Exmoor’s Ancient Stone Circles: The Mystery of the Micro-Monoliths
- Martin Hesp
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Such a statement may well have been made on Exmoor 4,500 years ago. Ancient Man had a great liking for rocks – as edifices like Stonehenge and Cornwall’s Merry Maidens so magnificently prove to this day – but on Exmoor he came up against a slight problem.
Rocks of any size are few and far between on the moors so the ceremonial loving locals had to make do with anything they could find – as the tiny standing stone in our picture proves.
The Vanishing Stones of the High Plateau
It is part of an ancient stone circle situated not far from the lonely road that crosses the high plateau between Exford and Porlock. The 80-foot circle comprises ten standing stones and broken off stumps, and 11 recumbent stones. It’s believed, judging by the spacing, there would originally have been 43 stones, six feet apart – but half have either sunk in the soft peat, or been dragged off by farmers and road-menders down the centuries.
Such is the lot of Exmoor’s ancient monuments. Look carefully around the moor and here and there you may find menhir-shaped stones incorporated in gateways and stonewalls – some older houses even have them in their large traditional open fireplaces.
From "Prairie-Busting" to Preservation
After the invention of four-wheel drive tractors, things got even worse for the ancient remains. In the 1970s and 80s the Exmoor National Park Authority held emergency meetings because archaeologists were horrified to find that the micro-monoliths of the moor were being ploughed under. Thankfully, farmers no longer go in for prairie-busting activities – a number of agreements were set up which put a stop to further ploughing of the precious moorland.
But who were the original denizens of the hills and why did they see fit to place vertically lodged stones in circles and in long straight rows? Such edifices are thought to have been the work of the people who lived here around about 4,500 to 5,000 years ago. These weren’t the old Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who’d dwelt here since the final vestiges of the last Ice Age, but members of the New Stone Age.
The Flint Workers of Hawkcombe Head
There is evidence of the Neolithic reign not far from the stone circle on Porlock Common – stroll around Hawkcombe Head for long enough gazing intently at the turfy ground and you are very likely to come across a shard or two of flint. You may even find the odd arrow or hammerhead hewn out of the stuff.
Flint does not occur naturally on Exmoor, but it was brought all the way here by the people of the New Stone Age and shaped into tools at Hawkcombe Head. The area is known as a “napping floor” – where the Stone Age people shaped raw flint into tools - and the tools made here helped the men and women of the day clear Exmoor of its primeval forests.
Farming was just beginning to find its muddy feet in the West Country. It has been estimated that, using the basic stone tools of the time, it would have taken an average sized family no less than five generations to clear just half a square mile of ground. Hard work, no doubt, but they kept hacking away at the smaller trees of the hilltops and so turned the plateaus like Exmoor, Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor into the agricultural savannahs that we now call moorlands.
Explore More: If you enjoy these tales of the West Country landscape, listen to my Adventures in Journalism podcast for deep dives into regional history.
The Rise of the Beaker People
This disafforestation – and the odd flint here or there – is all that’s left to bear witness to several thousand years of hard labour. Archaeologists used to believe the next step in Britain’s human evolution occurred with the arrival of the so-called “Beaker People”, but this theory is now in doubt.
The Beaker Folk were given the strange name because of the shape of the pottery vessels that are often found in the round graves, otherwise known as barrows. Exmoor is rich in these sepulchral humps. You can see them from the Brendon escarpment in the east of the national park, all the way to the lonely Chains in the west. Two of the best known are Joaney How and Robin How on the slopes of Dunkery Beacon.
Magic, Ley-Lines, and Force Fields
So much for the vague history – but what were the henges and stone rows for? No one knows. If they tell you they do, they are either lying or doing some wishful thinking. Over the years I’ve studied such things on the moor, I’ve come across all sorts of weird people who’ve theorised on the meaning of the stones.
The Douser: I found a man dangling a gold ring on a silken thread over the Long Stone out on the Chains, claiming he could tell "good" stones from "evil" ones.
The Ley-Line Hunters: A father and son team used copper dousing rods and maps to calculate "invisible force fields."
It sounds crazy, but given that archaeologists are still uncertain how Early Man dragged the vast stones of Stonehenge from Wales to Wiltshire, they may have some sort of point.
A 7,000-Year Connection
The henges and rows probably had some sort of religious, sacrificial, or spiritual role. Many of Exmoor’s stone rows lead down towards springs – and some people think early man worshipped water-based gods. On the other hand, the structures may have been put in place merely to show people the way in Exmoor’s regular bouts of fog.
No one knows. What we do know is that these ancient edifices remind us of who we are and where we have come from. If you find it hard to believe that we modern sophisticated people have anything to do with those early, hairy, hunter-gatherers – then you ought to know that a recent DNA survey carried out in the Cheddar area found that today’s population has nearly identical sequences to that taken from a Mesolithic skeleton found in a local cave.
That man died more than 7,000 years ago and his relatives are still living in the district today. A fact worth remembering, next time you are gazing at the sepulchral stony remains on the moors.
