The King Stone [Rollright Stones] - Little Rollright, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, UK - Megalithic Monuments on Waymarking.com

"The King Stone is a single, weathered monolith, 2.4 metres high by 1.5 metres wide, standing 76 metres north of the King's Men. Unlike the other two of the Rollright monuments, it is of uncertain date. Many different interpretations have been made of the King Stone, with various arguments being presented as to what its original function was.

Lambrick catalogued six distinct hypotheses that had been presented by antiquarians and archaeologists over the preceding centuries and evaluated their likelihood. Some of these argued that it had been positioned in relation to the King's Men stone circle, with others instead suggesting that it was a component of a long barrow or other burial site.

Lockyer (1909) and Thom (1967) suggested that the King Stone had been an astronomical marker that may at the same time have had a relation to the ceremonies being undertaken at the King's Men. Lambrick dismissed any astronomical significance as unlikely, because the Stone aligns only with the rising of the star Capella as it would have appeared circa 1750 BCE. He notes there is no evidence that late prehistoric Britons valued the stars as important; they did build several of their monuments to have solar or lunar alignments.

Megalithic specialist Aubrey Burl in 1976 suggested that the King Stone had been a landmark or guidepost designed to mark the position of the King's Men. Again, Lambrick disagreed with this, saying that its "position and orientation make it too inconspicuous to be satisfactory as a marker for anyone approaching the circle either along the ridge or from the alleys either side." Early antiquarian John Aubrey and archaeologist Arthur Evans had suggested that the monolith was a surviving remnant of a stone avenue that had once led to the King's Men. But Lambrick thought this unlikely, as no other archaeological evidence exists for such an avenue, and it would have been poorly aligned with the circle.

Other researchers had suggested that the stone was once a part of a long barrow. But Lambrick's archaeological investigation in the 1980s failed to reveal any other evidence for such a monument. Bloxham had suggested in 1847 that the monolith was associated with a burial, or a larger cemetery. Lambrick came to agree with him, "tentatively" interpreting the monolith as a cemetery marker, primarily because of the "unsatisfactory nature of other explanations and the existence nearby of Bronze Age barrows and cremations, one of which had been marked by a broad wooden post."

He estimated that when it was originally erected, the King Stone would have weighed somewhere in the region of 4.7 tonnes, but that since, much has been chipped away. Using his own estimates, Lambrick suggested that with a team of 58 workers, the King Stone could have been set up in about two hours."

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"This fine standing stone is located just off the crest of the low rise that supposedly prevented the King seeing Long Compton. Immediately to the north-east there was an early Bronze Age round cairn 17m across with a central chamber (of which the capstone peeps through the grass) set exactly at the top of the ridge. There was at least one other Bronze Age barrow nearby and excavations in the 1980s revealed human cremations marked by wooden posts and others inserted into the top of the cairn. The King Stone is most likely to have been erected around 1500 BC as a permanent memorial to the burial ground rather than being an outlier to the much older Stone Circle.

The name ‘King Stone’ may have originated, like some other standing stones of the same name, from its use to mark an important meeting place associated with an extensive Saxon cemetery in the vicinity; but if so, the name may only reflect the adoption of the pre-existing standing stone for that purpose rather than having been erected in the Saxon period, but that is not known for certain.

The strange shape of this standing stone (likened to a seal balancing a ball on its nose) has less to do with weathering effects than the destructive habits of 19th century souvenir-hunters (and by legend, cattle drovers who chipped off small pieces to act as lucky charms to keep the Devil at bay). The serious damage caused by such vandalism was one of the reasons why legal protection for ancient remains was introduced in 1882, the Rollright Stones being among the first monuments to be put into the guardianship of the state. The railings round the King Stone were erected soon afterwards to prevent further damage, and between c.1911 and c.1950 had an upper tier (for which the attachment holes are still visible)."

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Type: Menhir Parking: N 51° 58.556 W 001° 34.205 Number: 1.00 Size: When it was originally erected, 2.4 metres high by 1.5 metres wide, and would have weighed somewhere in the region of 4.7 tonnes Source: Not listed Purpose: Not listed

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