This barrow and its close neighbour Chatsworth Park Barrow are relatively new discoveries. Barnatt & Collis do not mention them in the barrow corpus, neither does Marsden in his earlier work on Derbyshire barrows.
It wasn't until John Barnatt surveyed Chatsworth Park, and subsequently published a book on the estate, that they came to light.
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The stone was moved to the village of Pilsley where it was used as a pig trough....but pigs died and the landowners suffered bad luck until the stone was replaced on the barrow.
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This small barrow of earth and stones, 7m x7m and below 0.5m in height, lies by the side of an ancient trackway. It has outstanding views through the valley to the hillfort/enclosure at Carl Wark.
Atop the barrow is a wayside cross base known as the Baptism Stone or Christening Stone. Showing the trackway was in use way beyond the construction of the barrow.
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Think the stones visible in the hollow on top of the barrow are in fact the remains of a lime kiln.
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From Cheshire HER:-
Name: Standing stone at Ginclough 400m WSW Gin Clough Farm
SMR Number: 1606
Type of record: Monument
Map Sheet: SJ97NE
Parish: RAINOW, MACCLESFIELD, CHESHIRE EAST
Summary
Large stone or glacial erratic by track to Cutlers Farm, Rainow Road. The stone is cut away on 2 sides to create a square face on the east side The stone stands just under a metre high on the south side of the road. Standing stones are large stones of Prehistoric date that are though to have been placed upright for some sort of ceremonial purpose. They are sometimes set in pairs and are often found near other prehistoric sites including burial grounds.
Monument Types
STANDING STONE (Late Prehistoric - 4000 BC? to 42 AD)
Protected Status
Scheduled Monument 25702: Standing Stone At Ginclough 400M Wsw Of Gin Clough Farm
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Pastscape also list this stone as a reused Bronze Age standing stone.
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Around 120m from the cairn Harland Edge SW (b) this circular cairn of around 6m in diameter is also overgrown and again probably related to a settlement or something below Harland Edge to the south (Harland Sick).
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Unless you are walking Harland Edge then there's not a lot to make you want to find this cairn. It's roughly 5x4m in diameter and just visible above the scrub and heather.
From its position just below Harland Edge proper I would say it's more than likely related to the settlement on Harewood Moor or perhaps one below the 'edge' itself rather than those on Beeley or Gibbet Moor.
Excellent views south over the remaining Eastern Moors to the White Peak in the south.
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Small area consisting of a cairnfield and linear field clearance just about visible above the moorland grass a couple of hundred metres from the Millstone Sick. The NMR states that a house stance/platform is also visible but I couldn't find or make that bit out for certain.
The NMR also records the possibility of a stone circle on Harewood Moor. In his books John Barnatt does not mention it however, and my search of the area has yielded nothing up to now.
In all the remains are not really worth the effort of a special journey, although the boundary stone that stands in an improved field and is known from the 16th century perambulations as Shirle Forke, approx. SK305670 and engraved with crosses is worth checking out in itself.
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There are said to be 6 small cairns here, 2 of which are said to be definitely funerary because of their formal lay out i.e kerbs and dished interiors, but the area is so overgrown in thick heather or last years bracken that there is nothing to be seen on the surface.
Approximately 300m from the cairn at Fallinge Edge.
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As Postman says very overgrown now...only two of the cairns remain visible and a small section of the kerbstones.
The rectangular setting nearby is now completely heather covered.
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It's not really worth the effort of the 800m or so rough and wet moorland crossing from the Raven Tor Triple Cairn to this small funerary cairn on Fallinge Edge.
It's hard to tell whether the cairn's been excavated at some time in the past or not. Although some of the stone has been robbed, no doubt when the nearby quarries were working, as half the cairn is only discernable from the ring of kerbstones that remain.
Around 7m in diameter and perhaps 0.4m in height.
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Rainster Rocks lies near the south western end of a chain of dolomitic limestone outcrops that start in the north east at Harboro' Rocks moving through Longcliffe Crags and finishing at Black Rocks.
Smaller in area than Harboro' or Longcliffe the outcrop at Rainster is impressive because of its height.
With both the outcrops to the NE having a prehistory, (Harboro' Rocks where a Neolithic passage grave was erected and a Neolithic cave burial was located along with signs of Palaeolithic activity and Longcliffe Crags where Rains Cave is sited), I've often wondered about Rainster Rocks and whether they were an important part of the ancient landscape.
So over the last 5 or 6 years I've been searching the area around the rocks for any kind of evidence. At the south side of the rocks is a Romano-British settlement and lead rake and this is noted in the NMR.
The area is also heavily marked with Medieval ridge and furrow so any chance of finding a long lost barrow wasn't on the cards....but what there was was a prolific amount of mole hills....so I took my chance with them after successes with this method elsewhere in the Peak.
After a year or two with no success I started to take the lads up there with me to help me look....I showed them a piece of flint so they knew roughly what they were looking for and the youngest promptly went to a mole hill and recovered what looked to be a flint awl.
That was all that we found and nothing more turned up for several years until this year. Checking the mole hills this year I've found up to now what looks to be the rough out of a small flint axe and also a small quartzite celt (at least I think thats what they are, I'm trying to get in touch with the small finds officer at Derby's museum to confirm my beliefs).
While I know that a couple of random finds prove nothing the rocks lie within 2 miles of the Neolithic/Mesolithic sites of Minninglow Hill and Tithe Farm, the Mesolithic site at Hoe Grange and the Neolithic sites at Roystone Rocks and Curzon Lodge.
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It was here in 1844 when Thomas Bateman carried out an excavation of the barrow and discovered a crouched skeleton and the remains of a cremation with a bronze artefact in a collared urn.
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I wouldn't swear to it but I think this barrow has been lost to the Grange Mill Quarry.......I couldn't find it after a long time festering around the area along the edge of the quarry.
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Even more plough damaged than Slipper Low and no real reason to make a visit. Never been excavated....strange seen as Bateman was so close to it in the mid 19th Century.
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Excavated several times the first by Bateman in 184 he discovered a contracted inhumation in a rock cut grave accompanied by a beaker, he also uncovered a burial of a child. Subsequent digs unearthed a disturbed inhumation along with flints and an unspecified type of bead.
J.Barnatt's Barrow Corpus.
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Thmas Bateman did a partial excavation of the barrow in 1843 he discovered a cremation burial within a limestone cist and also a secondary inhumation. Both were accompanied by flint arrowheads and tools.
J. Barnatt's Barrow Corpus.
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Standing by several walling stone quarries. Measuring around 17 x 14m in diameter, several kerbstones are visible, the low mound looks very messed about with. Maybe the wall builders stripped most of the usable stone before sinking their quarry.
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The long barrow comprises a low wedge-shaped mound measuring 33.5m along its east-west axis and varying between 14m wide at the east end and 10m wide at the west end. The height drops from east to west from c.0.7m to c.0.2m. The bowl barrow, which is located off the west end of the long barrow, is a roughly circular cairn with a diameter of 9.5m surviving to a height of c.0.2m. The surface of the cairn has been excavated or robbed of its stone but the old land surface in which burials will have been placed is still intact. There is no recorded excavation of the long barrow though it is possible that the bowl barrow was one of those on Brassington Moor excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1849.
Info from NMR.
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Thomas Bateman excavated here twice in 1843 and 1849. Heading for his usual central mound position he found a crouched inhumation. And then six years later he located another crouched burial on the south side of the barrow accompanied by a bronze axe, flint and some kind of pottery vessel.
J. Barnatt's Barrow Corpus
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Dolphin trainer for the MoD.
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