Arthurs stone, Gower, Wales.
N 51° 35.618 W 004° 10.759
30U E 418309 N 5716501
Arthur's Stone, sometimes known as King Arthur's Stone or Maen Ceti, is a Neolithic burial tomb dating back to 2500 B.C. and was one of the first sites to be protected under the Ancient Monuments Act of 1882.
Waymark Code: WMDDJT
Location: South Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/30/2011
Views: 11
"Perched upon a set of pointed supporting stones, the capstone is a 25 ton quartz conglomerate boulder, measuring an almighty 4 metres by 2 metres and 2 metres depth. However, previous to 1693 the boulder was much larger than this, until an incident knocking more than 10 tons of it to the ground in a clean break. Nobody is sure how this almighty event took place, but many theories exist. Some say that a miller attempted to remove a chunk of the rock to make a new millstone, but that the piece proved too heavy to move. Others suggest it was struck by lightening during a violent storm or that St. David, the Patron Saint of Wales, himself split the stone with his mighty sword in defiance of the Druid worship centred around it. Whatever the cause the broken part can still be found alongside the monument, demoted to the ground.
The 17th century rector of Cheriton Church, the Venerable John Williams, was first to document the stone's common name, Arthur's Stone, in his letter to the antiquarian Edward Lhuyd:
"The common people call it Arthur's Stone, by a lift of vulgar imagination attributing it to yn [sic] hero an extravagant size and strength."
- Venerable John Williams
Although, the construction of this 'portal dolman' seems a magnificent feat, it is most likely that the Neolithic builders used the boulder conveniently deposited upon Cefn Bryn by a glacial ice sheet that during the last great Ice Age. The builders would have excavated beneath the immense rock, inserting the upright stones as they dug, creating two burial chambers. It has also been claimed in Dewi Bowen's book "Ancient Siluria" that a local astronomer, Richard Roberts, believes that Arthur's Stone is part of a astronomical construct together with the alignment of other landmarks visible from Cefn Bryn.
Understandably, due to its ancient origin, there are many fables to accompany the stone. Legend says that the stone claims its name from King Arthur, who found a rock in his shoe and threw it all the way from Carmarthenshire, straight over the Burry Estuary, to Cefn Bryn. Touched by the hand of King Arthur, the stone physically grew with pride and the surrounding stones raised it high with admiration. Another story bizarrely tells us that the stone travels over Cefn Bryn as the cock crows to quench its thirst at a local stream and Gower/druid tradition tells us that a young maiden could test whether the man she loved would remain faithful to her. Beneath the light of the full moon, she would offer the magical stone a cake made from barley meal, honey and milk and then circle the stone on her hands and knees three times. If the man she loved appeared before her on the final circuit she knew she had chosen a faithful suitor."
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