Sites on Fylingdales Moor

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Images

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

A trio of items picked up on Fylingdales Moor after the fire of 2003.
A worked flint found on Brow Moor, a shard of Scarborough ware pottery found in one of the round barrows known as Robin Hood’s Butts and an amber pebble found in a previously unrecorded ring cairn.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by Chris Collyer

Stone 94 PRANYM. This stone is close to a high point on the eastern side of the moor and as you approach it from the south the view begins to open up northward towards Robin Hood’s Bay.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by Chris Collyer

Stone 165? in PRANYM. Assuming this is the right stone then it looks like more of its surface has been uncovered since the book was written, there seem to be a few more cups and also three grooves (plough marks?) along the top edge.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by Chris Collyer

Crocodile tears. Stone 161 PRANYM. There are several nodules in this rock, here the groove (only the left hand side marked with water) rounds a nodule and returns back down in a hairpin kind of shape. Makes you wonder if the nodule was in place when the stone was carved and if so was it removed to be kept as a ritual object?

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by Chris Collyer

Stone 166 in PRANYM assuming I’ve got the right stone. It’s in the right location but the illustration and description in the book don’t really match. The grooves are pretty deep on this one but I couldn’t get a decent photograph.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by Chris Collyer

Stone 173 PRANYM. This would appear to be the same stone that rockartwolf photographed. From certain angles it resembles the kind of seashell that might be found on the nearby beach...

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This stone No.2 on Stoupe Brow Moor.
The photograph shows the stone with Robin Hoods Butts barrows in the background.
It should be noted that the carved stones on the moors seem to be associated with low stoney cairns as opposed to the large barrows.
The barrows have been covered with heather brash to promote the regrowth of vegetation.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This stone on Howdale Moor and is No.51 in Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors by P.Brown & G. Chappell.
This is also my favourite stone on the North York Moors

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This stone is on Brow Moor and is No.78 in Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors by P.Brown & G. Chappell
The stone is a divided by a carved cross motif with cups in three of the quadrants and an oval motif in the lower left.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

If you come across a cup marked stone with a wee, white, gardening tag beside it. It means that Graeme C. has been there before you and catalogued it for his forthcoming book.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This rock has linear motifs, a ‘P’ motif along with grooves & cups.
The upper image shows it’s relationship to a nearby low cairn.
This stone on Howdale Moor and is No.132 in Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors by P. Brown & G. Chappell

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This rock has a number of large cups and faint rings. It’s most interesting feature is the carved groove running around part of the edge of the rock giving the rock the appearance of a ‘smiley face’ when viewed from a certain angle

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This rock has two sets of what Stan the Man would call domino patterns, I called ‘em egg boxes because there are two sets of 3 pairs of cups.

I am always looking for features in the landscape that may relate to a particular carving, these carvings reminded me of the lines of double pits that can be found at a few sites on and around the moors e.g. Easington High Moor

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

This is one of the many Brow Moor rocks, which although very weathered, display the crude pecking of cups, rings & channels, that is characteristic of many of the carved rocks here.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

Flints from the Brow Moor area.
The large semi-circular pebble on the left is made of a quartzite-like material, it fits perfectly into the hand, one edge appears to have been worked to create a serrated edge, making it a wonderful saw-like tool.

Image of Fylingdales Moor (Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art) by fitzcoraldo

The cups on the upper surface of this rock were known but following the fire a lot more of the rock was revealed. I was fortunate enough to witness the Mighty Graeme C peel and reveal these deep cups and grooves for the first time.

Articles

North Yorkshire rock carving matches similar in jungles of Columbia

I just stumbled across an interesting article on Michael Bott’s blog regarding similarities between 2 vastly geographically separated carved stones... (apologies for cutting huge swathes of it out – read the article from the link at the bottom – it’s much better!)

“Recently, there have been quite a few archaeological revelations coming to light from the result of a wildfire that swept the moors of Fylingdales, N. Yorkshire. One of the items discovered is a “unique” carved stone, thought to be 4,000 years old.

[...]

Just so you can make your own mind up, here is the photograph that Rupert took of the Kogi ‘Map Stone’ in the jungles of Columbia alongside the photo of the stone recently uncovered on the North Yorkshire Moors.”

standingstones.tv/wp-content/StonesCompare.jpg

Full article here: standingstones.tv/2010/01/13/unique-rock-carving-found-amongst-archaeology-after-moors-fire/

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Cash to reveal moors secrets

Whitby Gazette

A £27,000 funding boost is to be used to help document the archaeological recording and research of sites unearthed following the Fylingdales Moor fire in September 2003.
The £26,900 project, which is being funded by English Heritage, will also be used to produce advice on lessons learnt from the fire and subsequent restoration projects as well as guidance on disaster planning for moorland environments which contain historic sites.

It will be managed by the North York Moors National Park Authority and Blaise Vyner, an experienced local archaeologist and private consultant who has been involved in the site since the initial post-fire archaeological survey, will carry out the project.

More here…whitbygazette.co.uk/news/Cash-to-reveal-moors-secrets.4414314.jp

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Fire lays bare prehistoric secrets of the moors in Yorkshire

A catastrophic fire which “skinned” a precious moorland to its rocky bones has unexpectedly revealed some of the most important prehistoric archaeology found in Britain.

The uncontrolled six-day blaze on Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire has exposed a lost landscape dating back 3,000 years which is now to be made accessible to the public by English Heritage.

Unique rock art and unprecedentedly clear bronze age field boundaries have emerged from the soot and cinders which were all that was left of two-and-a-half square miles of the North York Moors national park when fire crews and heavy rain finally swamped the area in September 2003.

The intense heat destroyed the entire blanket of peat which had accumulated over the area, close to the North Sea coast, since farmers abandoned it for unknown reasons in around 1000BC.

“We have always known that this part of the world is very rich in prehistoric remains,” said Graham Lee, senior archaeological conservation officer for the national park. “But the sheer number of new finds exposed by the fire is the most exciting development in archaeology in my experience.” The rock art list for the site, part of a vast moor also used by the RAF’s Fylingdales satellite tracking and early warning station, has grown to almost three times its previous size, with more than 100 sets of mysterious lines, cups and circles discovered since the fire.

“One of the very rare features exposed by the removal of the entire plant and soil covering is a set of defined borders to the areas cultivated in the bronze age,” said Lee.

The North York Moors form one of Britain’s most important prehistoric sites, with the wild, rolling uplands the equivalent of Leeds or Manchester in their day. In contrast to most of the rest of the country, their population had its heyday in the second century BC, and has since dwindled to today’s scattering of neat villages which largely depend on tourism.

“The fire was environmentally disastrous,” said Lee, whose colleagues joined landowners after the fire in reseeding the heather. “But it gave us access to a landscape which we could never have reached otherwise, on such a scale. No archaeologist has the means to dig out an area like this. What we have found as a result has altered perceptions of the period. It also raises questions about the scale of what else lies hidden over the rest of the North York Moors.”

Finds include stone age flint tools and drainage runnels and trackways from the 18th century alum industry, which used shiploads of urine from London to break down shale and produce the chemical for dyes and other ground-breaking uses in the Industrial Revolution.

“We’ve brought things almost up to date by making detailed surveys of slit trenches and foxholes used for training on Fylingdales in the second world war and since forgotten,” said Lee. “And the most recent finds are shell craters left over from artillery practice, which carried on into the 1950s.”

The wealth of the Fylingdales finds will now be collated with a £26,000 publication grant from English Heritage, following a local exhibition of the principal discoveries. “Everyone had to work very rapidly, because the protective cover had vanished,” said Lee. English Heritage’s project officer for Fylingdales, David Went, said the fire had “opened up a whole new chapter in our understanding of the moor”.

guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/21/archaeology

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Fire and the Archaeology of Fylingdales Moor, North Yorkshire

Whitby Museum, Pannett Park, Whitby, North Yorkshire
Thursday 1st December 2005
A seminar, sponsored by English Heritage: Fire and the Archaeology of Fylingdales Moor, North Yorkshire
This seminar will review the responses to the needs of ecology and archaeology on 2.5 square kilometres of moorland on the coast of north-east Yorkshire, the subject of a disastrous fire in September 2003. The morning session will discuss what has been done to record the archaeology revealed by the fire, and how this has been integrated with efforts to safeguard the archaeology and regenerate the ecology of the moor. The afternoon session with consider continuing management and research requirements, including a discussion of the now-famous carved slab, and what the wider lessons of the project are.
Draft Programme:
MORNING: RESPONSES TO THE FIRE (chair – TBC)
10.00 Coffee
10.30 Welcome
10.40 Introoduction – Fylingdales Moor before the fire (Graham Lee (NYMNPA)
10.55 Introduction – aftermath of the fire: archaeological management issues (Neil Redfern, EH)
11.10 Introduction – aftermath of the fire: ecological management issues (Rachel Pickering, NYMNPA)
11.25 The application of air photography to the burnt moorland (Jane Stone, EH)
11.45 Detailed survey and its results (Al Oswald, EH)
12.05 Walk-over survey and its results (Blaise Vyner)
12.25 Rock art on Fylingdales Moor (Paul Brown/Graeme Chappell)
12.40 New approaches to recording rock art (Paul Bryan, EH)
12.55 Summing up (Neil Redfern)
13.00 Lunch – a buffet lunch will be available – please book your place (see below)
AFTERNOON: TIDYING UP THE ARCHAEOLOGY AND ECOLOGY (chair – Graham Lee, NYMNPA)
13.45 Introduction – The land-owner’s perspective
13.55 Overview of the archaeology of Fylingdales Moor (Blaise Vyner)
14.10 The longer-term ecological ambitions (Rachel Pickering)
14.25 The Stoupe Brow monument – opportunity and dilemma (Neil Redfern/Blaise Vyner)
15.00 Discussion of further research requirements led by Neil Redfern
16.00 Conclusion
Please book in advance by e-mailing Blaise Vyner at [email protected],co,uk or writing to 16 College Square, Stokesley, North Yorkshire TS9 5DL. If directions or other information are needed please inquire at the time of booking.

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A Good Time To Seek Out Rock Art On Brow Moor

A massive blaze has devastated a large area of the North York Moors near Whitby.

An ecological expert fears the moorland at Fylingdales could be a barren wasteland for years.
More than 50 firefighters from across North Yorkshire – a quarter of the county’s force – tackled the blaze, which covered an area of about four square miles.

WhitbyToday

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Fylingdales Moor

Yesterday I went up to Fylingdales Moor with Rockrich with two things in mind.
To show Rich around the moor as he had not seen any North York Moors rock art.
To field test Graeme Chappell and Paul Browns recent book, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors.
It would have been quite simple to load up my GPS with the 188 x 10 figure grid references supplied in book and just follow my little yellow machine around the moor but I wanted to see if the book would work for someone who didn’t own a GPS and had very little knowledge of the site.
The authors have divided the moor up into 7 areas and a small map is provided for each area. I took photocopies of the maps from the book and decided I would only use these and the OS 1:25000 map to find my way around the moor. For a further test I loaded 8 grid references from the book so that I could test the accuracy of the references provided.

Without getting into a long-winded account of our day, We had about 6 hours daylight, and just leisurely strolling around, Rich and I managed to visit 6 of the 7 sites in the book finding many of the carved stones mentioned. The maps in the book work extremely well and the grid references were bag-on. I would recommend that if you are visiting the moor you should park at either the Beacon Howes car park at NZ969013 or the Jugger Howe car park at NZ945003.

You should also bear in mind that this moor is private land and is still recovering from the disastrous fire of 2003. You should try and always follow the footpaths where ever possible and keep any disturbance to a minimum. I would not recommend that you peel back any heather or soil from the rocks as many of the rocks suffered surface damage during the fire and are extremely delicate.

Graeme and Pauls book can be ordered here
tempus-publishing.com/bookdetails.php?isbn=0752433482

Graemes website
alkelda.f9.co.uk/

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Fylingdales Moor

I’ve previously been up onto Brow Moor but had no sucess at finding any of the rock art that’s been reported here. This time I was armed with a bunch of references from the SMR and a gps so I expected to have some success.
I parked up in the car park close to the radio mast on the coast road.
From this point I could see south along the coast past Scarborough to Flamborough. The radio masts of Seamer Beacon were very visible. It was also possible to pick out Shooting house Rigg – site of the Old Wifes Neck and Standing Stones Rigg, home of the Ramsdale Stones.
Using the references from the SMR I tramped onto the moor. The references took me to a stoney area of the moor just south of the trackway. The heather is quite high and due to the recent hot weather the moss and heather were stuck to the rocks like superglue resulting in a total inability to ‘peel’ back the moss from the rocks. I felt that it would be extremely irresponsible to start digging the stuff off the rocks so I left the area without seeing one piece of rock art.
As I was moving over the moor I noticed two fellas mooching about , cameras in hand and heads down. I wandered over towards them to ask if they were familiar with the moor and had they come across any rock art. I was greeted by a friendly “Howdo, are you looking for cups?”
It turned out that one of the guys was very familiar with the moor and it’s rock art, his mate was just along for the ride and to take a few photos. We soon slipped into a conversation about local sites and other rock art folk. I told him of my lack of success in finding any of the art, he said that they were leaving but he would show me a few of the examples in the immediate vacinity.
He showed me four lovely examples, all of which had been covered over to help prevent erosion. These were fine rocks, he also told me where to find other examples including some of the more complex motifs. He warned me that they were in deep heather and on rocks that were at ground level making them very dificult to spot.
The guys then took off for their pub lunch and I mooched across to the area he had pointed out. I found the landmarks he had described and started systematically moving through the thigh high heather trying to find the rocks. Unfortunately after an hour and a halfs searching I came up with nothing apart from scratched shins and ankles so I decided to call it a day and return in winter when the vegetation was a bit lower.
The Brow and Howdale Moors are a lovely place with some stunning views including some fantastic seascapes. There are also a number of barrows and earthworks scattered across the moors. Even though I only found a few rocks I still had a great time up there and would recommend the place for the views alone.

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Miscellaneous

Fylingdales Moor
Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art

As well as the existing sites, Graeme Chappell has turned up a number of new sites in this area.
NZ 964 013 – 764 303
NZ 965 012
NZ 9674 0105
NZ 9622 0147
NZ 9624 0152
NZ 9561 0123
NZ 959 009
All co-ordinates blagged fron Stan Beckensall’s wonderful book “British Prehistoric Rock Art.”

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Sites within 20km of Fylingdales Moor