Chris Collyer

There’s not a lot I can add to Stu’s notes as he sums this site up nicely along with directions and parking. I will add that the walk along the A57 is by a narrow overgrown path at the side of the road so be careful, also once you’re off the road then it’s uphill all the way to the stones, about 100 metres rise in just under a kilometre. Once you reach the site the views are pretty special, to the east it’s fairly gentle and rolling while to the west the twin peaks of Crook Hill are really ‘in yer face’ in a way that is unlike any other site in the area.
So what is this ring of stones? English Heritage can’t decide whether it’s a stone circle or kerbed cairn, it certainly looks like a small stone circle and reminded me of Bamford Moor but its location seems to shout cairn. Whichever, although it’s nothing spectacular to look at I reckon it’s one of the overlooked gems of the Peak. Just keep this one to yerself.

I picked about the worst time of the year to visit this site – September and the vegetation round the stones was just mental. Set on the gently eastward sloping eastern side of the moor before it starts to descend rapidly down to the Derwent it’s interesting that these are freestanding stones and not an embanked circle though you would hardly be able to tell. The dug out cairn in the centre is crazy too, you can stand at the bottom and not see over the top in places.
EH report four standing stones with two others fallen and measuring between 25cm and just over a metre tall set in a ring measuring 13 metres in diameter and also mention that there were nine stones in total here in the 19th century. If any site was a candidate for a good clear up it would be this one, it would be quite impressive without all the bilberry and heather, mind you the health and safety people would probably fence off the central crater to stop people falling in. Ho hum.

This was a real sod to find, in the end it took three attempts and the vegetation dying back a bit before I was sure I was in the right place and could see the form of the low bank. The stones are tiny and mostly buried as has been noted but the dug out cairn is fairly easy to find if not much to look at. While rooting around in the heather I found a suspicious looking leaning slab a little further to the southeast, don’t know if it was part of a buried cairn but it certainly looked more like a standing stone than those of the circle!

I can echo most of what’s already been said about this site – it’s difficult to get to, takes a while to work out what’s here, and has some great views. I approached it northwest from the footpath to Leam where the 550 metres on the map don’t look difficult – they are. The first 400 metres are uphill through thick heather with the added complication of some fairly deep holes to watch out for. Once you’re over the top it’s down hill to the circle but even then it doesn’t really become clear until you reach it (the nearby Ministry of Works sign has now gone) and initially it’s the heather on the raised bank that gives away its form. This bank has an internal diameter of around 30 metres and once you’re in the centre of it, it seems huge with many of the stones barely visible in the vegetation although the chair stone sticks out like a sore thumb and it’s top does indeed resemble Higger Tor two and a half miles away to the northeast. There seems to be some stones missing from the western side of the circle but theres a good run of stones towards the south and southeast while the views are all to the northwest round to the northeast along the Derwent valley. Incidentally considering it’s isolated position it’s one of the busiest sites I’ve visited in the Peak District, as I approached it a bloke who was photographing the cairn wandered off, there were a couple of walkers taking a break in the circle and as I left another couple with a dog were just coming over the hill asking for directions to the stones.

These are certainly decent sized cup marks and larger than I was expecting, in fact the peppering of tennis ball sized cups across two faces and the top of the stone make it look like some giant piece of fossilised cheese. Don’t overlook the cairn though, it’s quite impressive in itself. Marked on the map as a ring cairn English Heritage record it as a flat-topped round cairn which is apparently fairly rare in this area. The jumble of stones in the middle seems to be the result of robbing with the whole structure being between 15-18 metres in size, the carved rock sits towards the outer edge of this mound with some smaller stones nearby suggesting some kind of kerb.
There are some great views from the site, Sir William Hill rises ominously just to the southeast with Hathersage Moor away to the northeast while to the northwest there’s the weird Abney Low hill and the Smelting Hill / Offerton Moor area.

I have to say the cup marks on both these stones look fairly convincing to me, the decorated upright nearby and the cup marked stone in the Wet Withens cairn demonstrates that there was certainly some tradition of carving stones in this area. I wonder if a thorough investigation of the moor would turn up more marked rocks?