<< Our Photo Pages >> Simonburn - Stone Circle in England in Northumberland

I have visited· I would like to visit

consuelo would like to visit

Modern-Neolithic visited on 5th Sep 2014 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 4 Access: 2

Anne T visited on 20th Jul 2014 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 2 We know this stone circle as either: Davy's Lee Stone Circle, King's Crag Stone Circle or Haughton Common Stone Circle, rather than Simonburn Stone Circle, although the Grid Reference is the same. Having spotted a group of features that looked interesting: Davy's Lee Settlement, Davy's Lee Stone Circle and various tumuli, we decided to take advantage of the sunshine and walk to this area. The previous weekend, we'd visited Standingstone Rigg, near Great Lonbrough Farm. If we had continued south along the footpath for a couple of kilometres from Standingstone Rigg, we would have reached Davy’s Lee from the north. Instead, we took the opposite approach, from the south, from the old military road (B6318). My husband parked the car by the Old Repeater Station (parking on the Old Military Road being sparse and difficult, with soft verges, lay-by's virtually non-existent and fast-flying cars driving up and down) having dropped me off at the farmhouse 100 yards west from this road junction, on the opposite side of the road, by the footpath up to Sewingshields and Sewingshields Crags. We’ve done this walk before, to see the Roman fishing loughs, but with this walk, we needed to follow the path nortwards past the farmhouses, round the back of Sewingshields Crags to the bottom of the hill, then turn off a track to the left hand side (approx. Grid reference: NY 80653 70820). The track disappears for a while, so we headed left up a bank with what looked like quarried stone at the top, running in a double row running approximately east to west (approx. Grid ref: NY 80393 70793), plus what looked like a low lying stone circle with a blue ‘x’ in the middle of it. We wondered whether or not this was just the results of quarrying, but then spotted blue crosses sprayed onto the grass and a blue painted peg in the middle of what I thought might be the low lying stone circle. Just after this, I got sight of a huge bull about 100 yards away; walking further along, we realised there was no fence between the marked field boundaries, and I suddenly got worried the bull was going to charge as we were walking between him and 'his ladies'. We were at the edge of a boggy area, and had just started picking a way through. At this point, the farmer appeared on his quad bike to look at his ‘beasts’, and he stopped to talk to us. I said we were heading up to the Stone Circle and asked if this was OK. He told me the bull was alright, and confirmed that the archaeologists had indeed just been up to do a survey of the rocks/stones we’d just seen. He asked us if we knew where the stone circle was, and pointed out the direction of the tree in the distance to head for; we’d then see the stones poking up out of the grass. He then said he’d give us a lift part of the way, and we hopped on the side of the quad bike, and went about quarter of a mile. Neat! A very powerful machine – not sure I’d make a good motorcycle pillion rider, though. He dropped us off at the top of a ridge of rocks, and we made our way over, stumbling into what looked like an open cairn. I took some photographs, and we headed down the slope to another wide area of boggy ground with a small stream bubbling along the bottom. I wouldn’t have liked to have done this walk after a period of wet weather – wellies would have been required – me being me, I still managed to get wet feet! We stumbled first upon the Davy’s Lee settlement – perched on the end of King’s Crags, which dropped steeply into the valley below. What a view. Wandering eastwards, we came upon two small standing stones (or one with a forked top, buried in the grass), then the stone circle poked it’s head up to the right hand side of the track, towards Folly Lake. There were some clear cup marks on two of the stones within the circle. The grass and marsh grass was so tall, it hid most of the stones, and it was quite difficult to photograph, but the circle was clearly there – about 9 metres in diameter. I thought at one point that there might be an outer circle, but the grass was too overgrown to really tell (a winter visit will be needed!). The main stone in the circle was a funny ‘chair’ shape with cups in the top. Someone had been there recently and left a tea-light in one of the cups. The views south and east to Sewingshields Crags was magnificent; looking south-west towards Greenlee Lough, we could see a large erratic rock, Gwenhyfar's Chair, standing proud of Queen’s Crags. This stone is connected with Arthurian legends, although I’ve yet to explore this. We decided it was too far away to walk to this today, so headed back to the footpath. I could hear voices, and Andrew identified they were from climbers on the crags immediately opposite Gwenhyfar’s Chair. Leaving the stone circle, we headed off eastwards, but lost the footpath. Some of the land here is not access land, although the boundary isn’t de-lineated. Heading down the slope, we came across a large, apparently shaped rock, just lying on the ground at grid reference: NY 80670 71319, so I've recorded my visit and submitted images to the separate page on the Portal (Davy's Lee Rock Art). I would put this rock on a par with the rocks in the fields at West Agra Farm.

SolarMegalith visited on 21st Mar 2014 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 4

TheWhiteRider have visited here

Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Condition: 3 Ambience: 4.33 Access: 2.67

Click to view comments at bottom of this page

Download sites to:
KML (Google Earth)
GPX (GPS waypoints)
CSV (Garmin/Navman)
CSV (Excel)

To unlock full downloads you need to sign up as a Contributory Member. Otherwise downloads are limited to 50 sites.