Latest Fieldnotes

Taken from the Archaeological Inventory of North Tipp
Situated on level farmland. The remains of a chamber or large cist stand at the centre of a denuded round cairn some 15m in diameter. Four orthostats of the structure, none more than 0.8m high, remain in place. Two of these are alongside at the W. another stands at the N, and the fourth at the E. A displace roofstone leans against the outer face of the last. Gaps in the structure at the E and S render its original shape and size somewhat uncertain though there is some indication that it may have been polygonal in outline and not more than 2m in internal measurement (Manning 1983-4, 48-50)

Megalithic tomb (possible)
Taken from the Archaeological Inventory of North Tipp

Situated on level poorly drained pasture. A low, elongated stony ridge, at least partly natural in origin, serves as a dump for field clearance debris. It measures 49m long (E-W) and is 10m wide. An orthostat, 1.5m high, stands about 10m frothe village of Ardcroney. A burial chamber is exposed in a partly demolished round cairn now some 20m in diameter. The chamber, uncovered during bulldozing operations in 1977, was subsequently excavated (Wallace 1977, 3-20). The cairn, originally about 33m in diameter, may have been enclosed by an earthen bank and ditch. The chamber, polygonal in plan and orientated N-S, is centrally placed in the cairn. It is 1.75m long, 1.4m wide and 0.7m high. An inward-leaning slab forms each of its sides, two upright stones form each end, and roofing is by means of a single large slab. The skeletons of two males and a decorated pottery vessel were found on the paved floor of the chamber. A bone from one of the skeletons yielded a radiocarbon determination corresponding to a calendar date of c. 3500 BC (Brindley, Lanting and Mook 1983, 1-9)

Linkardstown -type burial
Taken from the Archaeological Inventory of North Tipp

Situated on the NW shoulder of an E-W ridge in farmland. A megalithic structure is exposed in a round mound which in turn is encircled by two low wide banks with internal ditches giving an overall diameter of 90m. The structure was uncovered during bulldozing operations in 1980 after which the site was excavated (Manning, 1985a). The mound, 26m in diameter, consists of a cairn core, 18 to 20m in diameter, overlain by a covering of clay, The megalithic structure stands eccentrically within the cairn. It is trapezoidal in plan, some 5m long and narrows from 2.3m wide at the SE or inner end to 1.3m at the open NW end. It was built around a limestone erratic which has a sloping upper surface and serves as a floorstone. Two stones form the inner end of the structure. There is a stone at right angles to the SW side of the structure 1.2m from the inner end. This, in combination with a rough wall divides it in two. That part of it forward of the dividing wall was filled with cairn stones among which animal bones and the bones of a child less than a year old were found. The inner end of the structure, roofed by a skeletal remains of an adult male and a child were found here along with a variety of animal bones, a bone point, some chert flakes and Neolithic pottery, including sherds bearing channelled decoration. Radiocarbon dating indicates a calendar date of c. 3350 BC for the burial in the chamber (Brindley and Lanting 1989-90, 2)

A lovely little valley, but not an easy field to get into, and when we visited, very boggy! Thankfully the resident bull and posse stayed at the other side of this vast field while we explored.

I was pleasantly surprised by the details of carving on this stone, expecting it to be a lot more weathered.

Tortie 2 can be just seen on the skyline from here, on the top of the same hill to the east.

.o0O0o.

It was extremely windy up here today.... Good views, possibly the Tyne valley to the east (?) and to the Solway valley in the north-west.

After asking Townhead farm, we parked at the abandoned worksheds nearby and walked up the path, past Black Hill cottage and stopping briefly to check out the rock art there.

The morning had been very rainy but the sun was out now, giving us a lovely few hours wandering and exploring the sites.

There were cows and associated bulls in all of the fields we wanted access to, but the farmer had reassured us they’d be “nae bother” ... thankfully he was right!!

Our wanderings took us to the far end of the field first, behind a knoll which has a sneaky little southern view of the Solway.

Found the main panel just before the autumn sun sank below the trees, another excuse to come back another day...

Children/Nash’s book mention this burial chamber in their appendix as a “Damaged or doubtful monument”.
A little historic pamphlet in Llanhowell Church (itself of early celtic settlement).by R.M.Jenkins
called a “A Pembrokeshire Pilgrimage” he describes it thus
“On Lecha Farm, to the west of the church are the remains of a cromlech which would appear to have sunk into the soft soil from the weight of the capstone, though it is possible that it may have been damaged by wanton or careless marauders. The capstone measures some 15 feet by 11 feet and is about 4 feet thick.”
Will try and find it next spring, it should’nt be too difficult to locate as it is near to a moat....
The striking and exuberant rocky outcrop (Carn Treglemaes) which must have been very visible from this cromlech, is included in the photos. Interdivisibility is difficult today as the high hedge banked fields obscure quite a lot but it is just a question of building up an internal landscape in the mind to visualise what it might have been like..
Note; Cromlechs sinking into mud brings to mind Figgis’s (Prehistoric Preselli) The Grave of the Watery Monster at Bedd yr Afanc, apparently a gallery grave with only the uprights showing through the bog – not to be visited in gale ridden sodden November – should I not make it there will someone please put a photo on TMA..

Difficult to find amongst the many small lanes, but if on arriving at the farm take the footpath not the bridlepath.
It sits in a large field and is fairly inaccessible, but I’m sure there must have been a gate somewhere.
Reading Nash/Children once more, he says the site has never been excavated, but is subject to a lot of field clearance., and plough damage.
Field clearance is a subject HA could go on for a long time about, I even took a photo of large boulders that had been cleared in an adjacent field.
The one thing that is to me at least fascinating about this site, is the presence about half mile away of a large tor like rock called Carn Treglemaes, this sits equidistant between the White House cromlech and the Llecha tomb, which is posted as a doubtful site by Nash but will be given a separate site name on TMA, as it definitely appears in the historic record in the booklet at Llanhowell church..

On checking the name on CARN it is called White House, not White Horse – obviously the authors of Neolithic Pembrokeshire, got their counties mixed.

I guess I should begin my field notes with some explanation as to why I’ve added the source of the River Ure to TMA.
The River Ure rises in the Pennines and then heads east into Wensleydale, it then flows out of Wensleydale into the Vale of York. South of York the Ure is joined by the much smaller Ouse Gill Beck and the river’s name becomes the River Ouse, I’ve never figured that one out. The river then flows south east and merges with the Trent to form the mighty River Humber, which then flows out into the North Sea.
What is significant about the Ure, for we lovers of all things prehistoric, is its association with a number of nationally important prehistoric sites. The Ure flows through Wensleydale, a Yorkshire Dale that has been occupied since at least the Late Upper Palaeolithic period.
As the Ure flows through Yorkshire it is associated with at least 2 cursus, 7 henges, a stone row, numerous cairns, barrows, rock art sites, burned mounds and an assortment other prehistoric sites. It is quite possible that during the Neolithic period, the River Ure was one of the ‘lines of communication’ between the Wolds culture of East Yorkshire and the Neolithic peoples of Cumbria. Evidence for this communication can be seen in the large numbers of Group VI stone axe blades found in East Yorkshire. The greatest concentration of Group VI axe blades occurs around the Humber estuary. These axe blades all originated from the Great Langdale Axe production areas in Cumbria. reciprocally there has been a significant amount of flint, from the East Yorkshire coast, found on a number of Cumbrian sites. There are also various other correlations between the prehistoric monument types and pottery found in both East Yorkshire and Cumbria but I’ll not detail them here in this brief summary.
Jan Harding states that the name ‘Ure’ derives from the Celtic word Isura, meaning ‘Holy One’.
The source of the Ure captured my imagination mainly because of its location and proximity to the source of another great river that features in the prehistory of the North of England, the River Eden. The Ure and the Eden rise within two kilometers of each other on the western edge of the Pennines. At their closest point, the two rivers pass within less than four hundred metres of each other. This means that it is theoretically possible to travel from the North Sea to the Irish Sea only walking on dry land for less than four hundred paces. I’m not suggesting that this was actually the case, where the rivers are their closest they are mearly becks. All I’m saying is that it is theoretically possible that our ancestors may have used the course of these two great rivers as a guide, a navigable route, between the east and west coasts of Britain.

Field notes

“In November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome”

Influence of Natural Objects by William Wordsworth

I drove down to the site via Brough and Kirby Stephen and then along the Mallerstang Valley. I parked the car in a convenient lay-by and took the footpath to How Beck Bridge and then on up to Green Bridge. With the Howgill Fells forming one side of Mallerstang and the Pennines forming the other it is easy to see why Mallerstang probably receives more than its fair share of rain. On the day I went it was raining on and off all day, the becks were full to the brim, almost every rocky ledge on the fell had been transformed into a beautiful waterfall with the ground completely saturated. In other words, a typical upland Pennine scene. They say that the sheep around these parts have webbed feet.
I left the path at How Bridge and followed the beck upstream. Its rough walking on the fells and involves a fair bit of bog-trotting and beck jumping, the peat on the moor side had been cut at regular intervals, presumably to aid drainage, so it was possible to follow the tracks of the vehicle that performed the peat cutting for much of the journey.
There is very little wildlife to be seen on these upland fells, a few ravens and the odd small bird, I guess the ground is too waterlogged for rabbits, but it is far from a silent wilderness, there is the sound of running water everywhere. The hike to the summit is one of those frustrating walks that presents you with two false summits to breach before you reach the fell top.
The Ure finally disappears into a flat bog on the summit of Lunds Fell. I was hoping that the source of the river would be a discernable feature such as spring but this wasn’t the case, the beck just petered out into a featureless boggy plain.
I sat and had a cup of coffee at the modern cairn on top of the fell, to the north I could see the Pillar marking the source of the Eden . I was just about to set off walking to the pillar when a storm blew across from Wild Boar Fell and I found myself in cloud. Not being familiar with the area, and not wanting to blunder into a bog I decided that I would call it a day and return home. I would leave the Eden for another day. As I’ve said before, it’s always nice to have something to come back for.
All in all I guess the source of the Ure is definitely ‘one for the enthusiast’ but if you want to get the general vibe of the place you can drive along the Mallerstang valley and stop somewhere around SD778963 you’ll be straddling the county border, east meets west, watching the Eden flowing north into Cumbria and the Ure flowing south into Yorkshire.

This double chambered cromlech speaks for itself, “wrecked” but still holding on. To quote,

Both chambers at St. Elvis farm are aligned n/w – s/e with capstones dipping towards an inlet of the River Solva.
Geo.Nash/ G.Children, Pembrokshire Monuments

The weather looks good, but gales and horizontal rain happened before the photos. Muddy lanes indistinguishable from muddy farm tracks, and great tankers bearing down high banked lanes are quite scary.
Daniels says of this monument that the southerly chamber may be ‘earth fast’, with the western end of the capstone resting on the ground and eastern supported by uprights, similar to the double chambered Carn Llidi tombs on St.David.
This may well be so, given the fat ‘diamond’ shape of the capstone resting on the ground by the fence.
This type of capstone is found at Carn Llidi, Coetan Arthur and the White House tomb further inland, and may point to a particular type of capstone confined to this area.

A mile or so further north near the coastline there are another two lost cromlechs, Llanuwas and Llandruidon. They lie either side of another small inlet valley down to the sea at Nine Wells. One must lie buried in the gorse somewhere in the remnants of the second world war airfield. The walk down to the cove is very atmospheric and captures for a brief moment how the landscape would have been in neolithic times. Again there is an old quarry with stone similar to that of St. Elvis.

The wrecked appearance of St. Elvis is blamed on a farmer, who tried to blow it up in 1798, but was fortunately told to stop.

Not a lot to say about this one. Its just after Ardcroney on the left hand side on the way to Borrisokane about 500mm after Ardcroney village. Not a lot to see some trees on a mound. Maybe Im doing it an injustice. However its right in the middle of a field that is used for tillage so I guess the farmer is respectful of its significance and hasnt removed it.

The site is just in behind the school in Adcroney, go past the soccer and hurling pitches and jump the field at the back, watch out for the electric fence it can give you a good pop.

I wonder what happened to the burial bowl. The excavation notes make it sound very interesting.

Tipperary
1977-79:0067
Ardcrony
Late Neolithic Burial Cairn
R880873
A massive central cist of sub-megalithic proportions was uncovered at the centre of a denuded cairn which originally measured about 33mn. in diameter of which about 20m. remains. About 2.5in. of the cairn height survives, The cist was polygonal in plan and consisted of a single large stone inclining at about 60 degrees at each side and of two vertical boulders at each end. The floor was paved with small irregularly-shaped flat stones and measured I .75in. by 1.40111. The cist was 69cm. high (internally) and I .48m. by 93cm. at the mouth. It was covered by a large single capstone, I .9m. long by I .73m. wide by 51cm. in max. thickness.

Two disarticulated and unburnt skeletons identified by Prof. CA. Erskine as being of men of 17 and 45 years – lay on tile paved floor, one on either side of a shouldered, round-bottomed, highly decorated shallow bowl of late Neolithic date, the bones had been disturbed before investigation. The bowl was covered with channelled decoration comprised of pendant triangles of horizontal lines and dots as well as circumferential lines around the rim and shoulder, the ornament on the base being arranged on a quadripartite system.

The cist and cairn fit into the Linkardstown group while the bowl and mode of burial make this the most western example, so far, of the ‘South Leinster” Single Burial tradition of the late Neolithic. A full excavation of the structure will explore the nature of the cairn, the existence of kerbs, and the relationship of cairn, and a now removed earthen ring, to the cist.
Wallace, P. (1977) N. Monster Archacol. 1., 19, 3-20.
P. Wallace, National Museum of Ireland

This part of Skye is in the Strathaird estate which used to be owned by Ian Anderson (so the Jethro Tull song is a definate reference). I visited the site in summer 2003. It’s in a hugely atmospheric location overlooking Loch Slappin.

We climbed the Mauherslieve on Oiche Samhain 2004. Man was it some climb! It took at least two hours to make our way through a raised peat bog. The top was clouded in mist so we couldnt see if we were heading the right way.

The cairn can be seen from one side of the hill in the style of the Paps of Anu and along with the english translation of Mauherslieve, Mothers Mountain makes this a very interesting site.
As we climbed we came upon a herd of wild deer. I also found an antler of a dead deer but left it on a ditch because I didnt fancy carrying it.

The views from the cairn are amazing. I estimated at the time that its diameter is about 15m by about maybe 5m high. Also there a couple of hollows in it where maybe some one took stones for fill. However there is a story that states that locals hid in ‘caves’ here during a rebellion so what that suggests is anyones speculation.

Later as we stumbled down the hill half lost because of the mist we climbed over a bank and amazingly it was the exact spot that I had left the antler, we all looked on this as a good omen and found our way back down to the car.

This is a lovely circle on Knockadoon, I don’t think you are technically allowed on the land by the farm owner but it is sometimes open as part of tours.

Circle K, the largest circle on Knockadoon, is located 100m northwest of Circle J. It has an overall diameter of 31m and is made up of two concentric rings (1.2m apart) of more or less adjoining stones. The tallest stone is 1.2m high, but many are much smaller. The entrance is located in the east, and excavation revealed rock-cut postholes that probably held the jambs of a wooden gate of some sort. The presence of a gate suggests that the rings were only part of the original enclosing structure, for one could easily enter it by stepping over the orthostats. These stones may actually have been the inner and outer linings of a taller earthen bank. In the center of the enclosure was a rectangular building, outlined by rock-cut postholes (Figure 4). These features suggest that Circle K may have been a 
domestic ring fort, not a ritual stone circle. The pottery found here dates the site to the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age (O’Kelly 1985).
Taken from nd.edu/~ikuijt/Ireland/Sites/cnoetzel/overview.htm#carraig

This has such a wonderful name for a site and is well sign posted from Ballina and Portroe. However when you get there you find that the best thing about the place is the view of the lake. This I think is probably the first megalithic site that I ever saw as this is my ‘home’ site because I only live a few miles away.
Im not sure if any excavation has ever been done of the site but there seems to be stones buried in the undergrowth all over the place and so the exact layout of the site is not apparent.

I think I must have visited this site around Easter Time 2005. Got the directions from the book Sacred Ireland by Cary Meehan. Think I went via latin cullen (the home of ex-tipperary hurling star Nicky English). The site itself is on the left hand side of the road and is difficult to see from the road itself as the side of the road rises up. I parked at a farmers gate just before the site.

At the rear of the site there is a small lake which Sacred Ireland suggests could have been used for votic offerings etc. Didn’t take a picture of the lake because at that stage the old farmer that owned the field had come in. He seemed like a nice guy and didn’t seem to mind people coming on his land.

About a half mile further up the road is the site of where Patrick Sarsfield finished his daring ride and attack on the Williamite forces. There is also a large rock outcrop (bit like the Rock of Cashel) that has been claimed by Christainity (beside a St. Brigid’s Church), however it is very impressive and I would guess that maybe its use may have gone back further than that.

I approached from the south, parked up in the village next to the pool and came up the track between the houses. From Tree Hugger’s pictures (from the north) I reckon I picked the best approach. So although there’s not a lot to see up on the fort, the approach was pretty impressive and I really liked the feel of this place. Very spacious. Fantastic views. Buzzards and plenty of sheep.

On a less blowy day I measure the full size as 35~37m diameter with the main body 29m long but only 17-and-a-half metres across (as taped at the northern end). The water-filled depression comes out at 35m diameter, which can be no coincidence.
The mound cannot be seen from the road in Orphir village. As you approach Scorradale it can be seen, often with the top of the mound roughly on a level with the hilltops across the water. From up on Scorradale Kongarsknowe can be seen very easily (unlike the Hillock of Breakna). At the bottom of the hill, by the Scorradale junction, looking across the mound presents the appearance of filling a meniscus. From there the top is dead level with the skyline across the Flow. This would seem to be a specific placement, though the base of the meniscus is formed by more than one piece of Orphir land.

Surrounded by trees and overgrown with bracken, this unprepossessing site is rather puzzling.

It is listed as a recumbent stone circle and there is certainly a large (3.4m long) recumbent stone in the right location. There is no evidence of the flankers and the recumbent, which currently lies in a position with a flat level surface uppermost, doesn’t look like your typical RSC recumbent.

There are some circle stones although they were difficult to find in the bracken. The centre is filled with a massive cairn which towers above the recumbent.

Visited 21 October 2005

This recumbent stone circle is well away from the rest of the pack but is certainly worth a visit.

The E flanker is still standing but its neighbour and the recumbent have fallen. Like many of the southern RSCs, the recumbent and flankers are joined to the ring cairn rather than the stone circle which sits on a wider radius. Two stones from the circle are still standing.

This site can be added to the list of stone circles which can be visited by the less abled. The access from the parking area is clear and, on this visit, the grass round the circle had been cut to allow closer access. Nice.

Visited 17 October 2005

You can avoid the worst of this site by not entering the gorse-covered enclosure right away and following the field wall clockwise (assuming you have approached from the S) until it straightens out close to where the remains of the circle are visible.

It doesn’t make the circle any more interesting though.

Visited 18 October 2005

Best way to the circle is up the farm path on the right hand side of the road. Stop just before a ruined cottage with boarded up windows. Up the lane about 300m to the gate, climb over this and then another gate to the left. Then walk diagonally into the field and like all good stone circles it appears out of nowhere!

Park opposite turn for Hinton Ampner on layby and walk north up Wayfarers Way. Past house at top of metalled path to crossroads of byways. Turn Left /West and Barrow is in field on the right after 200 yrds -

Park at Breamore House Tea Rooms car park and follow woodland trail up past house , through woods, follow path down to the left of the woods with the miz-maze in.