{JA: There's no traces of any other circles round here anywhere is there?} Not in the immediate vicinity. The next nearest was the Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt. And then there are henge monuments in the Cotswolds of which Condicote is the main one. And all sorts of other things are coming up. There's an enclosure near Banbury. There's been an amazing amount of new discovery from our photography on the Cotswolds; all the American air bases closing, and also because the Royal Commision have moved to Swindon, the combination of the two means there's a fantastic amount of archaeology discovered from our photography. There's also been some good summers. We went from having 29 Iron Age enclosures in the Cotswolds to having 130. [Sounds of astonishment]

Rather curiously the cairn by the King Stone is visible on our photographs. Curious because you'd normally expect a cairn to show up as a parch mark when it's very dry---it actually shows up as a dark mark. The reason is because the rest of that land has that much soil straight on top of solid rock, whereas the cairn has: that much soil; then it has that much stone with some soil in it, and then it had a really nice thickness of undisturbed original soil underneath.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

New archaeological discoveries. The wider Cotswold area, air photography

There's some indication at the entrance---just a hint---you've got a flat one and a sort of pillar one either side; and that if you look inwards it may have been the other way round, with a flat on the left and a pillar on the right, because the portal stone just behind the flat one is a very pillar-like stone; the fallen on lying there is a bit more of a flat one. And whether these are symbolic and so on---they may be; Aubrey [Burl]'s keen on that theory. I imagine that the shapes are to do with the geological way the strata actually works. Whether they're coming from different strata or not...John [Barnett] did a survey; he's the only person, I think, who's actually measured the thickness of the stones. I think he reckoned that there were three---about three---thicknesses roughly. Suggesting no more than that there were three beds within the limestone that they originally came out of.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

Stone Shapes. Possible symbolic shaping of the stones, geology

We've done some calculations to try and work out how much effort was involved in building the stones, and we reckon that to move the largest of the Whispering Knight stones---which is the largest of any of them---using a sledge rather than rollers would take about 60 people. And then putting them all up would possibly have taken something like three weeks depending on how you reckon they got the capstone on top. One theory we had---I don't know whether it works---is that they collected a lot of smaller stones to make a ramp and then you drag the stone up the ramp, possibly with wooden rails and things. Then if one applies the same sort of calculations to the stone circle and assume you're 105-odd stones rather than seventy-something, it's about the same; I think 20 people could put them up in three weeks. It's not enormous. And I think that what's interesting about that is not that this is fantastically difficult, it's that you don't actually need an enormous number of people to build a stone circle like this. And I also think that they weren't using the largest stones that were available.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

Building the Stones. How long the sites took to build

{JA: Someone we know reckons they found another one lying around...I think it was near Chastleton.}Yes, well there are lots of claims like that, but the trouble is that a lot of these stones were around and some people did pick them up and use them for building or whatever. And indeed a lot of the legends about Rollright, about how you can't count them and the terrible things that happen to you if you take one away. There's the one about the stone being taken down to make a bridge at a local farm. And it took 24 horses to drag it down the hill and two men were killed on the way. And when they put it in place it then flipped back and crops failed and everything else happened and so they thought perhaps they'd take it back. It only took one horse to get it back up to the circle.

{JA: There's a slightly more current one than that which I heard about the other day which is: somebody's wife had died very nastily from cancer and he was very proud of having a piece of Rollright Stone in his house. Whether this is true or not about it being one of the stones from the circle I don't know, but I think it's a legend worth spreading around.} [laughter] There's an older one which I think the association is with a young man who went off to join the army in India and took a bit of Rollright with him for good luck. He died of typhus on the way.

{JA: This one was within the last few months.}A lot of them, I think they do have a genuine archaeological interest---a little message---which is that people did take chunks of the stones away and this was frowned upon. Because nobody knew what these circles were and very often the names associated---not here, but with other ones: the Devil's So-and-so, or Grimm's Whatnot---they associated these monuments with the devil and so anybody who was removing stones was messing with the devil. {JA: We heard one about Churchill down the road. Some old boy was talling John Wood that if you look down Churchill High Street there's bits of it in there as well.}

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

Legends Folklore old and new

{Chris Tweed: Could anybody tell me about the actual stones? Are they---I take it it's a local stone (Yes)---I was wondering whether we have got any possible site from where they might have been quarried from. They look like they have been lying around on the surface for a while.} Yeah---well all that's right! [laughter] When we were doing this work, somebody at the British Museum wrote to me and said, "did you know we had some bits of the Rollright Stones here?" And I said, "no, no. How interesting! If you don't have anything better to do with them could you do us a geological thin section to see where they're from?" And they did that and came up with a very close match to the stones from Chastleton which is on exactly the same geological strata and exactly the same topographical position.

So it's very definitely local and this ridge is...on this side there's a geological rift valley... {JA: This is Swerford Fault.} ...and on that side there was an enormous glacial lake laping up against the Cotswolds---I can't remember how many ice ages ago, but anyway---the whole of this face is subject to landslipping and, indeed, the reason why we got involved originally with this project was because they were mending the main road down to Long Compton, which was because of landslipping and subsidence, and the contractors wanted somewhere to dump spoil. The farmer on that side suggested: "Oh well there's a hole by the King Stone you could put it in." [laughter] A passing inspector of ancient monuments spotted this going on and said, "hoy!" We were asked to look whether they had been doing any damage, and in fact they hadn't, no particular problem.

Because there had been subsidence there and both sides had been subject to geological disturbance I think probably means that there were a lot of these boulders actually on the surface, and although...well there's one stone down in a field on that side which may acually be undisturbed...essentially they've all been cleared. Quite close to Chastleton there's a very minor road that goes through some open fields where you can actually see the rocks on the surface

{CT: so it's probably a similar sort of situation here. The rocks lying on the ground. You get the stones from Avebury lying on the ground.} Yes, and it's almost visible with the stones because they tend to have one surface more pitted than the other, and the surface that was in contact with the soil tends to be the somewhat smoother one, and the very pitted surfaces are where there've been weaknesses in the limestone which have than got plants growing in them, and then the biochemistry of the plant actually etches out the limestone. You can actually find little runnels where the rainwater's run off them - and some of them quite clearly since they've been erected, but some are where they were flat.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

The Source of the Stones, Geology and Land slipping

{John Attwood: George, when we've been out here with people who've been hatting or dowsing or whatever, we've had a lot of people come over and say, "Is there anything in the middle?" Is there? Has there been?} Well, other than the four small mounds with their four pits---which I think may be recent---not that we know of.

{JA: Has it ever been excavated?} The only excavation, other than the one that I did a few years ago, was by the 17th century antiquary called Thomas Brown who wrote a book called "Urn Burials". But we have no idea where he excavated. It's quite possible that people have dug in the vicinity, but other than that no other excavation has ever been recorded.

{JA More than a few people reckon there's a dead body under there} [laughter] That's what he reckoned...that's what he was looking for, and it's possible. But, generally speaking, stone circles are not particularly associated with burials.

{JA: I just wondered---a lot of these people are getting their rods and going: "there's something here!"}Yes, well there might be.

{Well Tom [Grave's ??] dowsing survey had concentric rings coming down although he said later it could have been a spiral.} {It's the "dead bodies" bit that got me.}

When we were doing our work, quite a lot of dowsers were around. We tried to set up a sort of trial of it against our geophysics and our excavations. But we never quite got it together to get the surveying grid right and record it so we can actually see... I think it would still be worth doing, actually.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

Dowsing the Circle, what's in the middle of the circle, excavations

The other thing is that there are quite a number of other sites around the complex. There are two Bronze Age ring ditches in the field down that way; there's the site of possibly another tomb like the Whispering Knights---which we looked for and which there's no trace of---it was being destroyed in the 19th century. There's an Iron Age enclosure with a trackway leading to it which goes from past the Whispering Knights---sometimes misinterpreted as a cursus monument but actually... {Andy Norfolk: Yes, that'll be the one that was on the aerial photo that Paul Devereux was so excited about.} Yes. It's actually Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. And there's another ring ditch by the King's Stone; a Roman settlement site; and a Saxon cemetary round the junction of the three parish boundaries between Little Rollright, Great Rollright and Long Compton which was discovered in 19th century quarrying and never been investigated since. So there's quite a long history of activity.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

Other Sites: Ring Ditches, second Portal Dolmen, Iron Age Enclosure, Roman Burial Site

We did some work around the King Stone, and one of the numerous theories about the King Stone was that it was part of a long barrow, which was the long mound behind it. Which of course was the mound which rose up in front of the King and stopped his view of Long Compton. OGS Crawford, who was the first Ordnance Survey archaeologist, had claimed that the notch out of it might be one half of what's called a porthole entrance to the long cairn. But in fact the notch is quite clearly the result of people chipping bits off  in the 19th century.

Anyway, we put a trench across that mound to see whether it was natural or whatever, and discovered a round cairn by the King Stone - previously undiscovered, which was still intact - so it was about 17 metres across, and had various cremations put in it, and a little cremation next to it, which had been marked. And there's also a very small barrow next to it, which we also excavated, and again found cremations - one of which was buried in a funny little cavern under the ground which had a big, broad post erected next to it. So in both cases there was evidence that these were Bronze Age burials, marked by standing wooden posts, and so the theory which I like best about the King Stone is that it was erected as a memorial to a burial ground.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

Theories about the King's Stone, Possible Long Barrow, Round Cairn, Bronze Age Cremations

The stone circle is probably later Neolithic; perhaps something like 1000 or even 1500 years later. It has some interesting characteristics. It was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1882, along with the other stones, and that was because people were chipping bits off---which was particularly relevent with the King's Stone. One of the problems with interpreting it is that in 1882 some of the stones were re-errected. Now one of the things that we discovered was that by looking through all the antiquarian drawings of the stone circle---going back to the 17th century---it's possible to work out which stones are still standing as they were then an which ones have been moved.

And, in fact, one of the drawings, we discovered, was by Sir Norman Lockyer who was the Astronomer Royal in the late 19th century and who had drawn a plan of the circle in, I think it was, 1860 and then had come back and made more annotations in 1872; and then had come back again in 1890 and had discovered that a whole lot of stones had been moved around. [*Someone chuckles*] Anyway, the upshot of that was to see whether we could work out what the design of the stone circle was and what kind of circle it was related to other ones. And basically what we discovered was that a lot of the stones in their original positions are standing very close to each other. And the best group is over there.

If you take the tallest stone; then there's a small stone; and that rather pointed one; and a sort of trapezoidal one. Then there's a very big flat one; two smaller ones; and another rather pointed one. By looking at the antiquarian drawings you can see that the tallest one was standing; the next one was fallen inwards; the next one was standing; the little one was fallen inwards; and then the next four were all standing. And you can see how very close those are together. You can also see, when you look at that group, that those six which were standing have large white lichens on them, and the others don't. And we did a survey of all the lichens on the stones and that helped to confirm which ones are in their original position. The conclusion from all that was that originally the stone circle was more or less a continuous wall of stones.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm

More about the King's Men Stone Circle, Norman Lockyer, Circle Design

George Lambrick: There are three groups of stones. The stone circle is, perhaps, the best known. And then there's the Whispering Knights which is a...you can just see through the trees in the next field...which is a neolithic burial chamber; and the King's Stone which is a single stone standing across the road. They are [of] widely differing dates. And the Whispering Knights is probably the earliest of these monuments. By analogy and by some pottery that we discovered in the 1980s it appears to be Early Neolithic---say, around 3500 or 4000 BC.

The Whispering Knights is a kind of neolithic timb called a "portal dolmen" and these are mostly found in Cornwall, Ireland and Wales. And this is the easternmost example that we know of in Britain and it would probably have contained disarticulated burials. The only evidence of burials was a human jawbone found in the 1920s.

Archaeologist Dr George Lambrick giving a talk on location at the stones. In 1997 the regulars of the Stones Mailing List and their friends gathered at the Rollright Stones for a get-together, the first of many as it turned out. We were treated to a talk by George Lambrick, leader of the only recent excavation of the Rollright Stones and a trustee of the Rollright Stones Charitable Trust. At the time he was Deputy Director of the Oxford Archaeology Unit. Originally online here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/mm/eng/rolltalk.htm