These ([Plate IX].) were used to mark the way. They were of all sizes, from the Whetstone on Hargest Ridge to a small stone not much larger than a football. Some were long stones or menhirs, but few remain upright in this district. I know of three lying fallen on leys, namely on the wall at the south gate of Madley Churchyard, near the inn at Bush Bank (cross road from Weobley), and used as a bridge over a ditch near the Field Farm on the Litley-Carrots path.
I show photographs of a fine stone at Red Lion, Madley, having a flat top, and of the type which developed into market stones. The market stone at Grosmont Town Hall (on which the first market basket placed on market day paid no toll) is the successor of such a mark stone. Two marking stones (with ancient brick houses built partly on them) stand unnoticed in the short Wye Street, just over Wye Bridge at Hereford. They mark the Palace Ford, and a ley from Castle Hill to Hunderton. They are of the same peculiar stone (not “old red”) as at Madley, Colwall, etc.
Wergin’s Stone ([Plate X].) is a late type of mark stone which was the prototype of the churchyard and wayside crosses, all of which I think are on the sites of original mark stones, as I find leys passing through them.
In studying such crosses, I was puzzled to find several (as at Vowchurch, Hentland, Capel-y-fin) with ancient rough unworked stones as a base. I am now certain that these bases are the original stones marking a ley. The Pedlar’s Cross near Pen-y-lan Farm above Llanigon (mentioned in Miss Jacob’s fine story, “The Sheep Stealers”) has been chipped into a rude suggestion of a cross without taking down, and a flat mark stone on which Archbishop Baldwin is said (by tradition) to have preached when on his tour with Giraldus in 1188, has had a cross inscribed on it. It stands close to St. Ishaw’s Well at Partricio.
There is a striking marking stone on the Rhiw Wen route in the Black Mountains.
Other stones on leys are:—White Stone, Withington (with original stone at the base of an inverted fragment of its successor—a wayside cross); Queen Stone, Huntsham, at Credenhill cross-roads, at the foot of Froom’s Hill, on the road near Turnaston Church, marking a ford at Bartonsham Farm, Hereford, and Crossways, Bollingham. The stone that all the Kings of England are crowned on is certainly a mark stone.
SIGHTING STONES.
Mark stones may be on one side of the track, as are the whitewashed stones which mark a coastguard’s cliff walk to-day. But there also appear to have been sighting points of stone exactly on the ley, so constructed as to indicate its direction.
The Four Stones near Harpton, New Radnor, are four upright boulders (see Frontispiece) in an irregular quadrangle, and no one has explained their purpose.
I took sighting lines over successive pairs of stones, five lines being possible, and although the work on the map is not yet completed, I can definitely say that the “Four Stones” are directing posts which point out at least two leys, proved by passing through other good points. The first goes to the highest point in Deerfold Forest (The Camp, 940ft.) in one direction, and in the other through The Folly and on the main road at Llanvihangel-nant-Melan, over Bryn-y-Maen Hill, here appearing to strike another “four stones,” and through Llansaintfraed in Elvel Church to some peak beyond.