Latest Fieldnotes

Iv’e heard that permission should be attained from the land owner, but the circle (or what ever it is) is passed on the way to the farmers house which is nigh on a mile further down a bumpy lane, and when asked for premission he seemed to think it strange that someone would want to see a block of stone about this big ( he uses his hands to show how big )
It’s a nice stone with good views, though it were a tad foggy when we got here the wind soon cleared it away a bit.

This is a really impressive site. I remember reading about it in the Discovery Programmes North Munster Project (I had a loan of it for a few days). I believe it is classified as a Bronze Age Barrow.
I would like to give the exact dims because it is huge and really the pictures don’t do it justice.
There are three rings around it as far as I could see. The inner one being about 1.5m high and the ditch in between is filled with water.
What really excited me was the views from it. To the east you have the many notches of the Galtys, south the Ballyhouras but even more importantly to the North you can clearly see the fairy mound of Cnoc Aine.
I think this mound/ barrow may be in some way related to the many monuments in the area.
The word rathanny is meant to come from Rath-eanaighe or the fort of the marsh. However I wonder is there any link to RathAine? With Anny being a corruption of this?
As for how to find it, I parked at the soccer field beside Hospital and walked thru the fields. It is about 1km from the soccer field.
There may be a track thru a farm but you will have to ask for permission etc. Basically you will need a GPS and to be honest I wouldnt fancy going down here in wet weather. I think it would live up to Rath of the marshes!

This standing stone is about 1m tall. However it has fallen. By the looks of it pretty recently

This stone is not marked on the OS map. It is about 500mm high. It could possibly be a scratching post. However with the quantity of monuments in the area I doubt it.

The graveyard on the left coming out of Lattin is located up on a height above the road.
On closer inspection it is obvious it is built into some kind of mound. Again I’m not sure of its age.

This mound is on the right as you come into Lattin on the R515. It is a quite huge mound. Must be at least 5m high. I’m not sure of its date, it may be a Motte but it is listed in the OS Map as a mound.

About 200m from the mound nearby. This is a tall standing stone of about 2m high.
Unusually for its size it is not marked on the OS map.

Drove past here recently on the way to check out St. Ailbes well in Emly.
I had to do a double take when I didnt see the familiar sight of the standing stone.
On the way back I investigated it and it looks as though it has been hit by lightening and broken up.
The stone itself was charred where it split. I was glad to have seen it when it was still standing.

This mound is located just off the R515 before the village of Lattin. It isn’t marked on the OS map however it is right beside an unmarked Standing Stone about 200m to the west. The mound itself must be about 2-3m high in parts and about 15m in diameter. It is more long than round.

This was the second panel of rock art on the itinerary of the Rock Art Meet 2007. The bushes meant that only three or four people could visit at a tme, so the viewing was done in shifts.

It tripped off the continuation of a discussion that’s been bubbling for a couple of years now, due to the way in which the complex three lobed motif at the centre of the panel emerges from a substantial natural cleft.

If there is anything in the theory that natural features, particularly fissures/clefts, influenced the choice of the rock to be marked, then the subsequent placing of motifs, then this panel is a good example.

To find this stone requires a bit of hedge hopping..and is on private land. Please make sure no fences are damaged as it allows sheep and cattle from the fields to get into Kilminorth Woods where they have caused great damage in the past.

This stone is mentioned in Paynes ‘Romance of the Stones’ as having been standing 5ft high when seen by OS inspectors in 1962. There is some thought that it might only have been a rubbing post...and who am I to say otherwise, but...

It sits (lies) on a north facing slope that drops steeply into the West Looe river valley. Woodland now hides the landscape and the view up river towards Bodmin Moor. Just behind it is an earth bank that I believe is part of the Giants Hedge or a Iron Age hillfort that was later turned into a rabbit warren. (viewing said hilltop from above the modern wall looks as if the field is circular, it isn’t but if it went right out to the earth bank it might be)

Naturally shaped stones like this do not occur in the Looe area and rubbing stones tend to be made of granite, brought down from the moor.

The stone features on the EH list of sites (hence me seeking it out). A similar but smaller stone lies hidden in the woods just to the south.

In my mind I was already composing my letter to John Waterhouse, Aubrey Burl and the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society. The subject of letter? How I had rediscovered the lost stone circle of Rawthey Bridge.
The plan
Drive to Rawthey bridge
Search the Hillside
Find, describe and photograph the circle.

I arrived at the bridge mid afternoon on the eve of the summer solstice. There is a good parking spot a few yards south of the bridge and a gated footpath on the opposite side of the road.
I had two grid references for the circle, one placed the site on the hillside close to the bridge, and the second reference placed the circle on the top of the nearby hill called Bluecaster.
Unusually for me I decided to use a sort of semi-methodological approach to my search for any trace of the circle. Starting at the bridge I followed the footpath for about a mile, checking out any possible sites either side of the path. I then turned back on myself and headed north east and uphill to the top of Bluecaster and then finally back down to the bridge. This triangular search would cover the two grid refs I had for the site and much more besides.
Unfortunately I didn’t find any trace of the circle. The hillside shows plenty of evidence of human activities mainly in the form of trackways and drilled rocks so fairly safe to say that good amounts of stone have been removed from this hillside to be used for building, road mending and also to feed the many lime kilns that operated in this area from Roman times to the eighteenth century.
So that was that, no circle, no glory but not a wasted day. The views of both the Howgill Fells and the limestone scars around Wild Boar Fell are spectacular.

In Nevern, off A487.

“A small area of modern Pembrokeshire, comprising the built-up area of Newport town. It lies within the medieval Cantref Cemaes. Cemaes was brought under Anglo-Norman control in c.1100 by the Fitzmartins who established their castle at Nevern on the site of an iron age fort. Cemaes remained in Angle-Norman hands until 1191 when Rhys ap Gruffudd retook it. He strengthened Nevern Castle, but Welsh supremacy was short-lived for Rhys died in 1197 and in the same year William Fitzmartin regained control of Cemaes”

cambria.org.uk/HLC/newportandcarningli/newport.htm

This must be one of the smallest , approx 3m at it’s widest internally . The gps is for scale , you could get more people in the average stone circle than gps’s in here .

For many years I have dreamed of discovering some cup-and-ring marks in Kent, and this morning I struck sarsen!

Discussing the sarsens littered around Walderslade, on the hills above Kits Coty etc, I was suprised when a friend told me he’d seen cup-and-ring marks on some of them. So off I went in the rain today, and lo and behold, as far as I know, the only cupmarks in Kent!

Not the best pictures you’ll ever see, but it was dark, wet, raining and the stones were buried in the trees. No doubt described by some as a stone circle, but that is purely fanciful and overimaginative. Doubtful even as a chambered tomb, buried in a small narrow valley, even though there are two triangular stones standing at one ‘end’ of the group of 10 or so stones. I’d love to say it is a possible tomb, but even my desire to discover a new one can’t overcome my commonsense!

Viewed from Wyaston Road these are largely inaccessible and not at all as captivating as the large barrow near Osmaston Fields Farm nor Tinkers’ Hill. I would make a rough estimate of a height of 3-4 feet and diameter of 15-20 feet for the larger of the two and 3 feet and 10-15 feet for the smaller.

These seem greatly diminished and, I would guess, have been (are being?) ploughed into the ground.

The walk from The Hurlers to the Cheesewring is magnificent. As you walk across the open land, you can see the site getting bigger and bigger and more and more spectacular.

This really is an amazing landscape and once you venture to the top, it really is one of those “top if the world” feelings.

Fabulous.

There is also a nearby round barrow.

Text from:

coflein.gov.uk/pls/portal/coflein.w_details?inumlink=6063030

Located on a NW-facing slope in a recreational green area within a housing estate is a turf-covered, circular stony mound measuring 12m in diameter and 1m high on the NW, 0.3m on the SE. Excavations revealed the presence of a stone kerb, traces of which can occasionally be seen around the edge of the mound.

[5 Nov 2007]

Condition good and 17m in diameter. It’s near an old trackway and spring.

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coflein.gov.uk INFO

Large roughly circular earth mound. Approx 20m in dia and 1.3m in height.

Overgrown, poor condition.

Brash line obscuring western edge. Scrub growth obscuring feature such that it is difficult to determine precise extent and nature.

More Info Here:
coflein.gov.uk/pls/portal/coflein.w_details?inumlink=6068797

Thanks to the farmer for his friendliness and permission to visit the site.
It’s said to be a four-poster but there are many other stones close to the 4 main ones. I was struck by its situation on a small hillock that’s surrounded by about 8 other hills that are nearly equidistant, except for Carrickbyrne Hill that dominates the SSE skyline.

A bowl barrow. It seems to have been excavated or quarried relatively recently. There is a huge gash in the mound, right down to what looks like a burial pit. This quarrying/excavation seems to have been conducted in the last 10 years. The way the mound has been left leads me to believe that this ‘work’ was done unofficially.
The fosse and bank are clearly visible on the east and south quadrants. The mound would once have been over 3 metres tall. Many beech trees were planted on the mound, some still clinging precariously on to the remains.

A beautiful bullaun stone, dumped into the field boundary and neglected. It looks to have once been earthfast, though that’s hard to call as it’s so overgrown. It’s definitely not in its original position as the basins are all on a slope, with one end of the stone a metre above the other. There are 3 large basins in a diagonal line on the metre and a half square stone. This would be a prize bullaun elsewhere but now rests sadly, ignored at the edge of the field.

Easy to find to the right just inside the gate of the old cemetery in Myshall. Both bullauns were full of detritus, one with stones, a plastic bottle and some broken glass. It seems that the graveyard is reasonable well tended but the weird stone with the holes in it is ignored. Other photos elsewhere don’t show the concrete setting.
Both bullauns are very deep set, about 25 to 30 cms, and almost inverted cones.

After a promising start the expected Mesolithic windfall was a no show, the present hypothesis being that work on the barrow removed most of this previous material.

My visit to the excavation left me distinctly underwhelmed. First impression is that a mushroom-cap shaped rise has been revealed that consisted of a layer of small to medium sized flat stones sitting on top of soil (as distinct from embedded in an earth matrix). In the eastern quadrant they have dug through this. Just in front of what seems to be the very decomposed inclined top of a rocky outcrop (reminding me of the geophys lines at the other end of Long Howe) is a 4-6’ line of stones that looks to be at least one course of non-drystone walling. Apart from a couple more stones after a small gap it is isolated, doesn’t seem to be going anyplace or connecting up with anything else presently visible [so no mortuary enclosure then ;-) ]. Perhaps something later trashed this and the postulated Mesolithic material?

Walking around to the NW side of the dig (facing the road to Twinness) I saw an irregular shallow narrow trench that I take to be where they looked for a continuation of the previously found stakeholes or else the originals.

This single bowl barrow sits on the ridge of a hill. This is the same range of hills on which the Five Marys sit and is about half a mile to the west of of them. It is next to a small, narrow road and appears to have been damaged by traffic, large farm vehicles mainly use this road. Whilst not inherently interesting as an individual barrow, its prominent position and name do hint at the significance it may have once had.

This is an interesting name. It seems specifically Danish, from a personal name, ‘Sile’. In N. Yorks., we find it as Sil Howe, near the High Bridestones.

The N. Yorks. name is problematical, in that Yorkshire experienced several distinct ‘Viking’ incursions. However, it seems most likely that a Cumbrian ‘Sile’ would have come with the Norse/Danish group that was expelled from Ireland in 902 a.d.

Vikings often intruded their burials into prehistoric mounds. Within fifteen miles of my flat, we have, for example, Shunner Howe (Old Norse ‘Sjonar’) Simon Howe (Old Norse ‘Sigemund’) Sil Howe (Old Danish ‘Sile’) etc. Norse artifacts were found in Lilla Howe when it was excavated in the 1970s, too, even though that name is Old English, rather than Scandinavian. All of these are prehistoric in origin.

It would be interesting to know if this Cumbrian site has been excavated, and if Scandinavian artifacts were found. From the name, it does seem entirely possible.