Latest Fieldnotes

Made a spring attempt on this today, but the site is so seriously overgrown, and the flint/mortar walls are so spread, I doubt anyone could find a sarsen in there without professional help. The surrounding field is absolutely smothered with flint, as flinty a field as you’re ever linkely to find. The chapel itself is tiny, maybe 20’ x 15’, and a lot of the fallen wallstone is inside the building, though the siting of the whole thing is a little strange, on a  false level floor halfway up the southern incline of Knatts Valley [itself a strange place – fields and no hedgerows]. Not really dug into the hillside, rather a built level surface proud of the soil level. Found a beautiful piece of jet-black flint, most Kent flint being grey/blue in colour, so quite unusual.

Found the other end of the possible cist. The distance between the orthostats inner faces is 1.56m and they are offset, the south end of that at the right being in line with the centre of the left-hand one. Measurements are as follows :-

LH 0.56x0.08m, protruding 0.12m from the soil at either end and 0.27m in the middle. RH has disparate edges, the whole being 0.46x0.15m protruding 0.13m, the reduced face 0.33x0.05m showing 0.08m.

The latter, also has a stone lying down against it, only 0.6x0.26m compared to the other’s 1x max. 0.48m. But there is at least one other stone between the slabs so they would appear to date from a later period rather than being co-eval.

It seems curious to me that this mound is in such an odd-shaped ‘field’, even more so as this is only half of larger section of similarly strange shaped ‘field’. Though the eastern half appears fairly level, but I do wonder if it too once produced archaeological finds, as in Orkney farmers often keep odd pieces of land out of cultivation because at some time in the (often forgotten) past there was a reason for so doing – only occasionally do we find what site was at these places.

Almost totally obscured by the heather, this is a stumpy little stone but definitely a standing stone, and seemingly prehistoric. It has packing stones and is heavily grooved on top, it’s also next to what look very much like disturbed cairns. Is about 120cm tall, rectangular in section, no apparent cupmarks. Similar to (and actually larger than, believe it or not) other small stones of Northumberland, such as that at Rothbury. They used to call them ‘Stob Stones’ in these parts, a stob being the stump of a tree.

This might be a new discovery, I’m not sure. Possibly it’s the one mentioned by Beckensall in prehistoric Northumberland, though I think it’s further south. His description would seem to fit better with this one photographed by Rockandy. Alternatively, this could be the stone mentioned on the Keys to the Past website but if so, their grid ref is waaaaay out, over a kilometre in fact. I Find it a bit baffling that their grid ref was originally only 4 digits, as it’s placed right on NU160110, down in the Titlington Burn. The OS do report a couple of stones in the area, but don’t give then the gravitas of the antiquity script. I’ve not seen either, so wouldn’t want to comment.

Should anyone want to give it the once-over, Garmin E-trex said: NU 12357 17161 (82m altitude, 4m accuracy)

There’s also a weird stone with cortical texture nearby, reminiscent of the one at Cuthbert’s Cave

Hunterheugh 2 is one of the finest panels of rock art in Northumberland. The motifs aren’t anything special, but the way in which you can see the effects of weathering are superb. I can’t think of many other places, with the possible exception of the frieze at Buttony where a single motif has been partially covered so that the viewer can see quite clearly what effects the years have on these kind of carvngs.

With Hunterheugh 2, the largest motif is almost completely worn away at the top, but fresh as the day it was pecked at the bottom. It relly improves appreciation of the other simple carvings in the area, as they have mostly been weathered to virtually nothing, but panel 2 shows what all the others must have looked like when they were fresh. For this reason, it is imperative that the turf must always be replaced to protect the fresh carvings.

Panel 3 on the other hand, is barely discernable. It’s only a couple of metres away from panel 2, but presumably has always been exposed to the elements. It’s so worn away, you would be forgiven for walking right past it without noticing a thing.

No much to see here, overgrown with tall heather, very disturbed, but definitely cairns. There’s a little rectangle carved into a stone on the north side of the northern cairn. Looks like it was made with metal tools, no idea how old. Possibly some kind of boundary marker thing.
Supposedly there’s a cist in one of them. I couldn’t find it amongst the rubble and heather. Couldn’t make out any kerbs either, but they’re so overgrown with heather, there may be kerbstones hidden.
There may be marked stones in there somewhere, maybe even marked bedrock, similar to those found beneath the excavated cairn at Hunterheugh 1 further up the crags.

“I received an invitation from Mr Fowle [the landowner] to be present at the investigation and was there during the progress of the work. Upon removing the earth we found that there were three large stones and one smaller stone, all of them of irregular shape, of the same formation and appearance as the monument close by called Kit’s Coty.

That on the N side 7’6” x 4’9” x 1’2”
That on the S side 7’0” x 5’9” x 2’3”
That on the W side 3’0” x 4’0” x 1’6”
Small stone 3’0” x 2’0” x 1’0” [this having been placed to prevent the N stone from falling against the S stone, the whole structure had been depressed towards the south].

The stones were removed and next day workmen continued to dig beneath to ascertain if anything had been deposited, and at about 4 feet below the monument, they discovered a flat stone 4’ long, 3’ broad, upon which several human bones were found lying E-W, but they were thrown out carelessly by the workmen, and noone being on the spot to take notes, particulars could not be ascertained. Some of the bones were collected and shown to Mr Charles of Maidstone [see below], who gave a description of them. With the bones were found a fragment of an unglazed urn.”

C.T. Smythe, MS Collections, folio 30; Nat. Mon. Record.

“From the state of the teeth we may conclude they belonged to persons of, or past, middle age...two bodies must have been buried in the tomb as among the fragments of bones collected there were two right-sides of the under-jaws and ulna ...

About 4’ below the surface of the N stone was a flat stone...on which lay the skull of a mole, the rest of the bones lay in a direct line with the E end.”

Dr Thomas Charles, 1822.

Also known as the Warren Farm Chamber, this Medway Megalith was discovered in 1822 and excavated by Thomas Charles and Clement Taylor Smythe, having been unearthed only 6” down during ploughing. Laying east-west across the foot of a gentle downhill slope, and being smaller in stature than the other surviving monuments in the area, it was probably more easily destroyed, washed out and lost. The chamber alone is now visible as a circular chalkmark on aerial photographs in the centre of the field, 200m north-west of the White Horse Stone. It is on a level contour with Kit’s Coty, 1/4 mile to the west.

Three upright sarsens in an H formation were uncovered, plus another as a spacer with [very unusually] a fifth stone used as a paved floor, with skeletal remains on top, which ‘crumbled to dust’ as the workmen dug them out. Some small skull fragments and vertebrae were saved. Other sarsens were unearthed more recently in the same field, buried in pits, and were left in situ but it is not confirmed if they were connected to the monument.

This would likely have been the smallest of all the surrounding monuments height-wise, at around 5’ inside the [surviving] chamber, but nowadays there’s nothing to see.

As far as access, there is none, other than the view from the Pilgrim’s Way at the foot of Warren Farm Road, or from the White Horse Stone. Bordered by the Channel Tunnel and A249 to the west, it is not the most pleasant place to spend any time with little ambience, though the nature reserve and woodland on the spur to the east are a nice retreat.

Notes originally posted in 2004, then reposted after site was taken from TMA by he who did originally post it’s presence, then edited after a 3rd revisit on Nov 02 2007, this time with a bunch of veteran D&NRAPers. What a faff.

Despite what I’ve written below, closer inspection showed that this does look like outcrop.

There are also signs of quarrying, though by whom, who knows. it may have even been those pesky romans, who went around snaffling other people’s sandstone for their gaudy Mithraic temples etc.

Irregardless of who did the quarrying, it is interesting to wonder why they stopped before they’d broken up the whole bit of outcrop.

Imagination, given a bit of free-rein, suggests that this may have been because the ‘significant’ nature of the cupmarks was recognised, as is seen on many other marked outcrops in the county.

or, it may have been a deliberate act of desecration, with the remaining few cups being left as a reminder of what had been done. In which case, perhaps the original outcrop was much larger, maybe with more, wonderfully complex motifs (as opposed to a handful of fairly ropey cups...).

This speculation in turn leads to the idea that it may have been a case of prehistoric reverence, that a part of the marked stone was taken to serve as part of one of the many cairns in the area, or maybe even one of the cists, as is also seen with marked rocks elsewhere in Northumberland.

But, when it comes down to it, it’s more than likely that the stone was quarried to provide material for the nearby limekilns. Why did the quarrying stop before the whole stone was removed? Well, if I were some 18th/19thC dude repairing what was possibly an old roman limekiln, I’d only quarry as much as I needed, no more. What’s the point of going through the effort of breaking and transporting stones you don’t need?

Possibly the same cup-marked stone originally added to the county SMR by a keen cup-spotter, but then largely overlooked (like most of the prehistoric remains close to Hadrian’s Wall), this erratic boulder is fairly conspicuous, it’s the only one in the enclosed field, more or less in the middle of what is marked on the OS map as ‘Davy’s Lee’. I’m not sure if it’s the thing recorded on the Beckensall Archive, as that had a grid ref which placed it in a nearby stream, and was listed as being on outcrop. There’s no outcrop in the stream and there’s more than the 6 cups related on both the Archive and on the Northumberland county SMR, so ambiguity prevails.

It has natural grooves, which seem to have deermined the placement of the cups to some degree, as they are in groups, each group in an a part of the surface defined by the grooves.

The enclosed field in which the stone sits is interesting in it’s own right, as the boundary is a low earthen bank, containing what looks like cord rig. The banks are more pronounced at the NW corner, where a ditch is also in evidence, possibly part of a settlement?

Like most of the pre-roman remains in the vicinity, I’d argue this stone may have some connection with the stupendous stone at Queen’s crags.

Access:
Ask permission at the gatehouse, or at Sewingshields Farm. Rough, boggy terrain unsuitable for wheelchairs.

I parked right at the end of the road next to the reservoir just a hundred metres from Froggymead (grr)and got out my trusty bike,unfortunatly I’m a bit older and a bit heavier since I last came here and the trek up the track through the forest was just crap.
I passed Fernworthy(aawh)and kept going, passed one crosstrack and turned left at the next crossing this track takes you to the forest edge from here follow the wall till you can see the circles.

Apparently reconstructed at the behest of King George V, nice one matey. From the circles Sittaford tor is not visible so I’m inclined to presume the eastern horizon was the focus ,The equinox sun rises directly between the two rings though this might be because the circles are north-south aligned, i’m no expert but two circles and two imaginary lines projected from them to the rising sun may be some kind of phalic representation, just a thought .
Every one into stone circles should come here atleast once, the bike ride back to the car was a real thrill and took just 3 mins.

The Tinlee Stone
OS Grid NT 483 038
Visited in 1995. It’s situated in a firebreak within a forestry plantation, and as far as I’m aware the stone has never been catalogued on the internet. It stands at roughly hip height and access is via a forestry plantation ride (no vehicular access to the public and there’s no footpath or track leading to the stone). Possibly worth a visit for the more adventurous amongst you after visiting the easily accessible Ninestane Rig stone circle (OS Grid NY 517 972) where a car park is situated at the nearby Hermitage Castle. The Tinlee Stone is well off the beaten track therefore good map reading and compass skills are essential.

Next to Fingals bridge is a pub called the Anglers rest, this is where I made my way up, jump a small river and scramble up the steep slope.
But this was the hard way (anonymous though) the easier way would be to park in the small village of Preston ask permission and take an easy stroll up the easy way.
Fantastic views all around.
Three ramparts with three slightly staggered entrances and an out of place looking big stone in the ditch near the top, quite well preserved banks and ditches, and amazing views ,especially down to the river Teign and Fingals bridge

Just visited yesterday. It is located at the extreme north end of the village (opposite the modern cemetary), in a break of trees, marked on the Explorer 170 map as ‘TUMULUS’ (in capitals – which Rhiannon advises me – means it’s Roman)

... and it’s in someones back garden with an unfriendly dog.

This pair of barrows are just south of the trackway that runs across the moor linking the Lockwood to Castleton road with the Danby road. Locally the track is known as the old tank road. The trackway is a public right of way with vehicular rights. I wouldn’t recommend driving along the track, about half way along the road sinks into a bog.
Probably the best way to access the barrows is to park on the Castleton road and walk east for a quarter mile or so to the barrows. This pair of barrows are pretty unremarkable but a walk to them is worthwhile if only to illustrate the intervisibility of many of the moorland barrow groups. If you look west you can see the Black Howes on High Moor, the Three Howes on Three Howes Rigg, look east and the Siss Cross and Robin Hoods Butts barrows are prominent horizon markers.
Another thing to notice is, as you walk along the path you can see the summit of Freebrough Hill poking up over Moorsholm Rigg. When you reach the barrows Freebrough is in full view. However these barrows are not aligned on Freebrough. Looking north across the barrows the alignment runs past Freebrough and points to the coastal barrow cemetery of Warsett Hill.
I not convinced that this alignment was in the mind of the mound builders. I think that this pair of barrows should be seen as part of the wider chain of barrows that occupy the prominent ridges of the moors. A chain of burial monuments that in many cases still define parish and political boundaries and fringe the major ancient trackways across the moors, possibly defining the boundaries of Bronze Age estates.

Friday proved to be a windy day up at Hunterheugh and the rock art team decided to try a bit of exploration. My main motivation for visiting this site above Titlington Mount farm was to compare the millstone extraction that we had been previously told about here with the two large carved rocks in the Hunterheugh settlement area. The locals refered to these as millstones too and that had never seemed particularly satisfactory.

Luckily, Dave T didn’t let me dismiss the cup marks on the E side of the same outcrop as natural erosion and showed that at least two of them have eroded rings. The simple nature of these motifs and the pattern of erosion makes them similar to those of Hunterheugh 4, nearly 2 km to the east. As well as the two cup and rings on the N side, there are other cups (which may be natural features) along a narrow area of rock bordered by raised veins, on the S side of the veins, and on the SE edge adjacent to thin turf cover. It is quite possible that some of these had also sported rings removed by erosion and now obscured by the lichen cover.

This find extends the rock art found in the Hunterheugh area west along the ridge which culminates at Titlington Pike (above Glanton) which sports two large overgrown Bronze Age cairns and provides fine views of the Cheviot Hills. The remains of a circular Iron Age fort is also present on the spur ridge just west of the farm.

Four ‘burnt mounds’, now covered by vegetation, lie on the banks of a small stream just below the cup-marked outcrop. Two of the mounds were excavated by Peter Topping in 1992-93. (Northern Archaeol, 15-16, 1998, 3–25). Both mounds contained hearths, troughs and other stone-built fixtures. Radiocarbon dating demonstrated that the sites had been in use in the Bronze Age over 3000 years ago. Pollen and other biological evidence showed a landscape changing from scrub woodland to moorland at this time along with some evidence of possible local cereal cultivation during the earlier phases of the mounds.

A long stretched oval multivallate Durotrigian hillfort , or rather half of one as the cliffside part of this fort has long since slid into the sea. It cannot always be walked upon as it is within the bounds of an M.O.D.firing range, it can be got quite close to along the coast path, when it is open. This would have been one of the most spectacular places to be in Dorset when it was in use , the isles of Portland to the west and Purbeck to the east are clearly visible , the view inland is uninterrupted for many miles. Bindon hill is to the west about a mile away and there are many barrows nearby.

This is one of the more unusual Durotrigian hillforts in that is built on a single hill in heathland. It is roughly oval in shape and has a low mound around its top edge and a ditch and bank about a third of the way down from the top. From its north eastern conrner the nearby Woodbury hillfort can be easily seen, to the south can be seen the high ridge of hills just inland from the coast. This entire site is covered in gorse and bracken which make its features a bit indistinct and difficult to photograph , however the last time I was here it was covered in 30 foot pine trees, as it is on forrestry commission land. It is built from a sandy soil which is full of flint, gravel and pebbles which must have made an excellent source of tool making materials and slingshot ammunition.

This cemetery grouping of several round barrows sits on a ridge that runs for many miles and is covered in barrows . A walk along the footpath to the southeast of about 2 miles (Bronkham hill) will take you past about twenty barrows of various sizes. This Blackdown is just below the monument to captain Thomas Hardy of Nelson fame and not to be confused with the nearby poor lot cemetery in the Winterbourne valley which is also deeply unhelpfully named as Blackdown on o.s. maps. There are at least two barrows in the nearby woodland, but I’ve yet to find them, must try harder.

Probably the most accessible Dorset hillfort , you don’t have to climb a great height or park miles away from it. It’s a quite simple, roughly square shape with double ditches and banks on its southern and western sides . Inside the enclosure there is a single bronze age round barrow and hut circle marks which have been excavated . To the east of it on lower ground a grave yard of at least a thousand burials ranging from pre-Roman to c.400 c.e. has been extensively investigated. Below the northern rampart the ditch of a Roman aqueduct can still be seen, close to the end of its 7 mile length. Maiden castle can be clearly seen to the south west. It would be wise to visit this site fairly soon as the duchy of Cornwalls’ erroneously named Poundbury village , a suburb of Dorchester, is fast encroaching on this ancient place.

A medium sized, high durotrigian hillfort, from which a great view of the nearby Pilsdon pen can be seen. It is now quite heavily wooded, there are several oddly shaped mounds in its interior, these are now known to be post Norman rabbit warrens. Its banks and ditches are not as well developed as Pilsdon or Coneys castle.

I got to the circle from Loadpot Hill to the south – it’s no easier to find from that direction! The OS map shows it at about the position listed on the scheduling notice on MAGIC i.e. NY4571 1908 but I agree with fitzcoraldo’s GPS data i.e. about 150 yards to the NNW. This might not sound much but it could make all the difference tryng to find these recumbent stones in the tussocky grass.

The scheduling notice describes it as a slightly oval arrangement of approximately 81 fallen stones with an external diameter of 20m by 17m. Taking these figures and fitzcoraldo’s estimate that the stones define 60% of the circle leaves only about 45cm of the circle for each stone. Therefore if they were all originally standing, they must have been touching or overlapping.

The whole place felt pretty weird to me – a strange jumble of stones in what could have once been a circular arrangement in a pretty dull place. Why did they bother?

This is a really nice medium sized hillfort. It’s on the western border of the Durotriges and the Dumnonii , of the three hillforts in the immediate area ( Pilsdon pen and Lamberts castle ) it is nearest the sea. Unfortunately it is split along its length by a single track road , which looking at the age of the trees along its edges and its depth below the level of the hillfort has run through it for many,many years. The banks and ditches are in good order and are double on the north, east and southern sides , the west side only needs one small bank as it drops steeply into the valley below. Golden cap can be clearly seen on the coast to the south as it can be from the other hillforts mentioned above.

You really have to want to see this hillfort, it’s quite a climb, but utterly worth the effort. It’s a large multivallate Durotrigian hillfort, which being built on the highest hill in Dorset is an obvious site for a defensive position. The 360 degree panorama affords views of nearby Lamberts castle, Coneys castle,Lewesdon Hill and the more distant Abbotsbury castle. Today I can see Portland which is about 35 miles away , the last time I was here visibility was about 35 feet.

The easternmost of the currently recorded Hunterheugh motifs, Hunterheugh 4 is a set of faint cups with single rings. These are recorded on the Beckensall Archive as such. It’s not easy to say if there are 3 or 4 C&Rs as they are quite worn away.

There’s another single cup a couple of metres away to the NE, next to what looks like a natural feature that’s been enhanced into a shallow basin.

The other possibly significant thing about this site is the way the line of C&Rs seem to point to the peculiar natural feature of Cloudy Crags on Aydon moor to the south.

This is a cliff top Celtic hill fort near LLanbadrig on the most Northerly tip of Anglesey. It is reached by a cliff walk from the 12th century church of Llanbadrig or along old lanes. Part of the fort’s wall is still clearly visible as a white band of rock, with rock piles and hollows. There’s a ruined summer house on the most Northern part of the hill fort, looking out to ynys middle mouse. Beneath in the cove are the ruins of an old china clay factory, the cove was used as a small port to ship the produce out, also in the area was a medieval Nunnery, the whole area has a wild and remote feel to it, steeped in history.

I couldn’t find anything either, I was walking around in the pouring rain trying to find the stone for at least half an hour before heading home.
Sanity prevailed in the end. I’ll try another day, when it’s sunny.