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The Standing Stones of Yoxie is the remains of a building in a neolithic settlement called Pettigarths Field, about 4,000 years old, which also includes a megalithic tomb and Benie Hoose. The earlier assessment that the monument was a standing stone grouping has since been revised. It is now known to consist of a building partitioned into rooms. The 'standing stones' name is derived from the fact that the walls were built in part from megaliths, many of them still erect. The building was once about 18 by 11 metres in size, but little remains of the northern part. There is a main L-shaped block to the west, and a smaller forecourt to the east. There are no traces of door fixtures. A paved passage lined with stone boulders runs through the house, and traces of the paving continue through a circular room that it divides into two recessed sections.
The site seems to have been occupied for a long period of time. There is a local belief that the stones were used for ceremonies by Druid priests who lived at Benie Hoose – or even that druids still live there. However, the ruins are 4,000 years old. There is no written mention of Druids before around 200 BC, and no reliable sources even from later periods. Despite this the excavator, C.S.T. Calder, interpreted Yoxie as the remains of a temple, and Benie Hoose as a house that may have been used by the priests. He felt there were indications that this structure, and another similar one at Stanydale on Mainland, Shetland, were used for religious purposes. If so, they would have been the first known temples in the British Isles. However, early and middle neolithic society does not appear to have had complex social structures such as a priestly caste. It is now thought that both Yoxie and Benie are prehistoric houses.
Artifacts and material from the early and late Bronze Ages have been found. Some of the finds are Iron Age, while some date to the original Neolithic age settlement and others to a later occupation of the site in Iron Age. Pottery remains have been found in both houses. One large vessel found in Yoxie was very similar to a plain Bipartite Urn, possibly used for storing barley. More than 120 tools made of stone in a crude form have been unearthed in Yoxie.
References:The Château du Lude is one of the many great châteaux of the Loire Valley in France. Le Lude is the most northerly château of the Loire Valley and one of the last important historic castles in France, still inhabited by the same family for the last 260 years. The château is testimony to four centuries of French architecture, as a stronghold transformed into an elegant house during the Renaissance and the 18th century. The monument is located in the valley of Le Loir. Its gardens have evolved throughout the centuries.
