A postally unused postcard that was published by Frank Packer, Photographer, of Chipping Norton.
The image is a glossy real photograph, and the card has a divided back.
The Rollright Stones
The Rollright Stones are a complex of three Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments near the village of Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.
Constructed from local oolitic limestone, the three monuments, now known as the King's Men and the Whispering Knights in Oxfordshire and the King Stone in Warwickshire, are distinct in their design and purpose.
They were built at different periods in late prehistory. During the period when the three monuments were erected, there was a continuous tradition of ritual behaviour on sacred ground, from the 4th to the 2nd millennium BCE.
The first to be constructed was the Whispering Knights, a dolmen that dates to the Early or Middle Neolithic period. It was likely to have been used as a place of burial. This was followed by the King's Men, a stone circle that was constructed in the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age; unusually, it has parallels to other circles located further north, in the Lake District, implying a trade-based or ritual connection. The third monument, the King Stone, is a single monolith. Although its construction has not been dated, the dominant theory amongst archaeologists is that it was a Bronze Age grave marker.
Folkloric stories have developed about the Stones, telling of how they had once been a king and his knights who had been turned to stone by a witch. Such stories continued to be taught amongst local people well into the 19th. century. Meanwhile, antiquarians such as William Camden,
Archaeological investigations were undertaken in the 20th. century, culminating in excavations run by George Lambrick in the 1980's. The site is listed by Historic England as a scheduled monument and was first designated in 1882.
In the 20th. century, the stones became an important site for adherents of various forms of Contemporary Paganism, as well as for other esotericists, who hold magico-religious ceremonies there.
The stones also began to be referred to more widely in popular culture, being featured in television, literature, music and art.
The Whispering Knights
Believed to be the earliest of the Rollright Stones, the Whispering Knights are the remains of the burial chamber of an Early or Middle Neolithic portal dolmen, lying 400 metres east of the King's Men.
Four standing stones survive, forming a chamber about two square metres in area around a fifth recumbent stone, which is probably the collapsed roof capstone.
Although archaeologists had been debating the nature of the Whispering Knights for centuries, more about the monument was revealed only following the excavations carried out by George Lambrick and his team during the 1980's.
They found that the portal dolmen had never been a part of a longer cairn, as had been suggested by some earlier investigators. In addition, they uncovered a few pieces of Neolithic pottery around the monument.
Writing in 1743, the antiquarian William Stukeley described the Whispering Knights as sitting upon a round barrow, something which Lambrick accepted as being reasonable in the context of a portal dolmen.
However, George cautioned against accepting such an explanation too readily. He suggested that a "mound-like effect" could have been created at the base of the monument if ploughing in later centuries had led to the accumulation of soil around the dolmen's uphill side and the removal of it on the downhill side.
Excavation failed to provide evidence to prove either suggestion. Lambrick noted there was a possibility that some of the stratigraphic layers may represent the base of some sort of cairn around the Whispering Knights.
Lambrick believed that raising the capstone on the Whispering Knights would have been the hardest task of the Rollrights' construction. He said that it was analogous to the raising of the lintels at Stonehenge.
He suggested that the builders had constructed a ramp out of collected stones which were placed against the back of the chamber. The capstone was then hauled up on rollers, probably running on logs embedded longitudinally in the ramp, in order to get it into position.
Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.
You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.
Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page
Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.
Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:
Embed on your Web site
To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:
Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Install search plugin
"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script
A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.
Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.
