a time the barrow stones were kept at the Oxfordshire Museums’ resource centre at Standlake. With the help of a Heritage Lottery grant they have been set out in the pound near the church at Ascott-under-Wychwood and photographs and drawings of the excavations give background information. You can look at, and even touch,


stones that were once hefted by primitive man, stones that for thousands of years, right up until the 20th century protected the remains of people he respected, but here the stones evoke no sense of reverence. Up on the hill above Ascott, there is an acre or two of rough stony pasture surrounded by trees and high hedgerow where the original burial ground was. Cars speed past on a section of road that dips and winds at this point and it’s clear why widening of the carriageway was proposed, but so far the scheme hasn’t been implemented. There is no marker to indicate the spot and all the evidence of prehistoric man has been removed from the site but this patch of land shares with Notgrove and Waylands an indefinable aura. This was once a sacred place.


n 2 August 2011 6


Above: Massive sarsen stones guarding the entrance to Waylandʼs Smithy


Right: The earthed over barrow at Notgrove


and: The original site of the Ascott long barrow


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