Howe Harper Cairn(s) View all content for Howe Harper

Vehicles aren't allowed on the Binscarth farm road. After the track to Wasdale, but before you reach Binscarth House, a track goes above the house and along the hill [no, I couldn't find a way through the gorse, so don't try]. After a short while you come to ruins on your left, what look like greenhouses in an old quarry, and from there climb up and the pass back above the gorse. First you come to a mound with what look like stone slabs face down into it. Then you come to a small one that looms over a great scallop out of the hillside at the top of which a rocky ?outcrop is exposed. And Howe-Harper comes next in the top right corner of its own field practically. The ditch is quite obvious, though it survives best on the uphiill sides (north esp.) and topside. I'm not certain of the mound standing on a platform myself, looking from the north across at the partially surrounding ditch the word that comes to mind is berm. There are two exposed areas, a good one on the south side with small flat stones set into earth, an a smaller section on the north side only earth but with an area of dark dusty material. From here I went to the bottom right corner where there is a stone style at the wall corner - a design new to me, much larger curved stones like a spiral staircaise - into the next field [which feels like bad cobbling underfoot] for another distant look look at the 'crannog'. Thinking of tombs overlooking settlements this cairn overlooks a circular 'thing' in the valley below, a pow when there's been heavy rain or a cropmark otherwise.

Posted by wideford 19th August 2008ce

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