Bleasdale Bronze Age Circle

Last week I visited the Neolithic circle at Bleasdale, in the fells of central Lancashire. It’s a wild, beautiful place- you can observe the shadows of the clouds racing up the imposing hills.

The circle was made by inserting large oak poles into the ground. Most of the poles have long gone but the holes are still clear, and are currently filled with short concrete posts to show their positions. Radio carbon dating suggests the circle was first constructed around 1900 to 1720 BC. This is the time at which Abram of Ur first heard the call of God in the book of Genesis.

For what was it used? Burials? Worship? Political gatherings? No-one knows. In their day, the folk who built it would have been considered technologically advanced and socially superior. Now they are nothing but a dim and distant memory, if that. There’s a lesson for us there.

You can see an artist’s impression of what it may have originally looked like here.

Model, the Harris Museum, Preston.

One of the wooden posts, Harris Museum, Preston.

Pots discovered at the site, 1899. Harris Museum.