When challenged by the witch the King took his sevens strides forward, but instead of reaching the brow of the ridge as he expected, a mound of earth rose up before him preventing him from seeing the village of Long Compton. It is a fact, as anyone who has visited the Rollrights site knows, that only a few yards further from the King Stone, up the ridge, the village lies full in view in the vale below. The King didn't quite make it and was forever imprisoned in stone.
The ridge was always assumed to be natural but excavations in recent years have shown that it is in part artificial, with a cairn having been placed on the natural rise of the ground and a round barrow set at the western end. On top and aside the cairn the remains of Neolithic or Bronze Age cremations have been found.
It has also been suggested that the King Stone is all that remains from a long barrow, perhaps once part of a dolmen like the Whispering Knights. Either way the ground has been artificially raised on this spot.
The curious shape of the King Stone has been attributed to the many passers-by chipping off a piece for good luck. Many see the stone as avian in shape, deliberately carved to resemble a swan or goose head sticking upwards out of the ground, perhaps a directional marker to Deneb in the constellation of Cygnus and the direction of heaven. But from the north you can clearly see the face of a man with his hand raised as he turns his head away:
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| The King reels back and turns his head away |
The road travels along the Cotswold Ridgeway, a natural geological fault line that forms the county boundary between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. Odd occurrences happen along this road; Paul Devereux calls it a 'spook road'. As with many fault lines strange lights have often been seen here, and where there are lights there are fairies, dancing around the King Stone on the full moon.
Britain’s longest north–south axis is known as the Belinus Line connecting many megalithic sites and including the ancient capitals of England and Scotland, running from the Isle of Wight at the base of England to Durness at the very tip of northern Scotland. The line has been tracked on the ground by dowsing the male and female currents and runs through the White Horse of Uffington, the Rollrights, Meon Hill, and Alderley Edge to name but a few.
Standing on many of the node points where the current crosses along the Belinus Line, looking north where it touches the horizon, there are certain features marking the setting and rising of the stars of the constellation of Cygnus; the region of the night sky considered important to many ancient cultures as a mythological place of heaven or spiritual rebirth.
The Belinus current skirts the edge of the King's Men stone circle at Rollright, but the King Stone sits directly on it.
Sources:
Paul Devereux, Places of Power: Measuring the Secret Energy of Ancient Sites, Cassell, 1999
Gary Biltcliffe and Caroline Hoare, The Spine of Albion: An Exploration of Earth Energies and Landscape Mysteries Along the Belinus Line, Sacred Lands Publishing, 2012
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