The Kirk

Nearest town:
Ulverston (5km ESE)
OS reference:
SD251827
OS sheet:
96
Latitude:
54° 14' 3.31 N
Longitude:
3° 8' 57.28 W
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The Kirk

thelonious
thelonious Mar 29, 2019

22/03/2019 – The weather didn’t look too bad for the day so we decided to head off for a walk on Kirby Moor. Starting from Kirkby-in-Furness train station, it’s a nice walk through Beck Side and then up the footpath alongside Gill House Beck. ‘The Kirk’ is easy enough to find in the open moorland.

‘The Kirk’ had intrigued me beforehand. The OS 1:50000 has it as an enclosure, the OS 1:25000 marks it as a stone circle. Pastscape says Bronze Age embanked stone circle or ring cairn. Sounded like it could be anything.

I’ll put up a few photos of the site. Looking at them there doesn’t look a lot to see. Stone wise there isn’t really. What’s there is a well-defined large circular embankment. The bank is wide and seems to be made up of small loose stones in the sections you can see, through the grass/heather. The embankment is about 20m in diameter. There are a few larger stones showing that hint of an interior edge to the ring. Nothing that screams standing stone or stone circle. My money would be on ring cairn.

Just to the north of the embankment are what look like pairs of upright stones. 2 or 3 sets that hint of a stone row leading to or away from the site.

Well worth a visit to this mystery on the moor. Nice walk plus the cairn just north is very good.

Folklore

The Kirk
Stone Circle
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Oct 1, 2006

In addition to Fitz’s information:

On Kirkby Moor.. is a low ringwork of loose earth and stones. “It goes by the name of ‘The Kirk,’ and a ‘venerable inhabitant’ (Archaeologia, liii.) could recollect that it had once borne a peristalith. The natives assert that the spot was traditionally ‘a place where their fathers worshipped’, and, as a matter of fact, games used, until recent times, to be held on the spot by the Lord of the Manor at Eastertide” (Allcroft, Earthworks of England, 1908, p139).

Lancashire Folklore
T B Partridge
Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1915), pp. 211

Miscellaneous

The Kirk
Stone Circle
fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Jul 23, 2005

“The Kirk has been used for social functions until comparatively recently. Well into the 19th century, the lord of the manor and his tenants congregated at the circle on Easter Monday afternoon. There they indulged in games of wrestling, dancing, hurling and leaping. Such pastimes were not without their dangers, and the last lord to attend broke his thigh during one of the games. Sober counsel prevailed, and the games were discontinued”

The Stone Circles of Cumbria
John Waterhouse
Pub. Phillmore & Co Ltd
1985

Sites within 20km of The Kirk

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