In The Legend of Alderley the farmer travelling back from Macclesfield meets the wizard at Thieves Hole. After finally agreeing to sell his milk-white horse to the wizard the farmer is led from Thieves Hole to the cave of the sleeping knights. This journey incorporates some very specific landmarks which can be traced in the landscape:
“By Seven Firs and Goldenstone they went, to Stormy Point and Saddlebole.“
Garner, A., 1960 (1989 edition), The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. William Collins / Lions. London. p10.
The following sites are linked together by this journey…
Alan Garner has mooted the idea that because the waymarkers on this journey appear in multiple iterations of the Legend then they may be part of a confidently recalled oral memory which has been passed down the generations. He has speculated that Thieves Hole may have been a place of execution and burial for criminals in the essay By Sevenfirs and Goldenstone: An Account of the Legend of Alderley. He also thought that the Goldenstone may have been connected to a system of prehistoric astronomical calculations in an article entitled Oral History and Applied Archaeology in East Cheshire (The Voice That Thunders 1997, 65-79).