“Stone rows are a bit of a mystery and Dartmoor has the greatest concentration anywhere. There are over sixty of them dotted across the moor – and of such variety that they must have had many different functions.
I’m at Merrivale, right in the middle of Dartmoor and this site has a bit of everything: there are settlements all around – there’s hut circles over there – there’s a big stone circle with a huge standing stone over there – there’s cairns dotted all around – and these stone rows – right in the middle of it all.
And you want to see what’s in the middle of this row.
It’s only small, but this little funereal box, called a cist, does imply that this is the centre of a processionary pathway – so what do we have here?
A temple in the middle of a huge community?
Early days for this blog but about time I did something about the early days of making this film.
A couple of months after Rupert and I had finally decided to ‘green light’ production of Standing with Stones, in early December 2005 I set off on my own towards Cornwall to do some preliminary filming and exploring. At that time Rupert was still living on the Isle of Man and logistically it did not make sense for him to make a special journey, especially as no script had been written yet. Most importantly, it was a chance to test the way we had chosen to work and to make sure that the motorhome we had bought really was up to the job of mobile hotel, office and camera car. I had invested specially in what I thought was the best camera for the job (given limited resources) – a brand new Sony Z1e HDV camcorder. High definition (albeit heavily compressed) to do justice to landscape and texture, lightweight enough to be carried up mountains along with the other gear and cheap enough so I could buy it.
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