THE WANDERING STONES OF STREATLEY
Streatley village lies where the Ridgeway meets the Thames. The river spreads wide across the valley bottom and a series of small islands make it the ideal spot for fording or bridging the water. It’s been a crossing-point and meeting place for millennia. Today, two large sarsen stones stand either side of the road bridge, just at the point where it springs off the Berkshire bank on its journey to Oxfordshire.
Sarsens are sandstone boulders left by glacial action and they look nothing like the underlying chalky bedrock. They’re common in Wiltshire and parts of the Berkshire ridgeway but rarer in this area, so the pair by the bridge and a handful of others positioned at key points around the village really stand out.
IF THE BIG ROCKS ON MY HOME TURF ARE GOING WALKABOUT I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT
Inevitably, there’s a legend about how these funny old rocks came to be here. It’s all the fault of the Aldworth Giants – a group of larger than life-size stone effigies of the De la Beche family who lie in St Mary’s parish church, two and a half miles away. Four of the warrior-giants are known as John Long, John Strong, John Never-Afraid and John One day, so the story goes, the giants had a rock-throwing competition and the sarsen stones scattered around the district are the result of their sport. One stone even bears the imprint of a giant hand.
