Hobs & helpers · Oxfordshire

Wayland, the Invisible Smith

Wayland's Smithy, on the Ridgeway near Ashbury, a mile west of the White Horse

Family-friendly

Along the top of the downs runs the Ridgeway, said to be one of the oldest roads in Britain. About a mile west of the White Horse, in a clump of trees beside the track, there's a long mound edged with great grey stones. At one end, three big flat stones stand on their edges, and a fourth lies across the top of them like a roof, making a little dark room you can step into out of the wind. The country people called it Wayland Smith.

Here, they said, there once lived a smith whom nobody had ever seen.

If you were riding along the Ridgeway and your horse cast a shoe, there was no need to limp all the way down to the village forge. You led your horse to the stones and left it there, with a coin set down beside it. Then you went away for a little while. When you came back, the money was gone, and your horse had a new shoe.

His price, people said, was sixpence. And unlike every other workman in the land, he took offence if you offered him more.

But an invisible smith can't stay invisible for ever. In the end, so an old shepherd's song tells it, he was found out. Then he blew up the place and flew away. He went off to Devonshire, full of sorrow, and never came back. Job Cork, who kept sheep on White Horse Hill for fifty years, told it like this:

They say that in this cave did dwellA smith that was invisible;At last he was found out, they say,He blew up the place and vlod away.To Devonshire then he did go,Full of sorrow, grief, and woe,Never to return again…Job Cork, shepherd of White Horse Hill, as printed by Thomas Hughes in 1859

The stones are still there. If your bicycle gets a puncture on the Ridgeway, you might try leaving it there with sixpence. Only don't put down a shilling.

No plate yet. We are still looking for an old picture of this place.

What people said

  • The bargain. “At this place lived formerly an invisible smith; and if a traveller's horse had lost a shoe upon the road, he had no more to do than to bring the horse to this place, with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the horse new shod.” This is how Francis Wise recorded the country people's story in 1738.
  • Sixpence, and not a penny more. Walter Scott wrote in 1821 that Wayland Smith's fee was believed to be sixpence, and that “unlike other workmen, he was offended if more was offered.”
  • Found out. In Job Cork's verses the smith was discovered at last, blew up the place and fled to Devonshire for ever.

Other tellings

  • Wayland the Smith is far older than the stones' story. He was a magical smith in Anglo-Saxon and Norse legend, and English Heritage says the site was once thought to be the home of Wayland, “the Saxon god of metal working”. Walter Scott guessed the tale came from stories of the dwarves of the North, “cunning workers in steel and iron”, who lived in the rocks.
  • The name is old. Scott noted that the monument was named as a landmark in an Anglo-Saxon charter. [TODO: date and wording of the charter from a reliable source]
  • Francis Wise was sure the stones were the grave of a Danish king killed at the battle of Ashdown in 871, and Scott repeated this in his novel Kenilworth (1821), in which a character called Wayland Smith appears. Hughes's old antiquary scoffed that the Danish king “was no more buried there than in Westminster Abbey.”

What the history says

Wayland's Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow, a tomb, about 5,500 years old. English Heritage says fourteen people were buried in a first, smaller tomb between 3590 and 3550 BC. A much larger long barrow, the one you see now with its stone chamber, was built over it between 3460 and 3400 BC.

So it's far older than Wayland, the Saxons or the Danes. The story of the smith grew up around a tomb whose builders had been forgotten thousands of years before.

Go and See

Where
Beside the Ridgeway national trail, about a mile west of White Horse Hill, between Uffington and Ashbury.
Access
Open at any reasonable time in daylight, and free. There is no road to it: park at the National Trust car park on White Horse Hill (charged for non-members, free to National Trust and English Heritage members) and walk west along the Ridgeway.
Allow
About an hour there and back on foot from the White Horse Hill car park, plus time at the stones.
Families
A gentle tale for young children. The walk is along the Ridgeway, an unsurfaced track. The site is on an exposed hillside with uneven ground. Dogs on leads.

Visiting details checked 24 October 2026 with English Heritage. Always check before you travel.

51.5667° N, 1.5961° W · Open in OpenStreetMap

Make a day of it

From our sister sites

Acorn & InkPrint a day-out prep sheetGet children ready for a walk along the Ridgeway to the old stones.Acorn & InkWrite your own legendStory planners to print. Who else might live unseen in the old stones?

Sources

  1. Francis Wise, A Letter to Dr. Mead concerning some Antiquities in Berkshire (1738). The earliest record of the invisible smith we have found, as quoted in Thomas Hughes, The Scouring of the White Horse (1859), note IV.
  2. Sir Walter Scott, Kenilworth (1821), note B, as quoted by Hughes.
  3. Job Cork's verses, printed in Thomas Hughes, The Scouring of the White Horse (1859), note V. Read it free at Project Gutenberg.
  4. English Heritage, “Wayland's Smithy”: dating and visiting details, checked 24 October 2026.

This is a legend, told as people told it. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.