Mysterious Britain & Ireland

Category: Featured Sites

Fairies / Featured Sites / Folklore / Legends / Scottish Fairies

Doon Hill and Robert Kirk

Doon Hill and the Old Kirk in Aberfoyle, will forever be associated with the Reverend Robert Kirk, who wrote the Secret Commonwealth in 1691. The book is an essay on the nature and social structure of supernatural beings or fairies. Robert was a seventh son, said to have been gifted with second sight.

Ancient Sites / Featured Sites / Giants / Legends / Standing Stones / Stone Circles

Machrie Moor Stone Circles

The Isle of Arran, off the West Coast of Scotland, has many stone circles and standing stones dating from the Neolithic period and the early Bronze Age. The finest collection of circles can be found on Machrie Moor, on the West of the island. The whole moorland is littered with the remains of early man, from hut circles to chambered cairns and solitary standing stones.

Ancient Sites / Featured Sites / Stone Circles

The Avebury Complex

The stone circle and henge that surrounds the village of Avebury, is only one in a series of monuments concentrated in this small area. The site is a remnant of a ritual Neolithic landscape, which still survives although degraded with time and the actions of over zealous groups in past centuries.

Ancient Sites / Burial Mounds / Featured Sites / Legends / Pantheons

Wayland’s Smithy

Wayland’s Smithy is one of the most impressive and atmospheric Neolithic burial chambers in Britain. Somehow this ancient grave became associated with Wayland, the Saxon god of metalworking, from whom it takes its name.

History

Ancient Sites / Chalk Hill Figures / Dragons / Featured Sites / Folklore / King Arthur / Legends

Uffington White Horse and Dragon Hill

The White Horse of Uffington is one of the most impressive sites close to the ancient Ridgeway path, which traverses the steep chalk downs brooding over the Vale of the White Horse. Other sites include Dragon Hill, The Manger and Uffington Castle, which have been the subject of legend and folklore for over a thousand years.

Apparitions / Featured Sites / Hauntings / Photographed Ghosts

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is one of the most famous hauntings in Britain, this is mainly down to the strange form captured by photographers from Country Life magazine in 1936. Before that event the Brown Lady had been reported several times, but many of the written accounts vary considerably.

Featured Sites / Other Mysteries

The Mystery of Lincoln Cathedral

There is a suspicion of true irony in the fact that Hollywood came to film scenes of Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ at the splendid Gothic Cathedral of Lincoln, since it has been discovered that it has its own authentic code entwining with the global mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau, starting with the discovery of a strange depiction at the scene of The Last Supper at the Great East Window, whereupon

Apparitions / Featured Sites / Hauntings / Photographed Ghosts

The Tulip Staircase, Queens House

On Sunday 19th June 1966 a retired couple from Canada captured an extraordinary image on camera whilst visiting the Queens House in Greenwich. They took what is arguably the best known apparent photograph of a ghost. But this photograph is not the only piece of evidence that suggests The Queens House is haunted.

Ancient Sites / Chalk Hill Figures / Featured Sites / Folklore / Giants / Legends

The Cerne Abbas Giant

The Cerne Abbas Giant or the ‘Rude Man’ is one of the largest hillfigures in Britain, he (the figure’s gender is beyond doubt) is one of two representations of the human form, the other being the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex. The giant, carved in solid lines from the chalk bedrock measures in at 180 feet high, and carries a huge knobbled club, which measures 120 feet in length.