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Stone Temple Gardening
Where Land Meets Sky
Landscape First, Monument Second
Stone Temple Gardening explores ancient monuments through the landscapes that shaped them.
Since my teenage years I have been drawn to prehistoric sites, from famous monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury to obscure standing stones, hidden burial chambers, ridges, rivers, outcrops and forgotten paths. My work begins with a simple idea: the land comes first. Routes, horizons, natural features and movement through place often shaped how monuments were built, used and remembered.
I am a historian by training, not an archaeologist, which gives this project its particular voice. Stone Temple Gardening combines field observation, photography, archaeoastronomy, folklore, sensory experience and careful speculation to ask how ancient people may have encountered the living landscape before stone made those encounters permanent.
All My Stories
All My Stories
Wayland’s Smithy Long Barrow: Three Monuments Along the Same Sacred Line
Wayland’s Smithy is more than a Neolithic tomb. Follow its inherited line through three monuments, selected stones, chambered space, the Ridgeway landscape and the lost prehistoric sky.
3 days ago20 min read
Lligwy Neolithic Burial Chamber: The Descent Into the Stone's Grave
An enormous limestone capstone dominates Lligwy Burial Chamber on Anglesey. But what if the tomb occupies the very place from which that stone was raised? Archaeology, human remains, marine shells and the experience of entering beneath the stone reveal a monument shaped by movement, return and absence.
Aug 818 min read
When Stones Come Alive: Stone Folklore and Britain’s Megaliths
Ancient stones that walk, drink, whisper, dance and refuse to stay where they are put. Exploring the folklore of Britain’s megaliths, and what these strange stories reveal about how people continued to encounter prehistoric monuments long after their original meanings were lost.
Aug 11 min read
Devil’s Den: The Raised Stone in the Hidden Valley: Archaeology, landscape and encounter at a Neolithic long barrow east of Avebury
Hidden in Clatford Bottom east of Avebury, Devil’s Den was once surrounded by a lost landscape of sarsens. This essay explores movement, stone selection, shifting animal-like forms and the extraordinary effect of its great capstone raised into the sky.
Jul 2521 min read
Barclodiad y Gawres: Art, Fire and the Architecture of Sacred Passage
Barclodiad y Gawres is one of Britain’s most extraordinary decorated Neolithic monuments. This essay follows its carved stones, fire, darkness and Irish Sea setting to ask whether Wales’s “Newgrange” was not simply a tomb, but a temple of the sea.
Jul 1817 min read
Megalithomania 2026 Part 2: Sunday Talks, Sacred Geometry and the Mystery of the Stones
Megalithomania 2026 Part Two explores Sunday’s talks on sacred geometry, ancient measure, the Megalithic Portal and the mystery of the stones. I would like to personally thank conference organiser Hugh Newman for kindly giving me permission to use Megalithomania brochure images in this post. Welcome back to my Megalithomania 2026 write-up. This is the second part of my account of the Glastonbury conference weekend, focusing on the Sunday talks, the closing forum, and the idea
May 2414 min read
Robin Hood’s Stride, Peak District: A Prehistoric Ridge from Stanton Moor to the Grey Ladies
A walk from Stanton Moor to Robin Hood’s Stride reveals a prehistoric ridge shaped by movement, rock art and natural landmarks. From the Cork Stone through Rowtor Rocks and Cratcliffe to the Grey Ladies stone circle, this is not just a route but a sequence of encounters where monuments respond to the land.
Apr 1211 min read
The Grey Ladies of Nine Stones Close: A Peak District Stone Circle and Lunar Landscape
The Grey Ladies of Nine Stones Close emerge slowly from the White Peak moor, a stone circle that gathers space rather than dominates it. Through movement, marking and horizon, this essay explores its relationship with Robin Hood’s Stride and a landscape shaped not by alignment, but by prehistoric human attention to form and return.
Apr 510 min read
Arbor Low Stone Circle: The Stonehenge of the North
Arbor Low is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Peak District, often described as the “Stonehenge of the North”. This remarkable monument combines a stone circle, henge earthwork and nearby Bronze Age barrows within a wider ceremonial landscape. Set on a high limestone plateau, its location, horizons and surrounding features suggest that movement, visibility and place were central to its meaning. This article explores Arbor Low not as an isolated monument, but
Mar 2219 min read
Belas Knap Long Barrow: A Cotswold–Severn Neolithic Tomb in Gloucestershire
Discover Belas Knap Long Barrow in Gloucestershire, a Neolithic chambered tomb known for its horned forecourt, false entrance, and multiple burial chambers. A detailed archaeological and landscape exploration from Stone Temple Gardening.
Feb 2114 min read
Mitchell’s Fold: A Stone Circle Between Hill and Horizon
Set on a saddle of high ground between Corndon Hill and Stapeley Hill, Mitchell’s Fold is a stone circle shaped as much by movement and approach as by placement. This essay explores its archaeology, landscape setting, surrounding monuments, and later folklore, asking how meaning persists when prehistoric purpose fades and stone becomes story.
Feb 113 min read
Stone Temple Gardening — A Few Words at the End of 2025
Stone Temple Gardening began quietly in 2024, as a way of keeping notes while walking ancient ground — a place to think out loud,to integrate a lifetime of observation and reading on prehistory, and to share insights that didn’t fit easily elsewhere. It was never intended as a statement or a system. Over time, and largely thanks to those who returned to read, it became something more shared.
Dec 28, 20257 min read
Stonehenge Deciphered: A Critical Reading of Geometry, Landscape, and Intention by Alun G. Rees (2025)
Stonehenge Deciphered refuses to treat the monument as a static ruin. Rees writes against the desiccated style that bleaches prehistory into typologies and footnotes, restoring the lives behind the stones — the journeys, offerings, and ambitions that shaped Salisbury Plain. His portraits of figures such as the Winterbourne Chieftain or the Bush Barrow warrior transform archaeological traces into moving human stories, granting Stonehenge back its breath.
Dec 14, 202512 min read
Discovering Gors Fawr Stone Circle and My Find of a Possible New Ancient Polissoir Stone
Explore the sacred landscape of the Preseli Hills — birthplace of Stonehenge’s bluestones and home to the enigmatic Gors Fawr stone circle. Join Dr Alexander Peach as he revisits this ancient site after twenty years to uncover new insights into its alignments, mythology, and a hidden polissoir stone. Discover how craft, cosmology, and landscape converged in Neolithic Wales to shape one of Britain’s most profound ceremonial landscapes.
Oct 26, 202516 min read
Stones on the Move: The Ritual Pathways of Avebury’s Three Stone Avenues.
Avebury is not just about the stones, but also about movement through them. From the Avebury henge three great avenues once led outward: West Kennet to the Sanctuary, Beckhampton into watery lowlands, Silbury toward Europe’s largest Neolithic mound. These paths shaped sight lines, ritual, and myth — a choreography of stone and story that still carries us through the landscape. Join me in exploring the archaeology and stories of these mysterious processional routes.
Oct 6, 202514 min read
Stonehenge Cosmology: The Temple We’re Not Allowed to See.
This essay challenges dominant archaeological interpretations of Stonehenge by foregrounding its solar alignments, symbolic meaning, and cosmological significance. Drawing on Kuhn’s paradigm theory, ethnographic analogy, and firsthand research at Bryn Celli Ddu, it calls for a renewed understanding of Neolithic monumentality beyond funerary models.
Aug 6, 20259 min read
Has a Lost Stone Circle Been Found at Bryn Celli Ddu? Exciting New Discoveries in Wales
A new excavation just beyond Bryn Celli Ddu has revealed tantalising evidence of a lost stone circle. Join me on the ridge at Tyddyn Bach, where archaeologists uncovered a buried monolith and a possible ring ditch — findings that may reshape our understanding of Anglesey’s sacred landscape. In this post, I document the dig, explore the myths, and reflect on how ancient imagination still echoes in stone.
Jul 15, 202519 min read
Stone, Sun, and Spirit: My Summer Solstice Journey to Bryn Celli Ddu
Experience the 2025 summer solstice at Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey’s most iconic Neolithic tomb. In this richly illustrated post, Alexander Peach returns to witness the sunrise light enter the chamber, illuminating a quartz-veined stone and casting an axe-shaped beam. Explore the sacred landscape, solar alignments, and new archaeological insights into the Gorsedd, Sun Stone, and Tyddyn Bach. A powerful blend of myth, history, and first-hand observation.
Jul 6, 202515 min read
The Rollright Stones: Sacred Site and Megalithic Mystery in the Heart of England
Discovering the Rollright Stones: Ritual, Myth, and Memory on the Cotswold Ridge
Nestled on the windswept boundary of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, the Rollright Stones form one of Britain's most evocative prehistoric landscapes—a sacred triad of monuments steeped in mystery, myth, and millennia-old memory. In this richly detailed blog post, we explore the King’s Men stone circle, the solitary King Stone, and the ancient dolmen known as the Whispering Knights.
Jun 24, 202511 min read
Unveiling Gunung Padang: Indonesia’s Ancient Stepped Pyramid and Sacred Sundanese Marvel
Nestled in the volcanic highlands of West Java, Indonesia, Gunung Padang is one of Southeast Asia's most fascinating archaeological sites. Rising 885 metres above sea level atop an extinct volcano, it is at the center of an acrimonious archaeological debate about hidden subterranean chambers and over its contested dates of construction, some as old as 27,000 to 14,000 years ago. Gunung Padang weaves together geology, culture, spirituality and controversy into an amazing story
May 27, 202522 min read
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