Shropshire Magazine

The stones on Stapeley Hill may at one time have been twice as numerous as they now are

Mitchell’s Fold is one of the most mysterious sites in our county and one of the oldest monuments in the whole of Britain. Legends abound – but what is the history of Shropshire’s most important stone circle? Alex Byles finds out.

A grey and heavy sky hangs overhead, threatening to collapse at any moment and hurl itself open. The bitter wind, unsatisfied with its work and the trees that it has rendered to swept deformity, blows past without relent.

But the stones, the sentinels of Stapeley Hill, stand unmoved, enduring all that is thrown at them. They have done so for at least 2,500 years.

Standing in a circle atop Stapeley Hill in the west Shropshire parish of Chirbury, we know these mysterious stones as Mitchell’s Fold. Today they number 14, approximately a metre in height, positioned in a ring approximately 27 metres by 25 metres, with the most impressive reaching almost two metres.

Doleritic in nature, a dolerite rock vein runs in close proximity to where the stones stand today, with the Cwm Mawr dolerite stone-axe factory once just two miles away at Corndon Hill. That lends support to the view that Mitchell’s Fold was constructed from stones local to Stapeley Hill. But why and how did they come to be there?

Perhaps it is first useful to look beyond the existing site of Mitchell’s Fold. While 14 stones remain, it has been suggested that originally 30 once stood together, positioned between the years 2000 BC and 1400 BC by Bronze Age tribes. Further debate has also suggested that Mitchell’s Fold may have hosted a central stone, together with a trilithon – two stones supporting an upper altar – famous and otherwise unique to Stonehenge.

While this speculation has been dismissed as rumour, it is perhaps significant that Mitchell’s Fold’s tallest stone stands close to the line of the southern moonrise, with this stone assumed to be the entrance to the circle, along with a further stone placed approximately two metres distant.

Like the mysteries surrounding Stonehenge, this suggests that Mitchell’s Fold could have served as an astronomical indicator, but it has been argued without conclusion that the site may have been important for ceremonial or religious purposes. But while clarity is hard to come by, it can be safely assumed that Mitchell’s Fold was a site of importance for some of the original inhabitants of Shropshire; quite why we shall perhaps never fully understand.

Unfortunately, this view has not been shared by all; in 1994 a farmer removed some of the stones and, although they were partly repositioned shortly after the incident was identified, the damage was lasting. The whereabouts of the remaining stones is unknown, and other discrepancies in the physical nature of the site have also confused research over the years. Mitchell’s Fold hosts ridges in the ground which run both through and up to the ring and were thought to be a characteristic of the original site, but this factor has been latterly explained by farming which took place in the area in the Middle Ages.

But while the precise nature of Mitchell’s Fold is difficult to identify, local legends are keen to tell of various alternative events.

The most popular legend tells the story of a kindly witch, a man by the name of Mitchell or Medgel, who kept a beautiful white cow upon Stapeley Hill. The beautiful cow showed such benevolence to the local folk that she would provide an inexhaustible supply of milk, nourishing them during times of need and filling whatever vessel was brought to her.

The origins of Mitchell’s Fold stone circle go back at least 4,000 years

However, an evil witch came upon the magic cow one night, and intending only harm to the people of Shropshire, the witch milked the cow into a sieve, seeking to milk her dry so that she would never provide nourishment for local people ever again. But while the evil witch was going about her terrible work, a storm broke overhead and a flash of lightning illuminated the wasted milk, which lay on the ground.

Realising she had been tricked, the cow kicked out at the witch and bolted, never to be seen by the local people again; the evil witch, for her punishment, was turned to stone. When local folk came upon the scene the following morning to find the white cow had vanished, the wasted milk on the ground and the perpetrator turned to rock, they set a ring of stone around the petrified witch so that she would never escape.

While varieties of this legend exist – one of which is inscribed on a stone pillar at nearby Middleton Church – another tells the story of Owain Ddantgwyn, a fifth-century king of Powys, one of the most powerful kings in the country during the time and better known, some say, as King Arthur. Shropshire was indeed part of that region during those years, and Wroxeter, the seat of power, was one of the most important cities in what is now Britain. As we know, Arthur became king by drawing the sword Excalibur from a stone, and it is also said – indeed it was argued by the 18th-century historian William Stuckely – that this very stone was at Mitchell’s Fold.

But whatever line of events you chose to believe, perhaps the real importance of Mitchell’s Fold is that we can be sure, by the site’s longevity alone, that it was a construction of importance, created by the original inhabitants of Shropshire over 2,000 years ago.

Remember, as you walk among the stones of Shropshire’s oldest monument, that there stood the first Salopians.