
The highest bank maybe 3’ (1m) showing best it can until bracken and birches are gone. Ten years ago it was not like this.
The highest bank maybe 3’ (1m) showing best it can until bracken and birches are gone. Ten years ago it was not like this.
More banks
Winter view of what can be seen under the braken and trees which normally obscure it.
Where the wall/bank has been cut by a newer track.
Overgrown with bracken. Might be easier to see what’s what in the winter.
These notes are intended for the area from The Poind and His Man to Shaftoe Crags and Pipers Seat balancing stone. There is a lot to see in a lovely area that offers more than ancient remains.
You take the road from Belsay towards Scots Gap and as you pass Bolam Lakes ( an artificial lake created within past 200 years) about 3/4 of a mile past the last car park, you come to a cross roads, take the unmade track to the left past the farm buildings at post box. Go slow! No slower than that, kids and animals, pot holes and mud, you were warned. Continue unto you reach the section made of concrete railway sleepers and to your left is the Bronze Age barrow mound, don’t stop to take pictures, you’re nearly at the parking.
Upon crossing a cattle grid gateway you will notice a flat piece of grass on your right, which is where the landowner kindly allows considerate parking, there may be cars there but it is obvious where it is. There are usually free ranging sheep or cows or both who can be naturally curious so control all dogs immediately. There used to be eggs for sale with an honesty box but I haven’t seen that for a long time.
Looking across to your right you will see the barrow with its standing stone. Separate listing on here for info.
Following the dry stone wall walk along the obvious track in the grass. On your left is medieval ridge and furrow marks between the track and small conifer plantation.
You have choices and a map can be handy, either take the gate to the right and cross the rough and often boggy field towards the East end of the outcrops (1 mile) for rock art ( separate listing on here) and stunning views of Simonside and the cheviots, or, carry on straight up and through another gate ahead to Salters Nick. The ridge and furrow has given way to grassland. Please take the time to shut all gates properly as some of the latches are a bit old fashioned.
Once through the gate continue up beside the wall to the settlement and prepare to be disappointed. Ten years ago it was plain as day grass banks and hit circles visible but since cattle have trampled the ground to a morass while sheltering from the worst of the weather. This has lead to birch trees becoming established and bracken to smothering everything in between so mid winter is the best time to see anything useful. The pictures I put on yesterday give the idea ( end of January) . The settlement’s location, at the top of the only gaps in the crags that horses or cattle could realistically use, is suggestive of possible use as I find it very hard to believe anyone chose that spot to live all year round, when there are so many more sheltered and suitable nearby.
As you stand at the edge of the crags ( rock art listed on here separately) you are level with the tops of the trees. These wind blasted Silver Birch, Beech, Oaks and Firs are a marvel and often contain Ravens and other large birds of prey.
If you look around while trying to ignore the dry stone walls ( all quarried from the crags) you get an impression of the larger ancient landscape and possible field bounties or corals.
Across The Nick, is another possible settlement site with some banks being able to be made out however this landscape has been farmed, quarried, used for military training, and otherwise altered continually from the Neolithic until present day so beware of jumping to conclusions. Further East is a “ modern” standing stone erected for Queen Victorias jubilee. It is carved and possibly a reused ancient stone. It gives a good idea of how stone erodes in these conditions as the inscription is nearly gone near the top.
Great views all along the crags which are a geology lesson in themselves, being gritty sandstone which hardens in contact with weather but is softer when buried. There are layers of quartz and chert pebbles in places, which may have been a valuable resource in ancient times for sling stone, decoration or tools, most are smaller than a pound coin and can be found in the mud below some places, they polish up nice. Various layering and ripple patterns show how a seabed must have formed and reformed over millennia before being pulled apart by the effects of the Tyne fault line. There is supposed to be Neolithic evidence in caves documented but I’ve not found them yet, bracken smothers the place in summer and in winter it is a morass but I keep looking.
Climbers use these rocks to practice and you will see chalk marks on popular holds, some attempts have been made to “ improve” the rocks for this, so not all marks are natural geology.
Salters Nick got it’s name from being a route in in salt trade which shows how something we take for granted used to be an important asset for preserving and was apparently worth smuggling from the coast way inland. An obvious trackway heads NWish from the Nick towards the Borders. Quite when the Nick was made is open for debate and may well have been enlarged many times through history. Explosives have defiantly features in more modern works and the area would have been a busy quarry at the time they were enclosing fields and building the farmhouses. A lot of the amazing stone piles and crags are not natural except a couple of hundred years erosion.
To the left of the gap is a valley protected from the worst of the weather which forms a watershed in a roughly North/South line so the eventual streams empty into totally different rivers, some of the large boulders around this area have a very “placed “ look and if you explore your imagination can create wonderful ideas, but sticking to the facts, there are faint cup and ring marks to be found. Since the creation of a trout lake further down and cattle sheltering in the valley, the streams have turned into a general bog but there are trees and wildlife aplenty. Deer, foxes, badger and hares can often be seen if you’re quiet and walk gentle. In WW2 ( and possibly before) this area was used to train soldiers and an area of the crags I’d quite blasted and pockmarked from bullets and mortar fire, some trenches relating to this are on the hill opposite with trig point on top. This trip point was used to survey the OS maps of the area so it gives some idea of the views to expect in a 360’ panorama. From the top you can see Shaftoe Crags with a small enclosure known as a hillfort although it’s actual use is open to debate. Also the Piper Stone ( both of which have their own write ups on here) .
So in a small area there is a lot to see and walks can vary in length or objective. Wear decent boots and carry sensible coat because even in summer it can be very boggy and freezing rain squalls can appear from nowhere. Its the OL 42 map and about 40 minute drive from Newcastle. It is Right to Roam land but please let’s leave it how we found it so future generations can share the privilege of this access and unspoilt, litter and noise free land to recharge our brains and enjoy.
There’s not much to see above ground here. But there are some banks about 4ft high, and some apparent hut circles.
The banks are stone and earth, as can be seen clearly at one point where they have been cut through by a more recent track. It’s in an eminently defensible place, with a nearby fissure by the name of Long Byres, hinting at the possibility that this was a good spot to keep cattle penned.
In July, the bracken occludes the earthworks, but in winter, at sunset, this will be a much more visually satisfying place. but perhaps not particularly accessible.
Tradition points out Shafto Crags, as a place of the Earl’s concealment; a spot in that wild district, which is called “Sawter’s [soldier’s] Nick,” is said to be the place where, by descending a precipitous cliff, he escaped from the sentries who had tracked the noble fugitive to his quarry.
From “Dilston Hall : or, Memoirs of the Right Hon. James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwenter, a martyr in the Rebellion of 1715” by William Sidney Gibson (1850).
The Jacobite uprising in 1715 was the third major attempt to get the descendants of the catholic King James VII of Scotland (II of England) back on the throne – they believed they had the Divine Right to be there. There’s plenty of information on the Northumbrian Jacobites website, which mentions the legend that Derwentwater and his brother escaped from the authorities by taking refuge in the caves at Shafto Crags.
northumbrianjacobites.org.uk/index.php
The 1827 ‘History of Northumberland‘ here says:
The Scotch Street was generally a mere track-way, though in some boggy places it is paved. Till the Ponteland road was made it was the common road from Scotland, by Elsden, to Newcastle. By some it was called the Salter’s-way: hence the term Salter’s-nick, which is the name of a narrow pass through the Shaftoe-crags, and which, in 1552, seems to have been called East Shaftoe-dore, where one of the [men of Bolam’s] watches was then stationed; and there are curious earth-works.
A mesolithic rock shelter has been found in one of the overhangs on Shaftore Crags, to the NW of the IA/BA settlement.
This fits a vague pattern for this area, usually there is associated rock art, which in this case there is, at Hallion’s rock. I’ve a gut feeling that there would have been a lot more rock art on the crags before they were quarried in the late 18th century. There are a few recorded ‘portables’ in nearby farms, though perhaps these were once part of the crags. The stone quarried from the crags was used to build almost all of the farms and walls on the Shaftoe estate.