Although ascribed as a holy or healing well, this site is actually a curious natural water-filled depression near the top of Dun I, on the northern side of the island. It is one of three magickal wells to be found hereby. F.M. McNeill (1954) described this Well of Eternal Youth as having a fame that had spread far and wide, saying,
“Here, through ages past, pilgrims of each generation have lingered at the enchanted hour of dawn, ‘to touch the healing water the moment the first sun-ray quickens it.'”
In doing so, devotees would recover the energies of youth once more and live a longer healthy life.
References:
Hannan, Thomas, Iona and some Satellites, W. & R. Chambers: London 1928.
McNeill, F. Marion, Iona, Blackie & Sons: Glasgow 1954.
Takes a bitta finding – especially if some dood’s knocked it down again (as happens up here). Best thing to do is get to the Miller’s Grave prehistoric cairn, which is only a few hundred yards away. From Miller’s Grave, walk due west for 200 yards till you hit once a ditched footpaths, where you should turn right. A short distance along you’ll hit a 5-foot-tall boundary stone called the Greenwood Stone with ‘1775’ carved on one side. From here, walk due south into the heather for 75 yards. You’re very close!
Archaeology & History
We resurrected this old standing stone in 1996, several years after first discovering it laid amidst the heather in the early 1990s. It appeared to mark an old boundary line (no longer used) betwixt Wadsworth Moor and Midgley Moor, but its nature is distinctly prehistoric. The remains of a small hut circle (seemingly Bronze Age, though excavation is needed) can be found a short distance to the west, though this is hard to find when the heather has grown. Other seemingly prehistoric remains scatter the ground nearby, none of which have received the attention of archaeologists.
Greenwood ‘B’ on a grey day
As you can see from these grey, rain-swept images, this upright stone is well-weathered (though we need to visit here again soon and get some better photos). It stands some 4-feet tall and may have accompanied one or two other monoliths close by. The suggestion by one Peter Evans that the Greenwood B stone stood “possibly at the centre of a stone circle” is sadly untrue (soz Peter); though it probably had some relationship with the Millers Grave cairn site, a few hundred yards equinox east.
References:
Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
Easy to find if you go at the right time of year — very troublesome to find if you go at the wrong time! Check the place out at the end of winter, beginning of Spring. It’s at the top end of Shipley Glen, just past where the road bends round and goes uphill. About 50 yards up, on the left side of the road walk into the grasslands for less than 100 yards. Look around!
Archaeology & History
An intriguing site this one. Intriguing as it wasn’t in the archaeological registers when I first came across it — and I’m really unsure whether it’s in there now. It probably has, as John Barnatt came here with some earth-mystery folk in 1982! But when I first visited this site in 1975 it seemed no one knew about it — and little has changed since then.
It is an enclosed ring of stones less than 30 feet across with an earth embankment separating it from what seems like a secondary ring on its outer edge, a foot or two away. This didn’t appear to surround the complete ring and may have been damaged. It had an appearance similar in size, shape and form to the Roms Law and Harden Moor sites, and thankfully in reasonable condition. I don’t think any excavation has yet been performed here though.
There are a number of other small standing stones on the outskirts of this ring that may have some relationship with the site, but we need excavation to prove one way or the other. Several very well-preserved cup-marked stones are close by.
Folklore
Intriguing to those of you who are fascinated by alignments between sites, or ‘leys’, as an impressive lines runs through this site. Starting at the little known Hirst Woods Circle and terminating at the giant Great Skirtful of Stones cairn, once passing over the now destroyed Weecher circle and the Brackenhall Green ring on its way.
References:
Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Chieveley 2001.
Way off from seemingly anywhere this one – on the southern foothills of the great Cuillins, by the western edge of a seemingly unnamed loch. (most unusual) Take the Elgol road (A881) south from Broadford, nearly to its end, keeping an eye out for Kirkibost a few miles from the very end of the road. Just past here, stop and walk the track west to Camasunary a half-mile along, through the small forestry-bit, then follow the line of the trees north and keep going a bit more till y’ reach the nice stream that feeds that unnamed loch. Cross the stream!
Archaeology & History
Alexander Thom’s 1967 drawing
A fascinating little site this one! Perhaps consisting of as many as eight stones at one time, only three stand visible today. Alexander Thom (1967) reported finding other stones in this circle “being buried in the peat, but prodding revealed their position roughly” — as shown on his drawing here. There may at one time have been as many as eight stones here, but the site itself is quite small, making a ring of stones only 21-feet across (or 8 megalithic yards as Thom had it). The ruinous state of the site was put down to the stupidity of the Church of Scotland issuing “instructions that all stones in Skye were to be thrown down” a few centuries back.
Aubrey Burl’s later ‘four-poster’ summary
Aubrey Burl reported that “there were once at least 4 stones here, the tallest being of 6ft 6ins (2m) high,” and wondered whether this was one of the many ‘four-poster’ stone circles that scatter Scotland and elsewhere. An issue he seemed comfortable to proclaim a few years later in his survey of such sites. (Burl 1988) Of those stones still standing, the tallest is just 5 feet high; but there’s the impressive 11½-foot long monolith laying on the southeast edge of the ring! Mr Burl also pointed out that some
“casual digging inside the ring around 1860 uncovered a blackpolished stone about 1½ ins (4cm) long, ‘somewhat resembling a small pestle.'”
I found the proximity of the Cille Mhaire burial ground a mile west of here more than a bit intriguing (though didn’t have time to assess its geomantic relationship further). And the reported presence of prehistoric cairns nearby imply that the Na Clachan Bhreige ‘circle’ had some relationship with death and burial.
Folklore
The folkname of ‘The False Stones’ comes from that well-known tale of the site “supposedly being the remains of three men turned into stone for deserting their wives.” Something which Otta Swire (1964) thought was likely told by christian converts. It would have probably replaced an earlier tale of the stones being the site where some ancestral spirits lived. Swire also told that,
“these were once, if tradition is to be believed, Stones of Wisdom who could both foretell the future and show justice as between man and man.”
Burl (1988) also points out how,
“The name, Na Clachan Bhreige, has been variously pointed translated as ‘the judicial stones’, a place where medieval law courts were held, as in several other Scottish rings. It has also been interpreted as ‘the stone of lies, or falsehood.'”
References:
Burl, Aubrey, Four Posters: Bronze Age Stone Circles of Western Europe, BAR: Oxford 1988.
Grinsell, L.V., Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, Hale: Newton Abbot 1976.
Swire, Otta F., Skye: The Island and its Legends, Blackie & Sons: Glasgow 1961.
Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Sites in Britain, Oxford University Press 1967.
Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, Aubrey, Megalithic Rings, BAR: Oxford 1980.
From the Askwith Moor dusty parking spot, walk up the road for 160 yards where, on each side of the road, you’ll see a straight line running across the moors. On the left-side (west) walk onto the moor for 50-60 yards along this line, then dead straight west into the heather for another 50-60 yards and look around. It’s hard to see if the heather’s grown.
Archaeology & History
Found by Richard Stroud on July 20, 2004, this single hut circle is in faint evidence. About twenty feet across with a section of the low walling either missing, or more probably buried in the peat. Although no other hut-circles were immediately visible, this was probably because of the excessive heather-growth. I have little doubt that others will be close to this one, as the area is littered with prehistoric sites. The petroglyph catalogued as Askwith Moor 529 is very close to this hut circle.
Pretty easy really. Get to the ancient St. Michael’s Church on the dead-end road just outside of Linton village. As you approach it, look into the field on your right. Y’ can’t miss it!
Archaeology & History
Linton ‘Standing Stone’
This is an oddity. It could perhaps be little more than one of the Norber erratics found a few miles further north — but it looks more like a smaller version of one of the Avebury sarsens! Just under six-feet tall, it was shown to me by Adrian Lord yesterday (when the heavens subsequently opened and an outstanding downpour-and-half followed), who’d come across it only a week or two earlier themselves when they visited the ancient church next door. The stone certainly aint in any archaeology registers (no surprise there); and as one local man we spoke to yesterday told us, “there used to be several other standing stones in the same field, cos I remember ’em when I was a kid. ” The gent we spoke to seemed to know just about everything about the local archaeology and history of the area (one of those “damn good locals” you’re sometimes lucky to find!). He told us that the other stones which used to be there had been moved by the local farmer over the years, for use in his walls. So it seems that this is the last one standing. What looks like several other fallen stones can be seen further down the field, just next to the church. But this one’s pretty impressive.
Close-up of gnarled rockLooking south-ish!
The church of St. Michael next door was, tells the information inside, built upon some old pagan site — which gives added thought to this upright stone perhaps being the ruin of an old circle, or summat along those lines. The church, incidentally, is built right next to the River Wharfe.
Not far from here we find an almost inexhaustible supply of prehistoric remains at Grassington and district (less than a mile north). A huge excess of Bronze- and Iron Age remains scatter the fields all round the town. And aswell as the Yarnbury henge close by, there is — our local man told us, “another one which no-one knows abaat, not far away”!
Folklore
The folklore of this area is prodigious! There is faerie-lore, underworld tales, healing wells, black-dogs, ghosts, earthlights – tons of the damn stuff. But with such a mass of prehistoric remains, that aint too surprising. And although there appears no direct reference to this particular stone (cos I can’t find a damn reference about it), the old Yorkshire history magus, Harry Speight (1900), wrote of something a short distance away along the lane from the church. He told that,
“In the field-wall beside the road may be seen some huge glacial boulders, and there is one very large one standing alone in the adjoining field, which from one point of view bears a striking resemblance to a human visage; and a notion prevails among the young folk of the neighbourhood that this stone will fall on its face when it hears the cock crow.”
Just the sort of lore we find attached to some other standing stones in certain parts of the country. And in fact, from some angles, this ‘ere stone has the simulacrum of a face upon it; so this could be the one Speight mentions (though his directions would be, unusually, a little out).
There are heathen oddities about the church aswell: distinctly pre-christian ones. An old “posset-pot” was used for local families to drink from after the celebration of a birth, wedding or funeral here. And at Hallowtide – the old heathen New Year’s Day,
“certain herbs possessed the power of enabling those who were inclined to see their future husbands or wives, or even recognizing who was to die in the near future.”
And in an invocation of the great heathen god (the Church called it the devil), Speight also went on to tell that:
“The practice at Linton was to walk seven times round the church when the doomed one would appear.”
In a watered down version of this, local people found guilty of minor transgressions in and around Linton (thieves, fighters, piss-heads, etc),
“was compelled to seek expiation by walking three time around Linton Church.”
This would allegedly cure them of their ‘sins’! Rush-bearing ceremonies were also enacted here. On the hill above, the faerie-folk lived. And until recently, time itself was still being measured by the three stages of the day: sunrise, midday and sunset; avoiding the modern contrivances of the clock, and maintaining the old pre-christian tradition of time-keeping. Much more remains hidden…
References:
Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TF 232 018
Archaeology & History
Very little was known about this now lost burial mound. It was one of several nearby but, thankfully, the local historian and archaeologist E. Thurnam Leeds (who once lived at the nearby Eyebury Farm) sent a letter to the Society of Antiquaries in London, describing some pottery and other remains that he’d found there:
“The small pot of a late Bronze Age type and the other sherds exhibited were found in a tumulus known as Oliver Cromwell’s Hill, at Eyebury, near Peterborough. As only a portion of the tumulus has been examined as yet, it is proposed to defer a full account of the excavations until further progres has been made. The tumulus is of the round type, about 40 yards in diameter and 5 feet high at the centre. On three sides traces of a ditch were met with, containing soil which had evidently been burnt. Close to the gravel in the centre of the tumulus there were two distinct layers of charcoal, and in two places apparently remains of hearths. The small pot was found only 1½ feet down on the south-eastern side of the mound, 39 feet from the centre. In the centre itself at various depths were found sherds, some of Bronze Age forms; but a pice of a rimmed vase found at a depth of 3 feet 6 inches, about 6 inches above the first charcoal layer, appears to be of Roman date, in which case the centre of the tumulus must have been disturbed in those times, though the charcoal floors were never pierced. Bones of various animals, including sheep, pig, dog and hare, and a large flint flake were also found.”
As far as I’m aware, no further detailed examinations took place at this curiously-named hillock, whose folktale I’ve yet to read.
References:
Leeds, E.T., ‘Letter,’ in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 22:1, 1910.
The great Huddersfield historian, Philip Ahier (1948), in describing the lack of documentary evidence for several crosses in the neighbouring region, “at Deighton, Cowcliffe, Marsh and Golcar,” found out that,
“One did exist at Slaithwaite in front of the Manor House in the early past of the last century. In March 1931, the base of this cross, commonly known as the Dial Stone, was removed to Doughlas in the Isle of Man, where it rested in the garden of Mr Harry Wood; in August 1939, it was brought back to Slaithwaite and now stands in the Recreation Park.”
However, this site differs from another two that I’ve found records for on the outskirts of this township. Does anyone know what became of this old stone cross? Izzit still about? Its folk-name of the Dial Stone may make it a little easier to locate — but at the same time it does bring up the query, Why was it called that?
References:
Ahier, Philip, The Story of the Three Parish Churches of St. Peter the Apostle, Huddersfield – volume 1, Advertiser Press: Huddersfield 1948.
Not far south of the smaller Lesser Cursus monument, this huge linear earthwork was the very first cursus to be described, by William Stukeley no less, who thought it to be an old race-course for charioteers and the like! He stumbled upon this: a curious gigantic linear earthwork feature, stretching for nearly two miles roughly east-west and as wide a football field, cut into the Wiltshire Earth, betraying all notions of ‘primitive’ histories as proclaimed by the ‘intellectuals’ of his day. They were clearly wrong! This immense enigmatic structure, still baffles the same creed of intellectuals to this day — but at least our old ancestors have been granted greater abilities than previously believed. In his book on Stonehenge in 1740, Mr Stukeley described this,
“most noble work, contriv’ed to reach from the highest ground of two hills, extended the intermediate distance over a gentle valley; so that the whole cursus lies conveniently under the eye of the most numerous quantity of spectators. To render this more convenient for site, it is projected on the side of more rising ground, chiefly looking towards Stonehenge. A delightful prospect from the temple, when this vast plain was crowded with chariots, horsemen and foot, attending these solemnities with innumerable multitudes.”
Sir Norman Lockyer propounded its function as astronomical, aligning with the Pleiades around 2000 BC — a date we now know to be inconsistent with its construction, although as John North said in his Stonehenge (1997):
“Lockyer’s chronology was certainly better than the general archaeological consensus at the time.”
But further archaeological alignments and leys have been suggested running eastwards from here. And as Paul Devereux pointed out, “In the case of this cursus, archaeology got there first.” J.F.S. Stone, who carried out some excavations at the cursus in 1947, noted that
“its axis, if projected 1500 yards east, strikes Woodhenge and passes the Cuckoo or Cuckold Stone by the way.”
This was endorsed in 1981 by archaeologists John Hedges and David Buckley:
“In addition to aligning upon Woodhenge, the Greater Stonehenge cursus also sights upon the Cuckoo or Cuckold Stone.”
Alignment to Beacon Hill
In Roy Loveday’s (2006) survey of cursus monuments he told how this alignment goes much further, telling how it aligns “on the lower, northernmost prominence of Beacon Hill 8km away”, crossing Woodhenge on its way. Such suggestions used to bring outcries of derision from the archaeological fraternity, but it seems archaeologists themselves are making such claims more and more these days. At the forefront of modern alignment research in previous decades was Paul Devereux — and it was he who first noted the line-up with the distant Beacon Hill from the Great Cursus, telling:
“The course of the alignment can be extended eastwards a few miles beyond Woodhenge to cross the barrow-dotted ridge of Beacon Hill — a perfect example of a Wakins-style ‘initial point.’ The ridge is highly visible from Woodhenge. It disappears from view as one walks westwards down the cursus, but reappears clearly as the west end is approached. Indeed, the west end is so placed that it is at about the furthest point from which the Beacon Hill ridge , and the intermediate on which the eastern end of the cursus fall, can be seen together.”
…to be continued…
References:
Burl, Aubrey, A Brief History of Stonehenge, Robinson: London 2007.
Hedges, John & Buckley, David G., The Springfield Cursus and the Cursus Problem, Essex County Council 1981.
Loveday, Roy, Inscribed Across the Landscape, Tempus: Stroud 2006.
North, John, Stonehenge, Harper-Collins: London 1997.
Pennick, N. & Devereux, P., Lines on the Landscape: Leys and other Linear Enigmas, Hale: London 1989.
Stone, J.F.S., ‘The Stonehenge Cursus and its Affinities,’ in Archaeological Journal, 104, 1947.
In the midst of the great henge monuments at Thornborough — specifically, the central henge — archaeologist Ian Longworth (1965) said there “was built …a still earlier structure known as a cursus.” This giant monument was one of the earlier such sites located in Britain. Longworth continued, saying:
“This was a ceremonial avenue, running for nearly a mile in a northeast / southwesterly direction. The avenue is defined by ditches 144 feet apart with a bank running along the inside of each ditch. The ditches are now completely filled with plough soil and, as with other cursus monuments in the county, were discovered from the air as two dark lines in the cereal crop… Probably used for ritual ceremonies, no clues remain to show what actually took place.”
Thornborough Cursus (& henges)
This cursus runs almost at right angles to the alignment of the three Thornborough Henges, on the southern side of the central henge, and was first found through the aerial photography of J.K. St. Joseph between 1945 and 1952. When excavation work was carried out, “a crouched burial was found in a stone cist within the southwest end” of the cursus. This end of the monument is rounded, like the Stonehenge Cursus; whilst the northeast end of the monument has not been located. The southwest end of the cursus begins at OS grid-reference SE 2799 7906 and its northeasterly end is roughly at SE 2881 7954. The middle of the known cursus is roughly in Thornborough’s central henge.
Paul Devereux (1989) said that the monument, “which had become silted-up and grass-covered by the time the henge was built, had two main orientations, with a curvilinear, irregular section just to the east of the henge.” Although Norris Ward (1969) thought that the cursus actually went all the way down the River Ure, it stops some distance beforehand, though may obviously have had some important relationship with the waters.
References:
Longworth, Ian H., Regional Archaeologies: Yorkshire, Cory, Adams & Mackay: London 1965.
Pennick, N. & Devereux, P., Lines on the Landscape, Hale: London 1989.
Thomas, Charles, ‘Folklore from a Northern Henge Monument,’ in Folklore Journal, volume 64:3, 1953.
Ward, Norrie, Yorkshire’s Mine, J.M. Dent: London 1969.
