The Long Stone near Minchinhampton

I drove up to the flat farming land just beyond Minchinhampton as a detour in order to see one of the prominent ancient stones in the area. I’ve blipped it several times before as I always like seeing at both in person and as one of my blips. There is some dispute both about its name and what it is. The current general consensus is that it is a ‘menhir’ called the Long Stone, near Hampton Fields, just southeast of Minchinhampton. (I’ve added some wiki info at the end)

The Megalithic Portal website simply says:
The Long Stone is believed to be the closing slab from a burial chamber or portal dolmen. A smaller stone can be seen in the field wall approximately 20m away. This may also have come from the same chambered tomb.

I’m still more tempted to accept the opinion offered by the archaeologist Guy Underwood, author of the wonderful book ‘The Pattern of the Past’ (1969). I bought his book in the early 1970s when I first became interested in learning about the stone antiquities of the British Isles. Guy was investigating the suggestion, made by Reginald Smith of the British Museum, that there might be some connection between the location of ancient monuments and the presence of underground water. Guy then became a dowser. ‘Reginald Smith was an authority on the Stone Age, and held the views upon which my book is based, although he only revealed them to a small body of water diviners in the knowledge that his preliminary findings would be recorded and sooner or later investigated’.

In Chapter Nine Guy Underwood also says: 
Monoliths or ’Menhirs’ are isolated standing stones which have usually been erected over important ‘blind springs’, and would be recognisable as holy places. Many churchyards and market crosses, which served the same purposes, are reputedly built on sites previously occupied by pagan monoliths.’ The best examples in in England include the Long Stone at Minchinhampton (which he illustrates with a map of the dowsing patterns he found there), the King’s Stone at Rollright, in the north Cotswolds, and the Clavis or Key Stone at Claverton, near Bath, in Wiltshire.

Today the open field has been fenced off so that the Long Stone is in a small enclosure. Formerly it was standing in the open field which was grazed by sheep and cattle. The small associated stone is only about twenty yards away incorporated into the relatively modern Cotswold stone field wall.

However there is another stone very nearby called the 'Tingle Stone' and sometimes the ‘stories’ about them get mixed up. The Minchinhampton Local History Group records it as follows:
In the area of Gatcombe are to be found some of the best-known standing stones in the county - the Long Stone and the Tingle Stone. Some notice a "charged" sensation in the vicinity of certain stones, and experience a tingling sensation when they touch them. Doubtless, this is why the Tingle Stone is so-called. It's on the Princess Royal’s land at Gatcombe Park, and has long been thought to be charged with electricity. It could be the remains of a portal dolmen connected with a long barrow. Local legend has it that, when church bells strike at midnight, the Tingle Stone and the Long Stone run around their fields. They are also said to go to Minchinhampton to drink from a spring there.
 
The Long Stone, is a rough lozenge shape standing 7 1⁄2 ft high above the ground, and is said to be as much below the surface. It is famous for the two holes in it, which, although created by natural weathering, have given rise to various folk tales. The stone was thought to have healing properties. People would pass their limbs through the holes for cures, and mothers would put their children through to keep them healthy. Within living memory, children with whooping-cough and rickets used to be put through one of the holes in the stone. It may also have been associated with fertility rites, as couples would hold hands through the stone and pledge themselves to one another.