Rupert and I had a great time while filming in Ireland. It wasn’t always easy – the exhaust fell off the camper travelling north from Killarney – and in some areas we felt we didn’t quite do it justice, but the experience at all the sites was just great.
However, there was one major disappointment. Newgrange [...]
“The hobbits shuddered. Even in the Shire the rumour of the Barrow-wights of the Barrow-downs beyond the Forest had been heard. But it was not a tale that any hobbit liked to listen to, even by a comfortable fireside far away.” – From ‘The Lord of the Rings’; J.R.R. Tolkien
Maybe my thoughts and feelings about [...]
Here is a nice long clip from the DVD – all about henges. It just so happens that the most important of them occur within a quite small distance from one another in the South of England. Now, the two sites in the film that actually have the word ‘henge’ in their name turn out [...]
During the making of “Standing with Stones” Rupert and I found ourselves on July 5th 2006 standing on busy Cannon Street in the middle of the City of London. How come? Well, that question is answered in the clip below. Even so, it was pretty surreal to mind ourselves filming an ancient prehistoric monument inside [...]
As I said in the diary post about shooting at Cainbaan, everyone loves a puzzle, but when you get this close to the mysteries our ancestors left behind, a solution always seems only a hairsbreadth away, and yet – gaze into space for as long as you want – understanding remains tantalizingly just out of [...]
“You rememebr that lttle cist we saw in the middle of the row at Merrivale ? Well, thius is a perfect Bronze Age example. It’;s abot 4,000 years old and basically, it’s a stone box, and it would have held the remains of an individual or even a family, sometimes – with a coverstone – [...]
“If I was to visit all the sites there are, you’d probably still be watching this film in a year’s time. This end of the country is probably the richest in its wealth of prehistoric sites. Within just a few minutes of where I am now, besides any number of standing stones and cairns, there’s [...]
“The passing centuries have left many ancient sites with a mysterious anonymity. We respect them, but we don’t understand them and their social importance ha long since disappeared. We protect them and ignore them – in equal measure.
Knowlton Henge is a perfect example. This Bronze Age site is part of an enormous settlement that sprawls [...]
“Sometimes, like Nine Stones in Dorset, our ancient monuments stand neglected by the roadside, virtually unnoticed by passing motorists and unvisited by all but the enthusiast”.
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“Stone rows are a bit of a mystery and Dartmoor has the greatest concentration anywhere. There are over sixty of them dotted across the moor – and of such variety that they must have had many different functions.
I’m at Merrivale, right in the middle of Dartmoor and this site has a bit of everything: [...]
This magnificent stone circle is the first that we ever shot serious footage at for ‘Standing with Stones’. Sadly though, Scorhill does not appear in the final film. Why? Well, Rupert and I first shot ’serious footage’ for Standing with Stones way back in 2001 – and then we were not filming for the DVD [...]
“It looks like a target to me!” So says Rupert of the Yellowmead quadruple stone circle in the South West of Dartmoor. Not that he or I seriously suggest in the film that it was for Neolithic hunting practise (“Nearest spear to the middle wins!”), but this is one of the first times in the [...]
It was a grey day when I filmed at The Hurlers for Standing with Stones. An amazing site this – it doesn’t immediately impose itself on the visitor – it’s only by slow absorption that you get alerted to the grandeur that is laid out here across Bodmin Moor. Not one, not two but three large stone [...]
Less than 12 metres across, the Stone Circle at Duloe in the east of Cornwall is the smallest in the county. However, the eight gleaming white quartz stones have a presence all their own and give this circle a unique quality that I don’t think is repeated anywhere else.
Interestingly, the adjoining farm is named Stonetown [...]
“It’s partly because we tend to look out for big and impressive monoliths that important signs of our ancestors’ day-to-day lives can sometimes pass unnoticed. Here at Roughtor on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, the remains of a Bronze age village is almost lost in the landscape. But a closer look reveals the true scale of [...]
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