Legendary rocks

Megaliths (“Great Stones"), have fascinated people for millenia. One woman bought a house because there was a megalithic monument in the back garden. Stonehenge is too big to miss, and has inspired copies made using old cars.

Avebury on the other hand is too big to see except from the air and has a village, complete with pub and church, in the centre.  Megaliths are widespread on the European mainland and in Ireland, the most famous being Carnac and Newgrange  and many have  been lost to redevelopment including a large number in Putney, London, but there are still  thousands of  other lesser known monuments, with their own still developing story, to be found if you look for them.

Most megaliths were built around four to five thousand years  before the Christian era, roughly  one and two thousand years before the earliest Egyptian pyramids. Except possibly for megalithic tombs, which may have had multiple functions, their purpose and uses are still matters of debate.  Some may have been "religious" centres, and others "civic" centres, and some may have combined both roles. Some, like the Chiding stone, at Chiddingstone,Kent, seem, by their shape, to be designed to enhance fertility in crops, animals and humans and  inspired the local publican to call their pub "The Rock".

Groups of megaliths seem to be  aligned with each other, something first noted by Alfred Watkins in the early part of the twentieth century, but the significance of these alignments is a matter of perennial dispute. Some seem associated with the position of the sun and moon, others seem to have no purpose. It has been claimed that the alignments mark ley lines, or lines of "Earth Power", a suggestion most scientists and archaeologists reject. No explanation seems wholly convincing, even the theory that the alignments all arose by chance, rather than design. Still, whether planned, or coincidental, it is always rewarding to spot an alignment for yourself, after a long, hard climb to the top of a monument.

The Chestnuts tomb , in the village of Addington, Kent is is in the garden of a private house: The owner bought the house because of the tomb, which is open to the public (there is an admission fee). 

The Cat Stane , at Kirkliston, Edinburgh (The name "Cat" may come from the Gaelic “cath”  meaning battle ), possibly an outlier of a stone circle at Newbridge, two miles to the South West, resisted movement and is now inside the boundary fence of Edinburgh airport. The Cay Stane, once a hilltop landmark has kept its location and stands in  Caistane Crescent Edinburgh guarded by a wall and the National Trust. While the road near the Cay Stane was being made in the 19th century many skeletons in stone cists were found, giving rise to a speculations about a battle, although  it seems more likely the stone was near a prehistoric burial site.  Trottiscliffe Church, pronounced "Trozlee", in Kent is built on a foundation that includes megalithic stones, and there is a legend of a tunnel linking the church to the nearby Coldrum megalithic tomb. This legend has been claimed as evidence of a ley line between the church and tomb. More cautiously, all that can be said is that it  shows a memory of a connection between the two sites, possibly dating back to the times the monuments were built. Equally it could be a memory of a tunnel  between a monastery and a convent  allowing covert visits between the two establishments

Legends cling to these old stones like moss. The Whispering Knights in Oxfordshire (on private ground) are said to be the petrified remains of a would be usurper of the English crown, He encountered a witch who said that if he took seven steps forward and saw the village of Long Compton, he would be king of England. As he stepped forward his view was blocked by the Archdruids Barrow, and the witch turned him and his men into stone and then, rather pointlessly, turned herself into an elder tree, which was cut (and said to bleed) during the Midsummer Eve
celebrations at the stones and it used to be said that if you put your ear to the crevices of the Whispering Knights, they would whisper to you of the future.

Fairies allegedly danced round the King stone at Rollright on May and Midsummer Eve. Once a year the nearby Rollright Stones are said to walk down to a nearby stream to drink. It used to be a custom for a childless woman to visit the King stone at Rollright and touch it with her bare breasts, believing that she would then become the mother of a bright child beloved of and helped by the fairies, and it was believed that in case of illness, a prayer offered in the middle of the circle would effect a speedy recovery.

Researchers on the now finished Dragon Project who camped at the Rollright Stones are said to have heard strange noises, and research showed that the stones emit a burst of ultrasound, at dawn. One theory is that the ultrasound is emitted by moles, although it is not clear whether the native British mole can emit ultrasound. Don Robbins, in his book "The Secret Language of Stone" gives an excellently readable account of a more scientifically plausible theory that the stones contain quartz which stores electricity, the electricity being converted to ultrasound by sunlight.

At Wayland's Smithy in Dorset an invisible blacksmith used to operate: you could leave your horse and some money and return later to find the horse shod and the money gone. Wayland himself was a lesser known smith/demigod, and all over the world smiths have been associated with magic and the other worlds.

Megaliths with holes in were famous for being able to heal illnesses in adults and children, and promote pregnancy an example being the Men an Tol in Cornwall. Kits Coty house, the remains of a tomb in Kent which originally had a mound 180 feet long, was alleged to be able to make unwanted objects vanish, provided you put the object in at midnight on the full moon and ran round the tomb three times. It has been suggested that this is all that remains of a sacrificial rite. Little Coty in Kent is nnown as the countless stones and legend has it a baker tried to count the stones by placing a loaf on each stone, but the devil ate one and the baker dropped dead as he was about to announce the number of stones. A similar story is told about the Rollright Stones

The Ancient British put a vast amount of time and effort into constructing not only megaliths but many other structures, such as Silbury hill with a fascinating set of correspondences between the Hill and its neighbours and the dimensions of the Solar System and much of the British Landscape is artificial, having been shaped by the megalith builders. These structures were built by people as intelligent as us, but with thought processes and culture so different from ours they could almost be from another planet. Something to think about as you leave the megalith and get back into your spaceship.

But I wonder if perhaps megaliths are the ancient equivalent of pet rocks whhich were such a fad int he 1970s.