Ian Simmons (Member no: 2866)

Arbor Low

There was the obligatory hippy meditating on the bank, and a family were having a jolly picnic on a tablecloth spread out within the circle

Heading home to Southend after visiting our daughter Keri in Stockport to accompany her to Manchester pride, my partner Frances and I took a leisurely August bank holiday drive through the Peak District, which enabled us to stop off at Arbor Low. Easily accessible up a farm track, the monument sits on a high point in the Peaks with magisterial views over the surrounding landscape reaching to far distant horizons.

The bank and ditch surrounding the stones still intact and impressive, although a later barrow has been built into the bank part the way round and the stones themselves now lie flat rather than stand. The English Heritage signage maintains that they have fallen over the years, but the stones have a sense of being deliberately laid down when its community felt it had reached the end of its life, or maybe they never stood at all. As it is, the nearly 50 limestone blocks that make up the circle have become deeply furrowed and pocked by the elements over time, giving each a specific character and personality, and in the centre there is a cove, which once contained neolithic burials. Being a bank holiday, imbued with the lazy warmth of the dog days of August, Arbor Low had attracted quite a few visitors. There was the obligatory hippy meditating on the bank, and a family were having a jolly picnic on a tablecloth spread out within the circle, bringing to mind feasts that the circle’s original builders might have celebrated within its confines, while on the way back to the car we passed a woman determinedly labouring up the slope towards the monument, through a sheep field, using a walking frame – I salute her resolve! As one of the earliest prehistoric monuments taken into the care of the nation, its official boundary is delineated with neat concrete blocks, most marked “VR” for Queen Victoria, during whose rein this happened. A few, though are marked GR, having been replaced during the 20th century, and there is now a “CR” for King Charles, as a damaged one was replaced last year. It is always pleasing to find a stone circle being cared for and visited, my previous attempt to go to one, Aquhorthies in Aberdeenshire, failed when I found to be entirely surrounded and hidden by a thriving maize crop, making access almost impossible.