'Long Meg & Her Daughters'

Location : Little Salkeld
Map - Ordnance Survey - NY 571372

One of the finest stone circles in the north of England, the circle has a diameter of about 350 feet, the second biggest in the country. Long Meg is the tallest of the 69 stones, about 12 feet high, with three mysterious symbols, its four corners facing the points of the compass and standing some 60 feet outside the circle.

The stones probably date from about 1500 BC, and it was likely to have been used as a meeting place or for some form of religious ritual. Long Meg is made of local red sandstone, whereas the daughters are boulders of rhyolite, a form of granite.

William Wordsworth wrote 'Next to Stonehenge it is beyond dispute the most notable relick that this or probably any other country contains.'

Local legend claims that Long Meg was a witch who with her daughters, was turned to stone for profaning the Sabbath, as they danced wildly on the moor. The circle is supposedly endowed with magic, so that it is impossible to count the same number of stones twice, but if you do then the magic is broken.

Just over a third of a mile (0.5 km) to the North-East of Long Meg and her Daughters, the largest stone circle in Cumbria, is one of the smallest, appropriately named Little Meg.

Beneath the stones are the remains of the gypsum / anhydrite industries of the Long Meg Plaster and Mineral Co. Ltd..

Aerial photos by Simon Ledingham.