Wayland's Smithy

Wayland’s Smithy stands on the Berkshire Downs near Ashbury in Oxfordshire. It is an Early Neolithic chambered long barrow built by early farming communities around 3430 BCE. The site belongs to the Severn-Cotswold group of barrows, a regional style found only in south-west Britain. Archaeologists Stuart Piggott and Richard Atkinson restored the barrow between 1962 and 1963. Their work showed the monument was built in two phases, first as a timber chamber and later as a stone chamber. It lies on the same ridge as the Uffington White Horse and Uffington Castle, close to the ancient Ridgeway track. The barrow is linked in folklore to Wayland, the Germanic smith-god of Norse myth. The name appears in a 908 AD charter and again in a 955 AD land deed. Local legend once held that an invisible smith would shoe a traveller’s horse if a coin was left with it. The site also appears in Walter Scott’s 1821 novel Kenilworth as Wayland Smith’s Forge. Modern Pagans and Druids use the site for rituals, though concerns have been raised about certain groups visiting. Visitors find a trapezoidal earth barrow covering a stone chamber shaped like a cross. Four large sarsen stones mark the entrance, two of which were re-erected in the 1960s. Excavations revealed the remains of at least fifteen people, placed in several phases. The surrounding Berkshire Downs stretch away to the Uffington White Horse and nearby hillfort. The site remains open all year, cared for by English Heritage.