Haw Rigg Barrows

fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Mar 20, 2007

This pair of barrows are just south of the trackway that runs across the moor linking the Lockwood to Castleton road with the Danby road. Locally the track is known as the old tank road. The trackway is a public right of way with vehicular rights. I wouldn’t recommend driving along the track, about half way along the road sinks into a bog.
Probably the best way to access the barrows is to park on the Castleton road and walk east for a quarter mile or so to the barrows. This pair of barrows are pretty unremarkable but a walk to them is worthwhile if only to illustrate the intervisibility of many of the moorland barrow groups. If you look west you can see the Black Howes on High Moor, the Three Howes on Three Howes Rigg, look east and the Siss Cross and Robin Hoods Butts barrows are prominent horizon markers.
Another thing to notice is, as you walk along the path you can see the summit of Freebrough Hill poking up over Moorsholm Rigg. When you reach the barrows Freebrough is in full view. However these barrows are not aligned on Freebrough. Looking north across the barrows the alignment runs past Freebrough and points to the coastal barrow cemetery of Warsett Hill.
I not convinced that this alignment was in the mind of the mound builders. I think that this pair of barrows should be seen as part of the wider chain of barrows that occupy the prominent ridges of the moors. A chain of burial monuments that in many cases still define parish and political boundaries and fringe the major ancient trackways across the moors, possibly defining the boundaries of Bronze Age estates.