Tag: burial mounds

High Marchup, Silsden, West Yorkshire

megalithix

Tumulus:  OS Grid Reference – SE 0501 4949

Also Known as:

  1. Parson’s Lane Tumulus

Getting Here

High Marchup tumulus

From Silsden go up the long hill (A6034) towards Addingham until the hill levels out, then turn left on Cringles Lane (keep your eyes peeled!) for about 500 yards until you reach the Millenium Way footpath, or rather, green lane track, to your right.  Walk along this usually boggy old road for another 400 yards until you’re level with the small copse of trees below the field (about 100 yards away).  The slightly raised ditched mound on the left side of the track ahead of you is what you’re after!

Archaeology & History

Unless this old tomb was pointed out, you probably wouldn’t give the place a second glance.  It’s a seemingly isolated singular round tomb, subsided on top and surrounded by a small ditch, running into the edge of the walling.  Gorse bushes and a few rocks are around the edges of the site.  Harry Speight (1900) described this old tomb as a

“lonely isolated mound, to be seen in Parson Lane about a hundred yards west of the Celtic boundary, Black Beck, where some old dying chief has called his friends around him bidding them, “heap the stones of his renown that they may speak to other years.”  It is a tumulus 80 feet in circumference and does not seem to have been disturbed.”

In Faull and Moorhouse’s (1981) magnum opus they describe the site as “the denuded remains of a ditched round barrow,” but say little else.  It may have had some relationship with the settlement remains in and around the huge Counter Hill complex, immediately north.

References:

  1. Cowling, E.T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
  2. Faull, M.L. & Moorhouse, S.A. (eds.), West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Guide to AD 1500 (4 volumes), WYMCC: Wakefield 1981.
  3. Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Werneth Low, Hyde, Lancashire

megalithix

Settlement (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SJ 959 928

Archaeology & History

Known by this name – Werneth – since at least the 12th century, place-name masters Ekwall, Smith and others have tended to think the place derives from a hypothetical British word, *verno-, meaning alder trees – though I aint so sure misself.

It’s been difficult to ascertain the precise nature of this prehistoric arena. Many mesolithic flint finds and old stone axes have been found around the area, but it seems primarily to have developed into a neolithic and Bronze Age settlement and burial site. A number of cairns were once here, and both rounded and linear earthwork features occur in the area; but there’s been considerable disturbance in and around the site and without in-depth archaeo-surveillance, much remains hidden.

References:

  1. Abraham, John Harris, Hidden Prehistory around the North West, Kindle 2012.
  2. Ekwall, E., The Place-Names of Lancashire, Manchester University Press 1922.
  3. Marriott, W., The Antiquities of Lyme and its Vicinity, Stockport 1810.
  4. Nevell, Michael, Tameside before 1066, TMBC 1992.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian