11. The prospect, northward from Rowldrich stones. By William Stukeley, 1724.
A. The King Stone. B. The Archdruid's Barrow. C. King barrows or round barrows. D. The village of Long Compton.
Note how this image depicts the King Stone with its original prominent belly.
12. This is a composite view of the mound (Stukeley’s archdruid’s barrow) and part of the circle, excluding the road and hedges, to demonstrate that the circle was positioned in relation to the eastern end of the mound for marking the location of the northernmost rising of the moon.
13. We cross the road to see the King Stone, soon to be renamed, slyly peering over the Archbishop's barrow, now recognised as a natural mound.
Cultures from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age regarded this mound as a divine gift. This mound, or knoll, undoubtedly acts as a precursor to Britain's many long barrows.
Concealed beneath the grass these days is a circular cairn with a central interment positioned atop the mound. Additionally, at the far end of the mound, an individual was discovered interred in a round barrow containing Mesolithic flint, likely sourced from Norfolk.
14. The cairn atop the mound near the King Stone provides further evidence of the Stone Age measurement system known as the Megalithic Yard.
This cairn is oval or egg-shaped; if oval, it consists of two circles measuring twenty megalithic yards in diameter, with their centres spaced half a megalithic yard apart.
Its alignment, at 50 degrees clockwise from north, resembles the summer solstice alignment of Stonehenge. This cairn and its solstice alignment complement the main circle's alignment, which we have already discussed.
Lambrick, who excavated this cairn, wanted to leave it exposed for visitors to enjoy. However, the proposal was rejected because archaeologists dispute the importance of the Megalithic yard for the hypothesis of Stonehenge, which they wish to keep secret.
Source of image 14: An Illustrated Guide to the Rollright Stones. By George Lambrick.
15. The King Stone takes a crafty peek over Stukeley's "Archdruid's barrow."
Some say the belly was taken by entrepreneurs, who smashed it into smaller pieces to sell at a nearby market. The truth is that this stone was a source of embarrassment for all who beheld it, particularly for the fairer sex and the clergy. Let us examine it from the northern side to discover why!
16. The King stone seen from the north.
17. The King Stone reconstructed.
This Is No King Stone. It’s Not Even a Queen Stone! It’s a pregnant woman with a child, depicted in stone.
Thomas Fisher produced an early drawing depicting this stone as female and pregnant. Fisher's version features a hole beneath the belly, which can be interpreted as a representation of a vulva.
This not only carries connotations with other holed stones, such as those found at the entrances of certain burial chambers and long barrows, but it also provided a significant reason for Puritans, antiquarians, protesters, and clergy to extract the belly to conceal its true purpose! Let us rename it the Matriarch.
The Matriarch is positioned to discreetly observe where the mid-June sunset and the northernmost moonset enter the nine-mile-distant Ebrington Hill and Ilmington gorges, respectively.
So, why would a standing stone symbolising a pregnant woman be interested in where the sun and moon enter the ground unless that woman or girl sought to encourage the sun and moon to copulate as she has?
Source: An illustrated guide to the Rollright stones by George Lambrick, 2022. The image of the original King Stone can be found on page 10 of the guide.
18. This is where the northernmost moon, known as the Major Standstill, enters the Foxcote gorges near Ilmington every 18.61 years. Benevolent nature bestowed this perspective upon the Rollright astronomer/surveyors 9,500 years ago.
19. Also seen from the top of the mound. Summer solstice sunset on the evening of the 21st of June 2024.
The sun sinks into Nebsworth Hill at one end, and the major moon sets at the other, just like Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, where the sun and moon scan both sides of Sidbury Hill.
20. Observe the sun nestled between the stones known as the Whispering Knights in this photograph. It appears so diminutive that early folk believed they could catch it. Some thought they could replicate it! If they were able to, they might bypass their harsh winters and cultivate fruits, vegetables, and grains year-round. And after all, they were Britain's first farmers.
21. This humanoid family of stones is incorrectly referred to as the Whispering Knights. They are not even huddled together in a secret conversation.
The sun sinks into Nebsworth Hill at one end, and the major moon sets at the other, just like Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, where the sun and moon scan both sides of Sidbury Hill.
There is an old fable about a witch who turned the king's men to stone because the King couldn't see the village of Long Compton in the valley below. Nor can you see it in this picture because it's too far to the right.
This Fable was written by a certain Evans, who in 1895 failed to realise that Long Compton did not exist when the stones were set up.
So, bringing things up to date, I have rewritten Evan's poem to incorporate where the northernmost moon will set and will set again in 2024/25 through a couple of notches in the nine-mile-distant Nebsworth and Ebrington Hill seen above.
"Seven long strides shalt thou take, and if Nebsworth Hill and moon thou can see,
King of England shalt thou be."
The exultant King cried
"Stick, stock, stone
As King of England, I shall be known."
But on his seventh stride, the ground before him rose up in a long mound obscuring his view, and the witch cackled.
"As long as Nebsworth Hill and moon thou canst not see
King of England, thou shalt not be.
Rise up, stick, and stand still, stone,
For King of England thou shalt be none:
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be
And I an eldern tree."
This fable is another Red Herring that misdirects us from the facts.
Some go looking for the elderberry tree the witch said she would turn herself into, but no elderberry trees are found at Rollright. (Perhaps the trees are being cut down around the circle to plant elderberries).
22. This gorge, or notch, one of two in Nebsworth Hill through which the northernmost moon sets every 19 years, would have surely caught Professor Thom's attention, unless it was intentional.
84. More corrupt work from Professor Alexander Thom.
Measured internally, this is the actual geometry on which the stone circle of Dinnever Hill was set.
Draw a 50-megalithic yard diameter circle and four sides of a hexagon from it. Next, draw a half-size circle (25 My) in the middle of the 50 My circle, which will determine the centre points of a further pair of 25 My circles. Finally, draw a 45.57 arc to close the profile. This 45.57 arc was thought by Stone Age folk to be 45.5 MY, for they would not have known the difference.
85. Rough Tor is similar to Dinnever Hill, except that the centre of a pair of 35.023 circles (35) is placed on where an axis, 5-megalithic yards away from the centreline of the outer circle, intersects with the line made between the centre of the outer circle and that of the hexagon.
86. BURNMORE. It is quite enough to expect Stone Age folks to have come up with geometric rings based on hexagons without expecting them to have concerned themselves with perimeter lengths in whole numbers, as Alexander Thom tried to do.
It is simpler to accept that Stonehenge is based on a 36 megalithic yard diameter circle, the Rollright circle to measure 37, Burnmoor 38, and Avebury's Sanctuary 47, all of which makes it likely that the design of Avebury and Stonehenge came under the influence of visitors from Cumberland.