Latest Fieldnotes

It’s been a while since we all went to some stones together, so it was nice to have the whole family at this, another of Wales unsung heroes. The weather wasn’t perfect it was a monotone grey almost all afternoon but the stones made up for that. Also Eric left the gate open a bit causing a farmer to sit and wait out our visit, just to say could we make sure the gates are shut after yourselves, very understandable but a tad annoying, had I known I’dve gladly run back and shut it.
One of the stones is out of place and easily rolled over by one man, I pushed it back onto the circumfrence but it left a sad muddy gouge where it had been so I decided beauty came before form. I couldnt tell if it was even from the circle as it appears on none of Kammers pics.
It does get a bit swamped in all that ‘orrible thick grass but some shears or big scissors would clean it right up.

Observations after a long overdue revisit in August 2008:-

After recently managing to see a sunset and a sunrise here, I found enough time to linger for long enough for some good pondering about this lovely lump of prehistoric stuff. It struck me that whilst the main panel has no views of the Cheviots (which it would have if the carvings had been on the outcrop on top of the hill), it’s actually one of the subset of Northumbrian prehistoric sites that may have been placed with some reference to the hill of Simonside. You can’t see Simonside when you’re standing at ground level, but if you step up to the natural shelf on the south east side (which you can do without compromising the carvings, as the shelf has turf), you can see the distinctive profile of Simonside quite clearly.

Now this could be overactive associative neuronal stuff in my head, but even if that is the case, I’ll claim that if you visit here, you can picture this stone as a nice spot for a bit of ‘ritual activity’ by some prehistoric spirit botherer, using the water from the natural basin for libatory purposes over the ancestral carvings, making invocations to some sky thingy or other as it descended to the sacred hill on the horizon. All the while casting a good dramatic silhouette to the audience on the pallisade of the strange double hillfort a few yards away.

Despite some effort, I can’t manage to suss out any connection with the mysterious Cateran Hole on nearby Cateran Hill. Not even a very tenuous one. Obviously some more exploration of the bleaker bits of Bewick Moor are called for in order to evoke some imagination stimluation.

This is a group of ten barrows on Hardown hill above the hamlet of Ryall. The barrows are a group of six and four – five of the group of six are shown here. These are mostly very slight and are covered in gorse and bracken, even so they are visible except for the lowest.
The group of four are very small indeed – 9 paces across by 1 foot in height with exception of a possible Dorset disc type. I didn’t attempt to find these today, this is a winter job I think.
To the immediate south is the back of the Golden Cap cliffs, whilst to the west may be seen the top of Colmer’s hill. Also within sight are the hillforts – Pilsdon Pen, Lambert’s Castle and Coney’s Castle all to the north west.

If you are in the area, and have a Woolfian bent, this little church is well worth a visit.

The church lies just south of the A27, a few hundred yards west of the Drusillas Corner roundabout, and about 3 kilometres west of the turning to the Long Man of Wilmington, and a short step northwards from the South Downs Way.

The mound is to the rear of the church, rearing away from the dead disciples that cling to its lower slopes.

The little church contains some amazing artwork by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Quentin Bell. For the full effect, remember to turn the lights on; the switch is by the entrance door.

Keys to the past has more info on this site at:

keystothepast.info/durhamcc/K2P.nsf/K2PDetail?readform&PRN=N3391

Aerial photography and geophiz found a line of postholes and it was suspected there was a large enclosure here with a timber lined avenue leading to Stonehenge Bottom. Field walking found pottery and tools and the present excavations (Stonehenge Riverside Aug 08) are designed to discover if there was a settlement here about 3000BCE.
Jim.

Quite by chance we stumbled upon this barrow cemetery while walking a section of the South Downs Way last weekend. Its not as large and impressive as ‘The Devil’s Jumps’ which is a few miles further west from here and the largest barrows are only a couple of metres high at the most, but there are actually two more barrows and a couple of cross dykes intersecting the group. They’re aligned roughly East/West unlike The Devils Jumps which are apparently aligned to the setting sun at the summer solstice. The best access point is probably from Cocking and a brief walk east along the SDW footpath. It’s not signposted but appears on the OS explorer map 121 (Arundel and Pulborough) and you have to look hard through the hedgerows to spot it. It’s also interesting to note that along this section of the SDW there are few solitary barrows and that they always seem to be in linear groups. There is another example near Westburton Hill near Bignor of a group of four barrows which lie in a valley(!), but sadly are no longer visible having been ploughed out over time.

One lonesome and battered bowl barow, but if you’re going along Rhinefield Road west of Brockenhurst, you’ll spot it. Unless you blink. I came cycling to the New Forest the other day with a friend down from London, and was very restrained in taking no diversions from the route for snapshots of other bumps.

Second only to Slap Bottom in the Southern Silly Names League, once I’d spotted this on the map I had to visit really. Now that I’ve done so, I don’t suggest you try to follow. It is pretty inaccessible for this part of the country! Parnholt Wood is gorgeous and well worth a visit but is just over the geological boundary into acidic, sandy soil (viz New Forest) with bogs and badass bracken everywhere. So don’t stray off the rights of way kids. One noticeable thing about this barrow though is how its ditch has survived reasonably well. In these parts, ditches tend to have been silted up and ploughed over.

This is an interesting place (having said that, there’s nothing to see). Flash Earth and other aerial photos will show you, at some times of the year, a faint circle in crop marks, maybe 200m diameter. Hampshire Treasures calls it Iron Age, but offers no excavation evidence or finds to back that up. OS gives it Ye Olde Typeface, but only in the most recent maps. It is right next to the highest place for miles around, with steep sides to north and south, long views to the Isle of Wight, Danebury etc (Fawley Oil Refinery!) and big big open skies. It feels very much like the sort of place that made for neolithic causewayed mortuary enclosures, like Hambledon Hill. It doesn’t seem a logical place to have a farm enclosure, and it would be rubbish as a defensive structure. But I have no more to offer than that. I would love to hear others’ opinions of the place. Next door is a (19th Century)pyramidal white monument on top of a mound which is said by some to be a round barrow, though recent excavations have revealed nowt. Perhaps “excavations” involved radar only? To complicate maters further, I see no causeway in the crop mark, but then the circle is not completely exposed. Is there a square crop mark inside the circle, on the northwest side? Is there a larger patch of disturbed land on the east side, facing the “barrow”? Hmmm. One more thing to bear in mind is that there was an anti-aircraft gun placement up here in the Second World War and some of the crop marks may be down to that.

These are two bowl barrows on top of the west-east ridge of chalk running between Winchester and King’s Somborne. They are quite a decent size for this modest district and fairly well preserved by being in woodland for a long time. There used to be two distinct groups of bowl and disc barrows downhill to the north, all now sadly gone under the plough. The eastern one is next to a bridleway called Burrow Road, which probably took its name from the barrow (beorh). The western one is given the name Robin Hood’s Butt by Hampshire Treasures. They are just over a kilometre apart but are so similar in size and position in the landscape that if they weren’t constructed at around the same time, then one must have been modelled on the other. The grid ref I’ve given is for old Robin’s Butt, which is easy to find if you are passing through in a hurry or can’t get far from a car park through narrow footpaths. There is a small car park next door; facing away from the road, go right through the trees and on the other side of an old line of beeches is the barrow. It is about 20m diameter and 2m high, dimpled from excavation, and with a slight trace of ditch round the outside. There may even have been a bit of a narrow berm but it’s hard to tell with big trees up close. When I visited there was a little vase of plastic flowers on top “in loving memory”. Not a bad place to become a secondary Space Age cremation. But(t) its proximity to the car park meant I also found several broken beer bottles and one lens out of someone’s sunglasses. This could be rich pickings for the 5000CE excavators (actually I tried to remove the rubbish as best I could without a trusty Sainsbury’s bag).

Hants Treasures also claims there are two at the Burrow Road location (SU424295) but I’ve only seen one; maybe the other is still deeply overgrown. There is a Forestry Commission-signposted gravel road (with locked gate) going north into the wood off Sarum Road. Walk up that and just before it turns a little right, look on your right and through the trees you will spot a clearing full of barrow. I make the Burrow Road mound to be about 35m diameter and 3m high, and is dimpled on top from excavation.

Thought I’d try the Loch of Tankerness again for Raymond Lamb’s double BA house/settlement. The stone in the field by Grieves Cottage is now down. Would have liked to know if anything was thereby revealed but new fences were then being set up in the field. Between the loch banks and the loch itself is a very wide flat margin, and though the water level appears to be now lower this margin has dried out considerably. A not quite row of rectangular features has come to light (or at least become more obvious through ‘drainage’), long ends facing the loch. Coming south from the gothic boathouse the first one [A] is totally dried out and would seem natural with low opposing linear rocky outcrops/walls forming the long ends with big brown slabs covering three sides and a short line of erect stones coming from landward to the northern end of the long east side. There are two stones that look to form a smal circular arc. The next depression [B] is like a cross betwen semi-circle and rectangle, it is filled with grass and there are only a few of the large brown slabs. The third feature [C] is still a pool, has well-formed sides of that low rocky outcrop (the north side is definitely untouched natural with very long rocks as has the lochward side), no large brown slabs. Its south and east sides are fairly unformed. What is most fascinating, however, is the way that the pool is sub-divided narrow-ways by angled ‘causeways’ of mostly small stones. Not all of these visibly go all the way between the long sides. They remind me of the stone rows I had seen around the Harray loch. Why not perpendicular ? My thought was fish traps [?fishponds], though I had no idea why this was sectioned up. The next dried-out pond [D] is distinctly L-shaped and regular. The last feature [E] also still holds water and almost has a complete division. With these last two you can look across at the burnt mound and [groan] ponder connections. At the Waterhall end is a drained arm of the loch, the bottom revealed by nature or artifice, I know not which. So after the time of Raymond’s drought did the loch levels never recover in the time since or could his features now be permanently exposed but unseen ?

I picked about the worst time of the year to visit this site – September and the vegetation round the stones was just mental. Set on the gently eastward sloping eastern side of the moor before it starts to descend rapidly down to the Derwent it’s interesting that these are freestanding stones and not an embanked circle though you would hardly be able to tell. The dug out cairn in the centre is crazy too, you can stand at the bottom and not see over the top in places.
EH report four standing stones with two others fallen and measuring between 25cm and just over a metre tall set in a ring measuring 13 metres in diameter and also mention that there were nine stones in total here in the 19th century. If any site was a candidate for a good clear up it would be this one, it would be quite impressive without all the bilberry and heather, mind you the health and safety people would probably fence off the central crater to stop people falling in. Ho hum.

This was a real sod to find, in the end it took three attempts and the vegetation dying back a bit before I was sure I was in the right place and could see the form of the low bank. The stones are tiny and mostly buried as has been noted but the dug out cairn is fairly easy to find if not much to look at. While rooting around in the heather I found a suspicious looking leaning slab a little further to the southeast, don’t know if it was part of a buried cairn but it certainly looked more like a standing stone than those of the circle!

I can echo most of what’s already been said about this site – it’s difficult to get to, takes a while to work out what’s here, and has some great views. I approached it northwest from the footpath to Leam where the 550 metres on the map don’t look difficult – they are. The first 400 metres are uphill through thick heather with the added complication of some fairly deep holes to watch out for. Once you’re over the top it’s down hill to the circle but even then it doesn’t really become clear until you reach it (the nearby Ministry of Works sign has now gone) and initially it’s the heather on the raised bank that gives away its form. This bank has an internal diameter of around 30 metres and once you’re in the centre of it, it seems huge with many of the stones barely visible in the vegetation although the chair stone sticks out like a sore thumb and it’s top does indeed resemble Higger Tor two and a half miles away to the northeast. There seems to be some stones missing from the western side of the circle but theres a good run of stones towards the south and southeast while the views are all to the northwest round to the northeast along the Derwent valley. Incidentally considering it’s isolated position it’s one of the busiest sites I’ve visited in the Peak District, as I approached it a bloke who was photographing the cairn wandered off, there were a couple of walkers taking a break in the circle and as I left another couple with a dog were just coming over the hill asking for directions to the stones.

These are certainly decent sized cup marks and larger than I was expecting, in fact the peppering of tennis ball sized cups across two faces and the top of the stone make it look like some giant piece of fossilised cheese. Don’t overlook the cairn though, it’s quite impressive in itself. Marked on the map as a ring cairn English Heritage record it as a flat-topped round cairn which is apparently fairly rare in this area. The jumble of stones in the middle seems to be the result of robbing with the whole structure being between 15-18 metres in size, the carved rock sits towards the outer edge of this mound with some smaller stones nearby suggesting some kind of kerb.
There are some great views from the site, Sir William Hill rises ominously just to the southeast with Hathersage Moor away to the northeast while to the northwest there’s the weird Abney Low hill and the Smelting Hill / Offerton Moor area.

I have to say the cup marks on both these stones look fairly convincing to me, the decorated upright nearby and the cup marked stone in the Wet Withens cairn demonstrates that there was certainly some tradition of carving stones in this area. I wonder if a thorough investigation of the moor would turn up more marked rocks?

Visited in September 2007 and Ministry of Works sign had been removed so can’t be used as a waymarker to find the cairn and nearby Wet Withens. The cairn itself has been bashed about and it’s difficult to figure out what it was meant to be. There is a suggestion that it may originally have been a pair of cairns that were either joined in antiquity or by more recent excavation/quarrying while another idea is that it could have been a long cairn. It measures about 28 metres by 18 metres.

The stonesetting at Elgesem is 40 meters long and 7 meters at the broadest. 21 of originally 38 stones still stands. The endstones is 2,5 (east) and 1,85 (west) meters high.

There are also 8 burial-mounds at the site (of originally 20-30) and several unmarked graves. Finds show that the site has been in use from about 500BC up to 1000CE.

A runestone was found in an excavation made by Nikolay Nikolaysen in 1870, the inscription is thought to represent the letters ALU.

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.

This barrow stands just over the fence next to a slip road off the A171. This slip road makes an ideal parking place for exploring the southwestern end of Brow Moor/Stony Marl Moor. The barrow itself is small low mound that sits on a high point of land and is very similar in size to the two Jugger Howes barrows that stand 300 metres south east on the other side of the head of Burn Howe Dale. This position is interesting as all three barrows seem to mark the limit of the valley, in Lincolnshire similar locations were often the site of long barrows.

As previously mentioned parking here isn’t easy. There’s a passing place just to the east of the village at SK201800, if you park carefully you can avoid blocking it. From here a footpath heads north then cuts northeast across a couple of fields then onto the moor where it starts to get a bit steep but by the time you get close to the stones the track has levelled off giving views across the moor to the north. It’s the views to the south and east that impress though – due south on the other side of the valley the low saucer shaped hill of Abney Low looks like a squashed Silbury while Higger Tor stands out on the horizon to the east with Eyam Moor to the southeast.
The site itself isn’t in a great state of preservation with just a single standing stone and a further fallen stone visible. This smaller one seems to be set into the inner edge of the bank while the larger one looks to be set further into the interior, it could just be that the bank is more eroded here – there’s certainly a lot of erosion around the base of the stone. English Heritage give the measurements of this stone as 75cm high with the bank having an internal diameter of about 8 metres and a width of between 1.5 and 2 metres.

There’s work going on to clear the trees at this site, so you’re probably better off visiting out of working hours, otherwise you won’t be allowed in there. This site is a mess at the moment. Lots of the site (and the hill) is taped off at the moment. They haven’t cleared away branches, etc, so it’s likely that it will end up in the same state (i.e. overgrown and covered in trees) again. Because of this, it’s difficult to really get an impression of the scale of the site. The site left me disappointed, and frustrated by the over zealous conifer planting policies of the 1950s.

A Sanctuary
When I visited this place for the first time I had in mind two songs: Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and “A Day In The Life” from Beatles.
The Led Zep song because there’s really a natural stairway that brings to the central Altar’s stone.
And that stone is seventy meters tall.
The Beatles song because it says:“I read the news
today oh boy/ Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire/ And though the holes were rather small/ They had to count them all...“. There’s an incredible numbers of cup marks all around the central Altar (somebody count 3249).
Jocking apart it’s really a remarkable place with a strong spiritual atmosphere. A serpent’s shape engraving on the Altar.
Most of the engraved cups are made (often in pairs) at the edge of the terraced rocks as if...
flying spirits could easyer go to pick their offerings.

Catto Long Barrow is an extensive prehistoric stone structure with remnants of seven stone tombs. The site has yielded archaeological recovery of stone axes and its vicinity is replete with tumuli, hoards of worked flint and ancient battleground remains. Situated on locally high open ground, the site offers expansive views in all directions. The site has been suggested in the literature as a likely location of a major battle with invading Danes.

GEOMETRY. I measured the length of this ancient monument at 49 metres, one metre longer than published on the Aberdeen Council website. (Aberdeenshire, 2006) The stones are of considerable size ranging to characteristic length of greater than two metres, but more commonly having typical dimensions closer to 40 centimetres. There are seven sizable pit depressions within the stonework, others having suggested the pits are results of modern disturbance; however, based upon the considerable build-up of mosses on the surface of pit rocks, if the pits are of modern formation, I would judge the disturbance to be at least a century into the past. Ferguson (1875) witnessed the opening of some of the series of cists or stone tombs within the Catto Cairn. Subsequently archaeological publications (Society, 1904) noted that the Catto monument would have been of much greater original height, and states clearly that the pits are remnants of cist structures. The earliest literature reference I found of Catto Cairn is in Sinclair’s 1795 account indicating an elliptically shaped monument of circumference 120 metres. (Sinclair, 1795)

Aside from the pits noted above and the necessarily uneven texture necessitated by the stone sizes themselves, the top of the cairn is a remarkably large expanse of relatively level surface, contrasted with the more conical or mounded shapes of many other large cairns of this region. The orientation of the cairn axis is approximately west northwest to east southeast, very similar to the Longman Hill orientation (Hogan, 2008) somewhat farther to the northwest from Catto.

AREA ARCHAEOLOGY. There are numerous archaeological sites in the local area of the southern extremity of the historic parish of Longside, especially on the eastern side of Laeca Burn. Among the notable local sites are Silver Cairn and .Dun-na-chaich, a large oblong mound. Somewhat to the west are the Skelmuir Hill standing stones. The vicinity has been documented as historically rich in surface finds including sizeable nodules rich in flint tools.

Immediately to the east of Catto there were hundreds of mounds which survived to the mid 1800s; the diameters of these structures varied from about three to six and one half metres. Furthermore, there were over 17 of these to the southwest that were exceptionally well defined circular features.with very flat tops; each of these finely crafted mounds were approximately 2.5 metres in diameter.

BATTLEFIELD. This region is portrayed by several early writers as a site of significant battles with invading Danes. (Smith, 1875) Sinclair (1875) also notes that the immediate local area of Catto is rich with archaeological features including many tumuli with square inner chambers. !8th century legends link the Catto site with history of the Moray Firth and with some type of ancient foreign invasion. The military connection is underscored by the fact that the plain to the immediate west is called “Battle-fauld"on older maps..

J.B. Pratt is the first author I found who suggested Catto Cairn as a battlefield, noting that the cairn itself, by its high ground position, was a likely point for the point d’appui, where troops would have marshalled. To the west the steeply ravined Laeca Burn forms a natural impediment to attack, whereas an historic morass lies to the north. In the 19th century there were many more tumuli, Pictish house sites, graves and circular stone campfire sites throughout the vicinity of Catto; however, aggressive local farming has destroyed most of these features in the last two centuries.

NATURAL FEATURES. The surrounding grain fields suggest that this locale would have been an agriculturally attractive area to Neolithic farmers. In addition to the nearby Leuca Burn, there is recorded 18th century evidence of prolific springs (historically termed “Kemp-Wells” or “Morris Wells”), whose prominence has subsequently been masked by agricultural drains installed as early as the late 18th century; however, as late as the last quarter of the 19th century, the Morris Wells supply potable water to Peterhead. The name “Leuca” undoubtably derives from the granite boulder exceeding 60 tons, which lies in the Leuca Burn streambed west of Catto .Based upon the large tree trunks found in the Leuca ravine, it is likely that most of the early Holocene landscape (even indeed the Medieval landscape!) would have featured a majority of the land forested with large deciduous trees along with Scots Pine. Presently dense gorse patches envelope much of Catto’s perimeter, a common circumstance since gorse is a plant that thrives on stony soils, typical at the verge of ruined ancient stone monuments in Scotland.

North of Catto lay another dense historic forest, but due to deforestation by aggressive farming practises, by the 19th century the land was transformed to a barren wasteland known as the Moss of Savoch of Longside; this outcome provides an example of the failed attempt to cultivate an area not best suited for crops. This northern area yielded large numbers of spearheads and arrow points as reminders of the earlier great battle fought here.

To the southwest is the drainage of Leuca Burn with the Hill of Aldie beyond, where further prehistoric native forestation would have been found, now replaced by a monoculture coniferous plantation, virtually devoid of native understory or wildlife.

REFERENCES
* Aberdeenshire Council (2006) “Catto Long Barrow”
* William Ferguson (1881) ‘’The Great North of Scotland Railway: A Guide’’, Published by D. Douglas, 1881, 174 pages
* Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1904) ‘’Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland’’, pp 256-262, published by Neill and Company, Edinburgh, Scotland
* C. Michael Hogan (2007) ‘’Longman Hill fieldnotes’’, The Modern Antiquarian
* Alexander Smith (1875) ‘’A new history of Aberdeenshire’’, published by Lewis Smith
* Sir John Sinclair and William Creech (1795) ‘’The Statistical Account of Scotland: Drawn Up from the Communications of the Ministers of the Different Parishes. By
Published by William Creech
* William Ferguson (1881) ‘’The Great North of Scotland Railway: A Guide’’, Published by D. Douglas, 1881, 174 pages
* Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1904) ‘’Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland’’, pp 256-262, published by Neill and Company, Edinburgh, Scotland