One evening in mid-July, I made a visit the Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. This is a stone circle, or albeit a reconstructed one, to the north of the river Thames. It's situated between a lake and a managed landfill site; an environment created by gravel extraction. This is not the healthiest of places to visit due to the ongoing landfill activities - so be warned!
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not the same Devil's Quoits which is associated with the video game 'Assassin's Creed'. See link: https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Devil%27s_Quoits. It's in the wrong county for a start!
The folklore associated with this stone circle (the real monument and not the Assassin's Creed one) is that the Devil played a game of quoits with a beggar, for the beggar's sole. During this game of quoits, the Devil threw stones which formed this henge.
The Devil's Quoits has had a precarious history. The stone circle virtually disappeared because of encroaching uses: agriculture, a military aerodrome and gravel extraction. Yet thanks to archaeologists, the monument was reconstructed at the turn of the twenty-first century.
In this podcast, I take you on my journey to the Devil's Quoits, and share a conversation with a fellow visitor.
Music:
'Solitude' by Entertainment For The Braindead which is share under a creative commons licence. See links below:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Find out more:
https://www.beehiveyourself.co.uk/
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https://stevenherbert.substack.com/podcast
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