This is another site from Barnatts book, and another ring or robbed cairn.
Although it’s buried under thick dead bracken.......I’d go for a robbed cairn, it’s not as tho’ I’m an expert or owt.
This is located on the second ridge that crosses the moor. A large bracken covered lump. Easy to spot on the ridge, when the brackens died down.
Not much to see
A small ring cairn 11m in diameter. Grass covered rubble bank. It has a small stone on the bank in the east, it lays flat in the bank, if it did ever stand it would be under 50cm. Barnatt says it might be a kerbstone or a standing stone.
It’s situated in a grass clearing in amongst the bracken. On the first low ridge north of the main track across the moor.
Excellent views as with all the Beely sites.
Possible ring cairn with central cairn, Barnatt suggests a robbed cairn due to it’s closeness to the stone wall.
Tricky to find, wouldn’t like to say whether it’s worth the fight through heather and peat bogs.......but hey it’s there.
OK so this ring cairn is hard to find and when you do..... it’s a bit of a let down, just a ring of slightly higher than the rest heather. But the views are outrageous. With Win Hill, framed by Lose Hill and Mam Tor in the west and the Derwent Valley and Crook Hill to the north.
If there were stones remaining here......it would certainly be one the Peaks best sites.
A small cairn 6m in diameter, and may be 1m high surrounded by 5 standing stones, 2 of which lean badly. A bit of confusion as to what exactly the site is.....kerbed cairn or in-filled stone circle.
A real pain to find, and the moor is wet for much of the year round.
A large grass covered rubble ring, approximately 18x15m in diameter. The width of the bank varies between 1m & 5m.
There is a large gap to the north. It may be a ring cairn, although J.Barnatt suggests with it laying next to wall stone quarries it may be a robbed cairn.
From the standing stone on Smelting Hill, follow the wall along until you reach a large disturbed barrow. Over the wall here, go to the far side of the field. The ring/robbed cairn is near the edge between 2 small walling quarries.
Excellent views.....nothing really to see of the cairn.
At last!........
After what must be double figure attempts, both singily and combined. The mighty Neil and I finally found this ring cairn. To say we’ve missed it so many times.... it’s quite an impressive site.
The stones that make up the cairn are alot bigger than any of the other Derbys’ ring cairns, some of the stones looked as if at one time they may have stood (thats only going on the shape of ‘em).
Right on the banks of a stream. Stone free interior and with a definite South facing entrance.
On a clear day the Beech trees at Minninglow are easy to spot on the distant Southerly horizon.
A bit of a strange one. The smaller stones that could be part of a circle are mainly buried in clumps of heather, but they could form a circle....I guess.
J.Barnatt has the circle down to a fortuitous arrangement of stones.
Sadly the rocking stone marked on the late 1800’s O.S maps is no longer rocking. A familiar tale in Derbyshire.
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09/05.
I had a feeling for sometime that the stone features mentioned by Flopsypete to the south of the circle were associated with a medieval farm/settlement.
Remembering to check them out last time I was up there.....I’m pretty certain that they relate this settlement. The structures, marked in places by upright stones, are in fact the remains of a long house, a smaller building and an enclosure wall.
Not prehistoric but an interesting spot all the same.
There are similar but more ruinous structures over the road in the Sheffield Plantation on the Longshaw Estate.
Harboro’ Rocks are an impressive outcrop of dolomitic limestone.
At the top of the rocks between the trig point and the rock ‘chair’ there used to be a chambered cairn, now sadly destroyed. Altho’ inspecting the ground shows what maybe traces of a rim. The cairn was thought to date to the Neolithic, and several crouched skeletons were found in the chamber.
In the early Iron age the site was used, and some bumps in the terraces on the eastern side are thought to be housing platforms.
Access is easy, there’s room to park near the Hopton Works.
The views from the top have got to be seen, and there’s a few strange shaped natural menhirs dotted around the place. And caves to explore on the lower terraces.
Top place.
The fort at Fin Cop is an easy walk from the Monsal Dale Hotel, with some excellent views of Monsal Dale below on the trek out.
The fort is defended to the South and East by banks and ditches and to the North and West by the steep sides of Monsal Dale. At the Eastern side, the side you approach from, double banks and ditches are still impressive, an entrance is central to this part of the defences, which carry on over the wall in the form of a single bank.
The views from the top are unreal with Five Wells in the West, Kinder Scout just visible in the North and Beeley Moor quite close in the South-East(ish).
Monsal is one of the best places to watch a Derbyshire sunset without doubt.
An added attraction this time of the year are the banks of the fort covered in Mountain Pansies and ‘Early Purple’ Orchids.
As in Holy’s misc. post, the site has been sometimes referred to as a stone circle......I wonder if this is down to the 1:6250 O.S map where it’s marked as a “circle of stones”.
The cairn has recently been cleared of the Silver Birch that were growing on it’s banks. Apart from some compass work, the stacks of logs are among one of the few distinguishing things to look for when trying to find the ring cairn.
The rubble ring that is left is not very well defined but can be over 10ft wide in places.
The path doesn’t strictly go to the stone circle, so it’s best to keep to the wall side.
I reckon the SW stone has around 5 cup marks on it 3 on the outward face and 2 on the inward. The ones on the inward are very worn but one is easy enough to find. The most prominent ones on the outward facing, one slightly worn.
You’ve gotta be a hardcore hillfort fan to visit Markland Grips as what’s visible on the ground is a bit of a let down.
Kinda tongue shaped the fort is protected on two sides by ravines; Hollinhill Grips and Markland Grips the west side by ramparts and ditches. The whole place is overgrown a hedge grows along the top of the banking, and the ditch is near impossible to find.
The entrance in the centre is thought to belong to the fort.
The clearest part of the earthworks is on the otherside of the railway banking, where the ending of three ramparts can be seen.
Access is easy down a dismantled railway....
Access to the fort is easy enough. Just off the A6097 is a minor road, the footpath that leads up to the fort is well signposted from here, and there’s room to get a car off the road.
The fort encloses roughly a hectare. Entrances can be seen in the NorthWest and East.
The forts defences are still in good nick, a triple bank and ditch to the East altho’ this side is covered in trees, the size of the the defences is impressive,
on the West a bank ditch and counterscarp.
The site sits behind two large mounds, the one nearest the entrance, is called Robin Hoods Pot and at over 6m high is thought to be a barrow.( See Rhiannons post Robin Hood’s Pot )
A top place.
Bingham henge is sadly no longer with us.........
Well no actually it is.
It’s just been wrapped in a 1m layer of clay (for it’s own protection) and carefully placed under an industrial estates car park.
The really sad bit is...... I’m visiting industrial estate car parks..........
The henge is tucked away behind the petrol station in Gunthorpe Bridge, on private land, so a bit of gate hopping is in order.
The site is now badly silted up and eroded. A central platform can still be made out as can an entrance in the south-east. The north and western sections are silted up and a drain cuts thrugh the western part, using the henges ditch at one point.
A nice enough place, and worth a look if you’re in the area.
Standing stumps would be a more appropriate description of this site, I must admit I was a bit let down. For some reason the name had got me going.....
3 barely visible stumps, one less so than the others.
I don’t know if the old O.S map I have has them in the wrong place, it just didn’t seem to fit..... A guy who lived in a house at the top of the drive had seen me hanging around, became suspicious and asked me what I was up to. He showed me the stumps, and assured me they were what I was looking for after seeing the look on my face.
Disappointed I left with....with not even a photo.
The bog at the bottom of the hill Elderford mentions is there just about the year round and on my visit to the stones this year, last years stepping stones had just about sunk in the mud.
An excellent site, it’s small size gets me everytime.
Try and catch a sunrise at the stones if you can, you won’t be disappointed.
Although Caer Leb is a bit eroded and silted up it’s still worth a look. A roughly square site with a lone stone stump just off centre.
I’ve read that Caer Leb was first thought to be a Medieval moated site but after excavations Roman coins were found so it was then attributed to them instead. Now after excavations at a similar site at Llansadwrn have shown it to be 2nd Century BC, Caer Leb is now thought to be originally Iron Age, and used at various times through the centuries.
Don’t you just hate it when you can’t get close up to something. I don’t mind a bit of trespass once in a while, but heavy duty barb wire fencing kept me out.
From a distance the stone looked to be over 7ft tall and quite impressive.
Oh.......
This can look so right.
So how can it look so wrong at the same time?
I was lacking a bit of time so I didn’t really get to have a proper look for this site. But on the same side of the A5 as this burial chamber a field or two closer to Bryngwran there is a small stone quite high in the fields.
A great site, although I’m a bit unsure of the restoration techniques on Anglesey, an overuse of bricks me thinks. But it’s one of the sites that they can be easily ignored.
There is a small stone further up the road from the chambers in the opposite direction to Ty Mawr approx.SH259801, it stands on a small mound with a few smaller loose stones around it. Not O.S marked, so it may be nothing.
As Broen says try and make time to see the hut circles. It’s a good starting place to walk up to the Caer y Tawr hillfort.
The site is well signposted from the road to the South Stack. There are around 20 ‘huts’ left to be seen at the foot of Holyhead Mountain dating back to the Iron Age.
Some of the huts look to have stone benches and bowls.
The view from the stones to Holyhead Mountain is amazing, it would be worth the journey just for that alone. Add to that a pair of great looking thin stones and it’s easy to spend hours up there.
The fence has now thankfully gone.
Only the Aluminium Plant to go......
You can see this stone from a fair distance, easily 10ft tall and in my opinion one of Anglesey’s best.
No trip to Anglesey seems complete without paying the stones at Pen-yr-Orsedd a visit.
This one is easily seen from the road, and is very tall and wafer thin. With one side often covered in cowshit, and farm machinery laying around it.
‘Viewed over a wall’? Get yourself over the gate IronMan. Then again I was there at 6.30am so everything was quiet.......
The chamber’s a funny old jumble of stones, now inhabited by lambs.
Easy access over a stile at the end of a cul-de-sac in Llanfechell.
Pity about the pylons and overhead lines but they take nowt away from this great stone.
It’s only a short walk up from the road at the SW end of the LLyn Alaw reservoir to the standing stone at Bod Deiniol.
A big stone over 6ft high and getting on for 6ft across.
Holy Island Mountain is visible on the horizon in the West(ish)
This great looking stone was sporting a rather naff pentagram, carved on it’s road side face.
I saw the same looking carving on one of the stones at Mein Hirion. They both looked to be carved into the lichen rather than the stone. It’s still bollocks tho’.....
This a great place to watch the sun go down. I’ve been here before in the daytime. But the place takes on a different atmosphere in the evening with the stones turning all shades of orange.
A bit tricky to find even though it’s in Brynsiencyn itself and it ain’t that bigga place it has to be said.
Although the chambers ruined now, the capstone is still impressive and rests on two stones, I wouldn’t know if the stones have fallen or were just squat anyway.
Armed with machetes this time to cut through the rhodadendruns, we came across a tunnnel already cut through them, hands and knees stuff for about 50yds through the thick branches.....at the end of the tunnel there stands the Turning Stone. Sadly no longer rocking....looking at it I don’t see how it ever did....but it’s still a great looking lump of rock.
The ‘tunnels’ go all the way along Overton Tor, sometimes only a few inches from the edge....and it’s along way down. But there was no sign of Robin Hoods Mark.
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Over the last few years I’ve recovered a handful of waste flint flakes in the fields close to Cocking Tor.
Sharp Low hasn’t survived as well as some of the other barrows around Tissington, and now it’s becoming a bit of a builders yard with piles of walling stone laying around.
It’s a good vantage point to see the other barrows in the area tho’ with Moat Low,Boars Low and Gorsey Low easy to spot.
Right next to a path that runs from Gag Lane Barn SK158531
A decent enough bowl barrow, the Beech trees that grow on the barrow making its location very easy to spot from quite a distance.
Access is easy enough along a path from Moatlow Farm, room to squeeze a car off the road near the path and farm.
J.Barnatt suggested in his 1990 book that these two sites were possibly robbed/ring cairns. Although it is now thought the circular rubble rings are probably hut circles. The rest of the features suggest the area was used in the Bronze Age for settlement and agriculture.
Clearance cairns and linear field walls are also quite visible, amongst the tufty grass. Especially on the Sheepwash Bank site.
The sites lay next to each other on two spurs of land below Stanage Edge.
(Dennis SK228840 & Sheepwash SK230841)
Stoney Low is now just a large oval rim, after being robbed for stone in the 19th century.
There are still a few large stones that were possibly something to do with chambers/cists, inside the rim.
In the 19th century Bateman saw a cist as the stone was being robbed, but no plans were made of the mound.
The reason to see Stoney Low now is because of it’s location.... looking West there are two rocky limestone ridges. Framed between them is Minninglow.
Stoney Low gives the best view of the Rockhurst long barrow. On the left knoll the barrow appears as 2 small round barrows.
Another sad aspect of Stoney Low is.... is the disappearance of two stone circles that one stood to the East of the mound. One 39ft across with stones of arond 2 ft tall. A few feet from this was a smaller circle.
Galley Low is in great shape and still a good height, not the usual ploughed Derbyshire barrow you come to expect; especially with it being located in farmland
Bateman made 3 visits here between 1843-44, near the head of a skeleton he found a food vessel and bone dagger.
The barrow is well known because of the grave goods Bateman unearthed. Amongst them was a finely crafted necklace of gold. The necklace was part of a secondary burial that took place the 7th Century.
Last dug in the 1950’s.. so thinking about.. it is in surprisingly good shape, compared to most of the barrows surrounding the hill of Minninglow.
Harthill Moor is a great area, with a handful of sites all within a few minutes walk of each other.
From the Neolithic(?) Cratcliff hillfort, the ancient Portway track, Bronze Age stone circle and barrows, Iron Age rings and settlements through to the Medieval hermits cave and finally the farm that’s there now.
Thousands of years worth of settlement all within view of Robin Hood’s Stride.
I’d never come across this circle in any books, so it was a surprise to see it on the NMR.
This small circle is located between the 2 rocky crags on Crook Hill. Of the 5 stones that make up the circle, only 2 remain standing ( both around 50cm tall ) the fallen ones are becoming overgrown with grass. Small patches of rubble may mean the circle was a kerb cairn.
Not far from Moscar Moor another small monument with a ring of 5 stones around a surviving mound.
Storming views with White Tor and the Salt Cellar in the East, Win Hill and Bamford Edge in the South and the crags of Crook Hill in the West.
Parking at Rough Wood car park, head back to the reservoir at the junction turn left and look for the path marked ‘Crook Hill Farm’. When you hit the open moorland just outside the farm, head NW(ish) off the path. The 2 standing stones are easy to spot.
Excellent.
Thought to date from the Iron Age. A roughly circular enclosure, a 5m wide rock cut ditch surrounds the site. Natural outcrops of stone are used in the construction as additional boundaries.
Building platforms have been identified within the enclosure.
A better view of the ‘enclosure’ can be seen from Robin Hood’s Stride.
I’ve been up on Overton Tor looking for the Turning Stone on and off for a while now.
One of a pair of rocking stones, the other was known as ‘Robin Hoods Mark’, which was 26ft round and weighed 14 tons. I’ve never come across a size for the Turning St’.
If they are still rocking, they may be somewhere amongst the mass of Rhododendruns, that run along the edge of the tor. There’s just no way thru’ them.
The rock carvings at Ashover school are about 1mile away.
Under the bracken and trees are 2 arcs of low bank. Approx. 20x19m in diameter.
Marsden in 1977 reckoned it was a ring cairn with central cairn.
Barnatt in 1989 said it was upcast from robbing the SE side of a small cairn.
Marked as an Enclosure on O.S maps.
This site is easy to get to being between the path and the ring at Beeley Central.
There have been several suggestions as to what it could be....A cairn with a surrounding bank. A ring cairn that had a cairn built into its centre. Or a well robbed round barrow.
The cairn is around 1m high about 15m in diameter. Surrounding the cairn is a low bank, visible really only in the SW.
J.Barnatt has this down to be a robbed cairn rather than a ring cairn.
It’s quite large still even tho’ it’s been damaged in the NE. By the side of the path and marked ‘enclosure’ on some O.S maps.
Sorting out all the ring cairns is a confusing business on Beeley Moor with it’s NE & NW Warrens, the Souths, the Centrals and more Warrens.
This rubble ring could be a robbed or ring cairn or maybe even a house.
It’s around 8m in diameter and about 20ft from the more visible Beeley North (South 2).
Still tricky to spot as it’s now only a slight raise in the heather.
It’s taken me ages to find this scrubby looking Ring Cairn.
It’s roughly 9x8m in diameter and the bank is built of turf and stones, roughly 30-40cm in height.
If your in the area it’s not far from the road, but I wouldn’t make a special journey to see it.
If you’re using the Wraggs Quarry route to get to the Raven Tor Triple Cairn. This cairn is worth finding, just on the edge of the workings.
The disturbed cairn has a visible cist, made up of 5(?) vertical slabs, rectangular in shape. There looks to be a capstone south of the cist.
Not a bad site despite it closeness to the quarrying, and probably one of the better preserved cists of the 12 or so that are visible in the Peak.