Latest Fieldnotes

It is actually in the field of Penrice Community College. Mount Charles School is nearby, though.

The first thing I should mention is that Thimbleby Moor and the surrounding area is heavily managed shooting land. It is not classed as access land under the new right to roam, it is classed as CROW access land with restrictions in place.
Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of this until I had returned from the moor, so if you are planning to visit the moor I suggest you contact Carter Jonas, Land Agent, Thimbleby Estates. This also applies if you want to visit the nearby Nine Stones.

I accessed the site via the footpath the leads from Oak Dale to Thimbleby. the path runs up from the dale through the woods. There’s a bit of an oppressive vibe about walking through the woods with lots of paths marked ‘no access’ and bird breeding areas fenced off with barbed wire. I guess this is neccessary when you have large groups of people roaming the estate blasting the birds with shotguns.
I accessed the moor via a small track and stile and followed the keepers road onto the moor proper.
The stone marked as stone No.6 in Chappell & Browns Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors is beside this road.
The stone itself is beautiful, it’s one of those stones that the more you look and feel it, the more you see. Unfortunately the sun was lost behind clouds so photography was difficult.
There are other stones on the moor but they are currently beneath deep heather and to be honest with you the sound of lots of guns being fired nearby was somewhat off putting.
As I walked back into Oakdale I came across a large shooting party of 30 or so sportsmen and women all armed with shotguns and labradors. I stopped to chat to one of them who explained that today was the last day for shooting pheasants and that they would only shoot the cock birds. I left the dale to the sound of gabriel blowing his 12 bore horn for the cock birds of Oakdale.
I don’t think I’ll be going back to Thimbleby for a while.

To get to this park across from the old cemetary/graveyard leaving ballina on the way to limerick/birdhill. Follow the track alongside the graveyard and when u come to where the track gets really wet (a stream runs through it) turn left into the field and follow the field uphill to the top of the field where there is a depression/grove where the standing stone is sited. There are two stones on the map but I thought i had found the second one but upon looking at the Archaeological Inventory afterwards found it wasn’t it so another trip is planned. The stone itself is about 0.5m high and is triangular shaped. I dont think the depression it is in is natural as the banks around it seem to be raised and so may be a ringfort.

In the village of birdhill coming from dublin turn right towards O’Briens Bridge. Less than a mile on this road to the left is a little spot that u can pull it at and seems to have been used for fly-tipping. Follow in through the fields until u can see the farm outhouses. The stone is in the field next to the outhouses.
A very tall stone about 2.1m high and the tallest I can recall seeing in north tipp to date. The main views are to the north over the shannon into Clare.

The way up here is very easy – just follow the Clunie walk from Pitlochry. From the car park in the centre, head under the railway bridge across the road and watch out for a footpath sign-posted to the left – over the super-fun suspension bridge. At the end of the bridge turn left, and at the junction head straight over and up the hill (sign-posted Clune walk) to the A9, crossing carefully. The track continues up beside Middleton of Fonab farm and then enters the forestry plantation (still sign-posted) where it becomes narrower. It then joins on to a wide forestry track which you follow for a couple of hundred metres before turning left at the junction of forestry tracks. The circle is another few hundred metres along here, off the track to your right.

This site consists of scattered stones and earthwork remains.

The setting of the site – at the foot of Cautley Spout falls – is most impressive.

There is a stone-edged track which leads from the settlement to the foot of the falls and stops there.
This suggests that the falls had special significance.

Park near the Cross Keys on the A683 east of Sedbergh.
(This is a temperance inn so don’t expect a beer after your walk). Follow the footpath signposted Cautley Spout. Its about 3/4 mile to the settlement. The path is often boggy in places.

Yesterday I went up to Fylingdales Moor with Rockrich with two things in mind.
To show Rich around the moor as he had not seen any North York Moors rock art.
To field test Graeme Chappell and Paul Browns recent book, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors.
It would have been quite simple to load up my GPS with the 188 x 10 figure grid references supplied in book and just follow my little yellow machine around the moor but I wanted to see if the book would work for someone who didn’t own a GPS and had very little knowledge of the site.
The authors have divided the moor up into 7 areas and a small map is provided for each area. I took photocopies of the maps from the book and decided I would only use these and the OS 1:25000 map to find my way around the moor. For a further test I loaded 8 grid references from the book so that I could test the accuracy of the references provided.

Without getting into a long-winded account of our day, We had about 6 hours daylight, and just leisurely strolling around, Rich and I managed to visit 6 of the 7 sites in the book finding many of the carved stones mentioned. The maps in the book work extremely well and the grid references were bag-on. I would recommend that if you are visiting the moor you should park at either the Beacon Howes car park at NZ969013 or the Jugger Howe car park at NZ945003.

You should also bear in mind that this moor is private land and is still recovering from the disastrous fire of 2003. You should try and always follow the footpaths where ever possible and keep any disturbance to a minimum. I would not recommend that you peel back any heather or soil from the rocks as many of the rocks suffered surface damage during the fire and are extremely delicate.

Graeme and Pauls book can be ordered here
tempus-publishing.com/bookdetails.php?isbn=0752433482

Graemes website
alkelda.f9.co.uk/

It was a day of good and bad news. The good news was that my hunch about this stone row being special was confirmed, the bad news was when i got out there my 6 month old digital camera packed it in.
This is a beauty of a row, it is situated on a high plateau with views all around of the main hills, Mothers Mountain, Keeper Hill, Sliabh Eibhlinne, across into limerick to Knockgrean/Knocsefin and down southeast as far as the jagged peak of Temple Hill where there is a cairn on top.

The stones are approx 1.5 – 2m tall and seem to be encrusted with white quartz and i would say they were specially picked for the job. One of the stones even has a small piece of red quartz in it which is quite unusual i guess. There are another three smaller stones around the base and there is also a triangular standing stone to the south only about 10m away. This could possibly be part of the row but it is a different shape to the other stones and the farmer told me the local name for them is “the three stones” so im guessing that it isnt.
Two of the stones seem to be pointing/tilted towards Sliabh Eibhlinne and the other one towards Keeper Hill. To the east is the Mothers Moutain and the west Knockgrean.
The triangular stone possibly looks towards Slievenamuck which has a similar profile.
Well i think im probably going a bit mad with my ‘alignments’ there but thats how things looked to me on the day.
There is a circular cairn to the east of the row that isnt marked on the map.

Just to save anyone the trouble, this stone is marked on the OS map but has been removed and is lost/destroyed.

The Townsends live in the far left house and are very happy to give permission to view the circle when asked. All the other cottages are rented out as holiday homes.

I’ll echo TomBo’s comments below about memory overlap. I lost track of which of these circles was which, and after 6 months I’m left with a sense of jaggedy swirly silhouetted shapes that makes me sigh contentedly to recall.

I will also heartily endorse the Clarkian nomenclature for those unable to pronounce the proper names. ‘Gary’ is so much nicer than a soul-less roman numeral.

Sited on the edge of the MoD firing ranges, in an area dripping with prehistoric remains, the Drake Stone is a 30 foot tall sandstone erratic perched conspicuously on a ridge above Coquetdale. It’s prominent profile makes it easily visible as you travel through the valley, and affords the stone itself an extensive view north to the Cheviot massif. It’s not far from the road, but the last 40m or so are very tricky going. It’s easiest to take the path through the trees, and circle around the stone making the last approach from the west rather than the obvious, but very awkward route from the east.

A short distance (10m or so) to the NW is a circular depression in the outcrop which may have been metal-tooled, it’s difficult to say as nearby outcrop bears the same marks, which could be the result of erosion through the strangely convoluted matrix of the sandstone.

Alternatively, just to the west of the stone (Altitude:273m NT 91985, 04435, accuracy: 7m, Garmin E-trex) is a earthfast boulder which could fit the bill for a small bullaun type basin, similar to those described by Beckensall as enhanced natural basins, of which there a couple, each associated with rock art, one a couple of miles to the east at Lordenshaw, and another a similar distance to the NE at Football Cairn.

Neither of the basins near the Drake Stone have been recorded on the Beckensall archive, but if that’s because no-one has heard of them, or because no-one has looked, or if it’s because they looked and discounted the basins, I do not know. See the reference to a ‘Drudical rock basin’ in the folklore post below, either of these basins could be the one mentioned by Murray, although it’s possible that neither of them are the thing he mentioned. To my mind, the smaller of the two is the more likely of the two presented here, as there were faint traces of what could be interpreted as peck marks consistent with those seen on other prehistoric carvings on similar stone. There is the possibility that slightly different punctuation in Murray’s description alters the location of the basin. If the sentence is read: “..the Draag Stone of the Druids, by a small tarn. Near it is a druidical rock basin.” Then the basin is nearer the stone than it is to the lough. I couldn’t find anything nearer to the lough than to the stone, though subsequent visits may prove otherwise (I’m still hoping that there may be there more definite rock art in the vicinity, as there are near the basins at North Lordenshaw and Football Cairn (e))

Regarding the significance of the Drake Stone itself in prehistory, in conjunction with the local folklore about healing children, it seems to me to have been a very likely spot for use throughout the ages. The outcrops around the erratic form natural shelters, making it a high quality vantage point and suitable for Mesolithic wanderers keeping an eye out for animals drinking on the edges of the gravel terraces of the river Coquet. It’s placed on the putative edge of two Bronze Age territories, as is evidenced by the cross dyke a mile or so to the east, for whatever that implies. Equally, it could be just as useful as an Iron Age lookout, having a good view of a major route from the hills to the sea, with intervisibility to a number of beacon hills. This possible use could presumably have continued as recently as the 17thC when one takes into account the endemic Border Reiver activities in the area. Given the position as a good route to pass unobserved from Coquetdale to Redesdale across what is now the MoD ranges, this seems fairly likely.

Regarding any possible ‘ritual’ significance in prehistory, the 19thC reference to druids is obviously an artefact of the predilections of the Victorian craze for all things druidic. But then there’s the tentative idea that the stone’s proximity to Harbottle Lough may have afforded it significance to anyone to whom lakes were somehow connected to the underworld. It would also have been one heck of a platform for any priestly character who was nimble enough to climb it. They’d be silhouetted very well when viewed by a crowd in the valley below. I can see why Murray was happy to accept it as a ‘druidical’ site; it just has that kind of feel to it. If the druids didn’t use this stone, well shame on them, they missed a good venue for a gig. These days it displays a mysterious offering much different from those one normally finds at a bonafide prehistoric site. Instead of flowers, crystals or whatever left by neopagans, there is a small bundle consisting of a metal rod and two brushes tied with a shoelace, presumably left by a member of the strange cult of ‘Bouldering’.

Of the two cup and ring marked rocks recorded in Ilderton parish in the Beckensall archive this site gave me two problems. Firstly, it lies a good 1km NW of Heddon Hill close to the promontory Iron Age hill fort just SE of Middleton Dene. Secondly, I wasn’t completely convinced it showed anything other than natural erosion cups and grooves although the Archive record describes a minimum of 27 cups.

The weather wasn’t good as you could barely stand up in the cold wind blowing off Cheviot and perhaps on a better day I might have been more amenable. Clearly the experts believe it (at least partly) artificial. The nearby site at South Middleton Moor is undoubdetly a carved cup and ring and the area is rich in ancient settlement, clearance and burial cairns.

The two sites are well to the west of the main cup and ring areas of Northumberland and the rock type here is mainly volcanic. The land here was clearly well settled and cultivated for a long time period although at above 200m now given over to sheep grazing.

John Barnatt seems to have binned his theory of the moor being divided, by the Bar Brook, into separate working and ritual areas after his survey of a few years ago.
The location of the Barbrook V ring cairn on the SW limits of the field system always caused me a bit of doubt over whether this was the case.....Barnatt andAinsworth’s survey of the moor a few years ago turned up 5-6 barrows, which were previously thought to be large clearance cairns.
Details of whether the opposite took place and field systems were laid out on the eastern side aren’t so forthcoming....

Written descriptions and photographs cannot fully prepare you for the Stoney Raise cairn, it is immense.
If you approach the cairn from the east you pass through a deserted settlement of undated stone-walled hut circles and Medieval houses. I assume that the stone used in the settlement was taken from the cairn, add to this the stone that was probably taken from the cairn to build the dry stone field boundary walls and you get some idea of how large this cairn was when it was originally built in the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age.
This monument has been described as belonging to the Great Barrow Class, a class of monuments that includes the Great Barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds and Wessex, but this is the Pennine uplands, there are no rolling fields of chalk downland here. So why?
If you stand upon the cairn and look west you can see Wild Boar Fell and the eastern margins of Cumbria. If you look east you can see the Tabular hills on the margins of the North York Moors. East meets west at Stoney Raise cairn.
Paulus, Rich and I also discussed other possibilities. The nearby prehistoric settlements at Addlebrough are on the slopes of a huge natural monument. The settlements at Caperby had the Great Limestone Scar to mark their lands. Perhaps the people who inhabited the Greenber Edge settlement felt that they also needed to make a dramatic statement in the landscape to announce their presence.

All we had to go on when looking for this carved stone was a fairly vague description of a stone near the Dove stones. That said, if there’s a stone to be found you can trust Rockrich and Paulus to sniff it out.
This particular stone is nothing spectacular but if you are like us and actually enjoy tramping across a waterlogged limestone wilderness then this is the spot for you.

I have been curious about burnt mounds for quite a while now. Tim Laurie has identified dozens of them in the Yorkshire Dales and further afield.
Initially I was rather sceptical about these mounds as monuments but after reading Lauries work I felt a lot more secure about adding them to TMA as a distinct class of monuments. Lauries work has shown that the occurence of these mounds can be predicted. They mostly occur at a height of over 250m OD, they are always on the banks of streams and often just below the spring line. Many of the Irish burnt mounds are thought to have been places where food was prepared. Evidence from the Yorkshire mounds points more towards them being sweathouses or bathing places. There is a total absence of domestic debris, pottery or bone on the sites. Laurie has also discovered evidence for possible structures on top of the mounds, combining this evidence with ethnographic examples strengthens the sweatlodge theory.

Laurie identified the Haw Beck mounds as being quite large, so when I mentioned this to Rockrich and Paulus they were keen to see them too, especially as the sweathouse fits in with some of Paulus’s shamanic theories.
There are two sets of mounds at this site both are situated beside streams and both are pretty difficult to describe other than to say they are mounds on the ground. That said, I would urge you to have a look at them if you are in the area. Castle Dykes Henge is visible from this site.

I’ve been trying to get up to this henge for yonks. It seems like every time I planned a visit something would happen to prevent it. This time, not only did I get to visit the henge but I did it in the excellent company of Rockrich and Paulus.
We walked up to the site from the little car park at Thornton Rust checking out a couple of decent sized glacial erratics on the way.
The henge itself lies just off the lovely walled trackway running up onto Flout Moor and is accessible if you can negotiate a rutted, muddy track and a stile.
The monument is a Class I type henge with a single entrance in the east. It has been built on a ridge and fits in beautifully with the folds of the landscape. The henge is set back from any possible routeways along Wensleydale to Cumbria, Harding speculates that this small henge (80m in diameter) may have served a small community. He describes the location of the henge as a possible attempt “to seperate the monument from what could be perceived as social pollution”.
Whatever it’s original purpose, the henge has beautiful views to east along Wensleydale to the nearby Burton Moor settlement and into the Vale of Mobray with the far off North York Moors across the Vale in the distance. There are also good views to the north and the site of the Ox Close Circle and Caperby Moor.

All in all this is a cracking little henge set in a beautiful landscape

If you want an eagle’s eye view of the surrounding valleys, this is place to go.
You can see this cairn off the A685 between Kirkby Stephen and Tebay. When you get to the top of Ash Fell – the big hill outside of Kirkby – look out towards the north. I’ve been driving past here virtually every day for years and meaning to stop and have a look...so I’m glad I finally did. Theres a handy place to pull off the road next to a gate onto the moor towards the cairn. Then maybe a 10 minute walk to the cairn. The views are absolutely fantastic. I hope someone goes up with a panoramic camera and posts some pics here.
Spotted all sorts of places – Gamelands clearly seen with binoculars, and im pretty sure you could see long meg herself from up here if you had enough magnification. My advice – dont drive past – Stop !

Great site and relatively easy to find. Wouldnt have found it without directions from Megalithomania. Fourwinds has more info on this site on his website.

I climbed this hill way back in September to see the hillfort/cairn. However at the top of a very hard climb with no path was a very unimpressive lump covered in heather. I can’t remember now whether I took photos and deleted them because they looked so rubbish, or didn’t bother taking them at all, but I don’t have any to post.

I’m mainly putting it up to save anyone else the trouble of climbing. In my opinion this isn’t worth a look.

When I looked at the stone row on the map I thought in might be aligned to the Mothers Mountain. However there is another hill in the way but i do think it is pointing in the direction of the mountain.
I really like the unusual holy water font on the largest stone. There are a few unusual markings on the other stones Im sure all are natural but i said id post them anyway just in case. The views around it aren’t especially stunning.
Its pretty easy to get to. There is an unmarked farmers track right up alongside it. All in a very impressive row.

Taken from North Tipp Archaeological Inventory

“Stone Row
Situated at the base of the N slope of a small hillock which in turn is on the SE-facing slope of a ridge in an upland area. Site indicated on 1st ed. (1840) OS map as ‘Three Stones’. Not depicted on subsequent 2nd Ed. (1902). A row of four stones aligned NE-SW with a possible fifth stone (H 1.3m; Wth 0.45m; T0.2m) lying prostate near a gap in the row; overall length 7.63m. These limestone orthostats are set in a slight hollow with a little evidence of packing-stones, though there are tufts of grass around the bases. The largest standing stone (H 1.78m; 1.56m x 0.4m), at the SW end, has a hole in the face into which hands were dipped as a cure for warts. From the NE to SW the remaining three stones measure: (1) H 1.05m; 0.76m x c. 0.3m (2) H 1.56m; 1.47 m x 0.28m (3) H 0.95m; 0.8m x 0.53m”

Didnt really get a good look at this site due to the close promixity of a fairly excitable horse. Really only got a good look at it from the pics when i got home. Its seems to be built against a boundary ditch which kind of takes from it a little.
Its quite a walk to get there about 1.5km along the track marked on the OS map and on the day the ground was very wet with some pools forming on the track that required wellies. At the very end of the track there was a massive bull in a corral so between bulls and horses i had to do a good few detours. In summer and without the animals im sure it would be a grand walk.

Taken from the North Tipp Archaeological Inventory

“Wedge Tomb
Situated on gently sloping boggy ground on the lower slopes of Cooneen Hill. The remains of a gallery, 4.6m long, survive. A septal-stone, partly embedded in a field-fence, marks the SSW end. Three contiguous stones remain on the more northerly side of the gallery. Beyond the easternmost of these there is a small set stone of uncertain fuction. There are four sidestones on the S side of the gallery. Two are alongside on the SSW and the other two, which are smaller examples, stand apart from each other towards the NNE. There is a thin slab outside the junction of the former pair. This supports one end of a roofstone the western orthostat on the N side of the gallery. Outside the latter orthosat there is another, apparently the lone survivor of a close-set outer wall. A decrease in gallery height and width towards the NNE is indicated. (De Valera and Ó Nualláin 1982, 82, No. 3)”

This is a good climb up with the hill be over 400m high. I went looking for the Wedge Tomb which you can see from the slope as you climb up the hill but not from the cairn itself. I was dissappointed at first but as I begun to investigate it there seem to be more to it than what first meets the eye.
I think there is a reasonably complete kerb underneath the heather/moss. The discovery of an ‘entrance’ stone looking south towards the Mothers Mountain was exciting but unfortunately it only goes in about 300mm till it hits rock again.
The views are amazing from up here and you can see all the main peaks in the area.

Taken from the North Tipp Archaeological Inventory

“Situated on the summit of Cooneen Hill with panoramic views in all dircections. A circumlar cairn (base diam. 8.7m N-S x 10.3m E-W; top diam. 5.1m) sitting on a natural knoll which continues to descend to S. The cairn (H 0.8-1.6m) is covered in moss and heather with small stones protruding. Kerbstones defining the top of the cairn at S. The interior is flat with a flat, with a slight drop below the encircling kerb. Large flat boulders in the interior may be lintels although three or four are loose.”

I was last here in summer when it was covered with bracken and seeing it today without the ground cover was another thing all together.
The raised ring of the circle was easy to see. Within the circle all the stones have been cleared except for the impressive central limestone block, and the few stones securing the post which marks the circle. My friend complained a bit about the post being inside the circle rather than adjacent to it, but then he’s never been here before and couldn’t quite get just how impossible this is to see in summer. At least then you can stand next to the post and know you’re in it even if you can’t see it.
Today the only vegetation was lush green moss, so tempting to lie down on, and despite the howling wind a very restful atmosphere prevailed. We would have fallen asleep if it hadnt started to rain.
We walked here from Shapbeck – a very satisfying walk past some interesting lumps bumps and groves of trees, and also much gentler than coming up from the Bampton side