Latest Fieldnotes

I have just walked this site again and have spotted what appears to be an unlisted pond barrow. I’m aware that these are notoriously difficult to tell from sink holes and the like, but this appears to have a well defined bank surrounding the parts of it which are not near the footpath, which runs very close to it. It is only several hundred yards from the Rainbarrows themselves. Photos to follow, you decide!
These barrows are much easier to see since much of the scrub has been cleared in order to reclaim the area as heathland. This is part of the Thomas Hardy heath project, which aims to re-create the heath of Hardy’s youth, which became the fictional Egdon heath in his writings.
The name does not appear to have anything to do with rain but is an Anglicised version of Hraefn or Hraevn meaning raven in Anglo Saxon – see A.D.Mills – Place Names of Dorset.

The marked stone is nicely looked after in it’s own puropse built niche in a wall. Apparently it was found in the field containing Shortflatt barrow, just to the east. Stan Beckensall has recorded three other cup-marked stones from the area, all of which are also in private hands.

This is definitely one that visitors should ask permission for before visiting, as it’s very much on private property.

I was struck by the strange veneer of reddish stuff that looked as if it had been splatterred onto the carved surface. No idea at all what it might be, but it doesn’t look like a natural feature.

If you go “around the houses” there will be a way in through gates, but this being the end of a decent dry period I took a shorter but naturally difficult route into the field containing the bulk of the cairn. By the field boundary is the mound with large exposed stones that I photographed on a previous visit believing it to be part of the cairn. Now I have my bearings this is not recorded as connected. But there is a strong suggestion, in my mind, that all is part of a bigger site that arcs around this hillslope. Perhaps it is all on some glacial feature, glacial action that is presumably the cause of the very large boulders being embedded in the banks of what I assume to be a former burn further upslope. On this part of the hill several features appear to run into one another, and a few of these also appear to have been trialled for archaeology..

Not actually marked on the map as a barrow but....that is what it looks like to me! The seaward side has dissapeared and a wall built through it. The whole mound is surounded by barbed wire to keep something out?
Great site to be buried!
Easilly reached from Gwithian Towans by NT road out to the lighthouse.

Follow the farm track from West Ardwell farm, sign-posted Ardwell bay, the track is passable by car (just) and leads to a small car park close to the beach. From here follow the coastal footpath southward around the point, a 5-minute walk, and the broch is un-mistakable and quite dramatic on its promontory. The site is accessible across a built causeway and the remains, although much reduced, are impressive with unusually two openings one to landward and the other to seaward both with checks. There is a mural chamber in the eastern side but we couldn’t find any evidence of stairways. Unfortunately we didn’t linger due the fact it was raining cats and dogs but this place will stand another visit in better weather as there is much to explore including some outwork.

I’ve not got a lot to add here, given the fame of this site and its comprehensive coverage in all sorts of guide books. A great little volume written by the O’Kellys is available from the proud and committed landowner.

Aubrey Burl in his big ‘Stone Circles of...’ book remarks that the monument’s relationships lie with the Wicklow circles and not with the Scottish recumbent and Munster axial stone varieties. I’m not so sure that a connection to the ASCs should be written off completely. Two northeastern portals look along a main axis, with a winter sunset declination, to two stones at the southwest which, because they sit together, give the same shape as one more broad than high. A supplied v-notch sits in the middle of these ‘axial stones’, an effect also offered by natural valleys in the sightlines of the Winter Solstice circles of Drombeg and Lettergorman South. Maybe in 1000 years an idea could mutate and fuse with other influences and appear some distance to the South?

Said by some to be a passage grave, this robbed out mound is oval in shape and shows no signs of a kerb. It’s about 200 metres east-south-east of the excavated henge of the same name that has been cut into by a modern factory.
It’s roughly 25 metres on its long axis and has a dug out depression at its eastern end.

There are ten red dots on Sheet 36 denoting this barrow cemetery. Three of them are beside the road with two on the road itself. The other five are in an arc aligned roughly south-west to north-east. To be honest I wasn’t expecting to find much and I wasn’t greatly disappointed. I did however locate the remains of about seven of the barrows. They’re quite hard to make out and most of the mounds have been flattened, but a little scouring shows plenty of evidence of circular banks and interior fosses. The one mound that remains to any great height is the most northern one. It’s about 2.5 metres high, roughly circular.

Slieve Breagh falls dramatically away to the north-west from this place and the views across Meath, Monaghan and Cavan and north into Armagh and beyond are spectacular. There are many peaks away on the distant horizon. A quite lonely and windswept place but worth the trip on this cloudy, windy and sunny Irish day.

The entrance to this souterrain is in the ditch by the side of the road. It’s marked on the map well into the field and the farmer had just dug a hole in the vicinity of the mark so I thought this must be it. Happily the farmer happened by and showed me where to look. He said that I could crawl in, that there’s “a big cave in there”. “Thanks all the same,” said I.
The lintelled entrance is to the south. Immediately, after about a metre, there’s a sharp right turn and the souterrain heads down. It looks like an ideal spot for a badgers lair and I had no torch. I would love to come back here with some proper kit and a companion less claustrophobic than I.

In her book “Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne” (Cork University Press) Geraldine Stout has this marked on both of the overview maps of Brugh na Bóinne, and yet there is no mention of it in the index and I haven’t come across it in the text, so far. I did see it mentioned somewhere else but can’t remember where. Having bought Geraldine’s book I decided to see if I could find anything.

I approached from the eastern end of the complex and just where the bend of the road turns sharp right on the long approach up to Dowth there’s a small wall. Over this and about 100 metres further west are 2 bowl-like arenas, like hollowed out inverted mounds. Was this where the stone circle once stood? The one further west seems like the most probable. It has 2 large fallen stones that may have come from the circle. One, the northern of the 2, is huge and has definitely been worked/shaped, though, from what I remember, the stones were blasted when the circle was destroyed. The other lies to the south and is thinner and smaller, about 2 metres long.

I’ve had limited experience of stone circles so I don’t know if I’ve found the precise location. The bowl like depression is about 10 metres deep on its southern side. The floor opens out to the north and drops off until it reaches the modern road about 8 metres below.

Marked on the map as a Tumulus, as it’s never been dug, this is apparently a bona fide bronze age burial mound. There are traces of a ditch, and the remains of stone kerbs, though the latter are a bit obscured by the field clearance dumped on the mound.

It’s got a good line of sight to nearby Shaftoe Crags, and particularly to the striking natural feature of The Piper’s chair, on the horizon. Maybe this had something to do with the choice of this spot for a mound?

It does bear a striking resemblance to the nearby Poind and his man, only without the standing stone. Who knows, maybe one there was a stone here too, a few standing stones in the area have gone walkabout, see Wallington and Middleton for examples.

The field just to the NW of the mound has turned up a few examples of portable rock art over the years, thought to be from now vanished cairns. There are still many large clearance stones dotted all over the immediate vicinity.

Nice to see the sturdy fence protecting the mound from the drepidations of cattle.

The thing that struck me today about this site, is that it forms a point in a straight line across from Fowberry Mains to Coldmartin Lough. Also on the same line, to within a few metres, are Whitsunbank 3 and Fowberry cairn.

I’ve never been a great believer in Watkinsesque straight line stuff, but sometimes I do wonder. 4 points on a straight line. Would this be enough to discount random chance? Hmmm.

Who the heck found this one?!?!

It’s underneath a boulder, with only about 2 inches clearance, so you can just see it.

You have to admire the thouroughness with which this area has been surveyed.

There is another carving here, but I was in a bit of a rush, so missed it this time. Pictures can be seen on the BRAC link below.

There’s also what looks like a standing stone between the carved boulder and the trees.

Its a good time to visit at the moment, as the very invasive gorse has been burnt back. The circle is indeed the area which is “cordoned ” off and is much more obvious now. The Giants Grave is the ring cairn further North – the OS map is pretty useless/meaningless really. Look out for Dartford Warblers in the thick gorse between the circle and the cairn !

Tremendous views all the way round. There’s room for one car on the lane by the footpath, which doesn’t go to the top it can only be reached by jumping a fence. The defences are mostly to the west the eastern side is steep enough to repel any invaders.
It rained for ten minutes on the way up but then cleared beautifully, tremendous views all around, I know Iv’e said it twice but it really is

located a little uphill behind a cafe type place named after one of the caves ( Ffynnon Bueno ). A footpath goes by the caves but for access you’ll have to ask at the cafe/house. The interior is blocked off by thick bars but you can see inside well enough. Cae Gwyn cave is covered with bushes and was on the other side of a fence which I was reluctant to climb with two small children.

Grey and rainy all morning, but the sunshine came through by the afternoon. I did visit Perborough many years ago, so I knew where to go and how to get there.

The site is comprised of a hillfort and a lot of lumps and bumps on one side. Approaching the site you pass a barn and a huge pile of shit (not a good omen). The banks on the flatter land to the right are very distinct, and very angular. They stretch across the whole field which has a few clumps of trees scattered in it.

Crossing one of these banks you head up a steep slope and up towards the actually hillfort itself. The wind was a blowin’ and I was glad I’d had a large lunch to keep me attached to the ground. The entrance was open and the bank of the hillfort has fencing atop it (all the way around).

The soil here is extremely flinty and very red in colour. A few sarsens are dotted around (although if they are contemporary with the hillfort or just ones moved out of the field to the edge by the farmer is anyone’s guess) and strangely some old broken asbestos sheets (def not contemporary).

The ditch and bank doesn’t seem to extend all the way around. It is more defined on half the site. The other side doesn’t have much of a ditch or bank at all, and it would be easier to just walk into it from that side. If that was how it was originally, then maybe it only defends from attack from one general direction.

Part of the interior has been ploughed – it looks like someone’s been practising for a ploughing championship.

The interior of the hillfort is not really flat, it seems to rise at the middle and slope down to the edge sharply on one side. The size of the interior seems like Uffington to me, but it must be smaller. The views are certainly stunning, you are surrounded by the ‘downs’ in the truest sense, with lots of wooded hills and valleys.

Walking back around to the entrance, you can really see the ditches below you in the field and there’s lots of ‘em.

Walking back to the motor with the wind blowing, I was glad I’d come here. It’s less busy than Uffington (OK much less impressive), but it’s nice to visit a hillfort and be on your own – you kinda get the place to yerself.

Very little seems to be written/known about the place and it wasn’t included in the ‘Hillforts of the Ridgeway’ project by Oxford Uni in the 1990’s. An enigma, but a pleasant one.

It was hard to tell what this is due to the livestock time limitations I had here. The large capstone says a portal tomb, but this stone could be a roofstone from a wedge tomb. As the tomb is in court-cairn country, it just might be so, but there’s no evidence of a court.

The mound that the burial chamber is in is completely overgrown. It stretches back from the chamber by about 20 metres and contains cairn material at the flatter back end. There are kerb-like stones on its eastern side, so are we talking a passage grave?

Situated in the church at St Just.

This stone is situated on a track between Carn Kenidjack and Woon Gumpas Common.Formerly known as Crowze East. The inscription reads JAC-T-VENA but is now barely visible.
Craig Weatherhill in his book “Belerion” thinks that the inscription is probably Hic Jacit Vena (here lies Vena).

Right on the main Kyle road . Cille Fhearchair is Farquhar’s cell or church and was a burial ground .

This stone is in an odd situation , far from the terraces above Loch Tay and close to the loch shore shore , among trees with a very limited prospect to the north even if the trees were cleared and a hillock to the south . It is 1.5m high and aligned 340 degrees .Access could be difficult as it is a steep drop from the road and there is no convenient parking place . Tir Artair means Arthur land or domain .

Lost and forlorn in a hedge and ditch are these sad remains of a wedge tomb. I was brought up here by the farmer who owns the land and who has a keen interest in all the historic and pre-historic features of his area.
There’s not much left to see. Two stones are set into the ground with the remainder tossed about in a jumble. The whole structure measures just 6.5 metres by about a metre and a half.

The site is on an an undulating ridge, aligned south-east to north-west, north-west of Rath Lugh. The cleared area is roughly 120 metres wide by 600 metres long. This whole area has had its topsoil removed down by about half a metre, revealing a sandy layer.
At the north-west end, at the highest point of the area, there is what looks like a mound, containing rough cairn-like stone. It’s one of three smaller areas that are co-ordoned off and under excavation. South-east of this is a massive plastic-covered rectangle where the ‘woodhenge’/timber circle has been found. Just east of this is a long line of test trenches, presumably part of the promised exploratory trenches that were dug ‘every 20 metres’ all along the 59kms of the motorway.
Slightly north of east of here, and about 150 metres towards Rath Lugh, is what the Sunday papers are calling ‘a high status burial chamber’. It’s circular, with an inner trench/ditch of about 2 metres. I guess there’s still quite a bit of work to be done in and around this site and the ditch may not really be that deep when the remaining covering sandy soil is removed.

Continuing up the Dounby road past the Howe crossroads, the Appiehouse Stone is at the top of the mound that can be seen behind the farm on your left. I have never found it before as coming from this direction it is basically invisible – the first sighting is when you look carefully as you come level with the summit. Coming from the Dounby direction it is much easier to see. Only it looks rather unlike the photo on the site record, being equally irregular in shape but nearer a rectangle than a triangle, unless it manages to look drastically different on the other face. Alas the presence of sheep in such a relatively small space meant I couldn’t check inside the field to confirm or deny the apparent further reduction in height. On the northern side there is a big dip with a steep rise, but this is not regarded as a connected bank/ditch as there are more similar behind it.

On the southern side there are a few projecting stones distant from one another, but the mound is believed to be natural. However, in 2004 in the course of building works part of a stone structure came to light and they had to re-route the pipe around the mound. Unfortunately where this structure stood vis-a-vis the mound itself is not noted. On the southern side between the mound and the farm I spotted two very small very shallow circular mounds a few inches high, of which the more obvious one looks to have at least one stone projecting either close by or at the edge. Something to do with the structure or relating to the pipe, or simply natural ?