There’s something in the air. People are practising hundreds of years old traditions. Morris dancers are clamouring to squeeze into town squares and stick men are dancing through the streets.

One ritual - forgotten until winter 2024 - is about to be revived in one small market town on the Welsh-English border. It’s Wren Day.

In this bonus episode of Heart and Stone, Meg Elliot goes in search of the power of storytelling in one of its most visceral forms, by reviving a forgotten folk ritual in her hometown and with her community.

Meg asks what ritual really is; if the resurgence of ritualistic activty is just an eccentric hobby or if it's something richer, more magical and transformative than most think?

Heart and Stone is an Overcoat Media production for BBC Sounds Audio Lab Written, Produced and Presented by Meg Elliot Executive Producer - Steven Rajam Sound Design and Mixing - Meic Parry Original Music - Elin and Carys Commissioning Editor - Khaliq Meer

Is the countryside really ours to freely explore when half of England is owned by just 1% of its population?

Across the UK, people are breaking the stereotypes and myths surrounding who can have access to our natural spaces.

Meg joins the Muslim Hikers on Kinder Scout in the Peak District, the site of the first mass trespass in 1932. She also speaks with Guy Shrubsole, author of ‘Who Owns England’ and academic and poet, Emily Zobel Marshall.

Heart and Stone is an Overcoat Media production for BBC Sounds Audio Lab

Written, Produced and Presented by Meg Elliot Executive Producer - Steven Rajam Sound Design and Mixing - Meic Parry Original Music - Elin and Carys Commissioning Editor - Khaliq Meer

In this episode of Heart & Stone, Meg Elliot delves into the changing world of British folk music, asking who is remembered in folk stories and song, and who has been written out?

Beginning in the breath-taking joy of a ceilidh dance, Meg meets Sophie Crawford and George Samson of Queer Folk, a group unearthing songs that document and celebrate the LGBTQ+ experience. Meg also meets singer/songwriter Angeline Morrison, who has created the first body of Black British folk song.

Heart and Stone is an Overcoat Media production for BBC Sounds Audio Lab

Written, Produced and Presented by Meg Elliot Executive Producer - Steven Rajam Sound Design and Mixing - Meic Parry Original Music - Elin and Carys Commissioning Editor - Khaliq Meer

How does a stone circle built in living memory become the stuff of legend for community who watched it being laid?

In 1979 North Glasgow, a stone circle was dropped on Sighthill by helicopter for the whole community to see. These new, astronomically aligned stones sat on top of chemical waste and other debris in an area defined by the industrial boom and bust years.

Not only is it one of the most unlikely places you’d expect to see a stone circle, within just a few years it became revered as a place of magic and memorial, as a sacred place to escape to.

This a story not just about urban regeneration but one of the power of imagination and the human need for meaningful connections to physical places.

Heart and Stone is an Overcoat Media production for BBC Sounds Audio Lab

Written, Produced and Presented by Meg Elliot Executive Producer - Steven Rajam Sound Design and Mixing - Meic Parry Original Music - Elin and Carys Commissioning Editor - Khaliq Meer

Why do we feel connected to certain places? To certain landmarks, physical sites and imaginary stories? What does our love for city lanscapes or the great outdoors say about who we are?

These questions began swirling for Meg as a teenager, sat at the top of Old Oswestry Hillfort. And, nearly a decade later, she’s still captivated by them.

From battles over development to innovative archaeology projects involving local residents, Heart and Stone visits two, very different hillforts. One in Oswestry, England, and the other on the outskirts of Cardiff. Can the help us understand our relationship with place and heritage? Do they inform our communities, and offer new perspectives on what we call home?

Heart and Stone is an Overcoat Media production for BBC Sounds Audio Lab

Written, Produced and Presented by Meg Elliot Executive Producer - Steven Rajam Sound Design and Mixing - Meic Parry Original Music - Elin and Carys Commissioning Editor - Khaliq Meer

Who decides what stories are remembered? Can anyone make a stone circle? And when we talk about folk ritual, folk stories and song, who are the folk we choose to remember? 

Across five episodes, Meg Elliot explores folk traditions in their many of guises, including visiting two very different hillforts on the hunt to understand why we form attachments to places; one new stone circle that came to be treated as an ancient, special place by the same community who watched it being installed, and folk musicians writing new stories about people written out of traditional folk songs.

Heart & Stone is an Overcoat Media production for BBC Sounds Audio Lab

Written, Produced and Presented by Meg Elliot Executive Producer - Steven Rajam Sound Design and Mixing - Meic Parry Original Music - Elin and Carys Commissioning Editor - Khaliq Meer

This podcast launches on Tuesday 25th February 2025