Knowlton

[puddleshark]

Comments

[heleninwales]

How intriguing! It does look a bit spooky, even in daylight.

[puddleshark]

I've only ever visited in the day, and I've never felt spooked by the place.

But there is a very strong sense of time there - the prehistoric and the medieval and the modern all side by side. By night, I think it would be quite an eerie place.

[callmemadam]

I've never felt the spookiness.

I remember when my daughter was invited to a picnic birthday party to be held there, a friend shrieked in horror at the very idea.

[huskyteer]

Favourite picnic spot for me!

[callmemadam]

We're obviously not sensitives :-)

[puddleshark]

heh!

Me neither.

But I've only ever visited during the day, when there have been kids and dogs running around, and it actually seems quite peaceful. Might be a different story at midnight!

[gordongirls]

I have now read up on what a henge is. I had only heard of Stonehenge and thought it just to be the circle of stones. I never knew about the berm and moat that comprise the henge. Thanks for getting me started.

[puddleshark]

We don't have that many stone circles in this area, as - away from the sea - there aren't that many outcroppings of large stones. But there are quite a few enigmatic earthworks that the archaeologists struggle to interpret!

[adafrog]

Very cool.

[puddleshark]

It's an amazing place. Hard to believe those earthworks have survived for four thousand years...

[restoman]

Great pictures!

Yes, it does look quite spooky!

I am envious of the amazing history and architecture that you have there. It is so rich and diverse.

[puddleshark]

Thanks!

I've only ever been to Knowlton during the day. The site has dark skies and is popular with astro-photographers, but I've never quite been brave enough to venture there after dark!

The Dorset landscape does have some amazing prehistoric earthworks - Neolithic long barrows and Bronze Age round barrows and Iron Age hillforts - but the site at Knowlton is one of the most impressive, simply for how well it has survived.

[edgeofthewoods]

I know! I wish we had cool things like this - there are petroglyphs and such, but they are so few and so spread out.

I loved going to Scandinavia and seeing the viking sites as that is where my mother hails from, so I felt a strong connection to it. We have Celtic blood as well, so these sites inspire that same connectivity.

Sigh.

[puddleshark]

Yes! Seeing children playing on the Neolithic earth banks at Knowlton, or running up the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort, there's always this terrific sense of connection to the landscape and the past - children's laughter echoing across thousands of years...