The Eternal
08/04/06 Floutern Cop Bronze Age cairn from the WNW.
Image credit: The Eternal
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/4795288.stm
Archaeologists hope to unearth Bronze Age treasures after receiving £50,000 to help fund a dig in a Cumbria valley. The three-year project in the Duddon Valley in the south west of the Lake District, will be carried out by professional archaeologists.
Much of the work will focus on the cairn at Seathwaite Tarn – a mound of landmark and burial stones.
The project is costing £133,000 in total and is being supported by the Lake District National Park Authority.
Archaeologists will be helped by university students, volunteers and members of the Duddon Valley History Group.
Park Authority senior archaeologist John Hodgson said: “The valley is a quiet and scenic part of the Lake District National Park.
“However, its quiet character masks a very long history of occupation. A wealth of physical remains exist from this long period, much of which has not been recorded.”
From “The Wind Among the Reeds” 1899, by W. B. Yeats, the exceptional Irish poet.
Quoted from the poem “He Remembers Forgotten Beauty”
“The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;”
Similarities to the King Dunmail legend?
10/02/06. Castlerigg stone circle in its landscape setting. Viewed from the summit ridge of Blencathra, looking SW. Derwent Water lies beyond.
Image credit: The Eternal
10/02/06. Carrock Fell hillfort from Bowscale Fell, looking N, 1.6 miles away as the raven flies.
Image credit: The Eternal
10/02/06. Great Mell Fell from the eastern slopes of Souther Fell, looking SE. The ridge of High Street Roman road is in the background.
Image credit: The Eternal
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4639116.stm
New plans for Stonehenge bypass
A government transport minister has been outlining possible options for the A303 road around historic Stonehenge.
It follows a decision in July 2005 to review plans – now estimated to cost £510m – to bore a tunnel at the site.
Stephen Ladyman said in addition to the tunnel, the viability of a bypass to the north or south or a ‘cut and cover’ tunnel would be examined.
He said: “The Government is committed to improving the A303 past the World Heritage Site at Stonehenge.”
He added: “I hope that everyone with an interest in this important issue will take this opportunity to contribute to the review process.”
David Lammy of the Highways Agency added: “This review is an important stage in our work. We need to find a solution for the A303 past Stonehenge that is right for the setting of the stones and right for the historic landscape which surrounds them.”
The public consultation period runs from 23 January to 24 April 2006, with public exhibitions being held in Salisbury on 9-11 February 2006 and in London on 17-18 February 2006.
Alternatives to the underground road tunnel at the site could threaten the recovery of one of Britain’s rarest birds – the stone curlew – the RSPB has warned.
14/01/06. Binsey Bronze Age cairn, NE of the north end of Bassenthwaite lake. Viewed from Barf. The cairn lies at about 1450 feet above sea level, twice the altitude of Elva Plain stone circle, which lies about 3.8 miles to the SW, and within easy sight. Are they linked?
Image credit: The Eternal
Elva Plain stone circle, viewed from Broom Fell looking NNW. It lies at the east end of a low west-east ridge, just west of the north end of Bassenthwaite lake. On the edge of the western Cumbrian mountains, the Cumbrian plain stretches westwards to the Irish Sea.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. Castlerigg stone circle, early morning, from outside the south side, looking north west to Skiddaw.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. Castlerigg stone circle, early morning, with the unusual stone in the south east quadrant. The stone on the left looks like it would almost fit, but not quite.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. Castlerigg stone circle, early morning, from within, looking to the south entrance.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. Castlerigg stone circle, early morning, the eastern edge, with the “cove” behind. Looking south.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. Castlerigg stone circle, early morning, the north west edge from outside the north entrance. Grisedale Pike is the peak on the right.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. Castlerigg stone circle, approaching from the north, early morning. Cloud-capped Helvellyn on the left, its slopes dropping down to Dunmail Raise – see site for that.
Image credit: The Eternal
07/01/06. A murky early morning, Dunmail Raise Bronze Age cairn. Note the dual carriageway ending sign (north end). The dual carriageway only lasts a few hundred yards, so beware idiot speeders, desperate to overtake anything in front. Taken from the car, perched on the grass verge, looking east. The hill in the background is Dollywaggon Pike. Behind the gap on the right lies Grisedale Tarn – see the legends of this site.
Image credit: The Eternal
The cairn sits at roughly the highest point of the pass between Grasmere and Thirlmere, called Dunmail Raise.
No bugger visits this. Not surprising really, as it sits in the middle of a dual carriageway. It’s sod’s Law really. The only place the road diverges is right here, for about 200 yards or so.
Mind you, if it hadn’t they might well have destroyed the cairn. There is a record of a stone circle here being destroyed when the road was “improved”. I’d like to get me ‘ands on the b*stard who planned that.
As for the cairn, well I must have driven past it literally hundreds of times, but I’ve never stopped to take a closer look. I always take my eyes off the road to have a good look whilst driving past. The hoary old stones give the appearance of being very ancient. The lichens and mosses look like they haven’t been disturbed for flippin’ ages.
As for remains of the stone circle, many large rocks can be seen around, and your imagination can take over. Try to think logically, otherwise every stone could be a possible remnant.
28/12/05. Working off the ale, twixt Crimbo and New Year, I found myself looking on this fine sight, on a day that would freeze the proverbials off a monkey cast in brass. The cairn sits in the middle of the dual carriageway. I just loved the place I was in, sod the view from the road.
Image credit: The Eternal
31/12/05. Loft Crag from Pike of Stickle summit. A cold day, in spite of the thaw. The Loft Crag site lies just over its summit. There’s not much to see, just a load of interesting, sharp greenstone flakes. They stand out against the natural rock shell, so anyone who knows what they’re looking for will see them. I left the place as I found it, moving and taking nothing. Please leave it as you find it.
After coming here all my life I still find it an awe-inspiring place.
Image credit: The Eternal
31/12/05 Loft Crag flakes, with sharp edges, eroding out of the peat.
The last day of the year, and a raw day at that. You can see where the rocks were worked, and here, where the peat had been eroded away, the evidence of the working of the greenstone can be seen as clean flake chips. No one I’ve ever seen here gives them a second look. I left everything in place.
This place is fragile, please tread carefully, and leave everything as you find it.
Image credit: The Eternal
31/12/05. Loft Crag stone axe factory: the evidence. Greenstone flakes, with sharp edges, on a thawing, but raw, day. By the way, I left everything untouched. The last site of 2005 for me, visited yet again. This place is fragile, please tread carefully, and leave everything as you found it.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 Castle Crag hillfort from the north, on the descent to Grange, as the fingers of night creep up on the Borrowdale valley. The last rites of one of those dark days at the sad tail-end of the year.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 Looking back southwards to Castle Crag hillfort, showing the west face in profile.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 The west face of Castle Crag hillfort rearing up in a mass of Borrowdale volcanic rock.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 The west face of Castle Crag hillfort rising up in a mass of scree and rock to the larch-girdled summit and sky.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 The west face of Castle Crag hillfort, impregnable on this side to any attack.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 Castle Crag hillfort from the south ridge, with Derwent Water behind.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 Castle Crag hillfort from the southern approach, below Low Scawdel, with the larch showing against the sky. Derwent Water lies beyond.
Image credit: The Eternal
23/12/05 Looking south down Borrowdale to Castle Crag hillfort, from the eastern slopes of Catbells.
Image credit: The Eternal
Bronze Age axe hoard found in Norfolk garden.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/4549230.stm
I must do a bit of weeding sometime.
The armies of the Saxon King Edmond and the Scottish King Malcolm joined forces to fight Dunmail, the King of Cumberland in AD 945, and won. It is said that Edmond himself killed Dunmail at the place where the cairn now stands.
He ordered his prisoners to collect rocks to pile on Dunmail’s body, thus forming the cairn.
As Dunmail lay dying he shouted, “My crown – bear it away; never let the Saxon flaunt it.”
A few of his warriors fought their way through the Saxons and bore his crown up the fell to Grisedale Tarn, where they threw it into the depths. They said, “Till Dunmail come again to lead us.”
Every year the warriors return to the tarn, retrieve the crown, and carry it down to the cairn on Dunmail Raise.
They hit their spears on the top of the cairn, and a voice issues from inside, saying “Not yet, not yet; wait awhile my warriors.”
The other legend of the cairn is that when two armies were about to join in battle each soldier from both sides placed a stone on the spot. Those who survived returned and removed a stone.
And I thought it was Bronze Age.
Castle Crag hillfort from the south. Taken from Grains Gill above Seathwaite.
Image credit: The Eternal
Detailed 3-day weather forecast for the Cumbrian mountains, with conditions on the fells.
Belated fieldnotes.
I arrived at Carrock Fell after a long day on the hills. It had been a bitterly cold day of gale-force winds and sub-zero temperatures on the fell tops.
The final approach, from the E, was over ground that would be boggy in warmer conditions, with the top rising above all else. This was the only direction which didn’t involve a steep ascent to gain the fort.
Once there I found the summit rocks to be surrounded by tumble-down stone walls, which were obviously impressive in their time. Entrances exist to the four points of the compass, and the views are extensive in all directions. There is no way this place could have been approached by stealth. The ascent from the valley is strenuous.
Archaeologists are of the opinion that it was never occupied as a fortified enclosure. If that was the case, then why all the effort to construct these very substantial banks of stone?
This is a very beautiful place of great loneliness, with nothing to be heard, save for the wind soughing through the pale grasses and ancient walls, and the song of the lark.
Carrock Fell hillfort from Great Dodd. View looking N.
Image credit: The Eternal
Great Mell Fell Bronze Age bowl barrow from Randerside on the slopes of Great Dodd. View looking NE.
The barrow is just below, and to the W of the summit of Great Mell Fell.
Great Mell Fell is a prominent, wedge-shaped hill to the W of the N end of Ullswater, which attracts few, apart from obsessive peak-baggers, and the odd, misty-eyed loner with an antiquarian bias.
Image credit: The Eternal
The watery autumn sun shines briefly through the gale, from whence we had come, illuminating Selside Pike Bronze Age cairn. Looking WSW.
Image credit: The Eternal
Selside Pike Bronze Age cairn, looking WNW, with the ridge we travelled earlier in the day on the mountain to the left. The mountain to the right is High Raise, with its own Bronze Age cairn on the summit. My mate, Pie Eater, sits within.
Image credit: The Eternal
Looking WSW into the modern shelter made from the Selside Pike Bronze Age cairn. My mate Pie Eater can be seen within, sheltering from the gale, supping tea, and pondering on the meaning of it all.
Image credit: The Eternal
Selside Pike Bronze Age cairn from Artle Crag on Branstree. Looking NE.
Image credit: The Eternal
“A Bronze Age round cairn; a circular mound of stones 10.5m in diameter and up to 0.5m high. The surface of the mound has been partly disturbed by construction of a modern shelter using stones from the cairn.” ADS.
This large cairn occupies the summit of selside Pike. We arrived there at the end of a long day on the fells around the head of Mardale. After many hours battling gale-force winds, mist, and horizontal rain, the weather eased off to heavy showers.
We sought sanctuary in the shelter that has sadly been made from the cairn. All around is nothing but grass, so the stones must have been carried up there.
It is a prominent site, with extensive views, including to the shap complex in the E, High Raise and Low Raise cairns to the NW, and the Four Stones Hill standing stones to the NE.
Castle Crags Iron Age hillfort, from Whelter Crags, on the descent from Low Raise.
Image credit: The Eternal
“A Bronze Age round cairn; a flat-topped oval mound of stones up to 0.8 high with maximum dimensions of 9m by 8m. There is a modern walkers’ cairn on the northern edge of the cairn.” ADH.
Just a few yards to the east of the route of the High Street R*man road, this cairn on the summit of High Raise is rarely visited. To the ENE the grassy ridge descends to the Bronze Age cairn on Low Raise.
The High Raise cairn is set on a rocky outcrop on a grassy ridge, the outcrops providing the building materials. On the E side a shelter has been constructed by wind-beaten travellers on the fells.
I’ve been here many times, and it always feels a special place of tranquility, even in times of storm, of which there are many.
“Remains of a cairn on the summit of Low Raise. 9.0m in diameter and 1.0m high.” According to ADS.
I’ve been on High Raise more times than I’d care to mention for fear of ridicule. I’ve only been on the ridge down over Low Raise once. I knew about the cairn, but was still surprised to find it in a place where there was nothing but grass. No outcrops, no rock beneath the immediate few feet of surface, just peat.
This is a lonely place, make no mistake, just a faint trace of flattened grass to show that others had trodden there once or twice. Go there when the mists are swirling over the hills, as I did, when it seems that you’ll never see more than a few feet of sodden fellside for the rest of the day. The cairn looms out of the mist like a great leviathan out of the depths. It looks like there is a quarry a few feet to the west, but seems too shallow to have excavated that much rock, and anyway, it’s all far too rounded and regular.
This is a huge cairn for the area. Even on the surrounding rocky peaks the modern summit cairns are small. High Raise is an exception, and there lies another site.
Descending down to the Iron Age hillfort of Castle Crags, Haweswater is shown to its best, full length.
Whit Moss and Brats Hill stone circles in their landscape, from the N. Viewed from the slopes of Slight Side, below Scafell.
Image credit: The Eternal
Maiden Castle cairn appears out of the long grass as you top the Eskdale to Wasdale col. This is obviously an old cairn, with the hoary old stones showning no signs of present use. I feel this is a very old burial cairn.
Image credit: The Eternal
Obviously an old cairn, the stones being covered in very old lichen. The centre has been cleared to make a shelter. It is situated to the NNW of Burnmoor Tarn. Is this anything to do with the Burnmoor complex? It’s marked on the map as an old cairn.