Latest Fieldnotes

The slopes either side of Fallowlees burn are “an area of prehistoric enclosures and barrows”. So quoth Mr Beckensall. There are a number of circular ditched features, at least four inside a 1.5 mile radius of the reservoir, the easternmost being Nunnykirk. It’s been suggested that this is a ritual enclosure, as it doesn’t seem to be a defensive feature, but it’s not alone. There is a small circular ditch at approx NZ036937, only about 10m across.

A larger one, on the southern side of Fallowlees burn is larger, is perhaps 30m or so in diameter. As many sites in the area hint at multi-phasic use, dating these features is not possible without the pro’s coming in and doing their stuff with the harcky-ological technique. But 3 things that can’t be denied are the recorded examples of rock art, which may be taken as a clue that at least some of the enclosures in the area are prehistoric, whatever their purpose may have been, ritual? Cattle? Rituals involving cattle? No-one knows for sure. The marks on this stone, if confirmed as rockart, would raise the number of sites to 5 (if the boulder near the table slab at Fontburn is taken as a separate example)

This simple, but typical, example of rock art is set a few metres away from one of these enclosures, in a patch of nettles that stand out like a sore thumb, indicating something going on underground. The stone has at least 4 cups and 2 grooves, and though prone, may have been upright at some point. It is in the middle of a small mound, and is not marked on the maps, nor is it mentioned in any lists or books I’ve seen. It’s easy to spot the patch of nettles from the bridlepath, with the stone peeking out.

This is the table like rock described in Stan Beckensall’s ‘Prehistoric rock art in Northumberland’. I think the grid ref given in the book may be a little off, as the stones is maybe 150m to the north east of the ref given which caused minor searching to begin with, but the photo in the book showed it is on the edge of conifer plantation, near a gate.

Approach from the bridlepath linking Newbiggin farm with Greenleighton farm, where the land rises towards the sheep pens marked on the map, turn left, and head towards the sheepfold with the tree in the middle (neat little structure that it is). Here there is a boulder with a single easy to spot cupmark. Look to the left, and the table-slab is visible lurking beneath the conifer branches. It has a strong presence, despite, or maybe because of the way in which it seems to be trying to tuck itself away. Unfortunately, the trees obscure the view, so it’s hard to say if it could have a line of sight to the four-poster on the other side of Fallowlees burn.

Big Stan counted over 80 cups, pushed for time, I didn’t even try and check, as some are very faint. The rings and arcs were visible, and I found myself in total agreement with the observation that whilst the slab is reminiscent of Old Bewick, the motifs are much simpler. The setting isn’t anywhere near as good as Old Bewick either, but I really felt this slab has a presence. Despite effort not to do so, I couldn’t help but imagine it slouching into the trees, grumbling in a Gilliamesque kinda way. It’s undeniable that this is a good example of several species of small, simple motifs, gathered together on a slab, possibly even grooved together with a pick.

Placed deliberately in view of Simonside. if this little four-poster type circle were a few feet further north or south, the hill wouldn’t be half as visible. The long hillocks to the east and west frame the plateau with Simonside as the definite focal point, almost due north. You simply can’t miss it, with it’s distinctive shapes being silhouetted quite precisely, none of the curves of the lower foothills of Simonside can be seen, which adds to the visual impact of the setting. It would be such a sight if viewd at night with the aurora borealis flickering behind it.

There are more than 4 stones, but the largest roughly describe a rectangle. All the stones are on a low mound, with many small boulders dotted about, possibly they once covered the larger stones. Burl declared this site a four poster, and the mound certainly seemed to hint at a burial function that would fit with the four poster label.

Stan Beckensall states there are cups, and some of these were clearly visible on the tops of two of the stones. But the ringed motif on the vertical side of one eluded me.

Growing from the south side, there’s a hawthorn of great age, most of which has broken off, the depth of the lichen on the split wood indicating it was a long time ag. Yet happily, the tree survives in reduced form. The strange hillocks framing the miniplateau upon which the sire sits are very conspicuous, that to the east having revetted stone walls, with traces of a ditch. The western one has some pretty hefty boulders as grounders of two parallel linear earth/stone banks, each of which is runs the length of the hillock. No excavations, no dating evidence, no idea. Though cattle droving suggested itself.

It’s not particularly accessible in any way, requiring a scramble up from the footpath to the south by the burn, or a trudge across bracken infested bog to the north, moss-trooper territory, with hidden hollows, steep sided cleughs and mossy, peaty moorland. Shame about the pine plantations.

This site is not marked on the OS map, nor is it scheduled, which seems a poor show. There surrounding area is littered with intriguing lumps and bumps, such as the circular ditch on the path from Newbiggin farm, just before the trees.

The place to ask permission is Newbiggin Farm, and though there are carparks on the eastern side of the reservoir, it’d still be a hike of a mile or so across some burns, through quite a bit of mud, along some pretty basic trails. If coming from the west, from Harwood forest, beware the recent tree felling has blocked some of the footpaths and bridleways, many of which might be easy enough on horseback, but are a right pain on a pushbike, even without the trees.

The grid ref here is for the cup marked stone marked on the OS map. Tree felling has trashed the area, and it is now covered over, and impossible to find.

It’s described in Beckensall’s ‘Prehistoric rock art in Northumberland’.

Up past Fursbreck Pottery I took a left onto the minor road that wends its way to Ballarat House. At Caperhouse I took another left.Coming towards Furso I was on the lookout on the same side for several tumuli but only saw modern agricultural mounds. One in particular (NMRS record no. HY31NW 53) has a sandpit on the top with a few stones poking up. Couldn’t find it ; apparently did but my map addition proved false. Thought I detected it in a couple of stones in summer vegatation beside the road at HY311165 and didn’t realise my error until my return. These were in front of Maesquoy to the right of a wooden direction sign for Furso itself. The nearer one, 0.54m high and 0.44m wide narrowing from a knee to 0.2m, is about 30 degrees offset from a road alignment. 0.4m away is a taller stone, 1.2m by 0.3m, that nearly parallels the road. They are alone as far as I was able to ascertain.

At the risk of sounding like an american tourist, the horse at Uffington wasn’t as big as I expected. Ok, it is quite big, but I imagined it was going to be much more chunky. Perhaps it has taken on a symbolic magnitude in my brain over the years. Or perhaps I couldn’t help comparing it to the fatter Westbury horse, which I know better, which sits above its own rippley valley in much the same way.

Whatever, this is just a fantastic spot. Sitting next to the horse you get the same kind of fresh-air-in-the-brain feeling you get looking over the sea. The figure is obviously positioned right at the point where the view opens up and you can see in a huge arc (not that the horse would be visible from the east side of it). I sat there with the skylarks trilling, swallows dive-bombing and the wind whistling through the wire fence (currently protecting the grass above the horse). It may be my overactive imagination but the model gliders seem to make a whinneying noise overhead.

It seems obvious to ask where the horse is facing – why is it positioned where it is? Looking directly out there are three wooded lumps in the middle distance of the landscape. I rather thought it was built to address these, but maybe it’s more general than that. I can’t quite work out what these lumps are – perhaps someone more familiar with the area knows.

When you sit by the horse you are naturally drawn to the flat-topped hill below you – Dragon Hill. This is a scheduled monument so I assume that means it was artificially levelled – or was it even artificially made, Silbury-like? I felt absolutely certain that when I reached it the horse would be plainly in view – but it wasn’t clear at all: just the back, hind legs and a snip of the head. It’s perched so high up on the slope. I suppose it’s reasonably clear from afar, but up close it’s not particularly obvious.

When you’re sitting on Dragon Hill you have an excellent view of the Manger, and the siting of the horse seems to make sense in terms of this weird valley – it’s on its back wall (not the flatter, steeper side wall which you’d think would make more sense was the Manger not there).

The Manger is certainly a singular place even without the horse. It has amazing undulating sides, a totally flat bottom and a narrow opening. Such a weird dry valley must surely have drawn speculation from our ancestors as to its origins or ‘purpose’. It’s certainly an ideal stabling spot for a gigantic horse! but as for a manger, even the Uffington horse couldn’t eat that much food.

The rippling sides of the manger are rough chalk grassland, but at its far end it is smoother, and on the other side of the road turns into woodland (containing springs). As I walked back up I noticed it is like a natural amphitheatre – the voices of people behind me were carrying a really long way. I liked it a lot here. I was feeling fed up and it made things seem right again.

I didn’t actually bother to visit this, but walked past it heading for the Nine Stones. It was only later on that i realised what a prominant position it occupies in the landscape. It might be because of the blackthorn growing out of it but...wherever I happened to be all day in the area I could see the cairn. Not only that but I knew if I needed to retrace my steps i only had to head for it to find my way back to where I had left the car.
Apparently it was excavated in the mid 1980’s.

This is a sod to find!
Down on the edge of the grassy area, north of the ring cairn and the blocking stone sits this archaeological mystery. It is supposed to be the shape of a D but I only found the curved bit. There are supposed to be 42 visible stones but none of them are more than 10 cm high! The Cornwall Archaeological Unit claim it to be a ritual enclosure..or at least they did in 1994.

Just to the SW of the ring cairn sits a traditional cairn with a mound in the middle. The long granite stone that lies on the north side has been suggested as a possible menhir that along with other similar stones once surounded the cairn.

This large cairn sits atop of the low hill at the western end of the East Moor stone row. It is about 60 ft in diameter and lovely and flat in the middle with a surounding low ring of stones covered in grass for much of the time.
This is the first cairn of its type I have come across, were they used for burials or just for ritual? answers on a postcard please.

I agree with Pure Joy...finding the stone row from Fox Tor would be nigh on impossible. From this end find what the experts call the blocking stone (see photos) and then head down hill slightly to the right of a line towards Fox Tor summit. After a while you will find the first upright stone...and then another...
By walking in roughly a straight line you will find several more stones, some flat on the ground, some leaning at severe angles, very ocasionally an upright. As you climb the hill towards Fox Tor they become harder to find, you lose sight of the ones behind and eventually end up amongst the clitter of the tor itself.
I wonder...does the row line up with Brown Gelly and the northern end of Dartmoor. I was too busy trying to find the next stone to take much notice...also by the time you get to one end you have lost sight of the other.

For Fox Tor stone row see East Moor stone row....
Fox Tor itself is a jumble of rocks and the chances of finding anything amongst them has to be left to the experts. I thought I had found one of the hut circles but then changed my mind....
A modern cairn has been constructed on the top of the tor along side the old trig point. Nice painted stone inset in it.
Good views to the south towards Trewartha Tor, Hawks Tor and Kilmar Tor.

I can not find any reference to this stone, and it is definately not the Tregune Menhir which stands in the middle of a field nearby. This one stands beside the road leading from Tregrenna to Tregune. It is about 5 ft high and has three sides. There are no signs of it being shaped by man and no holes where it may have been used as a gate post. The fact that it stands beside a track that leads onto open moor and important sites like the East Moor stone row makes me think it is not just another rubbing post.

Sometimes Rock art can be tricky to find. Not here though.

Straight up the path from the carpark, turn left, look for the big rock covered in carvings. Just in case the rock is feeling bashful, the main panel has a slightly quaint signit is virtually impossible to miss.

As ever, a copy of the relevant Stan Beckensall doesn’t go amiss.

A great place to start a jaunt up Simonside, which must surely be the focal landscape feature for this area’s rock art, though it does have a good vista over the nearby river valley (that of the Coquet), as is apparently desirable in a suitable site for cups and rings.

If you like playing ‘Spot the cup mark’ then have a walk around the outside. The heather is over 3ft high in places, so who knows what’s hiding under there?

The ditches and ramparts are easily visible from Beacon Cairn, just up the hill, on the other side of the road from the carpark.

Had a bit of time on my hand before the Knowes of Trotty tour so paid this a visit. Even CANMAP is ever so slightly misleading, for the fence that was my guide is actually smack opposite the Grimeston signpost on the Stoneyhill road below the Staney Hill standing stone. The two tumuli in the first field (Feolquoy barrows HY3174155) do have a few nice stones on the surface. There is a tumulus in the field opposite the one behind them (probable barrow Feolquoy mound HY 317157). Only I didn’t notice it because my attention was taken by the immense stones in the field I passed through. Felt as if they were all over the field, like the fallen remains of a giant castle. Some kind of rocky outcrop I guess. And on the surface loose foot-deep slabs left over from the giant’s dominoes. Surely at some stage nature here has been added to by man. One of the slabs someone may have thought to remove as it has a smooth-bored hole that has to be fairly modern.
Unfortunately I was unable actually to go into the field with the tomb as both sides of the fence are heavily guarded with electricity. Actually if I’d had time and courage there was a spot some way down the hill that I could have snuck through. Several decent areas of stonework revealed. This tomb is an heck of a big ‘un and it actually goes through into the next-door field – the NGR is for the field at the right.

Surprised these aren’t already on. But it is a bit of a yomp. Went on a guided walk with the Orkney Archaeological Trust. Because the area covered by these 11 cairns is now under management (hence the falling through of funding for further excavations this year) you can no longer reach here through Netherhouse byre but have to go the long way around via the Howe Road. The way through the heath is a ways past the Howe Farm turnoff and on your right. The rough and intermittent path leading to the ‘cemetery’ isn’t signposted so it is fortunate that they stand out. Owing to all the moss and heather it is a very bouncy walk -thankfully duckboards have been placed along the worst patches of the swampy bits now.

They aren’t much to look at – I would have been content to take a group picture at the first suitable place and gone back, myself. The cairns were constructed using natural drumlins as platforms. Though many were excavated by ‘barrow-diggers’ only the one with the golden discs was in any sense recorded. The 2002 excavation by Jane Downes, our guide, besides numerous cists in one of the cairns revealed in a flat area between two of the cairns some kind of building – perhaps a mortuary structure. In the Bronze Age the settlements were tiny and usually within a kilometre or two (so look about you if you visit). I think that from here you can make out the Knowes of Trinnawin tumuli on the west side of Hindera Fiold. From the cairn nearest Netherhouse at one spot two of the hills almost form a continuous flat skyline.

Just returned to see this site and couldn’t believe it, they’re building right next to it, I’m presuming they are building some kind of industrial site and widening the old lane to link it too Holyhead.
The fields are already bulldozed, the road must be to connect Trearddur to the Holyhead expressway. It’s disgusting that such an important site is treated this way.
So the site will now have a more traffic in front of it and the expressway to Holyhead behind it, with a lovely view of the Aluminium works in the distance. Such a great shame as the actual site is still very interesting, and well worth a visit, but it’s doesn’t look good for the immediate area around it.

Rennibister souterrain was ‘discovered’ in the 20th century when it collapsed under the weight of a tractor passing over it!

It has since been reconstructed and is really impressive. The Historic Scotland information board describes how it was a underground food store, it’s entrance within the floor of a round house.

Not much to see here at all, except a very large grassy mound, and no trace of any entrance.

The very friendly farmer whose land it lies on, told us it was excavated in 1974.

Despite the fact that this ‘stone circle’ is within the village of Aviemore, I quite liked its semi-urban location, nestling like a village green ground suicide-grey bungalows at the back of the fire station.

Moth had spotted this one in TMA but I had completely overlooked it. But we were so close we had to swing by. I had no expectations whatsoever. I thought maybe they were just another couple of unassuming cairns. But noooooo! These are Mighty Rock Monsters! And there are two of them.

The main one is a long – really long!- cairn made of piles of stones and with rather neat edges that stretches on for about 50 metres I guessed, possibly even more. At the ‘top’ end it even has a horned forecourt effect. As I approached on the polite wooden walkways that take you over the boggy ground, I saw that the passage entrances to the long cairn (there are two entrances) had nasty iron gates on them. It didn’t look promising. However, they were only shut rather than locked (presumably to keep animals out), so I bent over and shuffled in towards the huge interior chamber, built in the style typical of round these parts and on parts of Orkney, with neat flat stones, delicate corbelling and vertical stalls.

A round cairn, build in the same way, of piles of grey stones stands about 500ms away and is equally as nice, but much smaller.

Why isn’t this fantastic place better-known?!

I wanted to get off the paths and look for some standing stones marked on the map just to the south, but I had noticed that on virtually every tussock or bush was a large, fuzzy, brown caterpillar. Caterpillars freak me out, so I was unable to. In fact the more I looked, the more caterpillars I saw. I trod carefully back to the car.

Strange place and we couldn’t get close up to have a poke about to investigate properly. Looks like a cairn or mound with a coupla standing stones sticking out of it. Very odd. Fantastic views of the Brough of Birsay from here!

I visited the White Horse Stone this week – the first time for a VERY long time as I live in a different part of Kent these days. They have re-opened the pilgrims way now that the CTRL is finished, meaning that I didnt have to take the long walk through piles of old carpets, washing machines and building rubble that litters the pilgrims way from the bottom of Boxley hill.

The site seemed dreary and miserable to me ... once a place full of mysticism and excitement for me, now utterly grey – with the thunderous roar of the high-speed trains just increasing the feeling of melancholy.

The surrounding trees and scrub were littered with beer cans, empty cheap vodka bottles, fag ends and old plastic bags. I tidied up as much as I could fit into my pockets, set up my tripod and took one shot then left feeling utterly despondent.

This place once defined the spiritual revelations and explorations of the 20-something years for me and my friends ... now it seems to have died.

Sadness.

The second picture of the Grainan shows the single entry door and a smaller portal low on the wall. This portal opens into a small passage that runs round the inner wall to a wall forming one of the walls of the doors passage. The portal is about 2 foot high but opens up to about 3-4 foot inside getting gradually larger until it reaches the inside of the doorway passage.

This doorway passage is about 8-10 foot (I think, didn’t measure) long as it is the full thickness of the wall. If you go into the small passage (bring a torch, its pitch dark) and follow the curve round you will find a little light at the end where gaps in the rocks in the wall at the end let light in from from the main passage. Some gaps are big enough to stick a hand out. From the main passage looking at the wall you would have difficulty finding this hole.

There is a similar portal and passage curving round on the right hand side of the fort (looking out through the door) but the end wall is solid. This entrance is smaller.

Inside both of the passages its damp and cool with a loose rock floor. The roof is uneven so bring a torch or you’ll skull yerself! Don’t think its encouraged to crawl round these passages as they would not be considered safe.

Not sure what these passages are for as they must be part of the rebuild from the 1800s. There appears to be one opposite the main door but having seen the old rebuild plans which show both the above passages I think it may just be missing stones or a drain.

The fort itself (while rebuilt) is one of the most impressive in Ireland and commands an unrivaled view over loughs Foyle and Swilly. Just down from it is a spring (called a holy well, but most springs in Ireland are). An amazing place to be on a sunny day!