Harland Moor “A” (Farndale). Circle of free-standing stones on earthen bank; 75ft N-S, 69ft E-W, bank 5 to 65 ft in width, 2 to 3 ft high .
No evidenc of burial, habitation or hearths.
Harland Moor “C” is reported as destroyed.
fitzcoraldo
The Windypits are a group of fissures in the corallian limestone or the lower calcareous grits along the near the main valley of the River Rye.
There are 8 major windypit- type fissures known in Ryedale and four major cavities.
The name comes from the phenomenon caused by warm or cold air rising from the fissures and coming into contact with the air outside the entrance. In winter a steamy vapour rises in puffs or jets from the holes. In warmer months cold air can be felt in the passage entrances, sometimes moving so violently as to vibrate the foliage nearby.
Most of the known windypits have been excavated and have yeilded corded ware, gritted ware, flint ,stone and bone impliments and both human and animal remains. The recovered materials date from the late Neolithic to the Romano British.
“Finds from the windypits have added greatly to our knowledge of the beaker folk in Ryedale and the food and habits of the people of this period. They were probably partially of wholy nomadic hunter-herdsmen, though stones have been found in the fissures which may be grain rubbers, suggesting a more settled agricultural way of life.
Given a warm dry dry summer, the windypits would serve as a temporary habitation in the winter.
It is likely that they were also used for burial. A cave or a fissure was a likely origin of the chambered tomb of Neolithic times.”
The History of Helmsley Rievaulx & District
by Members of The Helmsley & Area Group of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.
Stonegate Press
Pub 1963
“Reference is made in Ord to a ‘hillock in Court Green’ which was destroyed by workmen. In it were found, below a paved surface, 5 urns of ‘flowerpot shape’ arranged in a circle. The present location of the finds in unknown, as is the site of the location itself. Ord further reports, though he did not see it himself, the existance of a ‘number of upright stones set in a circle’ near the mound.
The mound in question does not appear to be Court Green Howe as it is recorded as having been destroyed. Ord refers on several occassions to the whole of the Eston Hills as ‘Court Green’, so the alleged barow and stone circle may be anywhere on those hills.
Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland
G.M. Crawford
In 2001 a number of timbers were seen in the north side of Staithes Beck. They were originally thought to date from the development of Alum working in the area but a single radiocarbon date of 1730-1440BC placed them in the early Bronze Age.
Excavation revealed a mass of timbers of different sizes. Alder, hazel, ash, cherry, oak, elm and willow were all present. It seemed as though a rough timber platform had been created on a stand of clay on the southern bank of the stream. Tool marks were clearly visible on some of the timbers. There is, however, some doubt as to whether the structure was diliberate of just a mass of felled timber swept downstream.
Information from Tees Archaeology
Newsletter No.2 April 2003
I have passed this monolith for over 7 years now and to my shame have never stopped once. It is situated on Hilton Drive, which is a short cut for the Aberdeen taxi drivers rushing frantic offshore workers from the heliport at Dyce to Aberdeen railway station.
I have waited patiently for someone to post it on TMA and can wait no longer.
When I first saw it, it was on a bulding site protected from the JCB and brickies by a fence. Now a nice housing development has grown up around it using the stone as a focal point in the communal forecourt.
Unfortunately the stoney fella still has to be fenced in to protect it from..... what?
Any information?
Update 6th May 2003:
This information kindly provided by Kammer
Does this stone stand in an area that used to be the grounds of a school?
If it did, it may be the “Aberdeen, Hilton, Lang Stane” which is at NJ 9223 0836. This stone is also known as, “Hilton School, Langstane” which I reckon sounds a bit better.
CANMORE describes it as follows:
“A free-standing block of granite, c.9 to 10 feet in height, which Dr Simpson believes to be a Bronze Age standing stone. It now stands in the grounds of Hilton School and may have been moved when the school was built (Anon 1949), but if so it was replaced in its original position (information from Dr W Douglas Simpson, Librarian, Aberdeen University).”
Anon 1949.“This standing stone is situated on a gentle ENE-facing slope at an altitude of about 80m OD. It stands within a school playground at adjacent to the gates onto Hilton Drive.”
(Newspaper reference cited). NMRS, MS/712/83, visited 11 January 1991.Kammer
The Summary of the NMR Monument Report
“Possible Late bronze Age/Early Iron Age pastoral stock enclosure, believed to have been restored in the Medieval period as a horse corral.
If your planning to visit Roughting Linn it’s worth while tracking down Richard Bradley’s 1997 book “Rock Art and The Prehistory of Atlantic Europe”.
In chapter 7 “Reading Roughting Linn”, he draws parallels with Irish art and explores the idea that the “site itself looks so like a monument”.
Well worth a read.
Here’s what Stan Beckensall has to say about the stone.
“At Homildon Hill, below the Cheviots, on the way to Coldstream from Wooler is the site of a lesser battle in 1402 between the old enemies Percy and Douglas, traditionally marked by a standing stone to the east of the road that in fact marks the site of a prehistoric burial.
Shakespear begins the first part of Henry IV with this battle where the protagonists ‘did spend a sad and bloody hour’.”
Taken from
Northumberland, The Power of Place
Stan Beckensall
Tempus Books
2001
Following recent discoveries I have made on the North Yorkshire Moors and information I have received from Graeme Chappell, I think these marks are not prehistoric cups but marks left by bullets. Apparently standing stones were used for target practice during World War 2. Further evidence for this on this particular stone is that the ‘cup’ has damaged the carving of the date which would imply that the cup is younger than the date carving. The close proximety of an army training ground would also support this.
As well as the existing sites, Graeme Chappell has turned up a number of new sites in this area.
NZ 964 013 – 764 303
NZ 965 012
NZ 9674 0105
NZ 9622 0147
NZ 9624 0152
NZ 9561 0123
NZ 959 009
All co-ordinates blagged fron Stan Beckensall’s wonderful book “British Prehistoric Rock Art.”
There are 15 henge-like structures in the Milfield basin, 9 of which are thought to be definite henge monuments. This is the greatest concentration of henges anywhere!
Pebblethief mentions Blawearie House (the ruin). For a potted history of this place, check Stan Beckensall’s lovely book “Northumberland, The Power of Place” published in 2001 by Tempus.
” On the 11th October 1711, the justices of the peace sitting at Northallerton ordered that guide posts be erected at all cross roads; stone is much more easily obtained on the moors, so as a result a number of ‘handstones’ – the way indicated by a roughly carved human hand, were erected.”
Stanhope White
The North York Moors
1979
Dalesman Books
According to Janet & Colin Bord;
“A St Barnabas Fair used to be held in a field near the stones on summer solstice, probably a continuation of ceremonies held there in prehistoric times”.
A short excerpt from William Blake’s Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion.
“They groan’d aloud on London Stone
They groan’d aloud on Tyburn’s Brook
Albion gave his deadly groan,
And all the Atlantic mountains shook.”
The accompanying notes say the following;
“The ancient stone in the east central part of London and the site of public execution in the western part form a London Stonehenge, a place of druidical sacrifice where Albion is tortured.”
This from Stanhope White
“Not far from the Percy Rigg village, on Ayton Moor at NZ598114, is a square enclosure with rounded corners; the earthen wall have been almost eroded away, but it can be seen that there had been an internal ditch. This cannot have been a defensive work, and a similar structure in a far better state of preservation exists at Studfold Ring. The name implies an enclosure for horses and the internal ditch can be seen today in many open air zoos.”
The North York Moors.
1979
“Originally the mound had been enclosed by, or enclosed a stone circle, 30 feet in diameter, in the form of a wall 4 feet thick, traces of which were found on the south-east side of the barrow. Seven cremated internments had been made in this mound; two of these were accompanied by food vessels. A third vessel stood by the side of an urn holding calcined bones.
At the centre of the mound on the natural surface was a stone net-sinker, very similar to two others found with urns in the Rudda Howe at Staintondale. If these two barrows are not the last resting place of fisher-folk, at any rate fisher -folk took a share in building them.
More remarkable was the occurence in the body of the barrow of over 150 stones of varied sizes and shapes and all with cup-like hollows, usually on one side, sometimes on two. Generally a stone has one cup only; but sometimes two, three or even four cups have been hollowed out. Other peculiarly marked stones were also found, one with a incised cross, and another with a V-shaped mark.”
Frank Elgee
Early Man In N.E. Yorkshire
1930
The Cairn was excavated by the legendary Canon Greenwell in the 1860’s where he reported a central cist from which a pot had been taken. It was also excavated by the mighty Stan Beckensall 1984 – 1986 where he found further cists, amber beads, a jet bead, flint flakes, a melon bead, a number of cremations and a copper ring.
“The symbols on the Goggleby stone are a shallow wide cup mark with smaller one beneath it on the vertical face of the stone. The Asper’s Field stone, leaning inwards now towards the avenue, has a cup with a single ring on top....
The fact that the symbols are used on a very long ceremonial avenue may link them to the ritual of the avenue”.
Prehistoric Rock Art in Cumbria
Stan Beckensall
Tempus Publishing
2002
“The next site (Broomridge) shares a dome of outcrop rock that has ben
used for producing millstones, so don’t confuse these big circles with the low profile clusters of cups and the eroded multiple concentric circles around a cup at the east end of the rock”.
From Stan Beckensall’s’Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland.
Volume 1 Ford to Old Bewick published in 1991.
The Abbey Press, Hexam
“The remains belong to two, possibly three, alignments or avenues spread over a distance of more than 1.5m (2.3km). The two identifiable ends were a stone circle and a burial mound and as elsewhere male and female forms were paired. By analogy a Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age date can be assumed”
Archeaological Sites of the Lake District
T. Clare
Moorland Pub. Co. Ltd
1981
“Camden in the reign of Elizabeth I described the stones to the west of the village as being of ‘pyramidal form’.
Excavation in advance of the re-erection of the Goggleby Stone found no material which could give a closer date but it was possible to glimpse the method of erecting this 12-ton monolith.
After digging, the hole was partly refilled with loose clay and soil. The stone was then manouvred until it tipped into the hole where it was held at an angle by the loose fill. In this position the effort required to haul it upright would be greatly reduced particularly if shear legs were used. When upright the top of the hole was filled with ‘packing’ or wedging stones”.
Archaeological Sites of the Lake District
T. Clare
Moorland Publishing Co Ltd.
1981
ST. MARGARET’S STONE.
It is an old tradition that Margaret, while walking from the scene of her
landing to Dunfermline, complained of fatigue, and on coming to the “huge Saxon stone” on the road, two and a-half miles south-east of Malcolm III.’s residence, is said to have for a while rested herself on it, and that on her frequent “journeys toe and froe” she often used it as a rest.
The neighbouring farm on the west takes its name from this traditional
circumstance, and is called St. Margaret’s Stone Farm. In 1856 this stone
was removed to an adjacent site by order of the Road Surveyor in order to widen the road, which required no widening, as no additional traffic was
likely to ensue, but the reverse; it is, therefore, much to be regretted
that the old landmark was removed.
It is in contemplation to have the old stone replaced on its old site (as nearly as possible), and made to rest, with secure fixings, on a massive base, or plinth-stone.
This large stone, which has long had the name of St.Margaret’s, is probably the last remnant of a Druid Circle or a Cromlech, and may have been placed here even before the beginning of the Christian era. At this early period the road would be a narrow “foot-way” or a “bridle-path.”
From The Annals of Dunfermline.
According to Stan Beckensall,
“There are many similar named caves in the north, some from a pet named for St Cuthbert, whose body is said to have rested at various places on it’s long journey from Lindesfarne.
Although motifs on it haver disappeared, George Tate has left an account and drawings of them and says:
On the scalp of the rock where it dips into the hill, four figures are traceable; but from being very much defaced, it is difficult to make out these forms, even when viewed under a favourable light.”
AN AVENUE, A COVE AND AN ENCLOSURE: FURTHER FIELDWORK AS BECKHAMPTON, NEAR AVEBURY
In Past 34 we reported on the excavation, during 1999, of a newly-discovered Neolithic enclosure near Avebury, Wiltshire, and the rediscovery of a second megalithic avenue (the ‘Beckhampton Avenue’) leading from the Avebury henge. Undertaken by a team from the Universities of Leicester, Southampton and Wales (Newport) with generous funding from the AHRB, work on these monuments continued during 2000 and 2002. (Like so many projects, our plans for fieldwork during 2001 had to be curtailed due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth.) Further sections of the avenue and enclosure were investigated, including what we believe to be the avenue’s original terminal (or beginning, depending on your orientation) – a massive and largely unparalleled box-like megalithic setting known as the ‘Longstones Cove’.
Our excavations have focussed on an area 1-2 km to the south-west of Avebury near the village of Beckhampton. The sequence of Neolithic activity here is a long one, beginning with limited occupation and cultivation during the earlier 4th millennium BC, as revealed by John Evans’ earlier work on the nearby South Street long barrow (Ashbee et al. 1979). This in turn was followed by the creation during the mid-4th millennium BC of the South Street barrow and the nearby Beckhampton or ‘Longstones’ long mound. We now know from radiocarbon dates and finds of Grooved Ware on the base of the ditch that our oval enclosure was constructed early in the later Neolithic, around 2900-2700BC. This puts it more or less contemporary with the Avebury henge enclosure (Pitts & Whittle 1992). However, the Beckhampton enclosure and Avebury henge were very different monuments. In stark contrast to the truly monumental scale of Avebury, the Beckhampton enclosure was a slight and ephemeral monument that was to leave little tangible trace in the landscape. The ditch was no more than 0.9m deep and showed no evidence of recutting. It appears to have been systematically backfilled perhaps a century or two after being dug. The circuit of the ditch was interrupted by frequent causeways, with a major entrance (of the order of 40m wide) on the east. It is highly significant that the style of the monument is more akin to earlier Neolithic causewayed enclosures than it is to contemporary henges. The enclosure’s builders may deliberately have set out to create an anachronistic monument, perhaps out of respect to earlier sacred traditions, as a process of emulation, or as an intentional act of recreation.
Trenches dug within the interior of the enclosure failed to reveal any prehistoric features, nor were any visible on geophysical surveys of the site undertaken by the Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage. Finds from the ditch were few. A scatter of pig, cattle and sheep bones on the base near the eastern entrance could relate to a brief episode of feasting following on from the construction of the enclosure. Other finds of bone and antler came from the base of the later backfill. Set within grazed grassland, perhaps the enclosure was visited infrequently, if at all, once constructed. In this context it was probably the act of construction that was important, rather than an intention to create a lasting statement within the landscape.
Despite the excavation of 150m of its length (comprising 13 individual stone settings), the chronology of the avenue remains imprecise. It is almost certainly secondary to the enclosure, and may come at the end of the Neolithic sequence in the region, that is around 2500-2300BC. A further pair of stone settings was investigated during 2000, both stones having suffered the common fate of fire-setting and breaking in the early 18th century. We also explored the area immediately around one of the two surviving Longstones (’Adam’). This massive block of sarsen stone was recorded as the sole survivor of a megalithic ‘box’ or ‘cove’ by the antiquary William Stukeley; who recorded much of the avenue during a concerted period of stone destruction between 1700-1725. Our excavations showed this setting to incorporate two distinct phases. The first comprised a linear setting of three stones 40m across, forming a simple ‘T-shaped’ terminal to the avenue immediately to the south-west of the earlier enclosure. Two of the stones were then taken down and their sockets carefully backfilled with chalk. The central stone (set on the centre axis of the avenue) was left in place to form the south-eastern side of the cove. With splayed sides, the cove enclosed an area of c.15 x 10 m; the individual stones standing 2.5-3.5 m above ground and weighing up to 60 tonnes each. Unfortunately, all the stone sockets had been extensively disturbed during the phase of stone destruction recorded by Stukeley, but sufficient survived of one to show that the stones were held in place by a packing of small sarsen boulders. From the stone sockets and fills of later destruction pits came several thousand of pieces of worked flint, much of it debitage from rather ad hoc working.
Almost invariably associated with henges and stone circles, cove settings are known elsewhere, for example at Stanton Drew in Somerset, Mount Pleasant in Dorset, and locally within the Avebury henge (Burl 1988). However, none of these approach the scale of the Longstones Cove, nor do they form ‘closed’ four-sided settings of this kind. The Longstones Cove might, as Burl has suggested for others, reference the format of earlier megalithic burial chambers (ibid., 7). Alternatively, its closed format could have drawn upon memory of the earlier enclosure – a transformation from earth to stone that would parallel the lithic conversion of certain late Neolithic wooden monuments, such as the Sanctuary at the end of the West Kennet Avenue. Either way, themes of time, transformation and a desire to make reference to the past, seem to be deeply implicated in the Beckhampton monuments.
In tracking the course of the Beckhampton Avenue from Avebury to Longstones Field, Stukeley’s observations have proved extremely reliable. He was convinced that the avenue continued beyond Longstones Field to the south-west, eventually terminating on a low hill at Fox Covert (’a most solemn and awful place’: Stukeley 1743, 36). His projected course seemed to be supported by the discovery in 1968 of a large sarsen buried in a pit alongside the present A4 (Anon 1969, 127). Wishing to confirm or refute this south-western extension of the avenue, we returned to the field during Easter 2002. We were again aided by a geophysical survey undertaken by the Ancient Monuments Laboratory. However, this and another geophysical survey further along the projected line failed to detect any buried stones or stone destruction pits. Excavation likewise drew a blank. Did the avenue really extend this far? We think not. Re-analysis of Stukeley’s field notes suggests his identification of this stretch of the avenue was based on the presence of only a small number of recumbent stones, all of which could be naturally occurring sarsens. His records for this section were clearly quite speculative. Technically the case is ‘not proven’ and many ambiguities remain. However, our opinion would favour a termination of the avenue in Longstones Field, at or just beyond the cove. From the end of one avenue to the end of the other, this makes Avebury an impressive 4km long.
Mark Gillings,
University of Leicester
Parc le Breos Cwm Transepted Long Cairn, Gower, West Glamorgan: Date, Contents, and Context
By Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki
First investigated in 1869, the transepted long cairn of Parc le Breos Cwm was re-excavated in 1960–61 but without a report being published. This account presents a number of radiocarbon dates and a detailed re-examination of the human bone assemblages, and attempts to put the monument in local and regional context. Radiocarbon dates place the long cairn in the later part of the earlier Neolithic, and support a fairly long span of time over which its mortuary deposits were accumulated; they also show secondary re-use of the passage, and perhaps also the deliberate incorporation of very old animal bone from nearby caves. The analysis of the human bone assemblages indicates prior exposure of the remains found in the chambers, in contrast to those in the passage. Variation in musculoskeletal stress markers may indicate a mobile lifestyle for at least some of the male mortuary population. Other lifestyle indicators are noted, and isotopic evidence is presented for a terrestrial and mainly meat-oriented diet in the sampled group. The isolated context and hidden setting of the Parc le Breos Cwm long cairn and the apparently low density of south Welsh monuments are stressed.
This from ARCHI
Hethpool: possible stone circle, Yeavering Bell, NT 918 270
The barrow is about 85 feet long and is 3 feet high at its northern end. No side ditches are visible. A stone cairn was found within the mound surrounded by a kerb of large stones.
5 large barrows form a well defined cemetery.
The largest barrow is at the southern end of the group is 80 feet across and 8 feet high. This has been built with chalk slabs covered with a layer of earth and capped with chalk rubble. A grave at the centre of the barrow contained a contracted skeleton with a food vessel.
On top of Cod Hill is a large tumulus with one very large stone in the kerb, so large that it merits being called a head stone.
The Goggleby stone was re-erected in a concrete box.
Excavation in advance of the re-erection of the stone found no dating material for the original erection of the stone
These stones once formed part of a site called Karl Lofts which is said to have been two parallel lines of stones with their southern end a circle
The earliest peat in this region was layed down about 7000 years ago and may be part of the land bridge that existed between Britain and the rest of Europe. Much of what is now the North sea is thought to have been low-lying fenland.
Roughly 6000 years ago the area was inundated by the sea for the first time, a little over 5000 years ago peat once again began to form as a result of a brief fall in sea level. The bogs were colonised by alder, elm, oak and hazel. The first evidence of human activity is of mesolithic hunter gatherers. There have been frequent finds of the bones and antlers of red deer, some of these antlers have been worked for use as tools.
Around 3000BC pollen records show that the trees were in decline and grasslands were on the increase. At the same time charcoal appears in the deposits. Finds including flints, axes and cut timbers have been found in the deposits.
In 1971 the skeleton of a neolithic man was discovered. The man aged between 25 and 35 had been placed in the peat in a crouched position on his right side. near his right elbow a small group of flints had been placed and there is evidence that his body had been covered with birch twigs.
The peat beds exposed at low tide in Hartlepool Bay are among the largest areas of ancient mesolithic landscape still to be seen.
Following the below extract graves speculates that the Battle of Bardon-Hill may have taken place in this area. This is Stanhope Whites reply to that.
“There is one possiblity, unknown to Graves; that this is not the site of the Battle of Bardon-Hill but of the so-called Battle of Catterick. If the band of heroes from Manau Gododin had sheltered in the ruins of the Roman town whilst they drank for a year, then their last hopeless battle against the Saxons may well have been to the east, towards the coast. Unfortunately for us, Polydore Vergil was allowed to ship all his working papers to Rome, and with them went perhaps many written sources of the period, which are now lost. Instead of speculating about Arthur, modern historians might be better occupied searching in some mouldering archives in Rome for these early accounts”.
The North York Moors
Stanhope White
1979
Graves had this to say in his 1808 book The History of Cleveland.
“Within this township, and nearly at an equal distance between the villages of Seamer and Newby, there is a remarkable tumulus, significantly called HOW-HILL, which is not known to have ever been opened. In the fields adjoining towards the south, on the side of a hill, are evident marks of entrenchment; and in the valley or plain beneath, it is reported that armour, swords and human bones have been frequently turned up by the plough.”
Ord had this to say in his History and Antiquities of Cleveland, published in 1846.
“The parish of Seamer contains several objects of antiquarian interest. The most important is How Hill, a large tumulus, half way between the villages of Seamer and Newby, close to a farmhouse, the property of Colonel Wyndham. This is, perhapsthe most complete of the Cleveland tumuli; but whether Celtic, Roman, or Saxon, we have no sense of judging, not having had the opportunity of exploring the interior. he tenant assured us that some years ago he assisted in partially examining this ancient memorial, but found nothing except large masses of freestone, with fragments of bones”.
From British Archaeology
Magazine Issue 63
February 2002
Memories of Callanish
Aubrey Burl on his discovery that folk memories of the circle’s original alignment had survived for 1000 years
Even after 40 years of studying stone circles I have never lost my sense of their romance. But perhaps my favourite find was not the discovery of a previously unknown circle, but of some intriguing information about one of the best-known circles of all – Callanish on the Isle of Lewis.
I first went to Callanish in 1976. I had just finished an excavation in northern Scotland and I thought it would be rather pleasant to go across to the Hebrides to have a look at this marvellous site. It was a remarkably hot day – we had to shelter behind one of the stones while I was taking some notes because we needed some shade.
I was taken aback by the site. It is a unique place because the stones are very tall, with a huge central stone, an avenue and stone rows. It probably started off as a single standing stone, like a navigational marker for sailors – there are a lot of stones like that in the Hebrides on the coast – and then presumably acquired some sanctity, and people put up the stone circle, then added the avenue and the rows, and then they poked a little chambered tomb inside in the end.
About four years later, I was reading a book called The Sphinx and the Megaliths by John Ivimy, who had the belief that Stonehenge was put up by Egyptian astronomer-priests because they wanted an observatory in a part of the world with uncluttered skies! Anyway, this book contained a reference to the 1st century BC Greek writer Diodorus Siculus, who had described a ‘spherical temple’ where Apollo (the sun or moon) ‘skimmed the earth at a very low height’. Ivimy assumed that Diodorus was writing about Stonehenge, referring to an eyewitness report of an explorer who had actually seen the place.
But as soon as I read about Apollo skimming the earth I knew this couldn’t be Stonehenge, because at Stonehenge’s latitude both the sun and the moon are always very high above the horizon. To see that phenomenon (the moon or sun hardly rising above the horizon between rising and setting) you have to go about 500 miles further north, and I wondered if Diodorus might have been referring to Callanish.
Then Diodorus goes on to say: ‘In that temple, at the rising of the Pleiades, the sun is seen to set at the equinox’. And those two phenomena do also occur uniquely at Callanish. The ENE stone row at Callanish was in line with the rising of the Pleiades in the early Bronze Age, and the western stone row does point towards the setting of the sun at the equinox. So three independent lines of astronomical evidence point to Callanish; and that is very convincing.
It is accepted that Diodorus took his information about Britain from the earlier, lost, writer Hecataeus of Abdera, who himself drew on the lost writings of the 4th century BC Greek explorer Pytheas. Now what is remarkable is that by the time Pytheas got to Callanish, the Pleiades would have risen a few degrees to the north-east of the ENE stone row. The Pleiades – whose movements can be dated – had risen in alignment with the row for a few centuries after about 1700 BC (which is presumably when the row was built), but since then had edged away.
So Pytheas seems to have been reporting a folk memory of the connection between the circle and the Pleiades that had survived at Callanish for at least 1,000 years, long after the circle had gone out of use. This may seem incredible but we know from other societies that oral traditions can survive for many, many centuries even though their original use has long since been abandoned.
Strangely enough, years later when I wrote a book about stone rows, I suggested – quite independently of Callanish – that short stone rows (the type found at Callanish) were erected about 1800-1500 BC. And there you go, the Pleiades are rising at Callanish right in the middle of that range.
Aubrey Burl’s revised ‘Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany’ was recently published by Yale University Press
The rock art motifs here include a rosette
Stanhope White reports that there at least three other standing stones and are probably part of a kerb.
Stanhope White calls this a circle of rough boulders.
moggymiaow has informed me that this circle still exists and is very accessible.
The Percy Rigg settlement has five circular hut bases, two of them 28 feet in diameter with paved floors and the remnants of some stone walls still standing.
Breckon Howe is one of sixteen large barrows that follow a ridge across an 10 mile tract of moor between Goathland and Robin Hoods Bay and forms part of the ancient Whitby Strand Boundary.
The rock art at the Fowberry enclosure contains a unique grid carving NU029261
One of the Gled Law sites includes a carving with the largest number of concentric circles in Britain
A unique British site.
The carvings are horned spirals, triple spirals and running spirals.
According to the Mighty Stan Beckensall in his new book, there are 2 small cups on the north face of north stone and 1 large cup on its south face. There are 2 cups on the south stone on the south and south-west faces and 2 cups on the north face
Another small henge existed nearby but was destroyed when the new approach to Lowther Park lodge gates was constructed in 1878
The stone in the centre of the henge is one of four that existed. There was an additional four stones flanking the entrance.
A bronze and a stone axe were found within the henge.
Although Cawthorne is famous for its Roman remains, it was by no means unoccupied before they arrived.
James Ruddock of Pickering opened a barrow at Cawthorne on 26th November 1849 and found a bronze dagger, a flint spearhead and two skeletons. Ruddock was said to have opened over 300 barrows.
Another 19th century barrow digger, Thomas Kendal of Pickering, excavated a chariot burial close to the camps.
Numerous beakers and food vessels have also been found in the Cawthorne area.