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Photo Pages: Alphamstone - Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature in England in Essex
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Submitted by Thorgrim on Sunday, 23 January 2005 Page Views: 3757
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 Site Name: Alphamstone Country: England County: Essex Type: Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
Nearest Town: Sudbury Nearest Village: Alphamstone
Map Ref: TL878354
Latitude: 51.985304N Longitude: 0.733458E
Condition:| 5 | Perfect | | 4 | Almost Perfect | | 3 | Reasonable but with some damage | | 2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site | | 1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks | | 0 | No data. | | -1 | Completely destroyed |
no data
Ambience:| 5 | Superb | | 4 | Good | | 3 | Ordinary | | 2 | Not Good | | 1 | Awful | | 0 | No data. |
no data
Access:| 5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access | | 4 | Short walk on a footpath | | 3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk | | 2 | A long walk | | 1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find | | 0 | No data. |
no data
Accuracy:| 5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates | | 4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map | | 3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map | | 2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village | | 1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town | | 0 | no data |
no data
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External Links:               Alphamstone submitted by Thorgrim
Natural Stones or possible Stone Circle in Essex. Strange sarsen stones in a possible circle around the church and on a mound. See our article The Sacred Stones of Essex.
2006 Update: the Essex Pagans web site appears to be defunct so I have rescured the text of this article, as follows:
There's a stone circle in Essex?
Well there are stones, whether they were part of a stone circle once is up for debate.
To find them, you have to visit a small village on the Essex; Suffolk border called Alphamstone, where you will find a church that sits on the top of a small hill. Surrounding the church are 7 sarsen stones, they're not technically a circle anymore, but you can imagine where it might have been once (see diagram at the bottom of the page).
Sarsen stones are not common in Essex, so where did they come from?
They do occasionally appear in the gravels below Essex clays, which are sometimes exposed in riverbeds, which run deep below the clay layer.
So the most likely source of these sarsen stones is the river stour, which surrounds Alphamstone.
There are other various sized sarsen stones scattered around Alphamstone village, although it seems, most of these are knwn to have been taken from the local gravel pits during the 2nd world war.
One thing there seems to be no debate over is that humans moved the stones there, but who put them there and why?
Some people believe they were left over material from when the original church was built in the 14th century. I personally can't see how this could be the case, as the stones look like they have been pushed out of the way of the church.
Also one of the stones on the west side is buried, with much of its bulk coming out inside the church.
This proves that the stones were there before the church, but surely it couldn't have been a mistake that one of the stones was included inside the church? Maybe this is an example of the time when Saxon beliefs were slowly turning Christian, and this was an attempt of joining the two religions together. If pagan stone worshipping and Saxon beliefs could quietly carry on into the Norman period, surely a secluded place like Alphamstone, cut off by the river stour is where it would happen.
There has also been various Roman artifacts also found around Alphamstone church, so maybe these stones were once part of a Roman home? Perhaps not as the history of this area seems to go back further than Roman times.
There is an interesting story about a Saxon called Aelfham, which mentions the stones.
He came in search of a western land, travelers told of, which was fertile and rich. He climbed up the hill where the church now stands and below his feet there lay a stone. He claimed the hill as his own and the stone as a totem for his clan; a mark of his homestead, which was to be known as Aelfham's tun.
Aelfham couldn't have been the one to put the stones there, as the story says he found them. It was also more like the Saxon custom to settle around something that was already there.
In recent years there have been several bronze age burial urns found around the church. These are the earliest artifacts found around Alphamstone, so it is most likely that these bronze age people were the ones to drag the stones from the river and arrange them on top of the hill.
There still remains the question of why? To which there are two possible explanations.
The first explains the urns found around the site.
It was a bronze age tradition to bury urns surrounded by stones, in a large hole. The hole would then be covered over to make a sort of dome shape.
The other explanation would be that of a primitive sacred circle, like the many found scattered around Britain.
If it was an ancient urn burial site, over the years the land would have been eroded to uncover the stones. Though surely if this was the case, the urns would have been uncovered at the same time and not more recently.
Maybe the site was used as both an urn burial site and a sacred stone circle for ancient rituals. Why ever they were put there, they were dragged out of the stour river at least 3000 years ago and certainly had ancient religious pagan purposes. Since then, the Romans have settled around the site, the Saxons discovered the stones and adopted them as idols of their pagan deities and when the church was built they were left in the churchyard and one was even included inside the church.
For years they've been ignored and even forgotten, even people living in Alphamstone don't know they are there!
It is however remains of a sacred bronze age circle, which has been re-used through time and is indeed very special.
Yes there is a stone circle in Essex and it's found within one of the counties oldest villages.
Is this Essex's best-kept secret? Or are there others?
This is an aerial view of the church and where the stones are in relation to it. [Photo missing, if anyone can contribute this please let me know]
We can imagine where the stones probably have been moved from in the circle, and where stones that have been taken might have been. There is a very small stone half buried on right end on the church (marked as a small faint dot on diagram), that protrudes out inside of the church.
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 Alphamstone Church submitted by trui
 Alphamstone Church submitted by trui
 Alphamstone church submitted by trui
The largest stone by the west wall of St Barnabas' church is about 150 cms long.
 Alphamstone submitted by Thorgrim
Stone circle at Alphamstone? TL878354.
See article on Sacred Stones of Essex
Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.
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Re: Alphamstone (Score: 1)
by Andy B on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
(User Info | Send a Message) | A Qualified surveyor claims a picturesque village on the Essex/Suffolk border might boast the only proper stone circle outside the west of England.
For generations the sarcen stones at Alphamstone near Sudbury have been at the centre of hot debate as to whether they were ever part of a stone circle.
There are two stones marking the entrance to St Barnabas Church and a number of others further back near - and in - the church, but they form neither a circle nor part of a circle.
But Paul Daw, a surveyor who has visited more than 300 of the 400 or so stone circles, timber circles and henge sites in England, believes he might have found the original location of a stone circle in the churchyard using the ancient technique of dowsing.
He believes the stones which visitors to the church can see have been moved away from a once-standing circle in a corner of the churchyard.
His claims have been questioned by Suffolk County Council's archaeology team, which said whenever it has investigated the claims of dowsers they have never found archaeological remains.
But Mr Daw said he has had successes in the past and claimed he has had positive readings at Alphamstone suggesting a near-perfect circle of 10 stones.
“The find of a stone circle in East Anglia is unique, as all of England's other stone circles, of which there were nearly 400, all occur in the West Country, the area once known as Wessex, the Pennines and in Cumbria.
“On the eastern side of England, circular earth monuments such as henges and causewayed enclosures, and the occasional timber circle, were built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods.”
Mr Daw, who is looking for funding to continue with his work and who wants to open a national museum devoted to stone circles, said he hoped there may be a possibility that part of the site which sits just outside the area of consecrated ground might be excavated in the future to see whether his findings using divining rods stands up.
Nobody from the church was available for comment at the time of going to press, but Edward Martin from Suffolk County Council's archaeology service said while he had an open mind about dowsing's ability to find water he had not experienced a positive result for stones or archaeological remains.
“Finding archaeological remains with dowsing doesn't seem to work,” he said. “I would have great doubt about this being real. In south Suffolk you do get boulders which are very often used in foundations. But they would not make much of a monument because they are not huge stones. If we do get anything like that, we would have a timber circle rather than a stone circle.”
Divining rods used for dowsing have been used in various forms for thousands of years.
Scientific Dowsing has its supporters and its sceptics and research into the use of divining rods have not tended to prove it works.
During the 1960s some US Marines used dowsing to try and locate weapon stores beneath the ground.
Source: http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/content/eveningstar/news/story.aspx?brand=ESTOnline&category=News&tBrand=ESTOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=IPED12%20Jun%202009%2000%3A03%3A40%3A697 | [ Reply to This ]
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