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Brisworthy Stone Circle – 25.6.2004

Directions – I basically agree with the travel instructions on the Megalithic Walks link below. However, the hamlet of Brisworthy is definitely not the organised little cluster as the OS map suggests. It’s basically a couple of very rough working farms and a few houses, so parking is not clear or in abundance. And just to clarify that after walking up the lane there only seems to be one way out of that parcel of land, towards the stone circle. As the short lane ends keep towards the left hand wall of the field (signposted as the official path) and a stile leads you into the large field / moor land, circa SX562654 (i.e. there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this land directly towards to the circle). People with disabilities may obviously struggle with this stile. There is a gate next to it, but it was padlocked.

You’ll then find the circle 300 metres, due east, near the field boundary. This is clearly the ‘show’ circle in this area. South West Dartmoor has several cairn circles, and stones in some sort of circle, but this is the only really showy stone circle.

After several days of rain, I was blessed with sun tan weather which really made a rest at the stones a lovely prospect. Views towards Trowlesorthy (south east) and Legis Tor (east) are brilliant. With a keen eye the Stone Circle can be spotted from the Trowlesorthy area, partly hidden by some of the very few trees in the area.

Technically this doesn’t seem to be Access Land, but the chances of anyone stopping you seem remote, assuming you’re following the basic rules of the countryside.

Simonside is a heck of a good hill to climb on a sunny day. It would be awful in wet weather. However if you got trapped in a sudden mist, away from the path,you could take cover in one of the rock shelters and wait it out. I wouldn’t reccomend it though, as many clefts have only enough vegetation to hide them from view, not enough to stop you from disappearing. In all, not a place to go near dark on a rainy day, only go if it’s sunny, or if you’re very nimble. especially so if you intend to leave the path.

The path is needlessly wide, due to heavy erosion, but that does make it easy to follow, if a bit covered in the kind of loose stone that gives you a bad time no matter what the weather.

But once you get up to the top of the ridge, 360 deg views, madly eroded patterns on rocks, possible rock art, rock shelter type overhangs, cairns, even a pool at the bottom of The north side of Simonside proper.

The south side of Old Stell crag has a fantastically sheltered cranny with exellent views, but is toatally sheltered, ideal for a rest and a ponder.

Note of caution from a pleasantly unexpected encounter, there are adders, and they ain’t scared of humans or dogs.

Park at Lordenshaws car park for the easiest route, i.e that with the shallowest incline.

Strange weathered formations abound. The horizontally grooved pillar is particularly conspicuous. It’s on the north edge, about 20m NW of the cairn.

It has possible cup marks at it’s foot, a couple of which may be artificially pecked, or may only be solution holes. Better lighting, or a rubbing might make this clearer.

Beneath this are some of the many overhangs which could easily have been effective rock shelters before they silted up.

Another 10m or so along the path from the formation, is a boulder which appears to have definite pecked cups, less weathered, on a few of the side faces. I’m still not 100% sure though. Single cups being tricky to diagnose and all.

It’s not above the doorway, as a childhood memory suggested. Rather it is next to the doorway, opposite the gate entrance, you can’t miss it. It must be some of the easiest to find rock art ever.

Two, possibly three motifs, the upper two connected.

Reasonably good disabled access too, though the cobbled castle entrance is a bit steep.

Shame it’s been moved out of context, but great that it’s survived.

It’s another hypergroovey bit of stone.
The channels down this, and others like the Poind’s man, The Warrior Stone, Duddo, proudly display their centuries of braving the elements.

It’s also got a goodly number of cup marks, on all four sides according to Stan The Man.

There’s something about the grooves though, that taunts my imagination. They are so similar to similar grooves found running horizontally on natural rock features such as Dove Crag on Simonside, or even the vertical ones on Robin Hood’s stride further afield.

Part of me wonders if stones suh as the Matfen stone were deliberately quarried from already weathered rock.

One bad point about this stone, it has a chip recently taken off it near the bottom of the SW corner. Fresh new yellow stone is like a raw wound. Whether as the result of accident or deliberate idiotic behaviour, it’s shocking bad hat.

Access HARD! See Knowe of Lairo, plus a further short, but extremely steep and fairly hard climb up the craggy escarpment above Lairo. If you climb up just to the right of a shrub-lined stream to the north of Lairo, you’ll reach the ‘terrace’ coming out virtually straight onto the Knowe of Ramsay itself!

Wednesday 23 June 2004
Not all that ‘whelming’ I’m afraid, the mound is still evident but pretty low. I was pleasantly surprised that I’d managed to capture it on camera at all!!! In decent weather, worth the scramble up for the views, especially to look down on the Knowes of Lairo – itself a ‘must visit’ site! In bad weather, forget it!!!!

Access unless you’re fully mobile I’m afraid you’re not likely to get much out of this one! We parked by the farm at about HY397280 and walked a few yards uphill along the the lane.

Here the lane bears left away from the cairn, but it’s a handy place to cross the stream. Once across the stream, we turned to the right and crossed the rather overgrown fields to where the cairn stands. It’s pretty easily visible, so we just followed our noses. Torch ESSENTIAL and 1:25,000 map handy!!!!

Wednesday 23 June 2004
The mound is fairly impressive approaching from the ‘back’, but having not researched it or read the fear’s fieldnote, we didn’t know what to expect. Partly because it’s fairly overgrown and overlooked, we were very much expecting it to ‘just’ be a mound, and so it seemed once we arrived.

Having looked around the mound and walked up on top of it Jane decided to head back to the car, rather than to climb the extremely steep and rather craggy escarpment up to where the Knowe of Ramsay appears on the map. I decided to press on and found its remains (lowish mound only remaining).

Having taken a few shots of the Knowe of Ramsay, I considered just walking along the hillside and rejoining the lane back to the car at a higher point than we’d left it, in order to avoid the incredibly steep decent back down towards Lairo and the thrash through the ‘overgrowth’.

I decided to go back the way I came, as at least I knew exactly where I was going, and was extremely glad I did. Firstly because the view down onto Lairo and its place in the landscape are worth seeing, but more importantly, because I could see a glimmer of white at ground level between the ‘horns’ (evident from above) of the cairn’s mound.

I descended, still not expecting to be able to get inside the cairn, as I took the whiteness to be perhaps a notice or a barrier of some kind. But at least I’d be able to see where the entrance had been. Once I reached it however, the whiteness proved to be lichen on the lintel of the entrance, reflecting the bright sun!

I set to work ripping away vegetation to reveal a downsloping entrance only around 18” high. The entrance to the passage was a little muddy (no problem) but had a good covering of rubble that looked is if it might’ve fallen from the passage itself (potential problem!). I decided that as long as I was careful and bore the possibility of instability in mind, I should be OK and that it wouldn’t take Jane and the boys long to work out where I was should the worst happen.

Gripping torch between my teeth, I crawled in. The passage is around 15-20ft long and although it is slightly higher than its entrance, it stays pretty damn low! As I reached the inside end of the passage, I sensed more space, though hadn’t realised that I’d reached the chamber as it is hardly wider than the passage. But as I shone my torch upwards, my breath was taken away by the height of what was in fact the (very narrow) chamber!!! Stunning!!!

‘The fear’ is right. It actually seems taller than the mound – a mixture of optical illusion and psychological illusion caused by the narrowness and the surprise! That said, I’d be amazed if it’s less than around 18ft from floor to ceiling!

Edit: according to Rodney Casterton in ‘The Stonehenge People’, it’s 4 metres high, but may even appear more due to entasis – that visual effect where the builders use narrowing to distort perspective.

Inside and upright, I found it difficult to work out what was ‘going on’ in the chamber*. It certainly didn’t seem to be a stalled cairn, unless a severely mucked about with or damaged ‘double-decker’, originally like Taversoe Tuick. But equally, the lack of side chambers seemed to say it wasn’t a Maes Howe type either. It also has a number of ‘cross-bracing’ lintels across the upper part of the chamber to add to the confusion. I wonder whether these are ‘original’ or a later addition.

Edit: Rodney Casterton (see above) says they are original and similar cross beams may also have figured at Midhowe.

I spent as long as I reasonably could (with the others waiting back at the car) wondering open-mouthed at the place and trying to get decent photos. As I wriggled back out of the tiny entrance I just thanked my lucky stars to have been there and to have ‘stumbled across’ the entrance in such a fortuitous manner!!!

(Oh, and ‘the fear’, if you’re still around here – you had the right place – the one to the NE is the Knowe of Ramsay and is much less impressive!)

*I’ve since read that it is in fact a modified tripartite chamber, with the 2 side chambers walled-off. I guess this may also kind of explain the chamber’s extreme narrowness. No wonder I couldn’t work it out!

I agree with Jane, don’t be put off by the fact that this circle is within spitting distance of the M6 or that the circle is on private land.
The farmer is a nice fella
Farmer with a big smile “Here for the circle?”
Us “Yep”
Farmer “Follow the path, through the gate, you can’t miss it”
Us “Cheers mate”

This is a beautiful concentric circle sitting on a slight rise in a valley bottom with becks running down both sides. The two huge portals in the north are perfectly balanced by the even larger stone at the southern end.
Stu and I sat watching the cars whizzing by, the drivers oblivious to what was beside them or casting a curious glance at the two freaks in the field, all but one – white van man who gave us a toot on his horn.

Keep going through Ingoe hamlet, don’t take the left fork in the village, it gets tangly. Rather, head along to the right. down the dip, and up to Sandyway Heads farm. The short hardcore track not marked on the map leads to the field with the stone.

The associated tumulus is on the other side of the fence, and looks badly ploughed out, can’t be more than 70cm above field level.

Excellent views over the Tyne valley, and further south across to Hexhamshire Common, and to the Simonside hills to the north, though the farmhouse obscures this.

On the way into the hamlet of Ingoe, check out the possible quernstone on the tiny village green by the fork in the road.

The stone itself is deeply grooved stone, like a few of the others in Northumberland.

This circle has been described as ‘one for the enthusiast’.
We got there by parking up at the foot of the lane that leads to Scarside farm and then walked up the lane to the moor. Check out the lovely collection of stone troughs out side the farm.
At the top of the lane go through the gate and take the path to your left. This will lead you to a field wall with forestry on the other side. Follow this wall and it will lead you onto Knipe Scar common. The limestone pavements up here are beautiful and the circle is nestled within the pavements. As Stu says, the only way to spot the circle is to look for the wooden post.
The circle itself is a wild tumbled down affair composed of gnarly weather eaten limestone rocks with the odd granite stone thrown in for good measure. The use of limestone seems intentional as there are a few good-sized granite erratics laying around that could have been used.
It’s worth a walk to the scar edge to check out the view. To the south you can see the smoky plumes of the Corus plant at Shap to the south west is the river Lowther and beyond that the fells of Bampton Common including Four Stones Hill. To the west you can clearly see Moor Divock tucked in between Barton Fell and Heughscar Hill. To the north you can see way past Penrith into North Cumbria.
An alternate route to the circle would be to follow the footpath that leads from the A6 and passes the Shapbeck Plantation circle, which is just over a mile to the east.
All in all a strange, ruined circle. The use of limestone and a gnarly central stone give it a Derbyshire vibe with the odd granite stone to add some Cumbrian flavour. Well worth checking out

To add to Ironman’s and Chris’ comments about the size of the Cop Stone.
When viewed at a distance from various points on the moor the stone appears to be much larger than it actually is when you’re up close and personal like.

Another site along with Little Round Table that had been bugging Fitz and myself for some time.
In July the circle was pretty bracken covered, it wasn’t helped any further by being on the edge of a limestone pavement. The only thing that gave the circles location away was the wooden post planted in its centre.
The embankment(?) of the circle was constructed of chunks peeled away from the pavement, several granite stones stood out within this embankment.
A gnarled limestone block in the circles’ centre being the highlight and most obvious feature of the monument.
After walking across the limestone pavement and seeing the stones used to construct the circle, we both came away thinking about the stones in the circle of Arbor Low.

Stu and I came across this stone whilst hunting down the lost stones of the Shap Avenues.
Stu’s GPS puts it at NY 55821529
The cup mark is of a similar dimension to the carvings on the nearby Asper’s Field stone and the Goggleby Stone – 12 X 12 cm with possible peck marks visible.
From the looks of the staining on this stone it appears that the carving has previously been buried in the soil/vegetation and has therefore been overlooked.
It begs the question, how many other marked stones are there laying around in the fields surrounding Shap?

The question of whether anything had survived of the Little Round Table had been eating away at Fitz and me for yonks.
So when we discovered the NMR still listed the henge as having a small surviving section of the bank and ditch; we made it our first port of call.
Behind a wire fence, the remains of a 4m wide shallow ditch stretch for around 30m in length. And although it’s nothing too impressive, it was a buzz to finally get to see it.

From Lowther bridge head down the narrow road passed Lowther Lodge for approximately 40m. The earthwork can be seen in trees to the right of the road.

Following Moth’s instructions Stu and I gave this place a coat of lookin’ at. It’s a strange one, just when we figured we had the circle sussed, we’d find more stones that would throw the circumference out. I guess the whole place has been badly knocked about.
This was obviously a significant area back in it’s day. There are three other known circles well within a two mile radius of this one Knipe, Gunnerkeld and Wilson Scar plus the northern section of the Shap Avenues

Fitz’s ‘megalithic jumble’ is a spot on description for this site.
Sitting on a mound/knoll, the two most visible sections of the kerbing do look to have once described a circle.
But the two small quarries that look to have disturbed quite large sections of the kerbing have made the whole thing a bit hard to grasp.

Well worth a look, with some great views out towards the Howgill Fells.

My previous failure to find this stone was down to one thing – piss poor map reading.
Stu and I dropped into the council depot to ask for permission to search their yard for the stone. The lady in reception looked at me a bit strangely then went off with my map to talk to the boss. When she returned she told me I was in the wrong place, I thought she was just trying to get rid of me until the penny dropped...doh! She was right of course.

So guess where this lovely stone is? Lilliput Lane, the home of those little pottery houses that adorn many a twee shop.
To get there from the east, head west over the roundabout that sits over the M6, the turn off is the first on the left after the roundabout and is marked Lilliput Lane. Me and Stu were a bit worried that someone might see us driving into the place and mistake us for a pair of punters looking for a 3” high cotswold cottage to complete our collection. Park up in the visitors car park and walk round the side of the workshop and there it is a 6-7 foot tall beast of a stone with it’s own little garden, right beside the fire escape. I think the workers playing footy round the back must have thought we were someone official because they soon scarpered.
Well worth checking out.

This stone was a revalation to Stu and I. The Sewborrans and Skirsgill stones were big buggers but this one is huge.

The easiest way to access it is via the field beside Kitchenhill Bridge. It’s also worth keeping an eye out for it if your travelling on the west coast line out of or into Penrith.
Stu had a reference from Pastscape for a stone in a field about a mile north of this one. We had a good search around but found nothing.

Standing by the West Coast main line, near to Kitchenhill Bridge is this 10ft tall monster.
A big surprise for a stone that isn’t marked on the O.S map.

This year we decided to spend the summer solstice a little more quiely than usual. So we decided to spend it at Barnscar in the middle of nowhere camped in an iron age village no tom toms, no Fire-eaters and no born again christians trying to convert us!
So we pitched our tent high upon Barnscar (hoping we wouldnt be noticed) and spent the night here it was very peaceful and not a soul for miles bliss! This place is so calming the ground is nice and spongy to sleep on and it was beautiful to watch the sun rise over the Cumbrian Mountains on Midsummers morning.
Sadly this was Midsummer and the Ferns and bracken had grown to about 4 foot high so it was hard to see most of it.I did however find some stone tools just lying on the ground and a possible forgotten stone circle with an outlier too.
Barnscar is a little hard to get to but more than worth the effort it has a real ambience to it and is just dripping in archaeology a must for all TMAer’s if you get to Cumbria dont miss this one!

This one was my first real l-o-n-g stalled cairn. I had already seen Unstan and Taversoe Tuick which are both essentially round cairns with stalls, but Blackhammer was different. Like the others, it has been topped with concrete to protect it but the construction and its length is what wowed me. (I hadn’t yet seen Midhowe.) I paced it out at 12 1/2 ms!

...it’s quite astonishing!
It is a shame it’s had to be housed in this way, but to preserve its wonders, definitely worth it. A large stone shed with metal and skylighted roof from which a series of walkways take you over the tomb, which is simply HUGE! A great lozenge shaped heap of stones and rubble, carefully corbelled at an angle on the outside walls, thick rubble and then through the middle a passageway 23ms long, yes – 23 of your earth metres! – with at least 12 pairs of stalls, some with little stone beds. Like all the other tombs on Orkney, the quality of the masonry is precise and in places, painstaking. Each stone marking out a stall is about 5 or 6 feet high and neatly fits into the passage walls.

This is easily one of the finest, grandest pieces of neolithic engineering I’ve ever seen. Certainly as impressive as Maeshowe. It feels like a temple.

We wondered ‘why so big?’, ‘why here?’ and not least ‘how on earth...!?’ We mused on it’s
usage and wondered if as time had gone on, the bones of the dead had been moved over the centuries further down the passageway through successive stalls into the tomb, like a journey, until the bones reach the very end head stone, after which, that person becomes a fully-fledged ‘ancestor’.

The ‘why here?’ question was more easily answered as we looked around for a place to picnic out of the wind by the cliffs. The tomb is built right on the shoreline, next to the flat sandstone rocks which form the water’s edge, which chip and flake and can be quarried easily. To build a tomb of that magnitude, it’s easier if access to the thousands of tons of building material is near at hand. And so it is. You can almost see where the stones were cut from.

A large flat block of sandstone 6 or 7 feet tall and 8 inches thick, straight sided and flat topped at a slight angle, this has had a chunk taken out of it, as if some alien rockeater had taken a bite and rejected the rest. It’s a nice stone, but pales into insignificance when surrounded by such wonderful cairn building.

Unlike the other tombs on Rousay, this isn’t in the care of Historic Scotland, so there are no signs, footpaths or easy accesses. This requires determination. To reach it, one must pass through incredibly high, verdant weeds and grasses on uneven ground up a hillside which I found very tough going.

It’s very big and long and tall and I couldn’t see where the entrance was at all. A little of the rubble of the cairn showed through the grass on the top. But I didn’t hang around as the cold beat me. And I now know that I missed out.

Moth continued on poking about, going up to the Knowe of Ramsay further up the hillside from where he spotted the very overgrown entrance to Lairo. He returned to the car 30 mins later lost for superlatives about what he discovered. I’ll let him tell the rest...

The sign at the roadside says 1/2 mile to walk. But the walk is up quite a steep hillside, so take your time if you’re not a confident walker. I found it a bit slippy. It’s a nice walk though, past a load of noisy fulmars nesting on the rocky outcrops on the hillside.

It’s always damned windy in Orkney, but the gale on that hillside was vicious and bitingly cold. I was very glad to find this tomb was also concrete covered and sealed with a big metal door, giving both the tomb and me some protection from the wind. I took the opportunity to make a quick sketch of the chamber without my paints flying away. I paced out the length at 14ms.

Each side has evenly spaced stalls of big flat stones. The head stone at the end of the
passageway was bright green with alien blood lichen again.