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Wednesday, 21 April 2021

Swinside and Castlerigg

 


Swinside stone circle, near Broughton-in-Furness, Lake District


Castelerigg stone circle, near Keswick, Lake District

Many thanks to Charlene and Martin for these pics of the two best preserved stone circles in the Lake District.  They are both made from a mottley collection of locally sourced glacial erratics of all shapes and sizes.  There was clearly no preferential use of "pillars" rather than slabs or boulders.  It's assumed that both were made from stones quite closely spaced.  If there ever were stone circles worth the name in Pembrokeshire,  these two classic sites probably provide good models showing what they might have looked like.  Both Castlerigg and Swinside are probably Neolithic rather than Bronze Age structures.

2 comments:

Tony Hinchliffe said...

Will some of these rocks magically disappear, only to reappear at controversial would - be stone circle on Waun Mawr? Anything is possible for prehistoric archaeology's version of Tommy Cooper!

BRIAN JOHN said...

Both circles are deemed to be incomplete -- ie a lot of stones are deemed to have been removed. Not sure how strong the evidence is for that assumption. Maybe they started hauling them off to Stonehenge, and ran out of steam before they got there? No doubt a handy myth will come along before long which encompasses ALL of the British circles, whether complete or incomplete.....