Swinside

The stone circle at Swinside is located in the south-west corner of the Lake District in the ancient district of Millom, 5 miles north of the town of Millom (map reference {{gbmappingsmall|SD171881}}) . There is no visitors centre or car park at the site, which can only be reached by travelling on foot.Burl 2005. p. 48. To reach the site, the visitor must get to Crag Hall, where there are limited places for parking, and then walk along a rough track for 2¼ km (1¼ miles) uphill towards Swinside Farm, where the megalithic ring lies to the right of the path.

Megalithic specialist Aubrey Burl called Swinside "the loveliest of all the circles" in north-western Europe.Burl 1979. p. 235. In his study of the stone circles of Cumbria, archaeologist John Waterhouse commented that Swinside "can be compared only to Castlerigg and Long Meg and her Daughters in its visual impact; but its charm – for great charm it undoubtedly has – is greater even than theirs."Waterhouse 1985. p. 43.

{{Quote box|width=246px|bgcolor=#ACE1AF|align=right|quote="After over a thousand years of early farming, a way of life based on ancestral tombs, forest clearance and settlement expansion came to an end. This was a time of important social changes."|source=Archaeologist and prehistorian Mike Parker Pearson on the Late Neolithic in Britain (2005)Parker Pearson 2005. p. 57.}}

During the Late Neolithic, British society underwent a series of major changes. Between 3500 and 3300 BC, prehistoric Britons ceased their continual expansion and cultivation of wilderness and instead focused on settling and farming the most agriculturally productive areas of the island: Orkney, eastern Scotland, Anglesey, the upper Thames, Wessex, Essex, Yorkshire and the river valleys of the Wash.Parker Pearson 2005. pp. 56–57.

This period was also signalled by what archaeologists have interpreted as a change in religious beliefs across Britain. Communities stopped building the large chambered tombs for the dead, and instead, they began the construction of large wooden and stone circles.Parker Pearson 2005. pp. 58–59. The prominent megalithic-specialist and archaeologist Aubrey Burl (2000) argued that the change from building tombs to building open air rings signalled a change in religious belief for the peoples of north-western Europe. As he noted; "There was a change from the cramped, gloomy chamber or a tomb to the unroofed, wide ring, a change from darkness to light, from the dead to the living, from the grave to the sky."Burl 2000. p. 38.

Exactly for what purpose prehistoric Britons originally constructed stone circles is a question that continues to elude archaeologists. Despite this, many suggestions have been put forward, most of which argue that they were a form of a church.

Based on his study of those examples found at Orkney in northern Scotland, the archaeologist Colin Richards suggested that the stone and wooden circles built in Late Neolithic Britain might have represented the centre of the world, or axis mundi, for those who constructed them,Richards 1996. p. 206. an idea adopted by fellow archaeologist Aaron Watson as a possibility in his discussion of why Late Neolithic peoples constructed the great ring at Avebury in southern England.Watson 2001. p. 304.

File:Part of Swinside stone circle - geograph.org.uk - 572937.jpg

The stones used in the construction of Swinside were porphyritic slate collected from the adjacent fells, and are of the type that was known locally as 'grey cobbles' by the 20th century. The ring has a diameter of about 93 ft 8ins (26.8m), and currently contains 55 stones, although when originally constructed there probably would have been around 60.

Swinside's builders included a "well defined" entrance, 2.1 m (7 ft) wide, at the south-eastern side, which was signalled by the placing of two large portal stones outside the circumference of the circle. Such portal openings can also be found at other stone circles in the Lake District, such as Long Meg and Her Daughters. These features are also found in stone circles in Dumfriesshire.Burl 2000. pp.194 In particular, Swinside has a number of features in common with the Girdle Stanes.Burl 2005. p.121–123

Local folklore holds that at night, the Devil would pull down the stones of a church that was being constructed in the daytime, in the process creating the stone circle; it is for this reason that the site has also been called Sunkenkirk.Burl 2005. p. 49.

In the 1930s, it was recorded that there was a local belief that it was impossible to count all of the stones.Grinsell 1976. p. 165.

In 1901 the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society sponsored the first archaeological excavation at Swinside. Under the direction of C. W. Dymond FSA and W. G. Collingwood, the dig lasted from midday on Tuesday 26 March 1901 through to the evening of the following day. Two crosstrenches were dug, each 18 inches (45 cm) wide, covering just over one-thirteenth of the interior of the site. The excavators reported finding a lump of charcoal and a piece of decayed bone as well as some modern coins in the turf layer.Burl 2005. pp. 48–49.

• Birkrigg stone circle, 12 miles to the southeast
• Grey Croft stone circle, 12 miles to the northwest

{{reflist|20em}}

;Academic books

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book |title= Rings of Stone |last=Burl |first=Aubrey |author-link=Aubrey Burl |year=1979 |publisher=Francis Lincoln |location=London |isbn=978-0-517-34723-2 |ref=Bur79}}
• {{cite book |title= The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany |url= https://archive.org/details/stonecirclesofbr0000burl |url-access= registration |last=Burl |first=Aubrey |author-link=Aubrey Burl |year=2000 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven and London |isbn=978-0-300-08347-7 |ref=Bur00}}
• {{cite book |title= A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany |last=Burl |first=Aubrey |author-link=Aubrey Burl |year=2005 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven and London |isbn=978-0-300-11406-5 |ref=Bur05}}
• {{cite book |title= The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe |last=Bradley |first=Richard |author-link= Richard Bradley (archaeologist) |year=1998 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=978-0-415-15204-4 |ref=Bra98}}
• {{cite book |title= Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain |last=Grinsell |first=Leslie V. |year=1976 |publisher=David & Charles |location=London |isbn=0-7153-7241-6 |ref=Grin76}}
• {{cite book |title= The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy |last= Hutton |first= Ronald |author-link= Ronald Hutton |year= 1991 |publisher= Blackwell |location= Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn= 978-0-631-17288-8 |ref= Hut91 |url-access= registration |url= https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780631172888 }}
• {{cite book |title= Bronze Age Britain (Revised Edition) |last=Parker Pearson |first=Michael |author-link=Mike Parker Pearson |year= 2005|publisher= B.T. Batsford and English Heritage |location= London |isbn=978-0-7134-8849-4|ref=Par05}}
• {{cite book |title= The Stone Circles of Cumbria |last=Waterhouse |first=John |year=1985 |publisher=Phillimore |location=Chichester |isbn=978-0-85033-566-8 |ref=Wat85}}

{{Refend}}

;Academic papers and articles

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite journal |last=Dymond |first=C.W. |year=1879–81 |title=A group of Cumberland megaliths |journal=Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society |volume=V |pages=39–57 |doi=10.5284/1064617 |ref=Dym79}}
• {{cite journal |last=Lewis |first=A.L. |year=1886 |title=On Three Stone Circles in Cumberland, with Some Further Observations on the Relation of Stone Circles to Adjacent Hills and Outlying Stones |jstor=2841826 |journal=The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |volume=15 |pages=471–481 |doi=10.2307/2841826 |ref=Lew86 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2364712}}
• {{cite journal |last=Richards |first=Colin |year=1996 |title=Monuments as Landscape: creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney |jstor=125070 |journal=World Archaeology |publisher=Routledge |location=London |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=190–208 |ref=Ric96 |doi=10.1080/00438243.1996.9980340}}
• {{cite journal |last=Watson |first=Aaron |year=2001 |title=Composing Avebury |jstor=827904 |journal=World Archaeology |publisher=Routledge |location=London |volume=33 |pages=296–314 |ref=Wat01 |issue=2 |doi=10.1080/00438240120079307 |s2cid=219609029}}

{{refend}}

{{Commons category}}

• [http://www.megalithia.com/sites/sd172881.html Swinside stone circle] at Megalithia.com.
• [http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/79 Images of and notes about Sunkenkirk] at The Modern Antiquarian.

{{European Standing Stones}}

Category:Stone circles in Cumbria

Category:Hamlets in Cumbria

Category:Cumberland (unitary authority)