Long Meg And Her Daughters

After a recent blip of Castlerigg stone circle by John Gravett I was inspired to go and visit Long Meg once again and the weather proved almost perfect casting long shadows and lighting every stone, blade of grass and tree with a sort of golden but brash Winter sunshine, but oh so cold. This is such a huge stone circle that I haven't done it justice with my camera and woefully inadequate lens. Most of the photos of Long meg are taken from the air.

Legend has it that Long Meg and her daughters were a coven of witches who were turned to stone for profaning the Sabbath by dancing wildly in the moonlight. The circle is supposed to be endowed with magic that makes it impossible to count the same number of stones twice. There are 69 of them (or are there) and the diameter of the circle is 350 feet. Long Meg herself is twelve feet high (left of the picture) and has strange markings engraved on her. This is the second largest stone circle in the country. It lies in a very simple setting with a farm being nearby with the track to the farm running through the circle. In the Eighteenth Century the stone circle was nearly destroyed when Colonel Lacy, the landowner of nearby Salkeld Hall decided to have the stones blasted with gunpowder. When the work began there was such a violent and terrible thunderstorm with forked lightening striking the ground nearby that the workers fled in terror refusing to carry out the work as they took it as a sign that the circle had supernatural power and was defending itself. Colonel Lacy then had a change of heart. This picture shows barely half of the stone circle.

It is very quiet and it is easy to park within the circle on the edge of the track. No erosion is evident within the circle. Today you could see the Pennines in the background with a snow covered Cross Fell glinting in the sun.