way around. He also speculated that the monument’s builders intentionally placed the smoother sides of the boulders to face inwards. The outer facing sides are predominantly rougher in texture.
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.”
Resistivity and magnetometry surveys undertaken during the 1980s revealed four magnetic anomalies within the centre of the circle, possibly representing “pits related in some way to local ground surface undulations and the presence of localised burning.” Lambrick noted that similar features could be found within the stone circles of Mayburgh, Stenness and Balbirnie.
If you are interested in visiting the, click here for the official site.
Conservation
During the 1990s, the owner of the site, Pauline Flick, decided to sell it. In 1997 a campaign was launched by individuals — including a number of Pagans who used the site for ritual purposes — who feared that it would be purchased by those who would either turn it into a commercialized tourist attraction or prevent anyone from visiting it. They established a private charity, the Rollright Trust, which was eventually able to secure ownership through private donations and a grant from the Hanson Environment Fund.
A registered charity, as of 2007 the Trust had on its board individuals from a range of backgrounds, including both Christians and Pagans, archaeologists, a biologist, and a landscape architect. The Trust has engaged with the Pagan community from the start, and allows Pagan groups to book slots in which they can perform ceremonies at the site.
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.
If you are interested in helping with conservation, click here to go to the official website and support them!
Information from their official site and Wikipedia.
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