In search of more holey stones..

Well the snow has gone, to be replaced by high winds and thunderstorms. I'm not sure which is worse. After a fairly wild night, the morning dawned with high winds and blue skies. Could have been worse.

I'm on a theme here and another holey stone was on the agenda - this time the Long Stone at Minchinhampton.

For a change, this one should have been easy to find but we still managed to drive past it the first time....

Yes fairly obvious from the road isn't it! Never mind. We found somewhere to pull off the road and walked back to find it.

Access is very easy - there is a gate but as the wall is currently being rebuilt it wasn't really necessary. There are 3 holes in this stone, and it has the usual healing legends attached to it. Passing children through the holes was said to cure rickets. They'd have to be very small children, there is just about enough room to pass an adult hand through - may be just inserting the affected limbs through the holes would be enough?

This is another stone that is said to get up and wander around. When the clock strikes midnight, this one gets up and heads for Minchinhampton spring for a drink.


There is a second stone a few feet away

This one has actually been built into the dry stone wall. So is this the remains of a burial chamber? A circle? or just some standing stones. There are barrows all over the place so it seems that the area was in ritual use at some time.




Speaking of barrows, there was one just across the road so it seemed sensible to go and try and find it. This proved equally easy to find. A most unusual day!

Sadly it is badly damaged with most of the middle now missing. It's also fenced off with the green tape and we didn't approach too closely as it is on private land.

I think you can just about see some of the stones here but without clambering all over the barrow it is hard to be sure. Reports on the condition of the chambers are very mixed, from being present and correct to not being there at all anymore. Sadly I am not able to say one way or the other

A Holey Dancing Stone ?

Interesting one today. I'm still recovering from the December festivities (!) and today was the first time I didn't have to be up early for weeks so it was a very late start - coupled with the short winter afternoon, that meant somewhere local. Ideally somewhere we hadn't been yet.

A search of the Megalithic Portal throw up a nice oddity not so far away so it was off to Star. As we wanted to take advantage of the pub car park so we felt honour bound  to at least have lunch there first. The cider was nice!

The object of the excursion was to find the Wimblestone. A 5ft standing stone with a hole through it. Normally these stones are credited with having healing powers. You climb through the hole and are cured of whatever malady affects you.

Well the stone itself proved remarkably difficult to find. I didn't read the associated folklore before the visit or I'd have been forewarned. Wimble means "lively" and the stone has the reputation of being quite mobile.....

Well it certainly lived up to its name - I was with someone who swears it wasn't there when he looked so much frustrating wandering around ensued until I took control of the map and found the stone exactly where marked - he still says it definitely wasn't there the first time!

Anyway it is now frozen in pixels so these images shouldn't be going anywhere- or at least I hope not even if the stone does go dancing around its field or pursues impertinent farm workers all the way to the churchyard.

The hole is that dark mark near the bottom on the right hand side. You are looking through it onto mud which is much the same colour as the stone so it doesn't show up as well as it might.

A back view  - the hole shows up much better from this side.

 A close up - it is just about big enough to put a hand through comfortably. I guess it is just too small a hole to pass even a baby through which is why there seem to be no healing legends attached to this one.