In his gazetteer of Britain’s ancient sites, The Modern Antiquarian, the musician Julian Cope warns that hours can be spent unwittingly at the Rollright Stones on the Oxfordshire/Warwickshire border. He advises that visitors should not be in a hurry. I have one hour, and an appointment to keep, but the three parts of the site – the King’s Men stone circle, the lone King Stone, and the collapsed dolmen of the Whispering Knights – are barely 300 metres apart. I have time enough.
The stones in the reconfigured circle of the King’s Men are said to be uncountable, and indeed it is trickier than you might imagine, as they vary greatly in form and it’s hard to see where some join. A small boulder of entirely different geology might have been added, mischievously, last week.
