Kettley Stone Cup Marked Stone View all content for Kettley Stone

History of Northumberland Vol. 14 (1935) A short distance north-east of the probable site of St. Edmund's chapel and on the north side of Chatton Park Hill, or Chatton Law, as it is more commonly called, is a miniature corrie or dell scooped out of the hillside by diggers for sand or lead ore or by storm water rushing down the hill. A spring, now buried in sand, may once have flowed here and in the days of 'the king's wood of Chatton' there can have been few better hidden or more secluded hollows in the district. The entrance is guarded by two rock buttresses rather like the abutments of a bridge, on one of which is a small post hole about seven inches deep and of unknown date and purpose. A little way further out where the dell begins to die away, two weather-worn blocks of freestone project from its eastern bank, and the top of one of them has been roughly hewn down so as to leave partly in relief the stone bowl shown below. The vessel is nearly circular and is two feet in external diameter and six and a quarter inches deep, with a nearly flat bottom and a surrounding groove, half of which has been deepened with a sharp pointed chisel at a later date. On the nearly flat top of the boulder, east of the basin, are two rough depressions which appear to be part artificial and which afford comfortable footholds to a person standing so as to face westwards over it. very diverse opinions have been expressed as to the date and purpose of this nameless and legendless monument and in the present state of our knowledge it is best to leave these as open questions. The name Ketley or Kettley applied to this side of Chatton law has been said to be a corruption of cat Law (which occurs as a place-name in Chatton in 1616, see above) but some have seen in it an allusion to the stone bowl or 'kettle' while others think that it is related to the Scots word caterthun.

Posted by rockandy 26th January 2005ce

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