Good morning everybody. Welcome to a new video should we just um....
welcome to a new video today in today's video we're gonna be touching a stone
touching a stone yep very exciting it doesn't sound exciting but what if I
said to you if you touch this stone you could die!!!!
we don't do ghosty folklore on this channel, no I know okay good point
okay well we're in the lockdown period so we can't go and travel and
explorer so what going to do today is we're now on our bikes and we're gonna
do a local explore as part of our daily exercise so there's free local sarsen
stones one of which has some significant carvings in the shapes and it's been a
bit of a mystery for sort of two hundred years in this area and we are going to
get on a bike and we are going to go and find a Sarsen stone and explore and see
if we can work out and solve the mystery as part of our map mysteries you ready
um just a stop in a second okay you said bikes yes okay I think we are gonna go
out on our daily exercise I'm gonna go out on a daily exercise and explore in
today's video
okay so as we're travelling to this site let's give you a little bit
of the history because going to be difficult to describe a history as we go
let's give a little bit of a history about this stone and the legend and a
folklore that surrounds it now I'm not into folklore and all that but what I am
trying to understand is the history of this stone because it is quite
interesting in terms of the markings in terms of the actual history and the
significance of this sarsen stone there are three as we suggested but one of them
in particular has held a lot of question marks for a couple of hundred years
so it's 1883 a man called CANON has published a paper and the whiltshire
archaeological magazine and he has stated that he has found Kenwood stone
now the kinward or Kenwood hundred is the area in whiltshire and it's one of the
biggest hundreds in Wiltshire and its significant distance and the
stone this particular point is where they held their and the meetings whether
how their court thought of thing and he suggested that he'd found it and he
found it on CHUTE causeway now CHUTE is a village near andover and there's a lot of
history on that particular site so he said he found this particular stone in a
pit and the pit was part of a Roman pit where they dug a lot of the soil and the
chalk out and they made part of the Roman Road of that area and and thus it
was believed that he'd found the original place where they held their
meetings.
That was given it's only 1915 when somebody decided to not, excavate the
stone they tried to pull out the ground so a chap who was known in
the village decided to take his horse up there he tied a rope around the stone he
tried to pull it out but he had no luck to the point that the horse fell downand died.
okay so what we're looking for is perpendicular to this road this Roman
Road and T Junction and we're looking for a spot opposite the T Junction
around about 30 to 40 meters from the road so and we're looking for a pit now
here is a kind of a t-junction I can't see this being it because you've got a
complete fake head row hedgerow there and you've also got a field which is
plowed there was no obvious sign or a pit
right so we're still along the top of Causeway we're looking for the next
t-junction and whilst I'm cycling along here just um taking in the marvelous
view which I'll show show you shortly
it would be good to talk about the history up here so this is the old Roman
Road and I will try and convey some of the history that is in this area
so right here on the old Roman Road we've got pits just down to our right
we're obviously earth the chalk was taken and to build the road just to our
immediate right we've got an old ditch and the ditch goes quite a long way
across the South England did a Grimm's ditch part of the network of ditches
ahead of us probably about half a mile we've got an old pub closed 1915 ish it
Scots poor I think it was called the Bluebell inn near that pub we've got an
old Ridgeway or Thoroughfare called the North Hampshire Ridgeway
just over on the top of that hill over there we've got an Iron Age hill
for this area right here is steeped in history it's a fascinating landscape
yeah and we're looking for this some t- Junction and pit I think I've come too
far I think I missed the junction now that particular point could be the time
at which all the mythology started around it and what I mean by that is a
local started to think that if you were to touch the stone, death would ensue I
mean the horse fell dead so that made perfect sense of him it became known as
the devil's waistcoat and the local myth began
send it bigger I thought saying the least five feet across probably three,
three feet that way
should I touch it?..... so all was well until 1924 now a chap called George Gray
decided that there was a significant find and he decided he was
gonna excavate the area properly a proper archaeological dig certainly for
that period of time so he employed local builders Dunning's to help him with the
labour and and he dug a huge trench around this stone he couldn't get to the
bottom of it it was a quite big stone um but he found nothing other than the
stone itself and the interesting markings on it he found absolutely
nothing of significance no remains no pottery nothing that would suggest that
this was quite an important meeting place. ....... I'm still here!!
that aside he decided they need some help with the geology of the stone the
markings they seemed really interesting surely they would point to human
activity so he asked a chap called dr. Hebert Thomas to come along he was a
geologist and he would certainly know if there's markings were man-made or
natural so 1924 later in that year of July I think dr. Herbert Thomas came
along and decided that although those markings on the stone were very similar
to those found in sand caves in Brittany and therefore would be man-made these
were these are a hundred percent in his opinion absolutely natural markings
I'm very little about geology other than the whole land around here is his chalk
so what does that mean for this would that have to have in place here was this
perhaps the original 100 stone of the the area that they will stand here
according to you mr. George Grey
just a month later a month after the Geological Survey from Herbert
dr. Herbert Thomas just a month later the original chap who'd done the actual
dig George Gray received a letter in the post
the letter came from Reverend Engleheart he was a reverend of the church in chute
forest just across the way and he said 35 years previous to this point in 1888
he recalled a conversation with a very elderly inhabitant of chute, now 1888 and
a very early resident you'd presume they were perhaps born in the early 1800s
now they that particular inhabitant suggested that they recall somebody
moving the stone there is a big thing for the village at the time so this kind
of begs the point that had perhaps Reverend Engelhardt known as dig was
gonna happen he might be able to save George Gray a lot of time.
Of course the George englehardt claim is speculation but it does show how stories
are passed down through generations and it still survives today tales of death
and curses don't really take my boxes and if you're anything like me you'll
go out of your way to fly in the face of them go and touch that metaphorical stone
so perhaps that puts to bed this age-old myth about this being the kenwood stone
originally a 100 stone where all the meetings were held perhaps it doesn't
but either way it's been quite an interesting time bit of an interesting
journey and something we could do in our little lock down I hope you've enjoyed
the story and we'll see you next week.