Driving through Lambourn I am always impressed by the row of Sarsen boulders edging the
Church of St Michael and All Angels - a Church thought to have Saxon origins. The vegetation hanging over them in the clickable Google Map scene below has been cut back and they are now much more visible.
Screen capture:
Their history is probably mundane and just a reminder that Sarsens are all over the downs but I can't help wonder.
(In archaeology,
kerb or peristalith is the name for a stone ring built to enclose and sometimes revet the cairn or barrow built over a chamber tomb.)
Sarsen Stones would have been washed down to Lambourn at the end of the last Ice age. All the Sarsen outcrops in Wiltshire (particularly the famous Marlborough Downs) are either in wet or dry river valleys. Whether the medieval village used them for building stone is relatively simple identify as water moved stones are round in shape from tumbling (incorrectly termed as 'glacial erratics'by the geriatric rock collectors club) and those adapted to be used in building work would have at least one flat side.
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