Latest Fieldnotes

This is my first visit to a neolithic site since purchasing The Modern Antiquarian, and being only twenty minutes drive, it seemed the logical place to go. And what a place! So peaceful, and I felt at one with the surroundings...I really can’t describe how I felt. I was just grateful to get out of the Medway Towns in the knowledge that we still have some fantastic heritage nearby.

Hopefully this will be the first of many trips. I didn’t look closely, but it appeared that any graffitti has now gone.

[visited 22/3/3] What a weird & relaxing site. We found three standing stones and many many piles of stones scattered liberally about the fields. The main field is (I presume) used as a showjumping practice ground & I think some of the piles of stones have been cleared off the open spaces. However at least 2 piles looked like they had had a purpose, quite what I have no idea... RE the row, I was disapointed to see the three stones didn’t line up, make of that what you will. They are however beautiful stones, either naturally modified or by hand.

Oh and if you try and find the caves prepare for disapointment, at some point in the last few years someone has put locked railings across the entrance ways. Bah! Another thing to look for is the fort on the golf course, together with small standing stones scattered across it. Unfortunately I was not alone and the cry of beer stopped me finding the stones on the golf course.. next time gadget!!

Passed by this way yesterday, totally unplanned so no camera etc.

I was struck by how different the site looked with the undergrowth at it’s lowest point. Last time I was here, the trees and hedges were in full bloom, and the stones couldn’t be seen from the road at all. Yesterday, the circle could be seen ‘properly’ in its setting. A much more pleasurable experience.

I have visited this area many times but haven’t payed much attention to the beacon until the last couple of years. The Beacon consists of a round barrow which is very prominant as its sited on the crest of a hill. There are a few mentions of a cupmarked boulder here which I have tried, in vain, to find. I was up there today prior to taking my lad down to Port Mulgrave to hunt for fossils. The barrow itself is very significant and has yielded a number of important finds (See Elgee’s description in the Misc.). It is part of a chain of coastal sites with confirmed rock art finds.
The best way to get there is to follow the lane from Hinderwell to Port Mulgrave and then join the Cleveland Way footpath turning left along the field boundary (you can’t miss it!).
This site is visible from the Newton Mulgrave Long Barrow and the famous ‘Wossit’ mortuary structure at Loftus.
Whilst I was on the beach below the barrow I noticed that jet was still being extracted from the cliffs ( small scale), this is an activity that has occurred constantly for the past four thousand years at least.
Continuity or what?

Kit required for this site includes:
Stilts, waders, a hardhat and good sense of balance!
No really, this is a very awkward place to get to! Not recommended in wet weather.

Come off the main road where it says “Morwick Hall Only”
Park in the little village on the corner of the farm track to the rear entrance of the hall (not the passing place)
Walk down north towards the river. When the road starts to go steeper downhill, there is a bank following along the right side with a wooden fence atop. When this fence turns away east, climb onto the bank and in the fence you’ll find a place where you can climb over into the field.
Cross the edge of the field keeping the fence to your left: the rock outcrop is behind it, above the river. Go east right to the corner of the field and carefully climb down the very steep bank to the river bed.
Cling to the river bank like your dryness depends on it: the river looks quite deep here but thankfully I didn’t find out.
The carvings are approx knee-height, and some way above your head right on the edge of the face.
Hope this helps future scramblers.
Oh and if you see a small white piece of tooth thereabouts, it’s mine.
Banana chips. Ow!

.o0O0o.

Laying in a field behind Eldon quarry slag heaps and at the bottom of what must have been the once impressive.... and soon to be no more Eldon Hill.

The long barrow is orientated ENE/WSW and is around 50x25m and over 1m high in places. A round barrow is superimposed on the eastern end.
It’s still well worth a look.

Only a short walk across a field off the B6061 Castleton – Sparrowpit, there’s room for a car on the roadside.

The Barmishaw stone has some of Ilkley’s speciality carvings, the so called ‘ladders’. The patterns on the stone can be difficult to make out but there are said to be 6 of these ladder forms, as well as 24 cups, 9 of which have rings.
To find the stone, walk north from the Badger Stone, continue past the east-west track and continue roughly in the direction of the woods for 2 or 3 minutes. Although it is flat and only very low, the stone is a reasonable size and can be seen to the right in a clearing in the undergrowth.

Like Ironman, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by the Badger stone, this being my first visit. It was smaller than I had pictured it and due to the position of the sun the famous carvings were very difficult to make out and even more difficult to photograph. I thought the wooden bench next to it detracted from it as well – somehow it forces the modern world on the site – in the hour I was there, apart from a knowledgeable local I met, only 2 people came past on the track.
Definitely a stone to come back to when a more favourable light can do it justice.

It’s only a short walk from Harrod Low up Gautries Hill to the barrow on the top, it’s well hammered now, but it’s so obvious why it’s here. It’s only when you’re fully at the top that the views open up. Mam Tor in the NE and views over Crowden and Hayfield in the West.

OK it’s spoilt a little by Eldon Hill quarry nearby..... but it’s still a top place.

This long barrow is orientated East-West and is approx. 42x17m.
On the whole it’s not very impressive suffering from stone pits and ploughing.
It was dug in the 1770’s where the only recorded finds were bones, of an unspecified type.

There’s places to park in Sparrowpit and the barrow is half a mile across the fields.

Another Dartmoor oddity here! Yellowmead consists of 4, not quite concentric, circles and a short row. The tallest stones lie just South of East with the row slightly West of South.

The stones of the innermost circle form a near continuous wall.

Inner circle with 12 stones, outer circle with 15, surrounded by ditches and numerous stone alignments. There is also evidence of ancient quarrying nearby, and near the summit, some possible hut sites. Most stones of the circle remain standing.

The view across the Leven estuary out into Morecambe Bay and up-river past Ulverston to the Lakeland hills is sensational. A site chosen not only for its remarkable beauty, however; on the eastern side of this peninsula, it combines the virtue of an elevated position with that of being reasonable sheltered from the worst of the weather.

The various alignments (both of stones within the circles and some key stones outside) are intriguing, and I would love to learn more about these.

This is the nearest standing stone to where I live, and I didn’t know of its existence until a week ago, when fellow Scottish Megarak George Currie asked if I knew about it....

The stone stands around 1.2m tall, oriented E-W and has no significant markings on it. It is situated near the west gate of Camperdown Park, just west of the first green on Camperdown Golf Course (which is named Druid, funnily enough). I have noted that golfers have little or no imagination – almost every golf course with a standing stone on it names the hole either ‘Druid’ or ‘Witch’ whatever....

This site is fairly straightforward to get to, although not necessarily easy. There is plenty of parking space at White Wells carpark – walk to the old pump house and then head due south uphill keeping the white building of the old bathhouse to your left and head towards the waterfall. Once you get there is a very steep climb up beside the small falls (there may well be easier routes round the side) that leads to the outcrop of land the forms the north end of Willy Hall’s Wood. This is the place that Gyrus mentions on the main Rombald’s Moor page – it is indeed a wonderful place and has an air of ‘sacred grove’ about it. Continue south through the trees and just before they end you will find the large tilted stone with carvings across its southern face, these consist of about 17 cups, some of which have rings and some with interconnecting grooves. Just beyond the carved rock is another boulder that has three large saucer shaped indentations – I thought they may have been man-made but found out later from a knowledgeable local that he believed they were natural.
When I looked at my photo’s, the sunlight had caused the carvings to be almost invisible, but I noticed that the trees, stone and landscape seemed to be at chaotic angles – it wasn’t just my poor photography, this place is really like that.

It is easy to see how this rock got it’s name. A medium size stone with the top part covered in cups – nearly 50 of them, that does indeed resemble a pepperpot. On a lower part of the rock there are a further 17 cups.

I can’t give exact directions as I had cut across the hillside from Willy Hall’s Wood, but it is about 20 paces to the right of a well used track that leads uphill southeast from close to White Wells towards a small wood. There is another stone on the other side of the track that has about half a dozen faint cups.

Worth noting that if you face roughly west and look along the two flat faces of the stone, they line up with two dips in the horizon – including the one through which the modern-day road passes towards the coast. This may add credence to the idea that the stone was some kind of way marker on the ancient trackway from Tywyn.

The mound the stone stands on is pretty impressive too – rises out of nowhere as you walk towards it from Cregennen. It’s most likely a natural deposit of moraine, but the shape of it tempted me to wonder if it had been altered by human hands. Certainly gives a great view of Cader, as Kammer’s photos show.

Visited 2nd March 2003: Meini Gwyr is the only site in the Glandy Cross Complex that’s set up for visitors. There’s enough space for parking, and a slightly mouldy notice board by the gate.

Out of an original seventeen stones, there are only two remaining at Meini Gwyr. The site is thought to be an embanked stone circle, originally about 18 meters in diameter. In the 17th Century Edward Lhuyd recorded that there were still fifteen stones in the circle, and he was aware that some stones had already been ‘carried away’. This suggests to me that these stones weren’t long gone at the time.

The site was excavated in 1938 by Prof W.F. Grimes, but most of the paperwork relating to his findings was destroyed in a bombing raid on Bristol in 1940 (this site has had some bad luck). Grimes found out that the circle had an entrance on its north west side, cutting through the earthen bank and flanked by upright stones. He also found fragments of Bronze Age pottery in a hearth set in to the south east bank.

Incidentally, in the garden of the house next door to Meini Gwyr is a modern stone circle with a central stone. Don’t be fooled! Meini Gwyr may be a shadow of its former self, but it still has a bit of that zing that modern stone circles completely lack.

I went here today, 20/3/03, nearly drove past it! It’s a polygonal chamber, looking like it has been restored some time ago, perhaps 200 years, and concrete posts indicate where outher parts where found. It is unbelievably close to the A40, with the road literally carving its way through a part of the cairn. Not a place for kids, or the faint-hearted! It is hard to feel any ambience at all here, the road dominating the area, be careful not to fall on the road in an attempt to get good photos!!

Over the years there has been some confusion over the rock art location ‘Whitsun Bank’ probably caused by the fact that the two locations are situated about 500m apart. Whitsun Bank 2 is on outcrop rock (former quarry) in a field along the road, 280 deg. from the gate opposite the entrance to Fowberry Farm. Whitsun Bank 1 is 500m West of Whitsun Bank 2 and consists of lesser and smaller motifs. A very nice area so take your time!

We saw these small carvings for the first time in 1999. They are set on outcrop rock in the heather on the right site of a track from Coldmartin Loughs Main to the triangulation pilar, just before the wire fence.

If you’re about 20 feet tall you can see my house from here :-)

Lovely warm day, spring has sprung, the larks are singing...the ants nest was too near... eugh!

.o0O0o.

Found myself in Aberdeen today, quick visit to the stones for lunch.
On a beautiful clear day, lots of other people had the same idea, some walking, some jogging. None driving... except me. One woman said she had a fourwheel drive and she wouldn’t have brought it up this track...

NOTE for future drivers DO NOT DRIVE UP!!!!
I did – and felt like my tyres had been well and truly bagged.

.o0O0o.

Strawberry Lea is an arc of four stones varying in height from 1m to 30cm. There may be the ruins of a cist in the centre.

If this is the remains of a ring cairn, it’s position seems a bit odd, being at the bottom of the slopes Wimble Holme Hill. In J Barnatt’s barrow corpus he suggests the site may be similar to that of Moscar Moor and that both were originally stone circles and later had their interiors filled.
(Although Barnatt doesn’t mention Crook Hill in his books, this too may be a similar site)

A tricky one to spot, even though it’s close to the path... probably no chance of finding it in the summer, when the bracken is high.

[actually written & added 27/11/02] This is another hillfort covered in trees & especially at night, there isn’t that much to see. Apparently the east side of the fort is precipitous but we didn’t make it that far, preferring instead to stop at the west embankments and wonder what the sounds were emanating from the trees.

Probably a better place to visit during the day, unless you know where you are going and (possibly) have a torch...

Back in the 1920’s my father was the village policeman at Mundford. One day he was told that a motor cycle and sidecar had been seen standing at Grimes Graves for some time. In those days the site was on “common” ground. He cycled over and ultimately decided that the owner must have gone down into the mine. With the help of some locals and a ball of string to act as a life line, he went down into the pit and eventually found a young couple in one of the tunnels. Apparently they had got disoriented, their light had failed, and they were unable to find a way out. They were cold and hungry but otherwise none the worse for their adventure.