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Kettley Stone

Cup Marked Stone

<b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by pebblesfromheavenImage © Pebblethief
This site is of disputed antiquity. If you have any information that could help clarify this site's authenticity, please post below or leave a post in the forum.
Nearest Town:Alnwick (20km SE)
OS Ref (GB):   NU072297 / Sheet: 75
Latitude:55° 33' 38.87" N
Longitude:   1° 53' 9.01" W


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Photographs:<b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by rockandy <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by rockandy <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by rockandy <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by Hob <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by Hob <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by Hob <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by pebblesfromheaven <b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by pebblesfromheaven Maps / Plans / Diagrams:<b>Kettley Stone</b>Posted by rockandy

Fieldnotes

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This is an odd one.

I've seen a few cross sockets in Northumberland, and I can see why some people have suggested this could be one, as it's probably been on one of the St Cuthbert pilgramage routes. The one time spring may infer some kind of fonty-ness, and whilst it does have metal chisel marks on part of the groove, it just doesn't fit the bill as either a font or a cross socket. Not the ones I've seen in these parts.

But it doesn't look like any of the prehistoric RA nearby either, but the area is dripping with such. So I'm going to hedge my bets and say that it's a prehistoric jobby that's been co-opted for early christian religious malarky.

Notes in the night

It serves as a very effective marker to let you know you're on track to get to Ketley Crag after dark. It looms out at you, and the hollow in the side of Chatton Park Hill becomes a yawning gulf of shadow.
Hob Posted by Hob
13th July 2005ce
Edited 13th June 2006ce

23-4-03. I had just been up to Kettley crag and decided to investigate the Kettley Stone marked on the OS map; this rock is the only feature in the immediate vecinity so I presume this is it.
It's in a very sheltered little valley, with a fort, settlements and rockart nearby. Only the rabbits here now.

Does anyone know anything about it please ?
Can't find it in my book.

.o0O0o.
pebblesfromheaven Posted by pebblesfromheaven
24th April 2003ce

Miscellaneous

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History of Northumberland Vol. 14 (1935)

A short distance north-east of the probable site of St. Edmund's chapel and on the north side of Chatton Park Hill, or Chatton Law, as it is more commonly called, is a miniature corrie or dell scooped out of the hillside by diggers for sand or lead ore or by storm water rushing down the hill. A spring, now buried in sand, may once have flowed here and in the days of 'the king's wood of Chatton' there can have been few better hidden or more secluded hollows in the district. The entrance is guarded by two rock buttresses rather like the abutments of a bridge, on one of which is a small post hole about seven inches deep and of unknown date and purpose. A little way further out where the dell begins to die away, two weather-worn blocks of freestone project from its eastern bank, and the top of one of them has been roughly hewn down so as to leave partly in relief the stone bowl shown below. The vessel is nearly circular and is two feet in external diameter and six and a quarter inches deep, with a nearly flat bottom and a surrounding groove, half of which has been deepened with a sharp pointed chisel at a later date. On the nearly flat top of the boulder, east of the basin, are two rough depressions which appear to be part artificial and which afford comfortable footholds to a person standing so as to face westwards over it. very diverse opinions have been expressed as to the date and purpose of this nameless and legendless monument and in the present state of our knowledge it is best to leave these as open questions. The name Ketley or Kettley applied to this side of Chatton law has been said to be a corruption of cat Law (which occurs as a place-name in Chatton in 1616, see above) but some have seen in it an allusion to the stone bowl or 'kettle' while others think that it is related to the Scots word caterthun.
Posted by rockandy
26th January 2005ce

Links

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Kettley Stone on BRAC Updated


Kettley Stone on BRAC
Posted by markj99
4th January 2021ce