listerinepree

Last time I was here this stone was missing, any clues to it’s whereabouts?

From yorkgate road chevin car park walk east along the surprise view footpath for about 400m.

Parallel with the end of the plantation on your right there are some bushes with a patch of heathery grass beneath them. Knottie’s stone is visible from the path in those bushes, although the carving is very faint and much easier viewed from the other side.

Worth a look for the view from the stone, with the carved line seemingly pointing at the wart of Almscliffe on the horizon.

We went one dark winter evening and tried to tiptoe around the graveyard by the light of nearby street lamps, only finding it after some 30 minutes searching around the wrong end of the church. Its in the west of the church yard, near the edge where the trees are. Diminutive but an interesting carving.

Details from excavation notes – May 1971 issue of the Yorkshire Arcaeological Journal;

the mound contained 16 burials, many of them children and one a fetus of 7 months under a small cairn.

in the rubble of the mound they found fragments of axe heads from the langdale and north wales neolithic axe factories, and large quantities of snail shells.

This is quite easy to find, easily located near to the centre of the (very sweet but oddly desolate) village of North Deighton. Some locals advised us that the landowners were unfriendly and prone to confrontations, but we followed a track along the edge of a playground to a field where we could easily view the mound.

As it is situated in the centre of field with young crops we felt it would be bad form to stride across private land to get a closer look, hence my photos are from a distance. The mound is on a slight natural swell of the land, overlooking the Crimple river to the west of it.

The mound is supposed to be some 60ft in diameter, but seems ploughed into a smaller state. I still need to read the excavation notes from the YAS journal, and i’m told the finds from the barrow are kept in the pump room museum in Harrogate.

The locals also informed us of the (medieval) mound some distance to the NE of this howe, and their experiences of ghostly activities in the cottage they lived in adjacent to the mound!

Very beautiful location, an easy walk up and very easy to spot the huge cairn from the wall, the cist of the long barrow is just a little further along. The Yorkshire Archaeological Society notes on it detail that the cist contained one skeleton, the remains of a man about 5’4” tall and some cremated remains, possibly from a later date.

This stone is pretty well travelled. I had read about it existing in the leeds government archaeology listings, which had it placed somewhere in the grounds of Kirkstall abbey. I found directions to the stone which had it placed a short distance west of the ruins of the abbey guest house in the public park. No stone fitting the description was to be found.

Further (google!) research showed it had been moved to horsforth outside the museum next to the millenium stone, and had originally been found when Low Hall, the oldest building in horsforth, had been renovated in the 1960s. The stone had been temporarily placed in the grounds of kirkstall abbey for safe keeping where it featured in a display of rocks from around the world.

Its current position next to the fairly busy Fink Hill road isnt ideal, but it is a short walk from the road down to Low Hall, which is fairly difficult to get to across the ring road. It is a really nice example, but looking a little worse for wear with a few recent chips and scrapes next to the carving.