It wasn’t all bad

A board game designed by an eight-year-old girl with her father during lockdown has now received more than £130,500 on a crowdfunding site. CoraQuest – created by Cora and Dan Hughes from Huddersfield – involves players joining together to escape from a dungeon and fight monsters. It features Cora’s own artwork as well as advice on how to create your own characters. The project’s original funding goal of £12,060 to make 400 games was reached in 40 minutes.

According to the 12th century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, Stonehenge stood in Ireland until the wizard Merlin captured the magic circle, and brought it to Wiltshire. That is clearly a myth – but it now seems it contains a grain of truth. Archaeologists have not only pinpointed the ancient quarry from which the stones were extracted, in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire; they have also uncovered evidence that the circle stood in Wales for centuries before it was dragged to Salisbury Plain.

Researchers were puzzled when carbon dating of items in the quarry indicated that the stones had been dug up 400 years before they were erected in

WIltshire. But then, excavating the remains of a nearby stone circle, at Waun Mawn, they found that its diameter was identical to that of the enclosing ditch at Stonehenge; they also found that a stone in Wiltshire has a cross section on its bottom that matches an imprint in one of the holes left in Wales. The speculation is that ancient people erected the circle in Wales, then when they migrated, they dismantled it, and took their venerated stones with them.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM