Cartington Hill

Nearest town:
Alnwick (15km ENE)
OS reference:
NU04900496
OS sheet:
81
Latitude:
55° 20' 18.61 N
Longitude:
1° 55' 21.87 W
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Cartington Hill

Hob
Hob Jun 13, 2011

The top of Cartington Hill boasts three bronze age cairns, in a line more or less north to south, couple of hundred metres apart.

The hill has very nice 360° views, with the border ridge to the west, Simonside very prominent to the south, The Cheviots to the north, and the edge of Rimside Moor to the east. The deeply worn (like 2-3 m deep) drove roads clearly visible up the little secluded (and 99% deserted) Debdon valley hint at very old routeways.

There are a whole boatload of prehistoric sites intervisible as a result of this, but the one that stuck out in my mind was the Five Kings over on Dues Hill to the south west. I’d always thought Dues Hill must have been given it’s name by the Vikings, as it has such a similarity to the Duergar, an allegedly Viking name for the sprites of Simonside. But seeing it leaping out of the murky horizon from Cartington Hill, I wondered it it was possibly of roman origin, as Dues Hill is very clearly twin-peaked.

Anyway, enough of the view. The southern cairn I just managed to yomp to, take a pic, post to TMA, then leg it back to Rothbury in time for tea, is not fantastically accessible, but is worth the fairly short hop through the waist deep heather. It’s been mucked about with over the years, and the sangar is just big enough to provide shelter, but hasn’t disturbed the kerb. It’s quite a size. EH’s listing says it’s 17.5m in diameter and 1.8m high. Sounds about right to me. It’s got an odd remnant of some modern activity in the form of a very weathered wooden stump with some very rusted thick steel cable afixed to it, just poking out from the bottom of the sangar.

Just south, halfway up the hill, are some lovely big expanses of flat eroded outcrops that screamed ‘We probably had cup and ring marks but if we did, they’ve wethered away!’ at me.

Next time, I shall return in better weather, and go see the middle cairn, which has an exposed cist, and the northern cairn, which is totally undisturbed but covered with heather.

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