Download Category: Megaliths &c.

Like Lockyer’s Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered, William Stukeley’s 1740 study of Stonehenge stands out among the huge number of books on the subject. Stukeley was a pioneer preservationist. He lamented the callous treatment of the majestic ruins both by tourists and landholders. He coined the term ‘trilithon’ for the doorway-like arrangement of three stones, now common in the literature about megalithic architecture. Stukeley was one of the first to make accurate drawings of the site. The three dozen illustrations to this book, which show Stonehenge from every angle and document its context in the 18th century landscape, are still used today by scholars. He also did some rudimentary archaeology, and describes opening the grave of a warrior princess.
Stukeley’s Stonehenge was intended to be the first volume in a comprehensive study of universal history, which he never completed. He believed a pure form of Christianity was the original religion of mankind, which had been subverted by idolatry, and finally restored by Jesus. Stonehenge was a temple of this primordial patriarchial religion, built by immigrants from the Near East, possibly Phoenicians. They became the progenitors of the Celts, founded the Druid religion and built the mysterious standing stones. (Today scholars believe that Stonehenge was constructed by an indigenous, pre-Celtic, pre-Druid culture).

Staines means “stones” and it is thought to come from a group of nine stones mentioned in a twelfth century charter of Chertsey Abbey which delineated the boundaries of the Abbey lands, and was reported in Up Pontes by Christine Lake. The settlement of Staines is very ancient, with evidence of habitation from Mesolithic times; the Romans had an fairly important town here called “Ad Pontes” (“by the bridges”) as it was the place where the London to Silchester road crossed the Thames and Colne, and was about half-way between them (a day’s march from each). There are the remains of an old bridgehead at The Hythe; this is not the Roman one (there were also Saxon and Norman bridges here) but may be on the same site. Stukeley says that the whole town was bounded by a ditch. The charter says this:

It was May 1993 when Muriel and I first went on holiday to Scotland. We were staying on a farm near Aberlemno. We could hardly miss the roadside Stones, and to our surprise found a picture of a Centaur, which together with other figures beside it made us realize that the designer of that carving was conveying ideas with which we were already familiar.

So the hunt was on to see what we could find. To whom or what would it lead us?

Although we have been interested in the early history and origins of the British Race or Races the Picts were little known to us. What could we possibly have in common with them?

On the shore of the Bay of Fundy, op­posite the Town of Yarmouth, stands a rock weighing about four hundred pounds, which. about the end of the last century, was discovered by a man named Fletcher. It has been well known for nearly a hundred years, and those who dwell in its vicinity have always accepted it as a genuine relic of antiquity, no breath of suspicion ever having fallen upon it. The glyphs have been at various times copied and sent abroad to men of learning who have made more or less attempts at de­ciphering them, more than one savant see­ing traces of Semitic origin.

Three miles long and half a mile across, the tiny granite island of Lundy lies 12 miles to the north-west of Hartland Point off the coast of North Devon. Lundy is pounded on her Western side by the Atlantic and faces the busy Bristol Channel on her Eastern board. A haven for Kittiwakes, Gannets, Puffins and seals, Lundy emanates a sense of other worldliness and peace, remote in her oceanic isolation from civilisation. With just one pub, the Marisco Tavern, the Church of St Helena, a single shop and a scattering of cottages, Lundy has featured rarely in the field of ‘Earth Mysteries’ and attention to our islands is perhaps overdue.

THIS volume is one of the effects issuing from the labours of the “Royal Archaeological Institute for Great Britain and Ireland.” Having been asked, in the spring of this year, by some friends interested in the researches and prosperity of that useful Association, to contribute a paper at their annual meeting, to be held this year at Bury St. Edmund’s; I acquiesced, and fixed upon the subject which gives the title to this publication. I considered it a proper theme for an Essay to be brought under the notice of an assembly of archaeologists, who were to meet in the town which bears the name of one of the kings of the East Angles. The subject commended itself to the Honorary Secretary of the Institute, and I forthwith set to work to isolate some materials for this particular purpose, from MSS. on kindred subjects, upon which many a year’s hard work and study had been bestowed.

THE HISTORY OF A NATION IS THE HISTORY OF ITS RELIGION, its attempts to seek after and serve its God,” says an old writer. Of no nation or country is this more true than of Great Britain, where from the standing stones of Stennis in Orkney, to the Maen Ambres in Cornwall—the prehistoric remains of open-air sanctuaries,—artificial mounds and scientifically constructed astronomical circles, bear witness to the vigour and vitality of a national religion, which has already passed from the primitive into the metaphysical stage, and embodies abstract ideas, astronomical observations and a high and pure, code of morals.

From the comparative study of antiquity in Chaldea, Arabia, Persia, and Palestine, we now know this religion to have been Druidism, one of the oldest religions in the world, and in its Asiatic and Semitic form of Buddhism, the religion still of one-half of mankind.

HE HISTORY OF A NATION IS THE HISTORY OF ITS RELIGION, its attempts to seek after and serve its God,” says an old writer. Of no nation or country is this more true than of Great Britain, where from the standing stones of Stennis in Orkney, to the Maen Ambres in Cornwall—the prehistoric remains of open-air sanctuaries,—artificial mounds and scientifically constructed astronomical circles, bear witness to the vigour and vitality of a national religion, which has already passed from the primitive into the metaphysical stage, and embodies abstract ideas, astronomical observations and a high and pure, code of morals.

From the comparative study of antiquity in Chaldea, Arabia, Persia, and Palestine, we now know this religion to have been Druidism, one of the oldest religions in the world, and in its Asiatic and Semitic form of Buddhism, the religion still of one-half of mankind.

I judge that you pick up this booklet with much the same ideas on the subject that I had a few months ago. The antiquarians had not helped you or me very much, but had left us with vague ideas and many notes of interrogation.

On early trackways they alternated between a misty appreciation of hill-tracks and ridgeways, and an implied depreciation of all track-makers before the Romans came. To learn the meaning of mounds they did not go beyond the child’s investigation of a drum, cut it open to see; and, if nothing was there, quite failed to profit by such valuable negative evidence. In perhaps one moat in five they found a dwelling, and argued finely on the defensive importance of a ring of water; but as to the other four, with no dwelling, and in unexplained positions, they closed their eyes.

It must often have been remarked by those who are in the habit of reading treatises (great or small) on antiquities, that their authors, while sufficiently able to describe the objects they have seen, are, from the narrow field of their observation (it may have been a parish or a county), but ill furnished with a basis on which to found rational theories, and yet that the men who are in possession of the fewest facts are those who indulge in the greatest amount of theory.

In introducing these Notes of a visit to the Island of Sardinia, it is necessary to premise that my object in visiting that beautiful country was simply to do what the class of antiquaries above mentioned has not done — that is, over a wide range of observation, to examine carefully, and to measure and delineate some of those antiquarian puzzles, the Nuraghi. This I had previously done to many of the vast antiquities in Brittany; and being already familiar with the pre-historic structures of Scotland, I hoped to be in a position to better understand that class, both there and elsewhere, and to institute comparison where similarities exist

AS I know the pleasure, which every branch of ancient literature gives you I should not excuse myself, if I did not com­municate to you a late discovery of Roman antiqui­ties in these westernmost parts of Britain.

In the year 1756 a farmer at Bossens, in the parish of. St. Erth, driving his oxen from the field, per­ceived the foot of one of them to sink a little deeper than ordinary into the earth at A, fig. 8. (See Tab. 1.) Curiosity, and the hopes of treasure, led him soon, after to search the place; where was soon discovered a perpendicular pit, circular, of two feet and half di­ameter. Digging to the depth of 18 feet, there was found a Roman patera (fig. 1. & 2.) : about 6 feet deeper, the jug, fig. 3: nearby, among the rubbish, the stone, fig.. 4; a small .millstone, about 18 inches diameter: then another patera, with two handles, in other particulars of the shape and size as fig. 2, but unfortunately mislaid, and not now to be found. Intermixed with these were found fragments of horns, bones of several sizes, half-burnt sticks, and many pieces of leather, seemingly shreds of worn-out shoes. Having sunk to the depth of 16 feet, they found the bottom of the pit concave, like that of a dish or bowl. There was a sensible moisture, and mostly wet clay, in all parts of the pit. On each side there were holes at due distances, capable of admitting a human foot, by which persons might descend and ascend. There is no doubt but this work must have been intended for a well: but a pit so deep, and of such narrow dimensions, must have been sunk thro’ a stony ground with much difficulty, and with tools very different from those now in use.