Latest Fieldnotes

On a walk from the Knowes of Trotty (closed till 2 p.m. I found out after) to Cuween Hill I saw the barrows on the Hill of Heddle from above Berstane Farm and was finally totally convinced that the features below the Well Park field, occupying the whole of the field below its western edge, could be none other than the remains of barrows. My guess is these are also the ‘new’ find seen by a visiting archaeologist speaker a couple of years back. From the road below very much a jumble of gentle rises, dips and hollows. In appropriate lighting (as with the double ditch/bank of the Hillhead enclosure nearby) it is all so clear from the Orphir road- can you call wild vegetation cropmarks. Coming from Kirkwall this is the fourth field on the east side of the B9148, though it is very obvious. It appears to end at the steep-sided burn, or else its character changes.

The grid ref given in ‘Prehistoric rock art in Northumberland’ is incorrect. Presumably it’s a typo, as it’s exactly 1km out. The book says NZ0587 8395, the Beckensall Archive says NZ 05835 82943 for panel 1a and NZ 05713 82995 for panel 2a. A good tromp for exactly a kilometre in the wrong direction has proven to me that the Online archive is telling the truth. A subsequent trek about the same distance to the North west has proven to me that it’s a good idea to verify your co-ordinates after you’ve entered them into a gps in a hurry. The irony of the whole thing being, that when I finally found the darn things, I didn’t use a gps, the book, or the map. By that time I knew the area quite well, and there was only one outcrop I hadn’t checked, the one with the carvings. Bah!

Havings said all this, Neither are spectacular examples, being quite seriously eroded. The stone is soft around here. But both panels are a lot clearer than the one at the nearby Hallion’s rock . They’re reasonably accessible, especially when the vegetation is low, both are just off the footpath, one either side. Look out for the feeding trough.

Whilst not fantastically inspiring bits of rock art, they add to the general loveliness of the Shaftoe Crags area. Especially neat is the cleft of the ‘Long Byres’ just to the south west of these panels, which I defy anyone to deny as being a prime spot for any self-respecting hunter-gatherers to bed down for the night.

As usual for the area, there is an obligatory view of Simonside, silhouetted against the horizon, but this potentially significant view is annoyingly obscured by trees from panel 2a.

A modest, yet nicely executed bit of rock art.
Two motifs, each with a couple of rings, either side of an enhanced natural basin, directly above what looks like a rock shelter. It’s quite licheny, and when you pour water on the motifs, it trickles down quite nicely into the basin.

There’s a vague line of stones running from here back up the hill to the cairn, but it’s so disturbed, and there are so many other stones lying about, it’s probably just my imagination.

The outcrop is the lowest, and last on the ridge to the north of the cairn, where the land dips down.

GPS stuff: NU 04739 03139, elevation 234m

It’s a really odd shape for a hillfort. Like one standard hillfort that’s ben cracked in half, then each half set against the edge of the scarp, one next to the other. Or perhaps one hillfort with a hinge, which has been swung open, to make two hemispherical forts. It’s been described as being like a pair of half-moon spectacles when viewed from above.

It’s got fair sized banks and ditches, but it’s most salient feature is the great big rock cut basin just on the edge of the scarp, see Pebble’s photo. Given the nearby astounding rock art, you can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection between this thing and the cupmarks which litter the area.

In the height of summer you’ll need waterproofs if it has been damp – before you reach the mounds the rutted farmtrack finally gives out and you have no choice but to wade through sodden knee-high grass (even went through waterproof shoes to leave squelchy feet).

Although Whitelow cairn is more easily approached from the Bury Old Road to the east, I chose to walk up Whitelow Road from the north west.
Driving up the A56 from Bury, where I’d visited the museum to see the urns excavated from the cairn, at the traffic lights where the left turn takes you into Ramsbottom, I turned right into Whitelow Road, immediately parking up as the road is only suitable for off-road vehicles.
The road rises gently and skirts the southern side of Whitelow Hill, where I had to jump over a drystone wall to climb up to the cairn, which forms the top of the hill.
If it wasn’t for the copious amounts of stone which formed an outer wall, it wouldnt be possible to see where the hill ends and the cairn begins.
The view is only to the west because of higher ground on the other sides.

Near the great white scar formed by the china clay works at Trowlesworthy is a complex of stone rows and cairn circles not unlike those at Ringmoor. From where you park the car, you can see the rows sloping down the hill. Having sight of them makes the incredibly dull hike over to them slightly more palettable. Be careful how you go – you can access the site from either side of the canal, but there is no path so tread very carefully. The ground underfoot almost got me a couple of times! The are a couple of rows here the main one perhaps just less than 100ms long – hard to say as an artificially cut channel now bisects it.

The cairn circle is charming though and despite the fact you’re overlooking an industrial landscape, I quite liked it.

Just up the hill from Brisworthy are the monuments at Ringmoor which unlike pure joy, we found easily. A corkingly long stone row with a rather nice cairn circle at one end. As I strode down the row it seemed to never end! We also spotted some other stuff up there, including another small cairn circle.

The rows here seem to meander forever taking the traveller past the almighty great nearby tor and point you towards the stone circle 1km at Scorhill. The longest stone row idles its way across the moor with two lines of small stones, some hidden under grassy hummocks. Walking the length is not an option. You have no choice but to do it. The most complete section is actually not part of the main row, but deviates off pointing back down to Batworthy.

Yum! Yum! Yum!

Simply perfect.

I was looking forward to the madness of Yellowmead. It’s not the easiest to get to though – don’t expect a path and do expect to get your feet wet as you go bog-wading. And you need your megalith-antenna on maximum setting to find it- oh and an OS map, of course. It wasn’t immediately clear where the hell it was, although we knew we were going in the right direction.

Suddenly it dawned on Moth that the large herd of ponies we could see had chosen it as a cool place to hang out. We approached cautiously. Though they looked cute and cuddly we were aware they are wild animals and had some very young foals with them to protect. It became clear that they weren’t going to move for us and we’d just have to work round them. It meant we couldn’t walk among the small stones at all but had to walk round and round to try and get a sense of what was going on between the hoofs, sleeping foals, squabbling stallions and grazing mares. Were there four rings? Was it a cairn? The ponies weren’t saying.

Brisworthy stone circle reminded me a lot of Fernworthy in size of stones, diameter and ‘feel’. But whereas Fernworthy is held suffocated by trees, Brisworthy is free to breathe and today was bathed in warm sunshine. It seems to have a close relationship with a nearby tor. It’s on private land and we had to climb over a fence to get to it. Liked it here!

As the road passes Sharpitor there is a tiny tarn and parking place and, if you didn’t know to look, there’s also an incredibly long stone row! Two lines run parallel about 1m apart for more than 100ms, but the stones are so small you’d hardly know. I wish they’d put information boards up about things like this, then people would notice and take an interest. I loved it up here. Right on the top. Felt like I could reach up and touch the sky!

A few years ago, someone sent me a postcard of Scorhill stone circle. I liked the look of its pointy stones and always wanted to see it. Thankfully, the walk is mercifully short and the impact of this monument is mighty!

Corrrrrrrrr! As you crest the hill you down onto it and it compels you completely. Severe, pointy, dramatic, free of trees, bracken and other distractions, this sky temple seems to be indelibly stamped into the landscape and has a more powerful relationship with the moor and the heavens than anything I’ve seen except Brodgar.

From here we could just make out the Shoveldown stone rows, which we would see close up two days later. And Moth looked wistfully moorwards in the direction of White moor stone circle, knowing that I would never be able to walk to it and he’d have to go alone.

When I was 10, I remember seeing a film called ‘The Belstone Fox’ starring Eric Porter and Bill Travers and crying all the way through it. Now here I was in Belstone village. No tears this time.

We’d come to see Belstone Nine Stones, a cairn circle of now only 12 stones up on the moor to the south of the chocolate-boxey village and thankfully not a long walk away. Moth had been here before and had taken a while to locate it thinking it was up near the tor. It isn’t! Stay close to the field wall and when that runs out, keep walking straight and you’ll eventually see it. It’s very pretty and has lovely views down towards a waterfall and up towards a tor, but the drizzle was persistent so there was no chance of painting it.

It’s size reminded me of a Scillonian cairn or Yockenthwaithe and it felt like it was in the ‘wrong’ place to be an independent stone circle. I’d guess it was a cairn.

The short walk uphill on the forestry road from the car park by the reservoir took me 10 minutes (but then I don’t walk fast uphill). The weather was still pretty nasty though the plantation gave us some protection. The circle and rows now lie in a clearing in the trees. This means there are no sight lines or views, but the circle captivated me, nevertheless. It is lovely here – the circle is small but not tiny and the stones are small, too, but in proportion to the diameter. They seemed to spin above the boggy ground and were watched by me and Moth and a battalion of purple foxgloves.

Another 50 minutes walking would take us to the Greywethers, but given the climate today I had no intention of attempting it. It would have to wait.

Just a short five minute walk uphill from the road brings you to this ancient village settlement. Filthy weather prevented us from exploring this site thoroughly as the fine drizzle was blowing at an angle of 45 degrees quite unpleasantly.

The huge low wall which surrounds the long-abandoned settlement maps out the extent of the compound. Despite the looming sense of abandonment it was easy for me to imagine the place in its hayday. As I walked through the ruined ground plans of many houses I imagined the bustle of women working, children playing, goats and sheep corralled, men talking – ordinary things. The layout and size reminded me very strongly of the maasai villages of East Africa today.

Sadly, no African sun here today. Indeed, so bleak did it become that we declared ‘rain stopped play’ and headed back to the car.

I knew I’d hate the walk which even Burl calls ‘tedious’. But I did it in 50 minutes, mostly by thinking about Sir Ernest Shackleton and the fact this was surely better than being at work... wasn’t it?! The weather was shite – very windy and it even hailed once we’d reached the huge circles. Damnit! They’d be no sketching here.

My notebook says: ‘absolutely appalling walk which I’m not sure is entirely worth it, even though this perfect pair of large, complete circles are ‘A’-list Hollywood sites.’ Nevertheless, to see this pair of circles so close together, so even and so big was a real privilege. But the hike and the weather left me feeling so shitty that I couldn’t even be arsed to climb the nearby rise to get some height. Moth did though and got some lovely pics.

I staggered around them like a drunkard wondering: ‘why here?’, ‘why two?’, ‘why so close?’ and ‘how the hell am I going to get back to the car?‘

There are 2 cairns on Weatherdon Hill, which is to the north east of Ivybridge, that have been chosen to start the reconstruction programme. They are at SX651589 and within metres of each other. As you can see by the photograph they are in a quite bad state as the public take it upon themselves to move the stones around in order to make shelters. They have been surveyed in their present state and recorded and will be put back to how they were when first recorded. There are other cairns on the hill that will be done later.

I’ve passed the grassy spot where this stone lies many a time ,but today for some reason I lifted the grass and found this beauty . It’s only a few yards from another rock with deep cups which ws found about two years ago . Neither are that typical for the area .

The NMR reckons there are a couple of cupmarks on this stone, it does make the proviso that the stone is weathered, which it is, but the cups are a bit dubious.

It’s a similar stone to many of those in Northumbria, some of which have undeniable cups, but these two are a bit iffy, maybe it’s because they’ve been well hammered by the elements. I couldn’t for the life of me get a decent photo of them.

Strangely, Stan B doesn’t include them in any of his books, nor are they on the online Archive.

It’s a canny old stone though.

Nowadays, the Popping Stone is a group of three rounded sandstone boulders located in the Irthing Gorge, near Gilsland. It lies within the extensive grounds of the Gilsland Spa Hotel on the Cumbrian or west side of the River Irthing, which here defines the county boundary. The Popping Stone is marked on the 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey maps and can be reached by footpaths, although the last section can be very muddy in wet weather. The hotel welcomes the use of its large car park and the enjoyment of the wooded grounds by visitors, particularly if they decide to take advantage of the excellent hospitality available !

The secluded site is at the northern end of a 250m-long riverside meadow or haugh stretching from the Popping Stone Footbridge and narrowing northwards. Just upstream from the stone the river bank merges with a cliff and becomes impassable except by wading. The river curves to the west along this stretch, the result being that the site of the Popping Stone is invisible from most vantage points along the eastern cliff tops.

The largest stone is now approximately 2.7m long, 1.3m high and 1.4m wide and the two smaller stones are about 70cm and 85cm in length. The Popping Stone’s present distinctive shape is due to the smoothly rounded bulges on the top of the larger stone, particularly as viewed from the east side, the grooves between the bulges seeming to result from exploitation of natural flaws in the stone running roughly at right-angles to each other. Some parts of the rounded top appear to have peck-marks, as if they had been shaped by hammering, this is especially noticeable on the southern aspect of the upper surface. The stones are set close together, and can be seen to be almost touching in old photographs but are now somewhat separated, presumably due to undermining during spates.

The Popping Stone was not always this shape, however, and old photographs show that it was dramatically reshaped during the 1870s. The change in shape is acknowledged in some later publications, though generally asserted to be a result of people chipping pieces off for their magical properties. An old postcard, unfortunately undated, shows the old shape, with figures in Victorian costume. Although probably derived from a photograph this image is heavily altered and on its own would be an unreliable guide, but I have also been able to find a fine photograph apparently dating from the early 1870s showing the same original shape.

Visited 15th August 2004: I spotted this stone on the way up the Wrynose Pass (I was actually looking for a picnic spot). As it turns out there’s space to park just to the west of the stone, so this is where we ate our lunch.

Then I pegged it back to take a closer look at what I’d seen on the way up the hill. It did look like a standing stone of some sort, with possible packing stones exposed on one side. I got severely rained on taking photos and taking a grid reference (NY2830903302), and just assumed that when I got home I’d find some reference to this lump of rock on the Web.

Now having done some research I can find nothing to indicate that a standing stone exists has been identified on this site. I’m 90% sure it is an artificially placed stone though. It seems extremely unlikely to me that a genuine Bronze Age megalith has been overlooked in such an obvious location, so there’s got to be a strong likelihood that this stone is not prehistoric.

Pending further evidence I’ve put the photos here. Please feel free to pass comment (the best place for this is probably the Forum).

If you park in the car park to the NE of the ring, it is a long climb up a ‘bostal’ path, and then you double back on yourself as you turn left at the top onto the South Downs Way. This is a bit of a drag, but better than trying to scramble more directly up the steep, wooded slopes. We tried coming down the ‘quick way’ but soon realised the only way down was on your backside!
Alternatively you could park to the SW and take the South Downs Way east to the ring.
I must admit to having a slightly strange sense of foreboding as we made the climb and I am not sure why. Maybe it was the vehicles we had seen parked up on the hill, or the spooky local folklore I had read (see links).

When you get up here, you are rewarded with a fantastic view. Cissbury Ring and flint mines to the South with the blue sea as a backdrop and Wolstonbury jutting out sphinx-like to the East. An excellent vantage point.
We were disappointed to discover 3 4WD’s and parked next to the Ring, with their drivers were packing up after a nights camping. When I spotted them from the bottom of the hill I was expecting a wild Solstice free festival, but it was just some SUV driving muppets who didn’t even give us the time of day. Quite what these individuals were doing up here on the midsummer’s eve I don’t know (black magic to bring petrol prices down perhaps?), but how lazy and disrespectful to bring your stinking vehicles across an area of outstanding natural beauty and park them next to an ancient monument. Needless to say we were happy to see them trundle off and then we had the place to ourselves.

Most of the beech trees planted by Charles Goring in 1706 were indeed flattened in the storms of 1987. The ones that remain are on the south bank mostly, and provide some delicious shade. The interior of the Ring has been replanted, but is still quite scrubby and immature.
We were surprised to find a barbed wire fence around the interior, but there is a well worn entrance at the east (close to the original entrance).
I am always interested in places that the R*man’s decided to build temples on. Maiden Castle is one of the most famous examples, and it always suggests an existing sacred function for the site.

I ventured into the interior and it is a bit of a creepy wood with evidence of lots of campfires.
It is so overgrown I couldn’t see any evidence of the temple, which is apparently only a few inches below the surface. I did manage to get a bit lost in there and had a brief ‘Blair Witch’ moment when I was convinced I wasn’t going to find my way out! I now put this down to the 8% Cider and an overactive imagination.

There are also a couple of interesting cross ridge dykes, bowl, saucer, platform barrows and hlaews (rare Saxon Burial mounds) Click the Magic plug in on this page for more info on their locations.
Check out the links on this page for more background and go and feel the vibes of this absorbing place for yourself.

Like so many, the apparent bowl barrow on Wolstonbury has been raided and flattened by the plough. It lies on farm land just to the east of the main track that leads to the hill from the south, at the kink in the ‘cross ridge dyke’.
While it seems to be sited across the northern bank of the linear ditch and so appears later than the dyke itself, this may be a false impression. The barrow has been so badly disrupted (presumably by an unrecorded antiquarian investigation) that it is possible that excavated soil has been thrown over the linear earthwork.
It is also possible that the round mound could represent the mutilated remains of a later fire beacon mound. (But let’s keep that quiet until someone proves it, eh?)