fitzcoraldo

The easiest way to access this site is to park up at SE527939 and follow the footpath up onto the ridge, the Ridge runs between Parci Gill to the east and Arns Gill to the west.
Once you pass the small conifer plantation to your left you will start to notice the small cairns and low walls poking through the heather. I was quite fortunate when I visited the site as the gamekeepers had burned-back a substantial amount of heather thus exposing large amounts of the site.
There are no sheep on this part of the moor, so the only company I had was a solitary snipe who followed me around the moor singing out her shrill warning to no-one in particular that there was a stranger on the moor.
As you move up the ridge, the freqency of cairns and low walls increases until you find yourself in an area that I can only describe as ‘cairn chaos’. There are alignments everywhere -irregularly regular comes to mind. The local name for this place is ‘Stone Folds‘
My 21st century head tells me that there should be fields with cairns on the margins but this just isn’t the case here. There are wall enclosing cairns and walls leading from one cairn to another. Despite the huge efforts of creating the cairns, the ground around them remains very stoney.
I can’t make head nor tail of whats going on.
There is one well defined recto-linear ‘field’ but every thing else is chaos. My mind is flooded with questions.
Why so many cairns? over 300 of them.
Why did they create so many small cairns as opposed to a number of large cairns?
What was the purpose of the walling ?
A huge effort has gone into creating these cairns yet there are only two hut circles visible on the ridge and these are only about 10m in diameter. Did the creators of the cairnfield live here?

If the purpose of this site was for agriculture, I very much doubt that it would have been a place for growing crops, the ground is just too stoney, therefore it would have had to have been a place where animals were kept possibly a prehistoric stock yard. The ridge is known as ‘Cow Ridge’ But I’m still not convinced, the place is just TOO busy.

There have been a number of Mesolithic flints found on the western side of the ridge so this place was visited by the earliest of the North York Moors peoples. Could it be that this place is more than a mundane agricultural site?

Another reason to mooch up here is the views. To the south east you have the two great whalebacks of Hawnby Hill and Easterside Hill with the Tabular Hills beyond. To the south you have the imposing massif of Arden ( Arden – Wolves or Eagles Valley) Great Moor which terminates in the south west at Black Hambleton. To the east, west and north you have the vast expanse of the North York moors with it’s ridges and valleys stretching to the horizon.

All in all I would recommend that you check this place out. It will probably confuse the crap out of you, but there’s nowt wrong with that.

I was up at this site yesterday with Steve Grey.
It’s a nightmare to interpret.
I have searched the books and have only been able to come up with one reference to these stones (see misc).
Basically what you have is two pairs of standing stones aligned to the cardinal points. Steve has some very credible theories as to how a circle could have been constructed around these stones and why the other stones have been removed.
On further investigation we found a number of large stones, on the other side of the stone wall in the plantation, some of which showed evidence that they had once been upright.
The moor itself is a megalithic jumble, there are other stones that have obviously been stood up, one intersting group forms part of a linear earthwork running across the contour at approx SE473955 and is similar in nature to the cross ridge dykes found on other parts of the moors.
One thing you can’t ignore with this site is it’s setting. It is in the shadow of Black Hambleton and close to the prehistoric ridgeway of Hambleton Street and the views across the northern part of the Vale of York to the Pennines beyond.
Black Hambleton is a beautiful hill that can be seen from many sites across the moors as well as from the Pennines and the Vale of York.
The vibe of this site is very similar to that of the High Bridestones – we know something was going on here but we’re not sure what. A possible circle/row in the shadow of an impressive hill close to a major prehistoric trade route.

I’m gonna be cautious and call this a hut circle. It’s a circular embanked earthwork approx 8m in diameter with no obvious entrance. It sits on a promontary above the popular picnic spot of Sheepwash. I would love to call it a ring cairn but due to the wrecked nature of the site I can’t quite bring myself to do it.

Back up there yesterday.
The easiest way to get up to the site is to follow the footpath at SE56729750. The footpath sign is currently buried in a mass of trees by the roadside but it’s still there.

After throwing a little bit of thought & research at this site. I think it may be a Rath.
Mr Burl defines a Rath as ” Sometimes a pre-roman but more often an early christian banked-and-ditched sub circular enclosure. Most raths were family farmsteads but some were small defensive sites”.
I think this term may also be applied to Towtop Kirk

This huge cairn is not far off the Cleveland Way footpath. It’s a huge biut sadly wrecked cairn and is situated on the highest point of Cringle Moor (Cranimoor).
The centre has been hollowed out, probably as a hikers shelter and ably assisted by gamekeepers looking for material for their butts.
It’s a windy place on the best of days but the view from the escarpment edge is worth the walk.

The easiest way to access this site is to take the back road from Danby to Lealholm that skirts Lealholm Moor and park somewhere close to the junction at NZ763087. If you are car-less you can walk from Lealholm station, it’s not too far. If your mobility is restricted then this could be a tricky site to get to.
If you don’t know the area I would advise that you take the footpath that continues from the metalled road and follow it onto Black Dike Moor. Temple Beeld is in the watershed of Black Dike Slack and once you are in the area shouldn’t be too hard to spot.

The site itself is impressive from a distance and is basically a large, dry stone cross aligned loosely to the cardinal points. It’s purpose is to shelter sheep but Temple Beeld is no ordinary sheep fold.
It stands in a known area of prehistoric activity with other standing stones, pit allignments, possible habitation site at NZ743096 and a Mesolithic flint scatter at NZ0758098.

The Beeld has been constructed by filing in the gaps between 5 standing stones, four at the points of the cross and one at the centre. The gaps have been filled with lovely dry stone walling much of which has been robbed but is intact at the southern end and stands at 2m in height.
There is no other structure on the North York Moors that has been constructed in this shape.

It’s dimensions are 26m N-S and 16m E-W. The alignment to the cardinal points is about 10 degrees off true.

The stones themselves are all fairly different in character the two E-W stones are about 1.4m in height and are slab-like in shape
The N-S stones are of a similar height but are more rectangular in profile and may have had some degree of shaping.
The centre stone is the smallest 1m and is closest in shape to the E-W stones.
I get the impression that the E-W and centre stones are the oldest and they don’t have a straight alignment so the wall curves in a crescent of equal proportions from the centre stone.
I would also guess that the dry stone walling is no more than a couple of hundred years old.

All in all it’s an intriguing place with good views across the moor.
If you’re visiting the Bleed I’d recommend you walk on to check out the Long Stone and the pit alignments on Easington High Moor but if you want to return to the road, I suggest you follow the line of grouse butts just south of the Bleed, this will lead you to the metalled track and back to the start of your trek via a couple of fairly non-descript barrows.

As a point of interest at the junction of the metalled road and the moors road there is a medieval flagged path or ‘trod’ leading up to a single standing stone. I don’t believe this stone to be prehistoric but the flagged trod and the views across the Esk Valley are worth seeing .

These two fellas lay on open land besides the Great Asby Road. The most easterly of the pair is the most interesting and shows the remains of a ditch and a possible granite boulder kerb. There is also a small granite boulder in the middle of the cairn.

I got the name of this site from the 1863 map.
The site is on the junction of the track to Gaythorne Hall with the Great Asby ‘wilderness road’. There is a row of lovely rounded Shap Granite boulders amongst a group of trees beside the farmhouse, which could be the remains of a circle or kerb. The house does not appear on the old map so the stones may even be a clearance of ‘The 13 stones’, they seem too well aligned for that though.
Watch out for the free roaming sheep, they mobbed me.
Baaaa 4 feet good!

This is a very strange site. It’s situated on a rise on Gilts Lane and is very easy to access from the road.
The site itself is a megalithic jumble. All of the stones are lovely rounded Shap granite boulders, there are bits of kerb/circle running all over the place. It is possible to see the remains of at least two circles here but the whole thing confused the crap out of me.

I was up here today.
Hollin Stump is close to what I’d call ‘a wilderness road’ but is unfortunately in a huge, walled field with no obvious entrance. I did not go up to the cairn as I’m always loathed to scramble over a dry stone wall.
I had expected a much larger cairn but it appears that this once magnificent pile has been well robbed of it’s stone.

I have been tortured by thoughts of this site since I came across it on the MAGIC Map a couple of weeks ago. The first thing that drew me to it was the name, it’s a fantastic name. The next thing that drew me in was the 1863 map of the area, which showed not only the enclosure but stones and tumuli as well. I started thinking to myself that it’s most likely to be Iron Age but then again, a roughly circular enclosure with associated stones....hmmmmm that doesn’t sound particularly Iron Age. The final barb that twisted into my imagination was the proximity of the site to the A66. The road that carries me to Mayburgh and Castlerigg, the road that carried Tuff axes to Yorkshire and Yorkshire Flint to Westmorland. This road looms large over my megalithic wanderings and wonderings, it’s my megalithic route 66.
Back to the fieldnotes. This was going to be my last chance to visit this site for at least a month I had planned to stop at Rey Cross on the way here but Stainmore was in a state of white-out with drifting snow so I thought better of it and pushed on to the lovely Eden Valley.
The weather had changed by the time I had dropped down into the valley, it was cold and windy but no snow.
I followed the wee road from the A66 to Coupland and then parked up just beyond the cattle grid and walked up to the public footpath that runs along the George Gul.
The Gul is a wonderful steep sided valley that narrows into a gulley and has a number of caves in the cliffs. The caves are wonderful places carved out of the lovely red sandstone, the weathering around the caves is outrageous and creates an other-worldly atmosphere. One of the caves is large enough to stand up in and bears the marks of it’s visitors in the graffitti carved into the soft red sandstone walls.
Whilst mooching about the main cave a lady shouted up to me from the Gul to ask what was in the caves I told her that there was nothing much and scrambled down for a chat. She was a local farmer out for a stroll with her dogs. I asked her about the Druidical Judgement Seat and she said that she didn’t know anything about it ‘s history but would walk up to it with me.
We climbed up the bank from the Gul to the site. My first impression of the site was the view. The site is situated on a  promontory of steep sided land between two becks with lovely views to the Pennines beyond particulaly Roman Fell. In the back of my mind I had been hoping that this site would be a henge but I didn’t dare get my hopes up too much.
The site is on a narrowing spit of land and is as circular as the geography allows, it consists of a low bank with a shallow internal ditch surrounding a roughly circular encloure. The low bank and ditch run right up to the edges of the spit and in some places are slipping down the steep sides due to erosion. There is one entrance into the enclosure which is situated on the western side, which geographically is the most logical place to put it. The enclosure itself has a number of low features within it, the most noticeable being two, low, parallel, narrow ridges approximately 4m long and which could possibly be two side of the same feature.
The diameter of the whole site from bank to bank is 86m and the ditch is approximately 3m wide.
After mooching around the site and saying good bye to the farmer I set off in search of the stones that were marked on the 1863 map.
The site is on rough ground and borders a golf course, there has been a fair bit of landscaping to create the greens and fairways. There is an area of rough grass between the course and the enclosure and there are a number of stones laying around that could qualify as fallen stones, most are made of lovely Shap Granite.
So what are my conclusions? Is it a henge? I don’t know. It could be an Iron Age enclosure but the ditch and bank and too low and shallow to be of any great defensive use besides, why build a low bank and ditch on a site that has natural defenses provided by the steep sided slopes of the spit of land?
With reference to the 1863 map and looking at the site with it’s two sets of stones, nearby tumuli and the enclosure, then yes it could be a henge but I would like to see what other people make of the site before I commit myself. I would also like a look at the SMR summary if anyone has a copy.
All in all, I would say that it’s well worth a visit, it is a beautiful wild place jammed in between farmland, a golf course and Route 66. (-:

I found the reference to this site in a report called “Danby Moors Archaeological Survey 1988-1989” (cheers Kat).
The site is described as an elongated mound (NE/SW) 19m long.
Fired up by this refence I was up at the mound today. The mound is quite easy to get to, it stands about 50m from the Danby Beacon road.
The mound is situated on the southern side of a shallow valley with views to the coast and Danby beacon.
The mound itself is curiously boat shaped with a depression on the top that echoes the shape of the mound, as opposed to your usual circular excavation pit. In paces I found it to be 23m long and 15m wide and orientated EEN-WWS.
There are a few rabbit holes in the mound which reveal the construction to be earth & stone.
Conclusion, not a spectacular mound but a definite NYM curiousity given it’s shape, it may possibly related to the long barrow at Newton Mulgrave 7km away which is a lot bigger but of a similar shape and orientation.

There are two main barrows at Hob on the Hill.
Both are approximately 17 metres in diameter.

The southerly mound is the Hob-on-the Hill barrow and is pretty wrecked. There are large stones laying around it that may be remnants of the kerb.
There is a boundary stone set into the top of the mound which has a number of legends carved into it’s faces
On the north face is the letter ‘G’ and a benchmark, the south has the letters ‘SK’ the west ‘G’ ‘RC’ and the date 1789, the east face has the letter ‘S’ and the words ‘Hob on the Hill’ carved into it.

The second mound is about 70m north and is in better nick with some of the kerb and structure visible on the eastern side.

Both barrows are visible from many points on the northern moors and command 360 degree views.

One interesting view is from the Hob mound. If you look across to the east you can see the Black Howes with the tip of Freebrough Hill rising behind them.

There are many ways to access this wonderful site. My favoutite is from Commondale along the old ‘Monk’s trod’ path. Once you pass through the gate at the bottom of the Whitely Beck valley you will notice a large earthwork running along the eastern side of the valley, this is Park Pale, the boundary of a medieval deer park. As you gradually walk up the valley, passing the war memorial to two fallen Grenadiers from WWI, you will notice that the skyline ahead is dotted with stones. These are the Bridestones.
The earthwork starts at the edge of the river valley and runs roughly north-south for about 1 km. Over this distance I counted 55 individual stones all free standing, all very weathered, all ancient. There are other stones scattered about and a cursory glance in the numerous grouse butts shows where other stones have been used.
One of the stones close to the ancient Guisborough road has been marked with a cross and a bench mark.
As you move away from the river valley, the earthwork becomes more defined until it finally peters-out on the moor top 15 metres west of the most northerly barrow.

Access to this site is via a pleasant path along Froggat Edge. This is a very popular site with the wearers of multicoloured man-made fibres, what’s with the ski poles?
The views are beautiful but are soon to be blighted when the Stoke Wood Limestone quarry expands and gobbles up the hillside, for what? roadstone!
The circle is a beautiful ruined double ring with two entrances. Burl calles the northern entrance ‘questionable’. Stu tells me that a cairn was placed in this entrance shortly after it was constructed. I would say that it looks better than questionable and would be so bold as to say that it’s quite well defined with 4 corner stones.
A nice spot and a lovely circle

This is a big bugger. It’s a lovely circle but lacks the intimacy of Barbrook I & II. There is also a lack of other monuments in the immediate area of the circle. Makes you wonder what was going on here.

As we left Barbrook I, I asked Stu if the circle was the best site on the moor, he said nowt and gave me a wry smile.
I now know what that smile meant.

Is this a stone circle or a circle of stone?
Whatever it is, it’s a cracker. I’ve always maintained that reconstruction should be done on a case by case basis. In this case the reconstruction is absolutely spot-on.
A premier league site.

I met up with Stu in Chesterfield, we were due to go and hear a bunch of lectures but it was a sunny day and when Stu suggested that we go and check out some circles I didn’t have to think twice.
The drive up to Big Moor took us through the beautiful Derbyshire uplands, groups of birches and coarse grasses gives us an insight into the prehistoric landscape.
The circle is a cracker with it’s lovely south western stone.
This part of the moor is divided in two by the steep sided valley of the Bar brook. Stu tells me that there are hut circles and field systems on the other side of the valley which would indicte that the living and the dead inhabited well defined regions of the moor.
There are cairns dotted around the circle with one particular beautiful cairn looking down on the circle. It’s worth mooching around the cairns, some are well defined and large stones have been used to enclose them.
A lovely necropolis.

I’ve searched for this row a number of times, it’s not too far from my home so whenever I’ve had a spare hour or two and the right motivation I’ve driven up to Old Castle Hill and mooched around the area.
The moor up there is a managed grouse moor and is bisected by the road from the A171 to Commondale, comdle in local dialect.
This morning I was browsing through the EH Pastscape website and came across a reference to the row. This is the only reference I’ve come across for the row apart from Elgee’s, it gave no further details but it made me determined to get out and find this site. Before leaving I read up on Elgee’s description, studied and sketched Elgee’s photograph of the site noting the shape of the stones and the lay of the ground.
I parked up on the Commondale road with views across to Freebrough Hill, the coast, the Black Howes and the barrows of Hob on the Hill beyond.
Elgee had positioned the site of the row on the west side of the valley, what I hadn’t noticed before was a second reference that gave an extra clue – the mention of a mound.
I parked my car half way up the road and strode into the knee-high heather. After about half an hour I had found my mound and a careful search of the heather turned up two fallen stones. I carefully checked the profile of the stones against my sketch..they matched, I checked the profile of the horizon...it matched, I paced the distance..it almost matched ( Elgee gave an approximate distance.
I scoured around the hill for the other stones but found nothing. The mound on which the stones are set is made of sand and gravel and is eroded at the eastern end, it is also covered in thick heather and deep peat. I suppose the other stones could still be there or have been carted off by the farmers and game keepers, as is the case on so many other sites.
So it looks like I’ve found my row minus three stones....Deep Joy.
This is my second North York Moors true stone row, my first was at Simon Howe I just hope I can turn up a few more.

This stone is approx 2m high and 1m broad. The weathering on the top of the stone indicates it’s antiquity. It has been damaged by the fire and will no doubt suffer further damage once the frost begins to permiate the cracks caused by the intense heat of the fire.
There is another large standing stone on the moor which is taller and narrower, but the Mighty Graeme C informs me that this is a recent addition to the moor’s topography.

This ring cairn is a low lying feature in the landscape, it is composed of smallish stones and is approx 12m in diameter. I was unable to capture a decent photo of the feature as there appears to be no banking. I have posted a picture of a standing stone that sits on the margin of the cairn and appears to be part of the monument, possibly a headstone.

I’ve walked past this stone loads of times and always assumed it was a redundant gatepost, because of this I’ve never really looked at it. Then I read Tees Archaeology’s survey of the Upleatham Hills and found it listed as a standing stone...by gum! they’re right – of course.
The stone stands on the hollow way known as Sandy Lane. As the report says it’s in front of the wall and has no obvious traces of being used as a gatepost apart from the fact that there’s a gate just by it.
It’s lovely to find this stuff on your own doorstep and just shows how you can’t take anything for granted

Access to this lovely site is very easy, as the site sits beside the road on Percy Cross Rigg.
The site has been fenced since my last visit. I suspect the fence was erected to discourage the dickheads on two wheels from using the banks and ditches of the site to get their kicks.
There are five hut foundations here, two of which are very prominent, one having at least three courses of stone wall surviving. The site has been dated to the late Iron Age.
The area is steeped in prehistory, the mesolithic site of Highcliff Nab is less than two kms away, the long cairn, cairn cemetary and Iron age enclosure of Great Ayton Moor is one and a half kms away. The area is surrounded by Bronze Age barrows and the entrance of the most southerly hut looks over towards the site of the Commondale stone circle.
All in all an excellent spot and a good illustration of continuity of use of an area over 6 thousand years.
There is some debate over whether the local Gabrantovices tribe were a sub-tribe of the Brigantes or a division of the Parisii. I think that given the known Iron Age remains in this area, that there could possibly be a connection between the name Percy and Parisii...just a hunch!

The Black Howes are a very prominent group of barrows and can easily been seen from Smeathorns road. Access is along the ancient path, or trod, known as Quakers’ Causeway. The path runs from Aysdale Gate to Brown Hill.
We approached it from Brown Hill, the main Howe is about 1km from the road.
The first thing you notice is the wonderful views from this point, you can see the coast and lockwood Beck reservoir, but best of all are the views of Freebrough Hill.
There are also a group of prominent barrows running along a ridge on the western horizon one of these barrows is Hob on the Hill.
The first barrow you come to is large and low, approximately 1 metre high and 12 metres in diameter.
The main group of three barrows are another half a kilometer along the track. The first one you encounter is the largest. It is over 2m high and about 18 metres in diameter. There are traces of a kerb around the barrow and the southern edge is cut by a drainage channel. The barrow itself resembles many of out local barrows and has a deep depression in the top probably caused by the excavation by the prolific barrow digger, Canon Atkinson.
There are three barrows in this group and they grade in size with the largest in the east. The other two show no signs of a kerb. The group are aligned NNW-SSE.
The question is which came first, the track or the barrows? are the barrows aligned to the track or to some other object?
Whilst up there I had a look for Elgee’s stone triangle, not for the first time.
Elgee reports the triangle to be north of the Howes. I spent a good hour scouring the hill side between the path, Lockwood Beck and Spindle Bogs and came up with nothing. The hillside here is part of an intensly managed grouse moor. There are many drainage cuts, pools and shooting butts so although the moor has an outwardly natural appearence, it most definitely isn’t. I suspect any decent stone on the moor, including kerb stones and possible any standing stones have ended up in one of the many shooting butts, drainage channels or dams on the moor.

This is a lovely set of sites. Drive up through Bagbie onto the aptly named Blackmire Moor and use the cow byre as your starting point. Stu & I picked our way through the mud onto the field behind the byre and walked up the stone. From here were crossed over towards the tall drystone wall with the dark quarry in the background. On the other side of the wall you’ll find the cairn and a sweet four poster. The cairn appears to have two portal stones. You’ve gotta take in the whole scene and imagine that the wall doesn’t exist, the circle, the portalled cairn and the stone make a sweet little trio. Well worth a look.

I was full of anticipation before visiting this huge circle. It was to be my last contact with the Cumbrian great circles before I headed west towards the Solway coast.
I also liked the story Burl tells about how a farmer was rebuked for removing one of the stones. The farmer answered that it was only Judas that had been removed.
Burl describes the site as being divided by a hedge and spoiled in atmosphere. The hedge has now gone but the atmosphere is still spoiled.
The stones are huge but the soul of the circle has gone.
You should visit this circle to check out the megalithic engineering of setting up this vast circle on a terrace above Dumfries.
There are some lovely mineral veins in a number of the stones.

Stu and I were in total agreement when it came to selecting sites that we must get to on this trip.
High Banks was a must.
Sometimes you try not to anticipate a site because it may fail to live up to your expectations but this isn’t the case with High Banks.
Drive all the way to High Banks Farm you can park and the footpath to the rocks is marked. As you climb the hill you can see the outcrop in front of you. There’s a small quarry in the outcrop and a modern plaque has been placed on a plinth.
The carvings are breathtaking and increase in complexity as you move along the rock.
As well as the multitudes of cups and lovely rings there are pecked out channels that appears more broader than what you would expect. The large carving with the grouped cups and large central cup and rings uses the contour of the rock to increase it’s visual and textural impact. It looks like a partially exposed fossil Ichthyosaur skull.
This is rock art taken to another level. This is a well designed motif which I would like to think was the work of one person, a dude/ette who got fed up with cups and rings and decided to produce something a bit more contemporary.
I bet all his mates took this piss out of him for it too!
This is one site that you should definitely see and feel.

This is a crackin’ site. We approached from Wigton seeing the stone row first.
The setting of the circle is beautiful, we’d been looking at circles in the hills and this made a lovely constrast with it’s setting on it’s own platform in the fertile fields of the Machars.
The circle is in excellent nick and draws you into itself and the landscape.
As we travelled through the landscape we began to realise that a lot of these monuments are orientated NE-SW, this goes for the nearby row and the possible row in the cowfield.
Burl draws comparisons between the centre stone and it’s flankers with the Recumbant circles of NE Scotland.

The hole in the stone has been ground-out from both sides leaving a pair of funnels.
I love stones with holes in ‘em.
A good sized fella, worth a look.

This platformed cairn is a good size and worth a look if your passing.
The side that faces the road looks a bit robbed-out but it’s overall shape and condition is good.
It stands beside the B7079 on the outskirts of Newton Stewart.

These two sites are intervisable with each other. I’m not sure as to the chronology of the tombs but I would guess that the uphill tomb was the first as it commands a better view.
If you try really hard and the light is on your side, you can just make out the large cup and ring carving on the capstone of No.1

The easiest way of getting to these stones is to use the gate opposite the lovely lake and follow the field boundary uphill and turn left halfway up the second field.
As Stu says, not a lot of character to this confused, probable, four poster.

It takes a minute or two to spot the stone coming from Bagbie and the south west but once you move up the road you can look back and see the stone cutting the horizon.

I’m not sure if this is a known site. I’ve found no record of it, yet.
We noticed it as we were walking back to the beach from the burial chamber.
The sun was dropping and just caught the rock revealing a group of faint cup and rings on the western edge of an outcrop.
A nice end to our trip.

This lovely little site can be found in a lush meadow on Newton Farm.
It appears to have been a stone-lined rectangular box with a standing stone at each corner. It’s a bit tumbled down but quite recognisable. Nice views over the sea and the broody hills.

I’ve previously been up onto Brow Moor but had no sucess at finding any of the rock art that’s been reported here. This time I was armed with a bunch of references from the SMR and a gps so I expected to have some success.
I parked up in the car park close to the radio mast on the coast road.
From this point I could see south along the coast past Scarborough to Flamborough. The radio masts of Seamer Beacon were very visible. It was also possible to pick out Shooting house Rigg – site of the Old Wifes Neck and Standing Stones Rigg, home of the Ramsdale Stones.
Using the references from the SMR I tramped onto the moor. The references took me to a stoney area of the moor just south of the trackway. The heather is quite high and due to the recent hot weather the moss and heather were stuck to the rocks like superglue resulting in a total inability to ‘peel’ back the moss from the rocks. I felt that it would be extremely irresponsible to start digging the stuff off the rocks so I left the area without seeing one piece of rock art.
As I was moving over the moor I noticed two fellas mooching about , cameras in hand and heads down. I wandered over towards them to ask if they were familiar with the moor and had they come across any rock art. I was greeted by a friendly “Howdo, are you looking for cups?”
It turned out that one of the guys was very familiar with the moor and it’s rock art, his mate was just along for the ride and to take a few photos. We soon slipped into a conversation about local sites and other rock art folk. I told him of my lack of success in finding any of the art, he said that they were leaving but he would show me a few of the examples in the immediate vacinity.
He showed me four lovely examples, all of which had been covered over to help prevent erosion. These were fine rocks, he also told me where to find other examples including some of the more complex motifs. He warned me that they were in deep heather and on rocks that were at ground level making them very dificult to spot.
The guys then took off for their pub lunch and I mooched across to the area he had pointed out. I found the landmarks he had described and started systematically moving through the thigh high heather trying to find the rocks. Unfortunately after an hour and a halfs searching I came up with nothing apart from scratched shins and ankles so I decided to call it a day and return in winter when the vegetation was a bit lower.
The Brow and Howdale Moors are a lovely place with some stunning views including some fantastic seascapes. There are also a number of barrows and earthworks scattered across the moors. Even though I only found a few rocks I still had a great time up there and would recommend the place for the views alone.

We hit this site this morning. The weather was beautiful, the Pikes had a bit of light cloud around them but apart from that the sky was empty. and the views up and down the valley were breathtaking.
We had the site to ourselves, so the lads went off to explore the fields and I got down on my hunkers and got to grips with the carvings. I’ve found this is the only way to suss out what’s really there. It’s like braille for the seeing – if you know what I mean. The motif on the block to the east, which is mentioned in Stan Beckensalls “Prehistoric Rock Art in Cumbria” showed up quite well in the morning sunshine.
I’m afraid I couldn’t relate the carvings to the map theory, I can be a bit slow at times so maybe I need someone to talk me through it – any offers?.
As we left the site we discovered a large barn owl which was sat motionless on a branch just staring at us at the same time a buzzard flew over us and lazily made it’s way down the valley towards the Pikes.
All in all a crackin’ site, lovely rock art

This is a lovely little Yorkshire Henge.
As Stu states, it’s a bit battered and worn but what matters is that it’s still there.

These lovely stones rise up in front of you as you come down the path towards them.
As a four poster they’re a bit jumbled up but the stones themselves are lovely and full of character. The site does not look down into a valley or plain, it lies in the shadow of the limestone scars of Malham Moor.
Significantly the site may be on a trackway from Settle to Grassington. The site also appears to be on the most westerly margin of Wharfedale and its many enclosures, settlements and hut circles.

When I last visited this site I saw two fairly knackered circles. On this visit acompanied by the mighty Stubob and his most excellent gps I saw a different circle which was far more defined, though still pretty knackered, than the ones I saw last time.
I looked for my two wrecked circles but couldn’t locate them this time.
I thought that I had read that there were two sites up here but when I got home and checked I discovered that Burl has 3 sites listed up here so maybe I’ve now seen them all. Not sure tho‘

There are two ways into this area. You can walk along Black Hill Road from the B6265 or you can do as we did and park at Middle Skyreholme and walk up Skyreholm Bank. A GPS would be very useful to help you finding the rocks, many of which are in the fields around the track. As you march up the bank you will come to a fork in the road. The rock art posted by myself and Stu is all from the area surrounding Black Hill Road.
The stones with the most complex motifs have views into the Skyreholme valley and beyond. The rocks with simpler motifs tend to be on the lower north facing slopes looking towards the B6265 and Grimwith Fell.

Me and Stu ventured up here after a visit to Yarnbury Henge. The landscape changes once you’ve past the henge. You are now in the mining zone and part of a desolate but not unattractive industrial wasteland. There are tips, shafts and the remains of the mine buildings everywhere.
We parked up at the top of the lane and this bloke comes up all friendly like, and asked us what we were up to. We told him that we were looking for circles, he reckon he’d been coming on the moor for 15 years and had never seen a circle. I showed him the map and he told us which way to go. He then asked us if we liked watching lapdancers. I asked him what he was doing on the moor he said that he was off to kill some rabbits and then shoot a porn film. At that point all his mates turned up in 4X4’s and they drove off in convoy across the moor.

From the top of the lane you should take the right hand track and head for the chimney. Once you’ve crossed the dam and are heading up to the chimney you pass through a gate. Walk up the bank to about halfway between the gate and the chimney and then turn sharp left and charge across the beck on to the far bank. The two circles should be a dozen or so meters in front of you.
These are not stone circles, they are circles of stone – ring cairns with the banks composed of earth and small rocks. The most southerly of the pair is a lovely looking thing the more northerly one is a bit wrecked but recognizable.
These two monuments are in the zone between the track and the beck. To return don’t bother charging back across the beck, just follow it downhill and you’ll come to the gate. Check out the mineshaft capped with a rough corbelled roof. It’s a lovely relatively recent example of modern practical megalithic masonry.

I was up at this fella today.
The views down the lower Esk Valley to the sea are absolutely crackin’.
There is also a modern memorial stone close by.
The are definitely worse places to spend eternity.

I was up at this fella today. It’s quite easy to find and is just visible from the parking area. The circle is now a sort of elongated “D” shape as a good portion has been chopped off by the old turf road. It’s a decent size with some large stones.
Its pretty wrecked and definitely not the best looking circle, but we ain’t got many so we love ‘em all.
For all your earthly needs check the village store in Gillamoor, it’s a happy place.

This lovely rock is a bit of an oddity.
Most of the other carved rocks on the moor have the carvings on their southerly face and so you view the carvings whilst looking over the escarpment edge and into the valley and the landscape beyond. This rock contradicts that. Many of the carvings are on the north face and so look back into the moor, the carvings on the ridge can only be viewed by climbing onto the rock itself. This would indicate that this rock may have had a different function from many of the other carved rocks on the moor.

Parts of the walls of this enigmatic enclosure are really fresh. The facing stones and the rubble in-fill show that dry stone wall building techniques have changed very little in the past 3 thousand years.
Well worth a visit.

Gotta go with Stu and Chris on this one.
The name builds up a level of anticipation that this badly weathered stone fails to live up to.

This is a beautiful stone with three distinct sets of cups. The cups are lovely and deep and are totally enclosed within an outer groove.

This is a crackin’ stone which affords the weary walker the only bit of shade on the moor.
The diagram posted by Haus doesn’t seem to be completely accurate. Stu and I traced out a number of interconnecting channels which conected up most of the features on the left hand side of the stone.
Stu put forward a credible interpretation that the carvings on the left half of the stone represented a map of the landscape beyond the stone.

I have to disagree with Chris on the siting of the bench. The stone is set looking out into the landscape, you look at the carvings then you look at the Wharfe valley beyond. The bench serves the same purpose – it’s all about the location.