Latest Fieldnotes

Two year’s ago going up from the Hall of Gyre (alias Orphir House) at the first corner I looked back to the left of Gyre and saw a couple of fields away a large mound (HY24460513) of apparently crescentic shape lay in splendid isolation. At least one side of the field it lay in was bounded by a fence of (?thin) slabs. But it wasn’t shown on my map or on the NMRS (and nothing thereabouts on CANMAP). So perhaps, big though it was, it was only a modern spoilheap, despite there being nothing for it to be the spoil from anywhere in sight. In the end I had to reject the evidence of my eyes and believe it to be modern. Only now have I found that this used to be Congesquoy, the site of a mound.that failed to make the 1882 map despite having been known since 1797 according to a map in a privately printed work of Alfred W.Johnstone that shows three other ‘missing’ archaeological sites in the Gyre/Gear area.

August 2006

Went and had a look a few times this year, over the space of a week, but can’t convince myself about the second ring I thought I’d seen previously, despite a number of different lighting conditions, both natural and artificial.

August 2005

Wheelchair/buggy access here is very good (as it is at most of the main Kilmartin sites). The dedicated parking space is only a few hundred metres away, the ground is fairly flat, with no big bumps, gates are sensible, and there is a nice even bridge over the stream.

It seems to get a bit busy though, even on weekdays, we hung about for an hour or so, and spotted at least 7 groups of other visitors, most of whom were in a bit of a hurry. It’s quite fun to watch folk doing the circuit from here to Nether Largie south, via Temlpewood, it looked like quite a nice little walk. So we eventually got up and did the same.
It’s a nice way to see these 3 sites, as it gives you the chance to see the X from a number of perspectives, but isn’t strenuous in the least.

I got the idea into my head that there are two rings around one of the cups, but it could just be a trick of the light. There are’t any double rings on any of the diagrams I’ve seen.

Far, far away from civilisation, deep in the wilds of Dartmoor lies the Erme Pound. It is a collection of broken walls once used to hold animals. It may not be prehistoric but around it lie several stone rows the most famous being Stall Row, perhaps the longest on the moor. It actually crosses the River Erme jus above the pound and goes off into even wilder countryside.

To reach this point requires a stiff walk from Harford. The reward being that you can take in many antiquities along the way including following the stone row if approached from the western side of the valley.

For those wanting isolation, this is the place...especially on a wet misty day like I had!

Is this the longstone still marked on the latest OS map as recumbent? I have visited it twice now and can find no other stone in the area that could be the longstone.
Found on the southern side of Piles Hill just to the left of the Two Moors Way. It has a boundry stone beside it and tends to be surrounded by mud caused by cattle using it as a rubbing stone.

With so much to see in this area, I missed this the first time around. My second visit this year was with the owners of the land and with their guidance I was led to this site. As Lubin says it can be found by heading north from Harford gate (Not a place to leave valubles in your car) and following the highest edge of the field walls. A track runs to a gate in the field system and then on wards towards Piles Wood. The cist lies on the hillside above the track just before the gate.
No sign of the capstone unless it is the stone a little further up the hillside.

Although this area of the Lizard is covered in barrows there are very few other remains to be seen except for the odd menhir like Dry Tree. WARNING! Not all is as it seems...during the 2nd WW the RAF set up a base here called RAF Dry Tree. Much of the base was to do with radar and telecomunications, hence the dishes we see today. The other remains that lie across the landscape are whats left of the station, including some of the “barrows”. Take a closer look and you will see that some of the humps and bumps hide modern buildings, all part of the war effort to camoflage the area.

27th Sept 05

The EH carpark has now been tarmaced and the whole area tidied up. Three info boards now tell the story of the whole region. Paths have been improved and new permissive rights of way opened up. You are now free to explore the whole of Goonhilly from here down to the sea.
It is still posible to follow the path along the perimeter fence of the telecom ststion but a nicer route is to head south of the dishes around a large almost hidden 2WW building (it is possible to climb on top for some great views over the downs, but be carefull..there is a double wall with a big drop in between). Go past this and around to the south of a large cream coloured domed building. Once around the dome you will see the dishes to your left, head towards the fence and a kissing gate at the right end of the fence. Go through this and you will find the menhir. You can then return to the car park via the original walk beside the wire.

The pretty village of Alfriston has so much to intrigue, considering it’s location with Firle Beacon to the west and Wilmington to the east. Going by the extensive write up here I tried to track down some of the stones mentioned. Go the church and note the mound it is built on. Three small stones (that could have been imported from Brighton) are located south on the green under a clump of trees, then take it from there. At the north of the village head west down North Street which leads to a (very steep!) path up the South Downs where some barrows and Long Burgh are located.

Oh, there are four pubs too!

As Stubob says, a bit of a disappointment. I’m not sure what I was expecting but maybe they’ve sunk or shrunk.

I parked up by the farm and walked back, got wet feet in the grass but not a prob. These are great stones and must have been quite a sight when intact.

Took some finding, despite guidance from CanMap printouts – but once you spot the large standing stone it becomes considerably easier. Excellent site – the remains of the cairn seem to be surrounded by a broad stone circle. The large standing stone (cross carved into the western face), with the remains of other some stones in a roughly circular arrangement (either snapped or fallen). There are many rows here, and some of them seem to have interesting alignments to geographical land marks – most notably two converging lines that seem to form a triangle with a distant conical peak. The remains of a stone circle of smaller stones appears to lie just beyond the cairn too. Will definately go back and take more time – taking care to search for the cup-marked stones which are down through the village, towards the trees, which we didn’t have time to look for.

Nice walk to the site, through the remains of the village of Learable which was cleared in 1815, with nice views all around. Don’t visit during tick season, though – you’re off path and on heather most of the time.

“A Bronze Age round cairn; a circular mound of stones 10.5m in diameter and up to 0.5m high. The surface of the mound has been partly disturbed by construction of a modern shelter using stones from the cairn.” ADS.

This large cairn occupies the summit of selside Pike. We arrived there at the end of a long day on the fells around the head of Mardale. After many hours battling gale-force winds, mist, and horizontal rain, the weather eased off to heavy showers.
We sought sanctuary in the shelter that has sadly been made from the cairn. All around is nothing but grass, so the stones must have been carried up there.
It is a prominent site, with extensive views, including to the shap complex in the E, High Raise and Low Raise cairns to the NW, and the Four Stones Hill standing stones to the NE.

“A Bronze Age round cairn; a flat-topped oval mound of stones up to 0.8 high with maximum dimensions of 9m by 8m. There is a modern walkers’ cairn on the northern edge of the cairn.” ADH.

Just a few yards to the east of the route of the High Street R*man road, this cairn on the summit of High Raise is rarely visited. To the ENE the grassy ridge descends to the Bronze Age cairn on Low Raise.
The High Raise cairn is set on a rocky outcrop on a grassy ridge, the outcrops providing the building materials. On the E side a shelter has been constructed by wind-beaten travellers on the fells.
I’ve been here many times, and it always feels a special place of tranquility, even in times of storm, of which there are many.

“Remains of a cairn on the summit of Low Raise. 9.0m in diameter and 1.0m high.” According to ADS.

I’ve been on High Raise more times than I’d care to mention for fear of ridicule. I’ve only been on the ridge down over Low Raise once. I knew about the cairn, but was still surprised to find it in a place where there was nothing but grass. No outcrops, no rock beneath the immediate few feet of surface, just peat.
This is a lonely place, make no mistake, just a faint trace of flattened grass to show that others had trodden there once or twice. Go there when the mists are swirling over the hills, as I did, when it seems that you’ll never see more than a few feet of sodden fellside for the rest of the day. The cairn looms out of the mist like a great leviathan out of the depths. It looks like there is a quarry a few feet to the west, but seems too shallow to have excavated that much rock, and anyway, it’s all far too rounded and regular.
This is a huge cairn for the area. Even on the surrounding rocky peaks the modern summit cairns are small. High Raise is an exception, and there lies another site.
Descending down to the Iron Age hillfort of Castle Crags, Haweswater is shown to its best, full length.

A perfectly preserved ring cairn with well defined banks and ditches 28 metres in diameter with an inner rubble strucure. A very peacefull place to visit.

This barrow is 67 metres long. on one end of it is a superimposed round barrow with a central cist, the cist is 2 Metres long and still has half the capstone now standing upright inside it.
The barrow stands in an absolutely stunning location in a field on a sloping plateau with 3 round cairns and a ring cairn.
So good in fact i spent all day here and i didnt see a soul.
perfect.

There are alledgedly 5 cairns in this field, although i could only find two definate ones as the undergrowth and heather was far too thick on this visit.
One is a huge round cairn with lots of excavation pits the other being a long barrow which ive added as a separate site.
The round cairn is instantly recognisable the other three are less prominent, as theres lots of stones in this field and until the heather dies back a little i cant identify the other three.

This stone stands against a wall on the pavement in the village of Penrafelin and is about 3.5 mtrs tall.

Someone must have told the farmer that I was coming, he filled the field with cows and their young.

I had been along the old Finstown road several times going to Kirkwall and so was quite surprised to see a rectangular hole in the RH road verge (HY391118). Closer too it resembled more a cist formed of thin slabs set against one of those broad patches of turf that cross ditches to let farmers onto their fields. When I came to this ?tank I saw that it actually lay in the midst of two such bridgings, each 5m across. Kinda weird. The feature appear sub-rectangular because the edge of one slab has moved forward slightly,it would have measured 0.9 by 0.8m and is 0.5m deep. To the naked eye the ‘tank’ is certainly a little forward of the ditch line but a pic doesn’t appear to bear this out.
On my second visit it took me walking twice over the ground before I found it again. Now that the water-levels are much lower it has more the appearance of a well than a cist, the full depth 0.9m (as far as I could find) with what I took for the bottom being ledges on two sides. The ledges make you think of corbelling but there’s only one rough-edged ?slab on the left extending as a near triangular shape 0.25m along and 0.6m from the back left corner, with drystane walling above, and one on the right a slab 0.45m long and only 0.1m from the back right corner. Apart from the section of walling and the ‘ledges’ the structure is of slab construction (including a triangular stone making up the right back). The base is hidden by a couple of short bits of wood and a thin layer of other rubbish. Almost feels like part of a souterrain, certainly something of at least that age.
P.S. revised my opinion back to its being a short cist (?double?) on finding that one of those at Queenimoan had an erect stone wholly buried at one end. Ending the enigma this is my best fit.

This is high quality rock art. Interestingy different motifs, from the kind found in Argyle or Galloway, a distinct Arran style? Emphasis on the double channels leading down-slope from the cups and rings. It left me hoping that there must be more on the island somewhere. The motifs even percolated into my dreams the night after visiting.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing things is the possible anthropomorphic carving. Fans of The Sons of TC Lethridge are directed towards the track ‘A Pilot’s Eyes’, which mentions the site and the possibilities of sightlines being formed via avenues cut through the trees. Goat Fell would probably be a contender for such an sightline avenue, but of course there’s no hard evidence for such, but it’s an appealling idea nonetheless.

We found the site with no bother, you just follow the track, it’s the only outcrop, difficult to miss, just over the brow of the hill.

The trees are a bit densely planted, but despite this don’t seem too oppressive. Shame about the effect on the view though.

Access for wheelchairs and/or buggies, like most of the high profile monuments in Kilmartin, is pretty good, no awkward kissing gates, decent going on the paths.

Beware wary if encouraging small children to stick their heads out of the gap at the front of the chamber to shout hello at their Mum. My daughter did this, and nearly gave the fella sitting on top of the cairn a heart attack.

When I was living in Carmarthen we used to go out to Merlin’s Hill. I don’t think there’s public access up there, but we were young and foolish. I remember trying to sneak past the farm without the dogs spotting us.

Up at the top is a beautiful meadow. I remember taking a very large pink kite up there and flying it. Some friends back home were looking out for the kite, but although Merlin’s Hill itself is really obvious from town, the kite was too darned small. Happy (and in hindsight very innocent) memories. This is a beautiful spot!

One of the most archaeologically significant brochs in existance, due in no small part to the lower section of it being preserved under water.

Canmore has a lenghty entry: NMRS Number is NB13NW 3

Very close to the wheelhouse at Cnip, and the Dun Bharabhat broch. Between them, these three represent what is currently one of the top sites in the country for archaeological research.

This distinct hut circle is now signposted from the path around the Dunnet Woods.