The Gors Fawr circle of sitting stones

We took a little trip up into the mountains yesterday.  Very pleasant indeed.  

Gors Fawr has a rather pretty little circle of stones -- but I hesitate to call them standing stones because they are not tall, slim or erect.  They are almost all less than 1m high.  I doubt that any of them are deeply embedded -- they are best referred to as boulders simply placed or settled into position in a slightly distorted circle.  They are a perfect height for sitting on -- so we will call them "sitting stones".   Back in the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age, we can imagine the village elders sitting here in a circle, each one on his favourite stone, discussing the issues of the day rather as the community council does today.  Does that sound frivolous?  Maybe.  But I find it hard to see any religious or ritual intent here -- although of course the setting is greatly revered by some, and many visitors claim to be impressed by its ambience or power .......

Think of  Durham Cathedral at one end of the grandeur scale, and Portfield Gate Methodist Chapel at the other.  Then, on the circle front,  think of Avebury at one end of the scale and Gors Fawr at the other.  This circle is so small and insignificant that it cannot possibly have been intended to be ostentatious or intimidating.  It sits quietly in its landscape of wide horizons, mostly hidden from view but peeping out from behind the gorse bushes.  (The local authorities have removed many of the gorse bushes that were crowding in rather too closely on the stones -- and we are grateful for that......)

The essential details.  Thanks to Coral and Jack for publishing this drone image:

Most authorities think that the circle is made up of 16 stones.  I think that only 15 stones really belong to the circle, with 3 or 4 other recumbent stones slightly "out of position" off the circumference.  One of them, near the base of the above photo, is almost 2m long and has the best claim to be called a "pillar".  I think that one was ignored by the builders of the circle, as inded were other elongated stones scattered about in the landscape.

Aubrey Burl thought that 12 of the stones are "upstanding" and that 4 are fallen or partly submerged in the turf.

It is often claimed that the stone setting is made of alternating spotted and unspotted dolerite boulders.  I disagree with that.  Having examined the boulders carefully, I think that only 5 or 6 are what I would call "spotted dolerite" -- and there is no sign of an alternating arrangement.    The majority of the boulders are faceted and heavily abraded and weathered stones which have either been subjected to glacial transport (over a short distance) or to many thousands of years of exposure in a hostile and oscillating environment. There is nothingv to suggest that the stone have been carri3ed or dragged here from Carn Meini or anywhere else.  Used more or less where found, I think.   Some of the stones have cracks and breakage scars, but I would not say that any of them have been deliberately shaped.  There is no stone at the centre of the circle.  The spacing of the stones on the circle circumference is not very regular.  The diameter of the circle is c 22m.

Some of the stones:

This is the only stone that would be rather uncomfortable to sit on:

This is the recumbent small "pillar" (unspotted dolerite) that I think never belonged to the circle of stones:

See also:
https://archive.org/details/guidetoancienthi0000rees/page/36/mode/1up?q=gors
https://thathistorycouple.co.uk/2025/03/03/gors-fawr-stone-circle/

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/gorsfawr.htm

About 140m from the circle (not 400m as claimed by Darvill and Wainwright) there are two very impressive standing stones, one very broad and imposing and the other (called the "dreaming stone") more delicate and slim.  They are each about 2m tall, and the northern one of the pair seems to have a small ridge running around it.  That may be significant, or maybe not -- the apparent pit in which the stone is located may just be an excavation artifice.

There is much discussion in the literature about whether these stones should be considered to be a pair, and whether they are connected in some way to the circle.  Personally, I don't see any obvious connection apart from proximity.......

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So, what of any possible Stonehenge connection?  Well, there is nothing here to suggest any connection with Stonehenge or any contact between the Preseli tribe and the people of Salisbury Plain.  Parker Pearson and his colleagues argue for a deep connection between the peoples of the two widely separated areas -- but since they claim the existence of a highly sophisticated community at Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn, capable of large scale quarrying and stone moving operations, we see none of that here at Gors Fawr, or for that matter at Foel Drygarn.

So we return to thes questions:  If the Late Neolithic tribesmen of Preseli had a special reverence for spotted dolerite monoliths, why did they not exclusively use spotted dolerites in this stone setting, given that such stones were readily available?  If our heroes were -- as claimed by Parker Pearson -- obsessed (at Rhosyfelinn and Carn Goedog) with hunting for solid, elongated pillars, why have they ignored such stone shapes at Gors Fawr and used small boulders instead?

CONCLUSIONS

The Late Neolithic and Bronze Age people of Preseli, as far as we can see from the evidence on the ground, had little or no interest in grandiose civil engineering schemes.  They knew nothing of "special stones" or vast architectural "statements".  They had very limited technical skills, lived a simple life and knew nothing whatsoever about Stonehenge.