Blakey Topping Stone Circle View all content for Blakey Topping

There’s bit of confusion about the stone setting at the base of Blakey Topping hill. Burl says it is so damaged that it cannot be said for certain that it was ever a circle, Dyer on the other hand thinks it was, as does JC while the scheduling report calls it an alignment. As the first three cover the stones in their own books I’ll give a brief summary of the scheduling instead. It mentions the 4 stones calling them ‘roughly hewn sandstone boulders’ with 2 of the stones on the west side in a SSW to NNE alignment. The stone to the north is 80cm high but was once higher, the top having been broken off. The southern stone is 15 metres to the SSW and is 1.7 metres tall. On the eastern side of the alignment the southernmost stone is now part of the field boundary and is 20 metres to the southeast of the southern stone on the west side. It stands 1.3 metres above the modern ground level with a slight lean to the south. The north stone of this pair has been moved at some point in time and is now 85 metres north of its partner and is 1.1 metres high. The report then mentions that there would originally have been more stones in the alignment, the others having been removed in land clearance or for reuse elsewhere and it goes on to speculate that the line of these stones would have continued the curve formed by the 3 stones still in their original positions or formed 2 parallel rows, part of which survives as the 2 western stones. The report makes almost no mention of the hill.

Posted by Chris Collyer 15th July 2003ce

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