

Access to this lovely site is very easy, as the site sits beside the road on Percy Cross Rigg.
The site has been fenced since my last visit. I suspect the fence was erected to discourage the dickheads on two wheels from using the banks and ditches of the site to get their kicks.
There are five hut foundations here, two of which are very prominent, one having at least three courses of stone wall surviving. The site has been dated to the late Iron Age.
The area is steeped in prehistory, the mesolithic site of Highcliff Nab is less than two kms away, the long cairn, cairn cemetary and Iron age enclosure of Great Ayton Moor is one and a half kms away. The area is surrounded by Bronze Age barrows and the entrance of the most southerly hut looks over towards the site of the Commondale stone circle.
All in all an excellent spot and a good illustration of continuity of use of an area over 6 thousand years.
There is some debate over whether the local Gabrantovices tribe were a sub-tribe of the Brigantes or a division of the Parisii. I think that given the known Iron Age remains in this area, that there could possibly be a connection between the name Percy and Parisii...just a hunch!
There is also St Marys Well which Roland Close suggested served this settlement. It looks like the well at Sancreed.
From the road start off 10/15 yards left of the site and walk down towards the valley. the well is found after the ridge before the drop off towards the stream.
“The Percy Rigg village was first noticed by the late Mr Proud of Sleddale Farm in 1962, and excavated by R.S. Close in the following years. The site stands 880 feet above sea level at the centre of a large rectangular field about 300 fet long. There are five circular hut bases, two of them 28 feet in diameter with paved floors and walls still standing to a height of three courses of stone. Nine saddle querns and the base of one rotary quern were found.”
The North York Moors
Stanhope White
1979
The Percy Rigg settlement has five circular hut bases, two of them 28 feet in diameter with paved floors and the remnants of some stone walls still standing.