<< Feature Articles >> The Great Stone Circles – How they Work Part 1
Submitted by JACKME on Monday, 30 November 2015 Page Views: 30083
Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: England County: Cumbria Type: Stone CircleInternal Links:
Based on Research at Swinside by Jack Morris-Eyton
The contents page for the whole series is here.
I first began to take a serious interest in the Great Stone Circles after my wife and I watched the sunrise at Swinside on June 11th 1992. We had arrived at the circle far too early, but the wait was definitely worthwhile as we were eventually treated to a glorious sunrise that morning, an experience which was to lead to twelve years’ of research into how stone circles work.
As we watched the sun rising at Swinside that day, it soon became apparent that the centre of the circle was not the best place to see this event, as it did not line up with the entrance gateway. I therefore positioned myself in line with the entrance and moved around until I located the most suitable viewing point from where many of the stones lined up with features on the skyline, realising that the observations had to be made over two of the stones. Many people advocate making celestial observations from the unmarked centre of the circle, however this is clearly nonsense. A single aiming stone can be made to point to anything as the observer moves his head around.
This first visit inspired me to try and unravel the mystery of the stone circles, not by reading other people’s ideas about what they may have been used for, but by watching the sunrises and sunsets over the stones for myself. It was clear from the amount of effort invested in construction that these sites were not just built for fun, and so I hoped that as time went on I would come to discover how they worked. After a time I realised that there were many different types of circles and stone arrangements but I naturally concentrated on Swinside, being the nearest to my home.
Following initial investigations here, I began to look into the whereabouts of all the other stone circles in the county using John Waterhouse’s book ‘The Stone Circles of Cumbria’. This showed the sites at Bratts Hill and Elva Plain to be virtually True North of Swinside. Over the years I have also made use of Aubrey Burl’s book ´The Stone Circles of the British Isles’, to detect more interesting arrangements further afield. Unfortunately, I have only been able to inspect most of the distant circles on short day visits and it has not been possible to visit all of the sites, so there is a chance that some Great Stone Circle somewhere does not fit with the system.
Some people maintain that the alignments of the sun and moon at stone circles are all purely down to chance. However, during my research the same system has been found at many ancient sites all over the British Isles with similar shaped stones placed in the same key positions. What makes the system more complex is the fact that the stone circle builders appear not to have been too bothered whether a stone was used as a fore sight or a back sight and many of the stones act for both sun and the moon, making nothing simple. This research has produced spectacular results, unlocking the system used not only at Swinside and the other Great Stone Circles but also at other stone arrangements from Shetland to Brittany. Unfortunately I have yet to discover that at the famous stone rows of Carnac, although these do contain stones of the same shapes.
Research at Swinside
Swinside Stone Circle (SD172882) has been described by Aubrey Burl as ´one of the finest stone circles in Western Europe.’ I consider it to be the simplest and the most complete of the Great Stone Circles that I have visited. It holds the key to the understanding of all the others in this series of circles, namely circles normally comprising over forty stones built to indicate the sun and moon rises and sets over the full 18.6 years cycle of the moon.
Unfortunately many of the other circles are so incomplete or have suffered from such incorrect restoration that it would be impossible to figure out from scratch how these were supposed to work. Others have a quirk in the moon observations which it would be extremely difficult to understand without prior knowledge of Swinside. This does not mean that Swinside was built first, but that it is the only remaining circle in England, to my limited knowledge, with all of its elements more or less in place. Some of the stones were pushed over in the 19th century, ready for blasting by contractors building a new barn at Swinside Farm, however, when the estate owner was made aware of what was happening in a letter from his brother (dated 8th April 1808), he ordered the destruction to cease and the stones were pulled back into line over their sockets. All the surveys in my research have used only those stones which are still in the position they were when first erected.
The plan is to publish the results of 12 years’ research looking at all aspects of the Great Stone Circles and some other stone arrangements, which indicate sun or moon rises or sets, by posting a new article frequently on The Megalithic Portal. In order to show that what happens at Swinside is not purely down to chance or unique, comparisons will be made with other circles to demonstrate that the system I have discovered covers a large geographical area.
Throughout this series of articles an aerial photograph taken by Ed Cleasby from a microlite is used as the plan for Swinside - I have left a few cows in the picture to remind people that this is a photograph! The numbering applied is that which is commonly used, except that Stone number 25 does not exist (although it is shown on some plans) and there is no evidence of any stones having been removed since 1808. On some diagrams two stones are indicated (numbers 32 & 33), but from observation on site the socket looks as if only held one stone, although this can of course only be confirmed by excavation.
Read Part 2
The contents page for the whole series is here.
Jack Morris-Eyton sadly passed away in 2011 but his expanded research has been posthumously published in a book: Stone Circle Calendars: A New Understanding.
Note: To mark the anniversary of Jack Morris-Eyton's death, here is a reminder of Jack's series of nineteen articles, first published here in 2005.
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