When I’ve visited Castlerigg in the past it has usually been in the late afternoon, evening or at night time. This is the first time I’d been in the morning and despite the steady trickle of visitors who only stayed for a couple of minutes and then left, I mostly had the place to myself. Something wasn’t right though. Maybe it was the nasty wind whipping grit and soil in my eyes and blowing my tripod over. Maybe the morning sun lit the stones differently – the evening sun gives them a deep rich glow. Maybe it was because I had a list of other sites that I wanted to get round, and maybe it was because I couldn’t find the elusive spiral carving – I had the right stone but I only found out later I was looking on the wrong side – the spiral faces into the circle.
It was the first time that Castlerigg had left me unmoved. Next time I’ll be back in the evening.
Chris Collyer
I only found 2 of these cairns (known as Three Pow Raise) as I it was starting to get late and I had a long walk back to the car. The one in the picture is about 2 metres across and half a metre deep and is at NY48282186
I really liked the Cockpit, it was the main reason why I visited Moor Divock and was definitely well worth it. As you walk over the moor from the southeast the small stones of this 30 metre wide circle can be seen from a fair distance on a slightly raised plateau of land. How many stones? I read somewhere that there are 75, I tried counting them but got distracted by the sun as it began to descend between a gap in the stones to the west – are the stones missing here or was this an entrance? There is another possible entrance to the northeast.
The Cockpit is supposed to consist of a pair of concentric rings, in most parts it appears as a single ring of stones although there is a nice double run on the northwestern side. In my notes I had written ‘very nice’ and on a warm, still, spring evening it certainly was.
This is a beauty, a large barrow about 20 metres wide, still over a metres high and containing a open stone slab lined cist. This grave is a metre long and about half a metre wide and deep. James Dyer says it was found to contain a contracted skeleton.
As with other sites on the moor, there are still many of the original stones and small boulders scattered around.
This cairn is badly damaged but still has 1 medium sized stone and 2 smaller stones standing with several other boulders scattered around. The raised area of earth and rock would suggest that it was originally about 6 metres wide with the main area of stones being about 3 metres across.
Indeed a nice little circle of stones. There are 10 or 11 stones, the tallest around half a metre high, that form the 4 metre diameter circle of this ring cairn with many smaller cobbles still scattered around about and in the centre, which has been cleared down about a half metre. Popular with sheep.
As usual I find myself agreeing with Ironman, I had expected the stone to be taller. In Jacquetta Hawkes guide to British Archaeology the Cop Stone looks huge but standing next to it, it is still a respectable 120cm tall. Between it and Moor Divock South are a pair of standing stones about 2 metres apart and the tallest being about a metre high. If they form part of alignment then it is northwest-southeast and points roughly in the direction of The Cockpit
Looking at the OS Map, I was expecting Moor Divock to be a wild and untamed place but it turned out to be fairly flat and easy walking country covered with mainly grasses and patches of low heather and dead bracken. The track up from Pooley Bridge looked to be a bit on the steep side so I opted for the road from Helton and parked on the wide verge near The Cop, from here a track leads northwest past several cairns as the view steadily opens out with Heughscar Hill to your right and the looming hills of Barton Fell to your left. Certainly a nice place for an early evening stroll.
Probably the most famous carved rock on the moor, the Swastika Stone is generally considered to be later than the other carvings here and to date from the Iron Age. If you plan to visit the site it is well worth parking at the bottom of Heber’s Ghyll and walking up through the woods – this is a picturesque route that snakes up the steep hillside and criss-crosses Black Beck via several wooden footbridges. Once you get to the top a gate leads through a wall and onto the moor. Turn right and you should soon see the iron railings that surround the rock a few hundred metres ahead. Once you get there don’t overlook the actual carving – the one nearest to you is a Victorian copy, the original is just beyond it and is now very faint. Like several other sites on the moor there are some fantastic views across Wharfdale, especially to the northwest along the river valley.
This flat carved stone sits on the edge of a small outcrop of rock above Hardwick Holes and close to the main track that leads east-west across the northern part of Rombalds Moor before the land drops away to Addingham Moorside and the River Wharf valley beyond. The carvings on this slab consist of over 30 cups, some of which have rings with two of them having multiple rings. There are also several grooves, one encloses a pair of cups.
It looks like someone has recently scoured part of the main carving making it difficult to see, as well as possibly damaging it.
This carving is situated on the east side of Snowdon Carr just before a fieldwall. A low flattish boulder has around 18 cup marks with 11 of them linked with grooves to a central ‘stem’ resembling a leaf or a tree, hence the stones name, with other interlinking grooves around parts of the design.
Although this is quite a long rock, the carving are confined to the eastern end (there are a couple of simple cups on the western end), This could have be due to the view looking in this direction over the Washburn valley with the river curving away to the left and right, and the hill of Norwood Edge straight ahead. This ancient view has been altered in modern times with Swinsty Reservoir now to the left with Menwith Hill’s golfballs beyond it, and a large radio mast on top of Norwood Edge.
GPS Ref – SE17980, 51167
On the northern side of Snowdon Carr and a couple of hundred metres from the rocky edge of Snowdon Crags is this strange carving that can be said to resemble a skull although it reminded me more of Munch’s ‘The Scream’. It consists of an upside down triangle of cup marks with a smaller cup close to the middle. These three larger cups are surrounded by interlinking rings with form the shape of the face, the top 2 cups forming the eyes, the bottom one the mouth and the middle one a nose.
There are several other cup marked rocks close by in a damaged cairn field, one has four deep cups, while another has a large basin – I’m not sure if this is a natural feature or man made
GPS Ref SE17796, 51239
This is an area of rough heather covered moorland northeast of Ilkley and northwest of Otley. It has several carved rocks (about 2 dozen), but due to the undergrowth and lack of tracks they can be difficult to find. One particular carving somewhere near SE167506 consists of a human figure with an arch over its head, which could be interpreted as either a shaman, a hunter with a bow, or some kind of deity. Unfortunately due to some over inquisitive sheep I was unable to find the carving.
If you venture onto the moor, it is worth taking the one track that does exist that leads from a gate north of the carpark on Askwith Moor Road, to a triangulation point at Shooting House Hill where there is a spectacular 360 degree view of this whole area between the Wharf and the Washburn.
There’s no missing this landmark stone as it can be seen from a great distance across the moor standing above a wall that runs south, up from Intake Beck, past Silver Wells Cottage before bearing to the west and continuing to Silver Wells itself. Probably the easiest way to get to it is to walk up Keighley Road until a track leads off to the west and almost directly to the stone.
For such a prominent rock it has only a few possible cup marks, as do 2 of the large rocks next to it that make up part of the wall. It is possible that as the large flat side of this stone faces to the north across Ilkley and does not face the sun as the Badger stone does, that it was not deemed suitable for use as a carving surface by the inhabitants of the moor.
Some interesting sightlines include the Badger Stone,(east-south-east), Willy Hall’s Wood (east) and Weary Hill (north-east)..
This one is a bit of a mystery. Julian mentions it, as do several other sources but they give no details, while Burl ignores it and I have never seen any pictures of it or any solid information about it. While I was at the Badger Stone chatting to a knowledgeable local I asked him about this site – his opinion was that it is a fake, the stones having been placed there recently by persons unknown and as this particular area was formerly mined for rock there would have been plenty of stones lying about for them to choose from. The situation is also confused by the remains of some kind of (recent?) settlement building that seems to cut right through the circle, as well as the whole site being very overgrown.
This site is fairly easy to find if you follow the course of Backstone Beck after it crosses a track leading south-west from the Cow and Calf, the settlement is on the east of the beck.
It consists of 2 possible hut circles at the south end that have been somewhat restored and part of a curved low rubble wall that has also been restored (Ilkley Archaeology Group 1982-87). A suggested date for the earliest use of the site is around 3000BC, with the hut circles dated much later at somewhere between 800 and 500BC
There are also said to be 3 carved rocks within the enclosure but as I was short of time that day I didn’t have the time to find them.
Not sure what the name of this one might be, or even if it has a name. To get to it follow the track north from the Badger Stone a short distance until you reach an east-west track that crosses it. Turn right and walk for a short distance looking to your right for a stone partly topped with white lichen.
Because of the light it was hard to make out the carvings, but they seem to consist of a cup with four or five concentric rings. Coming from the right hand side of this motif there appeared to be several wavy lines, making the whole pattern look like a medieval drawing of a comet.
My GPS reading was SE11147,46138
SE10617, 46591
This medium sized toblerone chunk of rock is low to the ground and partly overgrown but as Stubob says it is fairly easy to spot if you know where you’re looking. It is quite badly worn but about a dozen cups are still clearly visible, four of them have rings, two of these having grooves running from the rings.
If you haven’t visited this part of the Moor before, don’t be fooled by the map into thinking that Keighley road is in fact a road. At the turn for Silver Well Cottage it is blocked for traffic and any anyway it soon deteriorates into a gravel track suitable only for four wheel drive vehicles. No doubt Sir Mortimer Wheeler would have given it short shrift though!
Well, 1 week and 2 hours after my first visit I was back again at the Badger Stone, it the same sunny spring weather but those couple of hours made a world of difference. What before was a grey featureless stone had been transformed by the sun sinking slowly in the West into a miniature Uluru/Ayers Rock, a beautiful golden brown mound with the carvings now throw into sharp relief by the near horizontal early evening sunlight. As I had rushed over the moor from Weary Hill I had worried that the sun was getting too low and I would miss the carvings for a second time – I needn’t have worried, the south-west face of the Badger Stone was lit up like a static firework display – cups, rings, gutters, strange grooves and the incomplete swastika were all clearly visible.
As I was making my way over from Weary Hill, a short distance from it I was checking the map to make sure I was heading in the right directing when I looked up and realised the Badger Stone was clearly visible on the horizon half a mile away, although it dipped in and out of view and was out of sight from as little as 100 metres away. It started me wondering about the intervisibility between the various carved stones on the moor – from the Badger stone I could see Willy Hall’s Wood and the positions of the Neb Stone and Weary Hill. Which other stones could be seen and if there might be any significance in these sightlines is something I’ll have to look into next time, it may help to explain why some non-descript stones seem to be profusely carved while others that would seem to be prime candidates for decoration have no carvings at all.
SE13706,39619
To find this stone take the track that leads south from Dobrudden Farm towards a wall in the distance. When you reach it walk down its right hand side and past an entrance. From here head out diagonally, the stone is fairly visible, but when I was there about a quarter of it was covered with invading undergrowth.
The triangular stone is covered with a complex series of cups (about 50), rings and grooves. One of the most striking things about the stone is the views – down past Shipley Glen and over to Bingley and Saltaire
SE13736,40227 I had difficulty finding this stone even though it is close to a track and a bell pit, as it is fairly small and lower than the surrounding grass. It has around a dozen cups on its top surface, and also has a line of cups along it’s edge
It took me a while to find this one, which lays at SE13768,39899 near a bell pit south-east of the park and fairly close to a track. It has around 25 cups scattered over it with carvings on the west and north side. The first consists of 3 linked cups with an oval groove running around them – it reminded me of ET’s face! The second is a complex and confusing pattern that includes 6 cups, some with rings, some joined, and with a deep groove around it. There is also a deep groove on the southern side of the stone.
This stone is easy to find as it is propped up against the north wall of Dobrudden Farm at SE13720,40098 although exactly where it originally lay is uncertain. The top part of the stone has 8 cups, 2 of which have rings which intersect each other. The bottom half has about 16 cups, the top 3 are in a row with intersecting rings around them. 4 cups on the left have a groove running round them, and there seems to be a groove that continues around the bottom and up the right hand side of the stone. Three sets of cups are also linked.
A couple of metres to the northeast of a small flat stone which has 2 cup and rings and a pair of groves which could be natural.
Baildon Moor is Ilkley Moor’s little sister, a few miles to the south it is both smaller and flatter which certainly makes it easier on the legs. For some reason it seems particularly popular with weekenders out for a stroll and folk walking dogs, but there are around 40 or so marked rocks here, with two third of them north/north-east of Dobrudden Farm caravan park although two of the best examples are to the east and the south of the park.
There are also said to be the remains at least 2 stone circles – one at Windy Hill and one north of the road at Pennythorne Hill but don’t expect to see much, if anything. There are also several badly damaged cairns, a destroyed Bronze Age field system, and quite a few recent bell pits.
Parking is easy at a free carpark north of Bingley Road where there are the remains of ‘Coll’s Burial Mound’ ring cairn, from here walk a short distance west to a track that leads uphill and south to Dobrudden Farm. Many of the stones lie close to this track. In Dyers ‘Discovering Prehistoric England’ he mentions 4 prominent stones and I’ve added these as separate sites and used his numbering system as an aid for those who have the book.
The Barmishaw stone has some of Ilkley’s speciality carvings, the so called ‘ladders’. The patterns on the stone can be difficult to make out but there are said to be 6 of these ladder forms, as well as 24 cups, 9 of which have rings.
To find the stone, walk north from the Badger Stone, continue past the east-west track and continue roughly in the direction of the woods for 2 or 3 minutes. Although it is flat and only very low, the stone is a reasonable size and can be seen to the right in a clearing in the undergrowth.
Like Ironman, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by the Badger stone, this being my first visit. It was smaller than I had pictured it and due to the position of the sun the famous carvings were very difficult to make out and even more difficult to photograph. I thought the wooden bench next to it detracted from it as well – somehow it forces the modern world on the site – in the hour I was there, apart from a knowledgeable local I met, only 2 people came past on the track.
Definitely a stone to come back to when a more favourable light can do it justice.
This site is fairly straightforward to get to, although not necessarily easy. There is plenty of parking space at White Wells carpark – walk to the old pump house and then head due south uphill keeping the white building of the old bathhouse to your left and head towards the waterfall. Once you get there is a very steep climb up beside the small falls (there may well be easier routes round the side) that leads to the outcrop of land the forms the north end of Willy Hall’s Wood. This is the place that Gyrus mentions on the main Rombald’s Moor page – it is indeed a wonderful place and has an air of ‘sacred grove’ about it. Continue south through the trees and just before they end you will find the large tilted stone with carvings across its southern face, these consist of about 17 cups, some of which have rings and some with interconnecting grooves. Just beyond the carved rock is another boulder that has three large saucer shaped indentations – I thought they may have been man-made but found out later from a knowledgeable local that he believed they were natural.
When I looked at my photo’s, the sunlight had caused the carvings to be almost invisible, but I noticed that the trees, stone and landscape seemed to be at chaotic angles – it wasn’t just my poor photography, this place is really like that.
It is easy to see how this rock got it’s name. A medium size stone with the top part covered in cups – nearly 50 of them, that does indeed resemble a pepperpot. On a lower part of the rock there are a further 17 cups.
I can’t give exact directions as I had cut across the hillside from Willy Hall’s Wood, but it is about 20 paces to the right of a well used track that leads uphill southeast from close to White Wells towards a small wood. There is another stone on the other side of the track that has about half a dozen faint cups.
There is very little to see on this site now, but Dyer includes it in Discovering Prehistoric England, Ann Woodward covers it in her book, and Julian flags it as standing next to a presumed Neolithic trackway in his Gypsey Race map, so I’ll include it as well although it is probably for anoraks only.
If you stand at the bend in the road with the field boundary in front of you the long barrow is hard to make out in the field to the right and there are the low remains of a bowl barrow between it and the road which confuses things. To the left of the boundary there are a couple of low round barrows recorded by Canon Greenwell but unexcavated.
The long barrow is around 50 metres long and 13 metres wide oriented east-west and badly ploughed down. The north and south flanking ditches are completely filled. The barrow has been excavated twice – by Greenwell in 1865 and Manby in 1958 and between them they found 3 burials, a collection of bones and remains of cremations, sherds from pots and flint fragments. The mortuary structure was trapezoidal with a concave wooden palisade at the east end, the whole thing being covered with an earth and chalk mound before being fired – creating a crematoria with temperatures estimated to have reached nearly 1200 centigrade. Radiocarbon tests from the site suggest a date of around 3000BC.
Info-
English Heritage
Ann Woodward – British Barrows
Dyer – Discovering Prehistoric England
Sharp(e) Howe itself is a nice barrow in a reasonably well preserved state despite its flanking of trees. When I visited in September 2002 there was a large piece of agricultural equipment left next to it, in Feb 2003 it had become the storage place for bails of straw – it seems to me the barrow is lucky to have survived at all. Canon Greenwell writing in 1890 says that the barrow originally had a ‘conical form’, the top 6 feet having been removed ‘many years ago, but within living memory’.
I’m not sure about the state of the other mounds in this group although one at TA 051770 is still stands around a foot tall.
Julian is right when he says there is nothing left to be seen of the Folkton barrow – it was only just over 2 feet tall when Canon Greenwell excavated it in the 1880’s. He is also right when he says the site is worth a visit though, not just because of the chalk drums but for the position of the barrow. As you follow the public right of way from the roadside eastwards, the landscape opens out in front of you as a huge natural crossroads between the hills. The barrow would have overlooked what could have been an important junction of 2 trading routes and it left me speculating on the possibility that there could have been some kind of stone marker at the bottom of the valley, although there is no record of one ever standing here.
A word of warning – a sign on a gate warns of a bull in the field – luckily he wasn’t there on the day I visited.
As I was short of time I only had the chance to look at three of these barrows but what corkers they are. An ancient east-west trackway across the top of Towthorpe Wold forms the modern boundary between Humberside and North Yorkshire and is the site of a narrow plantation of young conifers and 5 bowl barrows. The 3 I looked at were all large and well preserved – the largest near the B1248 is between 35-40 metres wide and 3 metres high. The next 2 are around 20 metres wide and a still respectable 2 metres tall. This is another site that I will have to return to and spend more time investigating – parking is easy on the verge just before the county boundary sign.
The name Wharram Percy is most often associated with the DMV of the same name, but a short distance to the south-west is a collection of at least a dozen round barrows. Most of these, especially the barrows on the plateau of land between Toisland Farm and Wharram Percy farm, have been ploughed away but one survives as a slight bump next to a field boundary that leads north from SE837633. Others are marked on the OS Map running in a roughly east-west line to the north of the crest of Birdsall Brow but as this is private land (?) and someone was shooting game nearby I was reluctant to venture further to investigate. I did however get a picture of what is marked as a barrow as SE835637 although I’m not sure if the raised land it stands on is natural or man-made. There are some spectacular views from the crest of the Brow to the north – those Bronze Age people certainly knew how to site their cemeteries – and the whole area could do with some further investigation.
You can stand at Hanging Grimston and look around you at three and a half thousand years of prehistoric history. There’s the long barrow, the earth works, the round barrows and finally the Roman road. Add to this the probable ancient trackway under the road and you could go back even further.
The long barrow is badly ploughed, standing less than a metre high and doesn’t look like it will last too many more years, many of the round barrows are hard to make out as well although one to the north of the group is still in good condition. What still remains however are the stunning views to the west as the land drops away dramatically down Open Dale and out to the Derwent valley. These views must have been all-important to the people who farmed the area over this vast timespan.
Not much to see at this site anymore, most of the barrows are long gone – indeed while I was there a tractor was doing it’s business in the fields. There are two reasonably well preserved bowl barrows behind some farm buildings though, one is around 40m in diameter and about a metre and a half high and stands on the highest point of Acklam Wold. Close by, the other barrow is about half the size and height and now has a triangulation pillar on top of it.
The site is probably one for barrow anoraks only but there are some fantastic views just a little further on. Following the road to Acklam the land drops away to reveal Leavening Brow to the northwest and views to the Derwent in the west.
Just to echo Pure Joy’s notes, I tried to visit the site a few years ago and could find no trace of any footpath either. As it was nearing the end of the day and I had a friend and her two kids in tow it didn’t seem fair dragging them over the hillside to see ‘some more old stones’. I think they had enough of stones that day to last them a lifetime.
Then the same thing happened to us as PJ – we got lost on the roads too...
The most plough damaged of the three henges, but the bank is still in reasonable condition as is the northwest entrance. The henge now stands in its own fenced and wired enclosure and is an easy walk across grassland and past a ploughed barrow, from the road beside the central henge.
This reminds me a lot of Mayburgh henge, it’s in a similar state of disrepair and has the same air of abandonment. The entrances are still well defined but the bank is badly damaged and the internal ditch has just about gone. Apparently it is thought that the banks of this henge and its two siblings were covered in gypsum crystals, echoing the chalk earthworks of the south of England. The henge also stands over an earlier mile long cursus which ran in a northeast to southwest direction and later more than 2 dozen round barrows were constructed in this area, so it was obviously an important place for some considerable length of time.
Have to agree with Fitz about this henge, while the centre and south henges are derelict and abandoned this one is alive and well, even in the depths of winter and with a frosting of snow. The bank is huge, as is the berm (does my berm look big in this?) and the 2 entrances to the northwest and southeast are both clearly defined and lead over the deep ditch to the centre. Must be a wonderful place in the summertime.
This is a nice round cairn that is a fair size and still in reasonable condition despite having the centre dug out. Finding it is a bit tricky, travel southeast from the Cow and Calf car park and take the path that follows the edge of Green Crag Slack for about a mile. To your right you should be able to see a shed on the crest of the hill about half a mile away and halfway between you and it should be the pile of boulders of the cairn.
GPS Reading SE1383045197
This is a badly damaged cairn that has been heavily dug into and now has various bits of rubbish dumped into it There is a large stone that could be a boundary marker or milestone (I couldn’t read the inscription) that has been pitched into the middle of it and it also has what could be grouse buts built on one side although these could just be rocks thrown out from the inside. Just to the southeast there is another smaller but just as badly robbed cairn.
Directions are similar to those for the Grubstones – head in a southerly direction across the moor from the Cow and Calf carpark until you see a shed on a hillside ahead. When you get to this turn left along the track and walk for about 5 minutes or so until you pass the Lower Lanshaw damn on your left. The cairn should now be on your right hand side, not far from the track.
GPS – SE1406244550
Horncliffe circle is a strange beast and a real bugger to find. In late September 2002 it was badly overgrown with bracken and frequented only by sheep and looked like nobody had been there for a long time. It was so overgrown that I had to walk around it for several minutes trying to figure out if the jumble of rocks was indeed the circle of stones I had seen in a picture (see link). It is hard to work out exactly what the outer ring of stones and the central square stone setting were, many stones are set side by side, in other places stones are missing. It could be that outer stones were the kerb for a central cairn, although I read somewhere that the whole thing may be some kind of iron age settlement building.
Directions to the circle are similar to the Grubstones – set off southwards from the Cow and Calf car-park until you see a hut in the distance. Head towards this, but veer off to the rock outcrop about 20-30 metres to the north. From here a decent track leads south past several grouse-shooting outposts to the right with a fence to your left. After about 20 minutes you will see a dip in the track and a stream a short distance ahead of you. To your left will be an old stone by the fence with the name Thos. Pulleyn engraved on it. From this point you should see a patch of bracken about 30 metres beyond the fence – the stones are hidden deep in this bracken. Walking time from the Cow and Calf if about an hour by the most direct tracks.
GPS Reading SE1333943532
Known as Grubstones circle, it is very unlikely that it is a stone circle in the traditional sense. More likely it is a ring cairn or the kerb of a round cairn, although there are a couple of largish fallen stones in the centre there is very little sign of stone/rubble infill. I estimate the ring is around 20 paces across with about a dozen stones visible, others may well be hidden under a thick growth of heather.
The key to finding the ring is ‘head for the shed’ – a large wooden building that can be seen for quite a distance on the moor. Leaving the Cow and Calf car-park travel in a southwards direction by whatever paths are available, after about half a mile the shed can be seen a further half a mile to the south. Once you get there continue into the heather for a short distance – the photo should give an indication of how far.
The ring may be difficult to spot, and not much to look at when you get there but it is peaceful and sitting in the dip in the centre gives some welcome relief from the ever present wind of the moor.
GPS reading SE1365044727
Whereas Normanton Down is a vast sprawling complex of barrows, Winterbourne Stoke is much smaller and more compact. Park in the lay-by on the A303 that is just east of the roundabout junction with the A360 and wander through the trees to the barrows. The first large bell barrow after the woods gives a good vantage point of the western half of the site which include a nice pair of disc barrows as well as bowl, bell, pond and saucer barrows. Right next to the roundabout is a well preserved long barrow aligned along a northeast – southwest axis, most of the rest of the barrows follow this northeast axis.
Not a lot to see, that’s for sure – but hugely important nonetheless. The best time to see the white blobs that represent the post holes is early in the morning, not sure what time the carpark opens, but I got there before 9.30am when the ‘henge opens for business. Just a quarter of an hour later and you risk getting run over by tourist coaches. The place shuts at 6.00pm(?), after that you’ll have to ask the security guard nicely – don’t know if he will let you wander round ‘his’ carpark though…
Visited 2nd Sept 2002-09-09
A nice set of barrows between Stonehenge and the roundabout that leads off to Durrington and Woodhenge. The first time travelling west I completely missed them, then on the way back east they loomed out of the trees to the left of the road causing me to pull up sharply (not recommended on this road!). The barrows extend northwards as far as The Avenue while the Old Kings barrows continue on the other side of it.
While I was there I met a couple with their kids looking for a good place to watch the sun go down beyond ‘thee stones’. Hope they enjoyed it, I know I did.
Just a short distance from the hustle and bustle of Stonehenge is the barrow cemetery of Normanton down. Although you can see the stones and the tourists in the distance, if you come here you’ll probably have the place to yourself – the only other person I saw was looking for a crop circle and the only thing to spoil the peace and quiet was the distant hum of military transport planes.
As for the barrows, there’s long barrows, bowl, bell, disc and saucer barrows including the famous Bush Barrow excavated in 1808 by Sir Richard Colt Hoare.
Rollright was one of the first circles I visited back in the early ‘90s, and the King Stone was the first time I saw some of the strange offerings that get left at these places.
Hanging from a nearby tree/bush was a silver spraypainted piece of toast.
Yeah, go figure....
Burl says this is an 11 metre embanked circle or ring cairn, he also calls it Froggatt Edge, which is what I’ve always known it as.
As Holy says, it is bypassed by most of the walkers on the nearby track, who tend to look at you as if you are loitering with some kind of malicious intent.
Just across the road from St. Margaret’s church in Ilkley in an iron fenced enclosure are 3 cup and ring marked rocks know as the Panorama Stone. Originally the stone stood less than a mile away to the west around SE105470 but it was found to be ‘in the way’ of the development of 19th century Ilkley and was cut into 4 pieces, 3 of these being moved to their present positions in 1890 or 1892, depending on which account you read. Where the fourth part went I do not know.
Over the years the carvings on the rocks have badly deteriorated due to weather and vandalism and the marks shown in the web link are not easy to make out, but include cups with between 3 and 5 rings, some with connecting ladder motifs.