Latest Fieldnotes

I guess Shardlow isn’t really in the Peak District proper, unless of course you take the Pennines right to their bitter southern end, and finish at the Heritage Hotel (nee Pennine Hotel) in Derby City centre.
But seen as the news item on the discovery of the boat appears under the Peak District section, this is probably as gooder place as any.

In the Bronze Age Shardlow was marshy wet ground on the edges of the then River Trent. Today it’s a nice enough village on the Trent and Mersey Canal, still close to the Trent.
Sadly the area’s prehistory has been completely ruined by gravel extraction. A Henge complex, cursus and a later Iron Age settlement were replaced by gravel pits, now flooded and a mass of anglers.
Possibly the only ‘good-ish’ thing to come out of the pits apart from a ‘Windsor 3inch pea driveway gravel’ is the discovery of the Bronze Age log boat and the stone and timber causeway/walkway it was discovered next to.
The causeway was being constructed from sandstone rocks found 3 miles up river from Shardlow. It’s thought the boat was deliberately sunk with a full cargo of sandstone. Many bronze votive offerings have been recovered from the area of the causeway.

This is not a massive hillfort in the impressive way that Castle Ring (on fairly nearby Cannock Chase) is and I can find no trace of any mounds and ditches, even from the aerial photo available on Multimap.com- photographed at the wrong time of year perhaps?

It is, however, in a pleasant setting and worth a walk if you’re in the area. The hill itself is on private land, and divided between more than one landowner. A public footpath passes close by the bottom of the unwooded side of the hill so a fairly close look is possible and for those with a more optimistic view towards the current trespass laws a walk up the hill is also possible; in practice I’ve never experienced being harrassed by an irate farmer.

I found the following quote in a 19th century description of Leicestershire. The county boundaries have since been moved and Cadborough Hill is currently situated in Derbyshire:
“[Overseal] maintains its poor jointly with Nether Seal ; and between the two villages is a hill called Cadborough, supposed to have been an ancient British station, probably in connexion with that of Seckington, in Warwickshire. On the south side of the hill is a valley, called Dead-Dane Bottom ; and in an adjoining field is a tumulus, where human bones have been turned up by the plough.”
Sadly, I can find no trace whatsoever of the tumulous mentioned in the quote.

Rampart and ditch of an unfinished iron age promontory hillfort. The rampart is approximately 3m high , 85m long and 5m wide on top. Total width of the rampart base is 18m. The local name is five barrows due to depressions in the bank, giving the allusion of seperate mounds.

Most of this large stone elipse (39.6 x 35.1m) probably sits under peat.

The largest stone to the E has been cleared of peat and, although flooded on our visit, there was at least as much stone visible below the peat as the 1.2m which stands above it.

From spacing, it has been estimated that there would have been about 50 stones originally.

It will have been intervisible with Pobull Fhinn – about 1.5 miles to the NE.

For access – see Craonaval North.

Visited 26 July 2004

Another Hebridean Passage Grave.

This one gets into the record books as having the largest chamber of this type of monument – 6.0 x 3.7m. An oval which sits along the same axis as the passage.

Enough of the side stones are still visible to indicate its size and the remains of the massive slabs needed to roof a chamber of this size can be seen lying about.

For access – see Craonaval North.

Visited 26 July 2004

Bit of a confession here – we got the wrong site.

We were looking for Ultach Fhinn and we were also heading for secure ground following the disappointment of not getting to Oban Nam Fiadh when we came across this recumbent stone.

Not where Ultach Fhinn should be according to the GPS and only about half the length. But GPS’s (or Canmore) have been wrong and one end of the stone was well buried in peat.

What’s the chances of there being two large recumbents in this area, I reasoned. This must be Ultach Fhinn. Wrong – as I discovered when we were back home.

Pity. I’d liked to have seen the real Ultach Fhinn.

The site name translates, intriguingly, as “slab of the month old little one”.

There are actually two recumbents at this site each resting on smaller stones. Beveridge (1911) thought they marked an ancient burial. Canmore (1965 entry) says they could be natural but how would that explain the supporting stones?

Visited 26 July 2004

We didn’t actually get to this site!

Which is a pity because it looked good on paper. A well-defined passage and chamber with two capstones still in place but lacking a covering cairn. The best chambered cairn in this group of sites!

We didn’t get there because it would have involved crossing some of the scariest, marshiest ground I have encountered. As we came down from Craonaval, we dropped from the 50m highest point to somewhere between 10 and 20m where it started to feel like we were walking on lumpy custard. There was no way round it so we retreated quickly.

It had been raining heavily in the few days before our visit so it may not always be like this. Nevertheless, TAKE CARE WHEN VISITING THIS SITE.

Not visited 26 July 2004

Although described by Henshall as “unclassified chamber, round cairn” it looks just like an example of a Clyde cairn.

(The main difference between Clyde cairns and Hebridean Passage Graves – or, indeed, any other form of Scottish chambered cairn – is that Clyde cairns have no passage. The chambers start at the edge of the cairn.)

North Uist may seem a long way from Clyde cairn territory but nearby Clettraval is widely accepted as being a Clyde cairn. It has the more usual long cairn but Clyde round cairns do exist.

The edge of the cairn at Craonaval is not easy to see because of the vegetation but the two-compartment rectangular chamber is clearly visible.

Visited 26 July 2004

There are several sites on the Craonabhal ridge – none spectacular in themself but together they made for an interesting afternoon’s ramble.

In addition to this site, you can visit Craonaval, Loch Glen na Feannag, Oban Nam Fiadh, Ultach Fhinn, Leac A’ Mhiosachan and Sornach a’ Phobuill.

There is parking for two cars off the track at NF834634.

Craonaval North is the first site you come to in this group – some 200m to the right (W) of the gate at the top of the track.

It is the least interesting of the four chambered cairns in this grouping.

Visited 26 July 2004

Nice site with some very big stones but difficult to know what to make of it. The stone on the E that has been claimed as a recumbent could just be another of the large stones which has fallen.

I spent longer here than I probably should have trying to mentally reconstruct this site. Good fun though.

Visited 14 March 2005

Rarely have I spent so long looking at a site before visiting it but this one can be clearly seen from the beer garden of the Langass Lodge where we had lunch.

Aubrey Burl (see Rhiannon’s post) says it “has one of the loveliest settings of any stone circle” and you have to agree. It’s something about it being set into the hill so you can get above it for a full view of the circle and the watery landscape beyond it.

And its design is interesting with its two portal entrances.

Nice one.

There is a waymarked trail starting from the Lodge which takes in this site and Barpa Langass.

Barpa (pronounced Varpa) Langass – Cairn on the long ridge

This was my first trip to the Outer Hebrides. We came off the morning ferry and straight to this site – the only Hebridean Passage Grave covered by a cairn which can be entered. Might as well get the best one in first.

It sits in a wonderful location, as others have said, but there is a mystery.

Why does it sit on the 50m contour, some 40m below the summit of the hill and why does the entrance face into the hillside? These are unusual features for passage graves but they occur in a number of Hebridean sites so it presumably is deliberate.

We stayed there for about one hour with me nipping back into the chamber in between the steady stream of visitors.

One of those visitors might appreciate Rhiannon’s post. She entered the chamber not knowing I was in there until I spoke to her. Never seen anyone leave a chamber so quickly. ” I thought you were the man from 2000 years ago” she said when she recovered her cool. I didn’t correct her chronology.

Visited 26 July 2004

Looking at the motifs in a different light, it seems the uper C&R is placed in such a way that it occupies the middle of a natural ring on the boulder. Stan B often comments on how the existing surface of the rock can determine the placement and execution of the motifs carved upon it.

I’m still a bit baffled by the choice of the valley bottom as a place for the rock art, rather than the usual viewshed outcrops, which abound in the immediate area. However, walking back up to the kennels, A pathway was quite evident (not marked on map, not right of way) that runs east/west. Maybe this has always been a sensible route down to the North Tyne valley, and if so, that might have something to do with the presence of the carving.

The unopenable gate is now openable, but bears a sign ‘Bull in field’, so best ask permission before venturing into the fields. I saw no bulls, but did have an audience of 30 or so cows, arranged neatly in a semi-circle staring at me as I faffed about the marked rock. They seemed quite peaceful (if curious) creatures.

Revisited July 20th 2007

Two motifs of cups, concentric rings and penannulars, quite weathered, but easily discernible. The motifs are in a setting that overlooks a spring, which has now been covered over. The rock art is to be found just to the left of the track from the kennels, after you get past the annoyingly unopenable gate, which is tied with thick nylon rope, meaning access is limited to those who can climb over gates.

Stan ‘the man’ Beckinsall has recorded cups and arcs on the outcrops beneath the overhead powercables. These are amongst many natural cups and grooves, and I’m not totally convinced I found the ones he was talking about. Very much threshold phenomena.

Having said this, I can’t help but think that the natural holes and marks in the sandstone may be part of the reason this place was chosen to be marked with rock art, along with the presence of the nearby spring, and views across to the North Tyne valley.

There are a few lumps and bumps in the ground, but they look similar to marks I’ve come to think of as traces of medeival shielings.

The grid ref here is slightly different from that in Beckinsall’s book, which is a bit of a cheek, especially as I’m seriously fallible in the grid ref dept. But I swear, the earthfast stone with the two concentric c’n’r motifs, is a bit further up the hill. The ref in the book corresponds with a suspiciously prone stone, which whilst having no rock art, has enough bearing to suggest it may once have been a tad more vertical.

I asked for, and got permission from Frankham Fell Kennels, and followed the track from there. Anyone tempted to nip down from the top of Carr Edge, be warned that the going is extremely rough from that direction.

This stone has now been removed, but only temporarily. It wasn’t scheduled since Historic Scotland deemed the site’s archaeological importance to have already been compromised by excavation in 1854 when the stone was lifted so that underneath it could be examined.

But when planning consent was given for the development of the site (open cast coal mining of 750,000 – 1,000,000 million tons over four years, followed by development as a retail and business park) it included the stipulation that the stone had to be re-set in its original position.

The stone is currently in storage, and it’s estimated it will be re-erected in about 3 years time. Unfortunately the plans show that there will be a roundabout on the stone’s original site, so the county archaeologist faces the dilemma of putting it back there, or re-locating it close by so that the public still have access to it.

I’d disagree with greywhether. Spend some time, once the large standing stone has been found, and there is lots to see and find. We were there in August and the vegetation did not impair what we saw. The stones are small and low lying – one of the children said dismissively, is this it? but was quite carried away by the need to look, find and align the stone rows. It is not a lawned manicured site, but then again, it is up a hill in a remote part of Scotland. What should we expect?!?

However, what would the vegetation have been like at the time that this alignment was created?

Those who refer to the Ancient Italian Wall Builders as ‘R*mans’ will not like this site.

It’s rock art that’s been kidnapped by the Romans! The fiends!

It’s smack bang in the English Heritage Corbridge site. Hence quite easy to find, but incurs a £3.50 admission fee.

I was a bit deflated to find that no mention is made of it in the obligatory ‘stuff that was found here’ museum, especially given that it is placed on the edge of a mystery building. And you know what mystery buildings were used for doncha? Ritual purposes. Which begs the question, what were romans, or romano brits doing lugging what looks like it was a great lump of earthfast rock art, all the way into some strange structure, of purpose unknown, at a site that had alleged mithraic cult activity? Questions should be asked in parliament.

I couldn’t help think that it may have come from the same ridge as the possible cist cover at St John Lee. This ridge overlooks the eastern end of the confluence of the North and South Tyne, and would have been a very useful place to spy out the land. In such places is free range rock art found round these parts.

Ask at the till which is building 11, and approach it along the stanegate. It rests on a low wall, conspicuous as the only stone that isn’t a rectangular lump.

Possible cist cover, in a church.

It probably came from the ridge nearby, having been found in field clearance, following the ploughing of some mounds which may have been burial cairns. So syas Stan B, and so says a nice handpainted explanatory sheet framed above the stone.

Very weathered, the motifs have been ‘enhanced’ by some kind of paint, porobably wtaercolour, which has soaked into the carvings. It’s not in-your-face, like some painted enhancing I’ve seen, and I don’t think it detracted from my appreciation of the carvings.

It’s on the right hand side of the door as you enter. The Rev. was quite happy to allow access, and was quite chatty, being interested in the more recent archaology of the area.

Couldn’t help thinking it would feel happier outside in the fresh air though, somewhere it wouldn’t get battered by the elements, but I guess at least putting it in the church makes it easy to find.

Disabled access is fine, but if in a car, don’t come from the east, via the hamlet of Anick, as the road gets very poor and very steep. Rather come from Acomb. If on a bike, it’s worth the brief climb up to Anick, passing the ridge the stone originally came from, as it gives a bit of context to the carving.

The stone’s about 5ft high, similar in size and shape to The Longstone a mile away, and with the same orientation. The thin edge points straight to The Longstone.

I’m always wary of being too keen about sightlines – it seems such a maps & diagrams attitude, very Roman linear, the vision of someone new on the landscape who needs exaggerated simplicity and obviousness.

The megalith builders knew their landscape well, they didn’t need sightlines cos they just knew what lay beyond the hill the same way you and I can find our way round the bedroom even when the light’s off. They were far subtler, moving with the curves of the land.

Still this stone unquestionably points straight at The Longstone. The presence of two tumuli a few hundred metres east points to a real continuity of ritual focus here.

And I start to really wonder about the ‘fort’ just up the hill. It’s a gentle sloping hill, so although it’s the highest ground hereabouts it’s still not the best site for a defensive fort. Furthermore, from up here there’s a great view of the bay to the south, and once you get to the top of the hill where the ‘fort’ is there’s that on one side and Mynydd Preseli on the other, a place of tremendous significance.

The stone’s very weathered, not made of the same stuff as the Longstone. It’s been used as a livestock rubbing post, but even so it’s very lichened and it makes me doubly suspicious about the shiny new look of The Longstone.

visited 26 Aug 04

How thoughtful that the good burghers of the village have, like those of Avebury, named their hometown after its Neolithic monument. Makes it so much easier to find on the map. More towns should do this.

It’s just over 4ft high and nearly 3ft wide at the base, about 1ft thick and aligned with the thin edge facing roughly north-south. The southern side is vertical, and it curves down to the north.

The material is brown and grey, tough and quartzy crystally stuff. It is amazingly jagged and unweathered, and we thought perhaps we’d found something altogether more modern, but the map insisted that this must be the place.

The stone stands 50m or so from the road in a field bounded by a thick hedge. The village of Longstone is basically a crossroads. The stone is found off the road south from the crossroads (signposted Amroth), a few hundred metres along in the first field on your left.

The stone is directly opposite a house called Longstone Manse, although the entrance to the field is a bit further along.

It stands on a north facing slope just as it levels to flat land, looking up to a hill at 147118 which is the high point of the horizon and has ‘Fort’ marked on the map in olde lettering. These places are often a fort, though sometimes they’re ancient ritual enclosures. Even when they are forts, these were sometimes built on top of older ritual enclosures (maybe cos the work’s already half done, maybe to add extra imposing meaning by controlling formerly revered ground, maybe both).

There’s a probable sightline with Parc y Garreg, the menhir about a mile away on the SE side of that hill.

visited 26 Aug 04

Made of the same rich burgundy sandstone as the Devil’s Quit cromlech, the similarities continue with a collapsed upright giving it a great protruding from the earth feeling.

The vertical red stones behind the cromlech are very striking – was this originally considered part of the tomb?

The big capstone has three flat sides, with the pointy end aiming inland at the bay. There are views over a stretch of sea and bays several miles to the west.

It’s a fine and beautiful place to be.

Directions: King’s Quoit lies on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path at the junction with another footpath. It is clearly visible halfway up the cliff on your left as you stand on the beach at Maenorbyr / Manorbier.

visited 26 Aug 04

As if this land was originally inhabited by the cast of Monty Python’s Bruce sketch, the Devil’s Quoit is another name like Carreg Samson and Castell Coch that’s used for several different things in the same area. Surely it defeats the point of things having names if they all have the same one.

We cycled hard into the late afternoon sun, the wind shredding our faces for mile after mile to get here, making it feel like we’d just run off the end of the world eventually. The farmhouses become fewer as you approach the point of the peninsula, the dunes appear in front of you, how much longer can there be?

Like Kammer, we found this to be in the midst of crop behind an electric fence. However, unlike him we have a history of aggravated trespass and a higher general degree of naughtiness, so we bunked in. That overlooking house can’t be the farmhouse – too small neat and modern with no yard, no other obvious place to ask permission.

This big mutha of a cromlech is made from the most alarmingly rich deep burgundy coloured sandstone and commands an amazing view of the fertile lands to the east and the wild Atlantic crashing in from the West.

I thought it’d feel massively oppressed by the unholy industrial megalopolis of the oil refineries to the north-east, glowering as Sellafield does over Greycroft stone circle. But up here it feels amazingly open and clear, the gargantuan breadth of the open ocean dwarfing even the refineries, so somehow Milford Haven doesn’t eat any of it away for me.

The capstone is a classic D-shape, the flat end on the ground at the western end. As Kammer says, the assertion that it’s earth-fast by GE Daniel (and others such as Children & Nash) seems improbable. There is a northern stone that was clearly an upright which the capstone no longer rests on. If it were put back on that upright, it wouldn’t be earth-fast.

Furthermore, the side that touches the ground rests on a flat stone about 5ft long, seemingly another fallen upright. There’s no trace of a covering mound, but the field is likely to have had an increase in ground level over the centuries (all that sand blowing in), and the field has clearly been ploughed right up to the stones countless times. As I site here, rye is planted right up to it on all sides.

The area of dunes to the south-east, Broomhill Burrows and Kilpaison Burrows, is thought to perhaps be comparatively recent and during the Neolithic it may well have been a sea inlet, giving this cromlech a dramatic peninsula position. Children & Nash (1997) say it’s not oriented towards the sea but to Milford Haven Sound, but it appears to me to be clearly sited at a point where you can see both.

visited 25 Aug 04

With a tremendous commanding view south over a valley of multiple river confluences, the cromlech has a fat capstone on three uprights in the Llech-y-Tripedd style.

Despite Children & Nash (1997) saying there’s no trace of a mound, there is the clear remains of a mound higher than the chamber, with many cairnstone-sized stones poking through the surface of the immediate surroundings.

A fat capstone sized stone lies immediately adjacent in a field wall, along with two upright-sized stones. This is thought by WF Grimes (1939) and FM Lynch (1975) to be the remains of an entrance passage.

However, Children & Nash (1997) confidently assert it is the remnants of a second cromlech, in the St Elvis double-dolmen style.

As at Mountain cromlech in Mynydd Preseli, the incorporation of material in situ in a stone wall is actually a blessing as far as preservation is concerned, as the stones and any remains they cover are unlikely to be messed about.

The house adjacent has put an outdoor light facing the cromlech!

Directions: The village of Sardis is built on a 5-way crossroads. Take the south road, Thurston Lane, out. Just after the crest of the hill a footpath is signposted left down a track with double concreted tracks. Park here if you’re in a car (don’t worry about blocking the entrance too much, it’s not needed by farm vehicles, just cars from a house). The cromlech is a couple of hundred metres along.

visited 25 Aug 04

Marked as the singular ‘Maen Hir’ on the OS maps of 1912 and 1919, on more recent editions they’re marked as ‘Standing Stones’ either side of a house called Tremaenhir (’place of the standing stones’).

The first one is easily found, right beside the road and just over 6ft tall. Batman-ear shaped bluestone, like many stones in the area it’s got 3 faces. It has ‘1850’ carved about 3ft up on one side, an act superseded 10 years and 3ft later by a tosser called CG carving their initials and year of vandalism inside a square border.

The other stone isn’t obvious. It clearly must stand on private farmland behind the house. We had a poke about and found a likely candidate, a 3-faceted pointed bluestone (like many of the menhirs in the area), heavily weathered and lichened and in the right place according to the Landranger map.

Archaeologia Cambrensis (1974) says there are two stones over 6ft high, but our candidate was only about 4ft. It’s been incorporated into a wall and has been drilled to hang a gatepost hinge.

The fact of the farmhouse blocking the unquestionable landscape interrelation doesn’t help with the sense of place.

visited 24 Aug 04

I can’t believe I’m the first person to list this site. It’s in such a megalithically rich region I felt sure other stones tourers would have visited – how can anyone stay away with a name like this?

Indeed, as we started our tour at Mynydd Preseli and are now here, by my calculations that makes it an Elvis-Preseli holiday (rimshot, cymbal, thankyou).

Located on a public footpath through St Elvis Farm, this is an utterly extraordinary site – two cromlechs side by side. Both are damaged, the east side of the eastern cromlech has been drilled to hang a gatepost in the past, and both capstones lie on the floor of the chambers, but enough of the components remain to give a tremendous sense of the monument.

A clear mound of cairnstones rises up around the base. On the presumption that it was originally covered, it must have been by a single mound.

The nearby wall contains stones possibly removed from the cromlech.

Unusually for West Wales cromlechs, the site has no sea view, being on a north-west facing slope just over the crest of the hill from the epic clifftop view south over St Brides Bay a few hundred metres away.

The landowner is now the National Trust, so the cromlech is fenced off to protect it from livestock and has a little info board.

The folklore and power here is strong. According to the present farmer, a few metres away stood the parish church of St Elvis (last wedding 1820, last funeral 1850). Just beyond the site of the church before the farmhouse is an ancient well, supposed to be used by St Elvis to baptise St David. A pagan site usurped by a Christian one, yet the Christians have gone and the older stones remain.

visited 23 Aug 04

Not to be confused with several other monuments in the area of the same type and name, this is absolutely stunning, a dramatic monument in a huge top-of-the-world setting.

Coming round the coast path from Porth Mawr / Whitesands Bay, this cromlech stands boldly silhouetted against the sky for quite some distance.

It’s placed in the lea of two outcrops high on the headland, just at the point where you can see the sea both sides.

It’s thought by some to be the fallen remains of a conventional dolmen, a view supported (no pun intended) by two possible uprights lying near the edge of the capstone.

However, others believe it to be an ‘earth-fast’ tomb like Garnwnda, ie that it was built with one end of the capstone touching the ground and never had a covering mound.

This idea gains credence when you bear in mind that most earth-fast tombs are sited on or immediately beside a natural rocky outcrop. Your first thought for Coetan Arthur is that it’s the outcrop on which it stands. However, the view is across to the outcrop of Carn Llidi, and the possibly tooled flat side of the capstone faces it in the same way others face their outcrop (eg Ffyst Samson).

Furthermore, the capstone appears obviously shaped to mimic the shape of Carn Llidi. That being so, the capstone is surely in its original position – if it were raised level on uprights, the contour emulation effect would be lost.

The considerable prehistoric remains along this little stretch of coast, from Mesolithic to iron age, show it to have been hugely important for a massive period of time.

But even if none of this were the case, it is still wonderful to climb up here and be buffeted about by the wildness of the elements and made to feel very very alive.

Today the sun shines bright and the wind blows hard, and a horse and her foal stand beside the cromlech, the waves build, smash, drop and build as they have done ceaselessly since long before the monument was here and it all combines and piles on levels of the birth-death meaning of the place.

Perfect.

visited 23 Aug 04