SMR_NO 20470
GRID_REF ST 6029073835
SITE_NAME Description of a large stone at Armoury Square
DESCRIPTION
A large stone was noted by the antiquarian Samuel Seyer, writing in 1821, to stand on the north side of Stapleton Road. According to Seyer's account the stone stood "upright in a garden adjoining to the Armoury, on the left hand as you go from Bristol to Stapleton. It appears to have been much mutilated; at present it is of a very irregular shape: about four feet high ending in a point, and four or five feet wide; it is likely that it was once very much taller, and still it is under the ground as deep as it is high above ground."
(Seyer 1821, Memoirs historical and topographical of Bristol and its neighbourhood, page 102).
The site of the stone later became part of the front garden of No.46 Armoury Square.
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This is what an archaeologist called E.K. Tratman said about the monument in 1946.
"In Armoury Square there existed up to 1935 the remains of a considerable megalith. In that year it was broken up. Seyer reports that another formally existed not far from there on the opposite side of the main road. Both sites lay on the spur (where a river goes round a higher bit of land) that runs down to the east of the Frome and between that river and the Avon. The height above sea-level is quite low, but then a number of the Somerset megaliths are on comparatively low ground. They are, like a number of other sites, located close to water, though the implications of this cannot here be discussed. The two stones may have been single standing stones or the last remnants of dolmens or even a long barrow."
(Tratman, 1946, Prehistoric Bristol, Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society Vol.5, no.3 pages 162-182).
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