Pen-y-Beacon, Stone Circle in Powys, SO239373
Visited Sunday, 2nd May 2004
Nowadays marked clearly on the OS map, the remains of this stone circle can be found right by the car parking area beside the little road which runs north from the Gospel Pass immediately below Hay Bluff.
The obvious remains here are one fairly large, slab like standing stone, with another stone nearby, which is actually a stone from the car park surround which has been moved so that vehicular access to the hillside can be made. Closer inspection of the area reveals more however, and beside the large stone, the remains of several more slablike stones can just be made out in the grass. At right angles to the large stone, several edge set stone tops can be seen, which sort of make out an arc, smooth side in. Following this arc around on the moor land, several more edge on slabs can be found, which includes another arc of 3 or 4 stones at what would be the opposite side of the circle. In all, I reckon I found about 10 stones that could have been part of this fairly large circle.
The large standing slab seems to me to be a bit of an oddity, in that it is placed in such a way that it is at right angles to the rest of the stones, radially to the circle. There are a few other large stones flat on the ground here, which make me wonder whether this was originally an entrance to the circle, or perhaps some form of burial chamber which just happens to be in the same place ?
Unfortunately, as is becoming more and more commonplace on open moorland within Britain these days, it is all getting destroyed by the moronic behaviour of people in 4 wheel drive vehicles, who see it as some form of challenge to drive their machines over all the lumps and bumps they can find. As I was leaving, there was a large 4WD truck drive off the road onto the grassland near the circle and start careering all over the place, doing handbrake turns and the like. Perhaps these places now need video surveillance.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road