Latest Fieldnotes

As described by Hob.

There’s also a fort to the north west, but I was in torrential rain – and with my young family – so will visit that some other time.

Accurately described in Canmore as:

“a featureless low mound of boulders, grass-covered except round the waters edge.”

If you’re going to the lighthouse at the end of Point, you’ll drive right past this and can’t miss it.

One of the many sites around Steinacleit. You can’t help but notice this, sitting on the loch.

Besides the obvious causeway, other remains include several traces of walls, and possible evidence of the existance of earlier crannogs in the loch.

If you’re heading to Dun Carloway from Callanish, look for this dun in the loch just before the Dun Carloway broch turn off. It’s right next to the road, and has a clear causeway linking it to the shore. That’s about the only structure that remains, as the rest is a tumble of stones and heather.

A recreated “jelly baby” Pictish house sits behind the dunes here. Not ancient, but I’ve included a photograph of it. It’s well worth visiting.

The actual original settlement has been partially excavated, but some of it hasn’t been touched. It’s all reburied in the sand, and it isn’t very easy to make out. The beach here is outstanding, and the views are amazing.

Not much remains of this broch. If you like brochs, it’s worth a brief glance if you’re seeing the Bernera bridge standing stones anyway.

Excellent views of the church at Rodel from this Dun, which is at the top of the small hill immediately to it’s north.

Very little remains of it, although there are traces of the walls (including hints of mural cells) and an external wall creating an enclosure around the Dun and the summit of the hill it sits on.

Greywether’s directions are effective. Found the carvings without problems, sans gps despite high undergrowth and the moss on the outcrop.

Looking at rockartUK’s photos and comparing them with Greywether’s, and then with what I found, I’d say the moss is still creeping over these carvings. I visited just over a year after GW, and there was a noticeable increase in the amount of the carvings covered. The temptation to have a scrub of the moss was strong, but I figured it should be left to do it’s thing.

The pit is like a drawn-out irregular hexagon 4.2m wide at the western end and 6.1m at the eastern end, where the sawtooth outcrop is a metre high and on the order of 1.0m wide. On the downhill side is a grass-covered earthen lip 3.4m wide there that disappears past the western end way up the hill.
The back wall outcrop is 1.5m high and 5.3m long, the field edge is another 1.7m back and 2m perpendicular. Between it and the ‘jaggy’ is the corner space where the stone heap is, the out-of-place pink stone is 0.6x0.35x0.3m. From the left of the back ‘wall’ to the western end of earth and a few stones is 1.5m. The larger stones at the ‘wall’s base are showing 0.8x0.5x0.15m and 0.9x0.4m.
On my second visit I noticed at the bottom of the pit by the ‘jaggy’ two small adjacent sub-rectangular rocks that are either a buried outcrop or part of walling.

Not one for writing fieldnotes, but this longbarrow is one of the largest around and is truly magnificent if you allow your imagination to roam. It sits on the slope facing the small East Kennet church at the bottom, there can be no doubt which religion was more powerful in its day. The thing that struck me was how like Stoney Littleton it was, with the larger end at the top, so that the approach would have been downwards into the barrow, that of entering into the earth, or womb if you believe that was the intention.
Moss and I walked from Silbury Hill, thro the water meadows, past Silbaby, following the White Horse trail.
The landscape around East kennet longbarrow is both vast and open, earth meeting sky, but you need a horse to get around it!
The photo of Silbury Hill from the barrow is included because as the clouds chased over in a cold north wind, the sun suddenly illuminated a patch of chalk on its flanks, sparkling white, thought at first it was someone in a white dress on the hill, but when I got closer it was chalk. The chalk capping the hill when it was first built would have indeed made a spectacular sight.

Access for wheelchairs/buggies isn’t too bad. There are no kissing gates, and the two gates that you must go through are quite straightforward.

There’s few hundred metres of fairly rough ground though, not too boggy, but a bit bumpy. Wheeled contrivances would need about 4-5 inches clearance below the axle.

The size difference between the central stone and those surrounding it prompted my daughter to inform me that this was a school for rocks, and that the one in the middle was the teacher, and the small ones in a circle around it were the children, she wouldn’t elucidate as to what the lesson was about.

Last May we visited the area around Penkiln farm for the third time and spoke to Mrs and Mrs Evans again. She discovered not only much of the panels on Penkiln land but also in the neighbouring Culscadden field. The panels which we photographed this year were of a classic beauty with very fresh-looking pick marks.

We visited this site last year May. There are several panels around this farm/camping. There’s even a cup-and-ring marked slab in a wall in front of one of the caravans (see link to BRAC below). Prehistory at your doorstep!

We visited this wonderful site on 11 May 2005 after parking the car along the B727 (see map) and walked up through a small stretch of forest SE of the site.

There are about 20 recorded panels in the fields SW of the Old Smithy (now Clauchendolly-) cottage. We found the most obvious during our visit on 11 May 2005.
This is a really beautiful and quite place, on the right side of a road which leads to a camping.

We visited the fields North of Claunch farm with permission of the farmer on the 10th of May 2005.

Another new find from Glen Quaich . This stone has 40 cups and is only 120 metres South of the Amulree to Kenmore road and 380 odd meteres South East of Caisteal Dubh , a homestead .

The Bowden Doors are a double ridge of cliffs on the NE side of the Till valley. They run roughly SSW to NNW and are quite visible from many (if not all) of the main panels of rock art in the area. In particular, they may have some sort of bearing on the slightly odd placement of the stone circle at Doddington Moor.

Almost every other ridge in the area has rock art, yet this prominent and eminently suitable outcrop seems to have none. This, and the unusual nature of it’s contours on the map, originally drew my attention to this site.

It’s suitability for inclusion on TMA is a bit tenuous, but is provenanced by the finding of mesolithic artifacts at the base of the upper cliff. It could be classified as a rock shelter, as there are a number of spots along the ridges that would fit the bill perfectly, however pinpointing them isn’t yet possible, as no excavations have been done (and it would seem a lessening of the sense of place were this to happen). Even a quick visit here is sufficient to appreciate it’s suitability as a site for hunter-gatherer types. It’s nicely sheltered, yet strangely manages to also afford excellent views over the both Cheviot to the west, and east to the coast, in particular to Lindisfarne and Bamburgh. The ridges also overlook bucketloads of rock art sites.

The place also has some of the finest crazy rock weathering I’ve yet seen in Northumberland, with unusual features including a gigantic ‘cup-mark’ and a strange ‘pulpit’ feature, as well as some of the strange vein-like patterns seen in the cave below Dod Law. ‘Tis very special place, with a powerful sense of presence.

The cliffs have been popular with climbers, and some of these have told me that there was once an excavation of some mounds which found remains of burials. I’ve searched and searched, but haven’t yet found any references to this.

The other possible point of interest (from a megalithic perspective), is the fluted outcrop at Raven Crag, just in front of the lower ridge. This natural feature is very conspicuous, and in my mind makes the place a possible candidate for a quarry site for some of the fluted standing stones which are found in this bit of Northumberland, such as Duddo circle. It is stretching things a tad to suggest that the stones of Duddo may have come from The Bowden Doors, but the Raven Crag outcrop gives a nice example of what the standing stones may have looked like before they were quarried for use in monuments.

This site is known as ‘Glyn’ in Frances Lynch’s ‘Prehistoric Anglesey’. It isn’t the easiest site to find, nor the most accessible, but it is certainly unspoilt and away from the crowds. It is about 100 yards south of a well made footpath, but still difficult to find. I strongly recommend the use of a detailed OS map.

The whole area consists of a limestone pavement (imagine a miniature Burren) which seems oddly out of place on Anglesey. The chamber itself appears to be a large slab of the local limestone which has been propped up with small uprights to form a small space underneath.

Incidentally, it took me two attempts to find the chamber. On the first trip I got a little lost and ended up wandering about north of the path. In the woods and fields there are a number of walls and hut circles, very similar to those on Holyhead Mountain. I haven’t been able to find any information on these, so they may be prehistoric or they may be post-roman, but you can feel like a proper explorer as you trace their outlines in the trees.

Overall it is a nice site. Not spectacular, and probably not worth making a long trip for, but if you’re in the area (say, at Lligwy or Pant-y-Saer) then it is definitely worth a look.

CANMORE lists this stone as a cross, and it’s marked on the current OS map as a cross slab, but it was marked on the 1961 OS map as a standing stone, and visiting it seems to confirm that, it definitely looks like a christianised standing stone. So after a few second opinions I’ve added it here.

The stone is a large slab, 2.0m in height by 0.6m wide and 0.2m thick, giving it similar proportions to the nearby Clach Glas. On either side is carved a large simple cross.

Writing in 1925, JH Dixon described how it was supposed to have been connected with a chapel of St Maroc on the terrace above the Tay’s flood plain, although no trace of such a building can now be found.

The Clach Glas is not too far from the embankment for the railway on the flood plain of the Tay. It is around 1.7m tall by 1.0m wide, and is approximately 30cm thick, making it slab-like in appearance. It stands on a small but pronounced mound in which packing material is visible, and there was said to have once been more stones lying on the ground to the south and east, although these are no longer there. In the centre of the south face of the stone are two cup marks.

Not easy to photograph, you either have to risk life and limb in the middle of a very busy road or clamber on top of the hedge wall. It’s big.

This vitrified fort is between Strathpeffer and Dingwall.

It’s one of the four hillforts with direct line of sight to Craig Phadraig hillfort above Inverness. It also has direct line of sight to Ord Hill hillfort, North Kessock.

This cist is inches from the path to the Cairn o’ Get, about 20 yards short of it.

I’d avoided this site as I was convinced I’d be dissapointed. How wrong I was.
Beautiful site in a wonderful setting I’d love to see it clear of trees though. There is now a concessional path up to it, you are supposed to get permission at the school though, however it was closed so we asked the farmer in the field next to it and he was more than happy to let us visit.