MYTH, LEGEND & REALITY at Arthur's Stone Neolithic Chambered Tomb | With Michael Bott

[Music] you know the odd thing is although i can step out of my back door you know be amongst neolithic monuments they're not the sort that were visible above ground and although quite nearby 20 minutes drive away i've got the roll ride stones which is a very nice thing to have i've got to go quite a bit further afield to get anywhere that's got anything showing above ground really anything significant in terms of megalithic sites um so it's a it's a good two hours drive to where i'm taking you and where am i taking you herefordshire and a neolithic chambered tomb called arthur stone well that's nice isn't it wow here we are well glad i made the effort trick is i'm going to um spend the night here and uh tomorrow we'll take some photographic some cinematic uh footage to make into a little uh little filmet um but i'll i'll tell you more about um arthur's stone and about something else that's actually nearby that's very exciting um almost within sight of here i think but i'll leave that till tomorrow all right well here we are made it hi good morning um slept quite well last night and absolutely nobody about mind you it is only seven o'clock in the morning [Music] the air is still a little bit crisp um but here we are with another look at half the stone now my job here is to take some good footage of it so i suppose i'd better get to work soon but uh just take a moment to enjoy the peacefulness [Music] and the early morning birds twittering away arthur stone is named of course for king arthur and has been since the 13th century we're told as far as its actual origins in prehistory there seems to be little to be said aside from the fact that it's been dated to around 3500 bc and has been classified among the seven cotswold type tombs as such a little imagination is required when looking at it we need to be thinking long marrow the covering mound would have been about 80 foot long and 30 foot wide maybe about half the size of bayless nap but nevertheless similarly proportioned and viewed that way it's clear that the remains we can see here today are a very much diminished representation of the original monument all we can see really is the burial chamber not that there's any record of human remains having been found here but then again with such a disturbed site expectations of any fines at all would be very slim indeed what remains to my eye at least is simply that which is not easily portable i'm afraid nine stones supported the 25 ton capstone which as you can see is now in three pieces however arthur's stone does have its own distinct peculiarities the outlying upright stone is what remains of a false portal stone at the fulcrum of what would have been the forecourt the entrance was not from the forecourt at the eastern end but these stones here tell us that the entrance was into the side of the tomb from the south interpretations on a postcard please on the other hand what arthur stone lacks in archaeology it makes up for in legend apparently king arthur was said to have killed a giant here and if proof were needed he cracked the stone as he fell and left the marks from his elbows in it as he did so a 15th century chronicle tells us that during the time of the wars of the roses to cut a long story short it was deemed that a quarrel between a knight named turboville and thomas app griffith father of seris app thomas who helped henry vii to the throne should be settled here on this spot the champions met here accordingly and on first pass turboville was unhorsed broke his back and died in september 1645 king charles gathered his army here and allegedly dined off the stone even more recently it is said that c.s lewis took much inspiration from the wire valley in this the golden valley in herefordshire and that the broken stone upon which aslan the lion is sacrificed in the lion the witch and the wardrobe is based on arthur's stone sorry about the plot spoiler there and that's about it for arthur stone but i want to quickly tell you about something else that's only about a mile away and from a prehistory point of view it's absolutely fascinating but it looks to me if actually showing it you anything might involve a little trespassing not that i advise it but it's not far wish me luck [Music] oh seem to have made it it's only a few yards this way uh hopefully you can see that um patch of earth behind me in in the field this is dorsten hill and what you're seeing there is the remains of an excavation archaeological excavation um that took place quite recently started in 2013 and best thing is if i um returned to the studio as it were to tell you about it the excavation led by professor julian thomas happened because of an earlier discovery of a huge amount of flints and other finds in this field the dig revealed three long mounds aligned end to end the middle mound was composed of burnt clay and timber and had a timber palisade in the eastern mount bones were found with a long timber chamber built between two huge post holes and there were stone chambers with cremated remains built into the side of the mound in 2015 the western mound was found to contain the post hole indications of a timber building nearly a hundred foot long but what is extraordinary and hopefully we'll be able to explore the details of this a bit more fully in a later program is that the evidence here tells us that a large timber dwelling dating to nearly 6 000 years ago was burnt to the ground and that funerary monuments of stone and timber were created over the remains here essentially we have barrows built over houses in professor thomas's own words the halls of the living became the halls of the dead a totally unique site with so much more to go into and as far as interest is concerned about stuff going on under the ground here uh i hope you find that absolutely fascinating [Music] you

Channel: The Prehistory Guys

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Keywords: standing with stones, michael bott, standing stones, stone circles, burial sites, long barrows, ancient history podcast, neolithic europe, megalithic archaeology, megalithic culture, megalithic monuments, prehistoric archaeology, the prehistory guys, arthurs stone dorstone, arthurs stone, king arthur, aslan narnia, megalithic site, neolithic chambered tomb, historic hereford, ancient monuments herefordshire, king charles herefordshire

Id: PhWF86A8Ufo

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020