Saturday, September 12, 2026
A stone out of place and time
As the Discover Britain website tells us, the stone is easy to miss from the road and not marked on many maps, but walk just 10 minutes from the parking area and you’ll come to a giant, balancing boulder, standing watch over the North Gower coastline and across the Loughor estuary to the ‘mainland’:
Known as Arthur’s Stone, or Maen Ceti in Welsh, legend has it that the king found the rock in his shoe and threw it all the way from Carmarthenshire. Touched by the hand of King Arthur, the stone grew in size.
Gower is associated with mystic ley lines, and full of Bronze Age burial and ceremonial sites, so it’s no surprise that myths abound about this landscape.
The reality is a bit more prosaic as this site explains:
The capstone of Arthur’s Stone is of Old Red Sandstone, a rock that is local to Cefn Bryn. The capstone is the same rock as the ground rock unlike Stonehenge where it is the thought the stones came from Pembrokeshire. “The glacial boulder was likely deposited, quite naturally, precisely where it now sits.”
It appears that the ground under the stone was dug out to create a burial chamber and other stones were then inserted to provide support.
Arthur’s Stone is thus a large double-chambered Neolithic tomb, dating from 4,400 BC. It was one of the first sites to be protected under the Ancient Monuments Act.
There is also a wonderful custom or tradition associated with the stone. It was believed that if a maiden wanted to know if her betrothed would be faithful to her, she should crawl on her hands and knees around the rock three times. If he then appeared to her he would always be true. If not he’d be off tomming at the drop of a hat.
Local myths also surround the presence of a spring beneath the capstone called ‘Ffynnon Fawr’. One explanation for the spring is that St David caused the spring to flow in an attempt to Christianise the boulder in the 6th century. Another legend even suggests that Arthur’s Stone travels to the sea every New Year's Eve to drink.
Labels: lochist
