Latest Fieldnotes

[visited circa 16/3/3] Unmarked on the main notice board & without an OS map of the area, these proved a tricky find. After coming down off the hillfort, walking through the village and failing to find the Cob Tree public house mentioned by Dyer, I asked a very helpful local. Luckily the first and easiest to find was 10 minutes walk up a path...

I recommend parking in the Hillfort carpark and walking counter clockwise around the ramparts of the fort, until you reach the edge of public access. Then turn right and head off the fort, down some very muddy steps and the shelter is off to the left, past a fallen tree. Not that much to see but enough to see it would have been cold, wet and not that much of a shelter...

By the side of the steps is a very curiously carved rock, from when I have no idea, anyone out there that can help??

Other shelters are accessible but I had run out of time. If I recall correctly, turn around and head back up the steps. You’ll meet an apple orchard on your right, head down the side of it till its end and then turn left, the other shelters are thereabouts (ps you will need to trespass to do this).

In the summer of 2000, I was lucky enough to take part in an archaeological dig at the Beckhampton end of the Avebury Complex.

Pressure of work meant that it was only for one day and most of the work involved pushing a wheelbarrow but hey, I got my trowel dirty at Avebury.

This stone is set on a N-S axis, and stands around 7 feet tall. It is of local red sandstone, and there are some possible cup marks on the top – not clearly defined in the photograph I took!

No sign of the boulders Landells mentioned, though the cup marks are very prominent if rather badly weathered. The farmer here leaves a really wide space around the stone unploughed, which is a good thing to see.

This stone is a slab of red sandstone, around 4-1/2 feet tall, and lies on a NNW-SSE axis. It was apparently dislodged by ploughing many years ago but replaced in situ. The ENE face has a ‘girdle’ across it approximately half-way up, but doesn’t show too clearly in the photograph. No other markings appear.

This stone is a block of sandstone, around 4-1/2 feet tall, oriented approximately E-W. There are no visible cup marks on it.

A site with fine views over the Lune Valley and towards the three peaks of Yorkshire and the Howgills. The site consists of a circular enclosure; two ditches form concentric circles around the central area, in which a couple of hut circles are evident. The outer ditch is incomplete. There appear to be two entrances – one to the south east, the other to the north west. From the latter, a steep track (or hollow way) leads down the hill towards Claughton village. It’s quite easy to work out what’s what at this site, although none of the ditches is particularly deep.

There’s a great walk up the hill towards the Caton Moor wind farm, from which views over the Lakeland Hills and over the Irish sea to the Isle of Man and (on a really clear day) the mountains of North Wales are really spectacular.

[visited circa 16/3/3] Finally I made it back here during the day & it was well worth the visit. A fairly large fort on top of a heavily wooded hill, the single bank-ditch combo is clearly visible and a well trodden path is available either at the top of the bank or the bottom. The trees (whilst nice for hugging et al) did iritate slightly as I’d have liked to have actually seen the view, but other than that they added very nicely to the general ambience.

Half of the fort is under cultivation, seemingly with apple orchards, but ‘apparently’ the farmer doesn’t mind people walking on it. I didn’t try this out however!

Park in the main car park & follow the hillfort bank counter-clockwise to get to the mesolithic Rock Shelters.

Best way to access these fellas is to take the john Breckon Road and then walk up the Skinner Howe Crossroad. You’ll see the stones on the hill above you.
You need to leave the path to access the stones. I was only there for five minutes and a keeper came zooming over the moor in his eight wheeler. I was well impressed with his vehicle it looked like a big green banana split’s car but with an extra two wheels and a rifle. We had a brief discussion over the state of the grouse and how much grit he had to leave on the moor every day ‘because grouse have no teeth’, then I asked him about the marks on the stones. He confirmed Graeme C’s theories and deflated my dreams of finding new cup marks.
The stones are about three feet high and command lovely views over Westerdale and Baysdale. One of the stones is covered in ‘pseudo-cups’- bullet wounds to you and me, apparently they used ‘em for target practice in the war.

This fella sits beside the Castleton to Kirbymoorside road on the low mound of Little Blakey Howe. It’s marked on the map as a boundary stone but you just have to look at this lovely, slender six footer to know that he was here long before Lord Snot and his grouse moor.

You pass this fella on the Three Howes Rigg to Commondale road.
The whole thing is in poor nick and If it wasn’t for the stone on top of the thing you probably wouldn’t give it a second glance. It’s called a cairn on the OS map. I’m not sure if it is a cairn, the rabbits have just about collapsed the whole structure so I guess it’s not made of stones. There are a number of large stones scattered and semi buried around it’s periphery. I’m guessing that these could be the remains of a kerb.
In Summary, a messy site but the rabbits seem to like it that way. I like it too.

This one is a bit of a mystery. Julian mentions it, as do several other sources but they give no details, while Burl ignores it and I have never seen any pictures of it or any solid information about it. While I was at the Badger Stone chatting to a knowledgeable local I asked him about this site – his opinion was that it is a fake, the stones having been placed there recently by persons unknown and as this particular area was formerly mined for rock there would have been plenty of stones lying about for them to choose from. The situation is also confused by the remains of some kind of (recent?) settlement building that seems to cut right through the circle, as well as the whole site being very overgrown.

This site is fairly easy to find if you follow the course of Backstone Beck after it crosses a track leading south-west from the Cow and Calf, the settlement is on the east of the beck.
It consists of 2 possible hut circles at the south end that have been somewhat restored and part of a curved low rubble wall that has also been restored (Ilkley Archaeology Group 1982-87). A suggested date for the earliest use of the site is around 3000BC, with the hut circles dated much later at somewhere between 800 and 500BC
There are also said to be 3 carved rocks within the enclosure but as I was short of time that day I didn’t have the time to find them.

Drove to Gunnerkeld after Shap and managed to gain access to the farm, on my first visit. Excellent. The famer was in the driveway playing with his tractor, he was polite and showed me where to park and the way to the circle. There is a standing stone just in front of the house, (though I didn’t look, as it felt like walking over their front garden) and a few small stones barely sticking out the ground on the way to the circle, (could be old kerb stones?), which all seemed to line up, though there is a wall in the way so I couldn’t get a full view.
I had already read about the close proximity to the M6 but I really wasn’t ready for just how close.
The circle itself has an inner and outer ring with only a handful still standing. On approach It’s hard to get a grip of what’s going on as the stones seemed scattered but a formation soon appears when standing in and around the circle. There is also what appears to be a cairn in the center and one of the entrance stones has a big piece of flint in it. There are a lot of stones remaining and some of fairly good size.
A friendly place – the sheep were mellow and even the motorway drivers were tooting their horns as they drove by.

Not sure what the name of this one might be, or even if it has a name. To get to it follow the track north from the Badger Stone a short distance until you reach an east-west track that crosses it. Turn right and walk for a short distance looking to your right for a stone partly topped with white lichen.
Because of the light it was hard to make out the carvings, but they seem to consist of a cup with four or five concentric rings. Coming from the right hand side of this motif there appeared to be several wavy lines, making the whole pattern look like a medieval drawing of a comet.
My GPS reading was SE11147,46138

SE10617, 46591
This medium sized toblerone chunk of rock is low to the ground and partly overgrown but as Stubob says it is fairly easy to spot if you know where you’re looking. It is quite badly worn but about a dozen cups are still clearly visible, four of them have rings, two of these having grooves running from the rings.
If you haven’t visited this part of the Moor before, don’t be fooled by the map into thinking that Keighley road is in fact a road. At the turn for Silver Well Cottage it is blocked for traffic and any anyway it soon deteriorates into a gravel track suitable only for four wheel drive vehicles. No doubt Sir Mortimer Wheeler would have given it short shrift though!

Well, 1 week and 2 hours after my first visit I was back again at the Badger Stone, it the same sunny spring weather but those couple of hours made a world of difference. What before was a grey featureless stone had been transformed by the sun sinking slowly in the West into a miniature Uluru/Ayers Rock, a beautiful golden brown mound with the carvings now throw into sharp relief by the near horizontal early evening sunlight. As I had rushed over the moor from Weary Hill I had worried that the sun was getting too low and I would miss the carvings for a second time – I needn’t have worried, the south-west face of the Badger Stone was lit up like a static firework display – cups, rings, gutters, strange grooves and the incomplete swastika were all clearly visible.
As I was making my way over from Weary Hill, a short distance from it I was checking the map to make sure I was heading in the right directing when I looked up and realised the Badger Stone was clearly visible on the horizon half a mile away, although it dipped in and out of view and was out of sight from as little as 100 metres away. It started me wondering about the intervisibility between the various carved stones on the moor – from the Badger stone I could see Willy Hall’s Wood and the positions of the Neb Stone and Weary Hill. Which other stones could be seen and if there might be any significance in these sightlines is something I’ll have to look into next time, it may help to explain why some non-descript stones seem to be profusely carved while others that would seem to be prime candidates for decoration have no carvings at all.

There are a number of Handstones on the moors. Although they are relatively modern I have posted this one because it is a lovely monolith. The stone stands 7 feet high and is a lovely thing to see. It is also in an area where many standing stones can be found so if your out mooching about check it out.

Beautiful day – 27/3/2003 – quick visit to two stones at the foot of the hill that I have long been interested in but had seen no comments on – see the images os ref SD717152 and SD714155.

The two are rough hewn (local stone gateposts are smooth hewn) and have the large hole at their top.

Both are to the West of the hill and stand at the side of footpaths. The first stands alone with no walling close to it, the other is part of the stone wall that separates the farmland from the moors and forms part of the entrance – at one time there must have been a gate hung from it.

Both have had metalwork inserted into them at some time using some form of hard filler. The one within the wall has had the top hole filled, partly with a small stone block and partly with filler.

Came across the Goldstone ‘circle’ having taken the wrong road out of Brighton heading back to Pompey. The stones are of a strange concretian re-erected in a modern circle and surrounded by a fence in a park rather similar to some stones in a park in St. Helens, Jersey which have had the park built around their natual situ (one of the ones with unfathomably long french names). The Goldstone plaque does explain their modern interpretation laying blame on the farmer who buried the stones as he was getting fed up with tourists. Should have built a hut and sold postcards, they didn’t embrace diversification even then. Despite being completely out of context some satisfaction can still be gleaned from being in their presence.

I’ve been up on Overton Tor looking for the Turning Stone on and off for a while now.
One of a pair of rocking stones, the other was known as ‘Robin Hoods Mark’, which was 26ft round and weighed 14 tons. I’ve never come across a size for the Turning St’.
If they are still rocking, they may be somewhere amongst the mass of Rhododendruns, that run along the edge of the tor. There’s just no way thru’ them.

The rock carvings at Ashover school are about 1mile away.

Under the bracken and trees are 2 arcs of low bank. Approx. 20x19m in diameter.

Marsden in 1977 reckoned it was a ring cairn with central cairn.
Barnatt in 1989 said it was upcast from robbing the SE side of a small cairn.
Marked as an Enclosure on O.S maps.

Visited 13th March 2003: I’ve regularly stopped to look at Pen-y-Castell Hillfort from the road, but you have to get a lot closer to see the standing stone (north east of the fort). The stone is local gritstone, small and squat, with an angular shape to it.

The people who erected it may well have chosen the site because of the distinctive hill nearby (later fortified) and the stream running to the south of it (Afon Stewi). The stone sits on flat ground, and is well positioned to be seen by anyone travelling along the valley between the sea and the Pumlumon area.

The two peaks of Disgwylfa Fâch and Disgwylfa Fawr to the east are very striking viewed from the coast, and may have had some significance as a symbolic gateway into the mountains. If this was the case then one of the routes towards this gateway would have taken people up the Stewi valley, past Pen-y-Castell, and the distinctive landmark of the hill. It makes sense for a stone to be erected here.

Back in the 21st Century, a public footpath runs between the stone and the hillfort, close enough for there to be no problem going right up to the stone. It’s also marked on the Landranger, which is handy.

Fair enough, this isn’t exactly megalithic. But especially for those of a romantic turn of mind this is an important site for those interested in prehistoric Dartmoor.

Dartmoor – like the rest of the country – used to be covered in forest, apart from the topmost tors which were moor as they are today. At the end of the Mesolithic and during the Neolithic, people opened up these forests: first for hunting, then for farming. A combination of the climate and grazing kept the area open and like the Dartmoor we know today.

But in some places, very very few places, there is still oak woodland on Dartmoor. Wistman’s Wood is one of these. It clings on to the bottom of the valley side and looks most peculiar as you approach it (it’s a walk of a few miles, there’s no road). When you arrive you see the wood is made up of tiny twisted oak trees, literally dripping in lichens and mosses. In between the trees is a muddle of boulders, also covered in mosses. You can go in if you like, but we didn’t – it’s a very important nature reserve and there are some lichens in here that are found in maybe one or two other places in Dartmoor and literally nowhere else. The place is weird and fantastic and like nothing else. I’m not promising it’s actually a remnant from the primal forest, but if it isn’t it certainly does a good impression. It’s been saved from exploitation and grazing by the boulders (originally from the tor above), but such a place is so easily damaged that it’s frightening. It makes you feel a bit guilty to be there breathing on it at all but to know such a place exists does your head the world of good.

Back at Merrivale, and in glorious sunshine. It’s funny how when you revisit sites something totally different can catch your eye. This time I was just so taken by the outlines of the roundhouses (there are some as you climb up from the car park). There’s quite a cluster of them, a little settlement. It felt very human. It suddenly struck me that the amount of space inside the roundhouse I was stood in seemed about the same as our little flat at home. Instead of the familiar feeling of disenchantment about our compact living arrangements I suddenly felt cheered up. If it was enough space for a Bronze Age family it was good enough for me.

Wandering further up to the stone rows it felt like they were almost in the back garden. They’re certainly very close by. I wonder if this sheds any light on their use or the way they were perceived by their constructors. In my mind, perhaps it tells us how integral to their lives whatever the rows represent was. Perhaps you don’t put something you only use and think about occasionally out the back of your house where you have to step over it all the time!

I still thought the stone rows were fantastic, and had a power in their landscape – they’re very sculptural. But arriving at the stone circle and standing stone – they left me a bit flat. The stones in the circle are tiny, the menhir tall but somehow too man-made looking.

When the Bronze Age village was here, the climate on Dartmoor was much warmer, and the people would have grown crops and farmed livestock. It was only when it became wetter and more miserable that the villages were probably abandoned. As you can sympathise with if you’ve ever been out on Dartmoor in the rain.