KINGMAKER
KINGMAKER
SACRED and Ancient Celtic SITES
Cumbria
Long Meg and Her Daughters is the third largest English stone circle (the
other two being the outer circle at 
Long Meg is a 3.6m (12ft) high block of red sandstone 72.6m (238ft) south-west
from the circle centre: this is the alignement of the midwinter sunset. On its
north-east face there are some ring and spiral carvings, perhaps reflecting its
astronomical alignement. The decorated side of Long Meg doesn't face the circle,
so the outlier and the ring maybe are not contemporary. Aerial photographs of
the site have revealed that the circle is enclosed in a bank, not visible from
the ground.
In the 18th century there was an attempt to destroy the stones, but a tremendous
thunderstorm and superstitions stopped the project. For the local tradition,
Long Meg and her daughters were a coven of witches turned into stones by
a saint (or a powerful wizard) during their sabbath. As many other megalithic
monuments, these stones are said to be uncountable: it is impossible to get the
same total, but if anyone can do it twice, the spell will be broken. Another
story says that Long Meg would bleed if broken down
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This is one of the largest and most impressive hillforts of England. Its
ramparts enclose an area of 18 hectares (45 acres), and it is 2.5km (1.5mi)
around the inner circumference.
The early construction of Maiden Castle took place around 3000 BC. In the late
Neolithic period a massive long barrow, over 545m (1788ft) in length, was
constructed. About 450 BC the hillfort was extended westwards and by the third
century BC ramparts and ditches were enlarged, with two complex entrances at the
east and at the west of the hill.
In the Iron Age, between 350 and 70 BC, Maiden Castle became a flourishing town
and massive triple and double ramparts were constructed as well as complex
entrances. In AD 43 the second Roman Legion commanded by Vespasian attacked the
eastern gateway and succeeded in subjugating the population. In Dorchester
Museum can be seen the spine of one of the defenders with a Roman iron arrowhead
embedded in the bones. By AD 70 the survivors of the massacre had moved down
into the new Roman town of Durnovaria, now Dorchester, and Maiden Castle
was deserted.
One final development in the hillfort was the building of a small Romano-Celtic
temple 12m (40ft) square, in the late fourth century AD. Its foundations can
still be seen in the north-east sector of the fort.
At the east end of this mound have been found remains which suggest a macabre
ritual murder: a man about thirty years old and 1.6m (5ft 4in) in height had
been hacked to death and dismembered before being buried in the mound. This
murder has been dated to about AD 635, that is in Saxon times.BACK
Wiltshire
The largest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe is 39.6 m (130 ft) high Silbury Hill, part of the complex of Neolithic monuments around 
The base of the monument is 167m (550ft) in diameter and it is pefectly round.
Its summit is flat-topped and 30m (100ft) wide. We know that the building took
place in two phases: soon after work was started, a re-design was ordered, and
the mound enlarged. It is constructed in steps, each step being filled in with
packed chalk, and then smoothed off. There have been three excavations of the
mound: the first when a team of Cornish miners led by the Duke of Northumberland
sunk a shaft from top to bottom in 1776, another in 1849 when a tunnel was dug
from edge into the centre, and a third in 1968-70 when professor Richard
Atkinson had another tunnel cut into the base. Nothing has ever been found on
Silbury Hill: at its core there is only clay, flints, turf, moss, topsoil,
gravel, freshwater shells, mistletoe, oak, hazel, sarsen stones, ox bones and
antler tines.
Moses B.Cotworth, at the beginning of this century, stated that Silbury was a
giant sundial to determine seasons and the true length of the year. More
recently, the writer Michael Dames has identified Silbury Hill as the winter
goddess but he finally aknowledges that the monument remain a stupendous
enigma.
According to legend, this is the last resting place of King Sil, sitting on a
fabled golden horse. Another legend states that the mound holds a lifesize solid
gold statue of King Sil and yet a third, that the Devil was carrying an apron of
soil to drop on the citizens of Marlborough, but he was stopped by the priests
of nearby Avebury.
Silbury Hill is the largest man-made mound in North West Europe. The origins of the hill appear to lie within a low turf mound piled up within a ring of wicker fencing. The entire construction took around 50 years to complete. Radiocarbon dating suggests the earliest possible date for the this work could be somewhere around 3630 BCE. It seems likely that there was some link to the celebration of the harvest.
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