Fig. 11. Rudstone church, and monolith, near Bridlington. View of the North side.
On the Greensand hill a little above Mottestone church, in the Isle of Wight, there is a huge, untooled monolith, known as the “Longstone,” but it is not certain that it was originally solitary. A smaller pillar lies at its base, and Mr W. Dale, the Hampshire archaeologist, supposes that the two stones represent a fallen dolmen, or the remnants of a cromlech[128]. Other writers have considered the relics to be ancient boundary stones[129], but I think this explanation not very satisfactory. The Rev. G. E. Jeans, who advocates the boundary-theory, declares against the view that Mottestone signifies “mote-stone,” and points out that the Domesday spelling, Modrestone, indicates a personal name, Modr[130]. Even allowing for possible approximations made by the Domesday scribe, the etymology given by Mr Jeans seems more reasonable than the older one. Another Hampshire village, Twyford, on the Itchen, is worthy of a visit in connection with megaliths. The church in this old-world nook was believed by Dean Kitchin to be built on ground once occupied by a stone-circle or a dolmen, and Mr Dale considers that the two large sarsens which lie by the side of the building represent the wreckage of this ancient monument[131]. A particularly fine yew in the graveyard will be noticed in a subsequent chapter. On the neighbouring hillside of Shawford Downs, there are also some linchets, or ancient cultivation terraces. These associations imply that Twyford was not only an inhabited site, but presumably a sacred site, at a very early period. Still another Hampshire example is furnished by Bishopstoke, the church which Mr Hilaire Belloc asserts was erected on the site of an old stone-circle[132]. Cobham church, in Kent, stands a little to the North of the remains of a stone-ring. Outside the North porch there is a large sarsen, another lies against the wall at the West end, while a third is built into the South wall[133]. Thomas Wright long ago pointed out that the church of Addington, in Kent, was in the immediate neighbourhood of numerous megalithic remains, though all of these were in a ruinous and disordered condition. In fact the area seemed to be a vast tribal cemetery. Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, in 1878, was able, from a study of the monumental relics, to make an imaginary restoration of parallel avenues of stones as they once existed. At the North-Eastern extremity, there was a stone chamber which has unfortunately since been disturbed[134]. Some writers have believed that the hillock on which Addington church is built was artificial, but it is practically certain that it is purely natural; its existence being perhaps due to a protective capping of ironstone which has been proof against denudation.
The church of Stanton Drew, near Bristol, is placed within the precincts of a veritable Valhalla of monumental relics. Three stone circles are situated, as it were, within a stone’s throw of the building, the most distant being about one-third of a mile away, and the nearest only 150 yards. But besides these more perfect remains, there is a group close to the churchyard, towards the South-West. This group, called the Cove, consists of two upright blocks, 10¼ feet and 4½ feet respectively in height, and one prostrate stone, 14½ feet in length ([Fig. 12]). The original character of the monument cannot be decisively known. Mr C. W. Dymond contends that the stones hardly represent a ruined dolmen, because of the unusual height of two of the remaining pillars. Other speculations, hazarded, as it seems to the writer, without a vestige of proof, regard the Cove as a “druidical chair of state,” and, again, as a shelter for sacrificial fire. On the whole, it is safer to consider these monoliths as survivors of a cromlech or stone-ring. The material, which is unhewn, is a siliceous breccia of Triassic age, and was probably brought from Harptree-under-Mendip, about seven miles from the present position. The church, it should be added, retains portions of Norman work[135].
Fig. 12. The Cove, Stanton Drew, Somerset; a group of megaliths situated near the village church.