Castlerigg Stone Circle
Castlerigg stone circle
Interesting facts
- Only one excavation has ever taken place here, in 1882, and it found just a few fragments of charcoal whose samples were later lost.
- In 1799 Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited with William Wordsworth and likened the surrounding mountains to an attentive gathering of white-robed wizards.
- William Stukeley mentioned a second, larger circle in the next field, but no trace of it has ever been found.
- In the early 20th century a farmer set upright a plough-scarred boulder about 90 metres southwest; whether it ever belonged to the circle is unknown.
- In 1913 Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, a co-founder of the National Trust, helped raise a public subscription to buy the field and gave it to the Trust.
- A 2004 laser-scanning survey tested claims of a newly discovered spiral carving but found only modern graffiti.
- When it was protected in 1882, Castlerigg was one of only 68 sites on the first official schedule for all of Britain and Ireland.
- The ring is not truly round: it measures about 32.6 metres across at its widest and 29.5 metres at its narrowest.
- Its older local name is the Carles, or Keswick Carles, and it is the most visited stone circle in Cumbria.
Why it is worth it
Castlerigg stands on a rounded hilltop east of Keswick, in the middle of a bowl of fells. From inside the circle the ground falls away on every side and the horizon is made of mountains — Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Blencathra and Grasmoor among them. Archaeologists who rarely allow themselves adjectives call it one of the most visually impressive prehistoric monuments in Britain, and on a day of moving cloud it is hard to disagree.
The circle is usually dated to around 3200 BC, which would make it one of the earliest stone circles in Britain. Its stones are glacial boulders of volcanic rock from the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, probably gathered from the till the hill is made of; the heaviest is thought to weigh around 16 tons and the tallest is about 2.3 metres high. They form a flattened ring of about 38 to 42 stones — the count depends on whether you include small packing stones exposed by visitors' feet — with a 3.3-metre gap on the north side that may have been the entrance. Inside, against the eastern side, a rectangle of ten more stones is almost unique among British circles, and nobody knows what it was for. The only known rock art is a single lozenge carved on one stone on the western edge.
Castlerigg belongs to a small family of large open Cumbrian circles built when the nearby Langdale fells were producing polished stone axes that travelled all over Britain; it may have been a place of gathering, exchange and ritual. William Stukeley described it in 1725, the earliest written account, and the Romantic poets and painters found it irresistible — Keats is thought to have had it in mind when he wrote of a dismal cirque of Druid stones. It was among the first monuments protected under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882 and is in the care of English Heritage.
Getting there
The circle is about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) east of Keswick, a walk of roughly half an hour from the town centre. The nearest large city is Carlisle, about 34 km away, and the nearest railway station is Penrith, about 16 miles away, with buses towards Keswick. Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL) is about 142 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Castlerigg stone circle is situated on a prominent hill to the east of Keswick, in the Lake District National Park, North West England.
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