Tag: burials

Beadnell Caravan Park, Beadnell, Northumberland

megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone (lost):  OS Grid Reference – NU 2299 2989

Archaeology & History

Tait’s 1971 sketch of the carving

When the Beadnell Caravan Park was being constructed in 1970, in cutting into the Earth the workmen destroyed a couple of prehistoric tombs—but not before one of them (the northernmost one of the two) was thankfully excavated.  It was looked at by John Tait (1971), who described the covering cairn as measuring “nineteen feet in diameter and four feet high”.  Beneath it, within a cist that had been modified at two very different periods in time, were a large number of human remains that had been deposited over equally extended periods, suggesting it was a place of considerable importance to either one family lineage or the tribal lineage (unless it was just a dumping spot for any old Tom, Dick and Harry!).  Outside of the cist itself, but within the rocky mass of the cairn, this cup-marked stone was found (illustrated).  It had already been moved by the workmen before Tait came to excavate it, so he was unable to ascertain its precise position in the tomb.  Carved into a piece of sandstone were a number of odd-sized cup-marks, smaller than usual.  Tait wrote:

“It measures 38cm by 36cm and bears 29 small cup-marks and one slightly sinuous duct leading into what may be part of an earlier and larger cup. It also seems probable that additional cups  were added in antiquity, since some are distinctly more shallow than others and, in one instance, two cups impinge upon one another. The stone had been broken in antiquity and may have come from a larger inscribed slab, as is perhaps the case with some other “portable” stones of burials or cairns and other monuments of the second this nature.”

It is thought that the carving was laid back in the ground whence it was found.

References:

  1. Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 1, Abbey Press: Hexham 1991.
  2. Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
  3. Tait, J. & Jobey,G., “Romano-British burials at Beadnell, Northumberland,” in Archaeologia Aeliana (4th series), volume 49, 1971.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Balnabroich, Kirkmichael, Perthshire

megalithix

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NO 1008 5695

Getting Here

Balnabroich cairn

From Kirkmichael village take the A94 road 2 miles south to the Balnabroich standing stone and another 100 yards past it, on the left (east) take the dirt-track uphill, following the directions to reach the Balnabroich hut circles. You’ll see the large prehistoric rock pile of the Grey Cairn on the near skyline just above the huts and roughly on the same level, 50 yards away to the south, you’ll see this scruffy lumpy dump of a cairn, all overgrown.

Archaeology & History

The cairn, looking S

Amidst the veritable scatter of a thousand clearance cairns (yes, that’s the estimate), there are a few up here that had more funerary functions than the rest.  This being one of them.  When Allan Stewart (1795) wrote about them all in the Statistical Account, he couldn’t have missed this one—and yet he made no mention of it.  We had to wait another seventy years before the outside world became aware of its existence.  Then, along with “a band of between twenty and thirty workmen,” John Stuart (1865) set out to see what lay beneath the rocky pile.  In truth, much more attention was given to the huge Gray Cairn close by (understandably so), but at least some attention was given here.  Stuart described this cairn as,

“about 9 yards across, defined by large boulders, with a raised ridge around, and a cup in the centre. The raised ridges and centre were all formed of small stones and earth. A trench was cut through it from the southeast, which showed that in the centre, at a depth of 2 feet, a deposit had been made, of which the remains were charred wood and fragments of charred bone, with traces of blackish matter, which had filtered into the yellow subsoil, as in the case of the graves at Hartlaw.’ Many fragments of white quartz pebbles appeared near the centre, as in other cairns to the east.”

Indeed, at least one of the “cairns to the east” is made entirely of quartz stones!  Since Mr Stuart’s dig into the tomb, it has widened out slightly as rummaging cattle and other damage has been inflicted, and the grasses have coloured the tomb with their life.  Check it out when you’re up here!

References:

  1. MacLagan, Christian, The Hill Forts, Stone Circles and other Structural Remains of Ancient Scotland, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1875.
  2. Ramsay, John S., Highways and Byways of Strathmore and the Northern Glens, Blairgowrie Advertiser 1927.
  3. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, North-East Perth: An Archaeological Landscape, HMSO: Edinburgh 1990.
  4. Stewart, Allan, “Parish of Kirkmichael,” in Statistical Account of Scotland – volume 15, 1795.
  5. Stuart, John, “Account of Excavations in Groups of Cairns, Stone Circles and Hut Circles on Balnabroch, Parish of Kirkmichael, Perthshire,” in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 6, 1865.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Black Park (3), Callander, Perthshire

megalithix

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 66885 07447

Getting Here

Low-lying Black Park (3)

From Callander head east along the main A84 road and nearly 300 yards past the entrance to the Keltie Bridge caravan park, take the tiny road on your left (north) and barely 100 yards along turn right and go up here for exactly 1 mile.  Walk up the track from here and follow the directions to find the Black Park (1) cairn; and then the nearby small Black Park (2) cairn.  From here you need to walk north-east round the small rounded hillock in front of you, and cross a small burn (stream) up to the next small grassy rise.  Altogether this is about 200 yards from the Black Park (2) cairn.  On this grassy rise lives the Black Park (3) cairn!

Archaeology & History

As with its compatriot Black Park (2) cairn 200 yards southwest, this can be hard to see.  It’s an overgrown small singular cairn (it looks like a tumulus now) of no great note to look at: probably the resting spot of an individual or just a small family.  Measuring some 5-6 yards across and less than a yard high at the most, its easily missed unless you’re really mean to find it. More impressive are the ones on the hill immediately above you to the east.  Head there next!

References:

  1. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Braes of Doune: An Archaeological Survey, RCAHMS: Edinburgh 1994.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Black Park (2), Callander, Perthshire

megalithix

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 6672 0735

Getting Here

Black Park (2) cairn

Take the same directions as if you’re going to visit the large Black Park (1) cairn, and from here look down the slight boggy slope to your right (east) and, across the other side of a small burn (stream) you’ll see a slightly raised grassy knoll.  A curved dyke is to its left (west) side.  You’re there!

Archaeology & History

This small cairn, barely two feet high at the most, and five yards across, is deemed as a possible Bronze Age cairn on Canmore and in the Royal Commission (1994) report of the area.  There is certainly a pile of small stones here, but it may be a clearance cairn (I hope I’m wrong).  Only an excavation will tell us for sure.

References:

  1. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Braes of Doune: An Archaeological Survey, RCAHMS: Edinburgh 1994.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Black Park (1), Callander, Perthshire

megalithix

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 66612 07349

Also Known as:

  1. Black Wood
  2. Sruth Geal

Getting Here

Black Park (1) cairn, looking south

Less than a mile east of Callander on the main A84 road, nearly 300 yards past the entrance to the Keltie Bridge caravan park, take the tiny road on your left (north) and barely 100 yards along turn right and go up here for excatly 1 mile (give or take a few yeards) where  track goes into the forest on your left and you can park-up here.  Walk up the track into the silence for just under a mile where, as the track splits and you kink to the right, a gate appears.  On the other side of the gate, turn immediately left, almost walking back on yourself, just above the curving waters of a burn, through boggy reeds, keeping to the fence-line until, less than 300 yards along, you’ll reach what you’re looking for.

Archaeology & History

Black Park (1), looking W

This reasonably large cairn and its neighbours (Black Park [2], [3], [4] and [5]) would appear to be relatively new discoveries as I can find nothing about it prior to the Royal Commission’s 1994 survey.  They are even absent from Moray MacKay’s (1953) excellent work on the area!  Hence, descriptions of it are scant and visitors to the place are few indeed (we did meet a local who knew about the old tomb, but said that nothing was known about it); but it is, nonetheless, a fine, albeit denuded and very overgrown cairn, living today amidst a quiet mass of reeds and surrounded by boggy ground—so make sure you’ve got your boots on!

Internal line of stonework
Black Park (1), looking SE

At its height, today, it stands less than four feet tall and measures roughly 16 yards across at its widest.  Through one section of the tomb there runs a raised line of stonework that almost looks like internal walling, which may have been where a chamber once existed.  It’s been hollowed out by someone in the not-too-distant past but, as I said, there are no records of such a thing, so whether or not that was a chamber or merely a fortuituous collapse of stone in a straight line, we can’t really say.  Along its more northern edges there seems to be a small raised wall of stone defining its edge, although once again it requires a more discerning examination to work out whether this is part of its original facade, or is a result of some of the stone mass falling to the edges.

Visit the old place and sit with its silence for a while…

References:

  1. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Braes of Doune: An Archaeological Survey, RCAHMS: Edinburgh 1994.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Wilson Scar, Shap, Cumbria

megalithix

Stone Circle (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NY 549 182

Archaeology & History

This site has been completely destroyed by the huge eyesore of a quarry that we all see when we’re travelling up the M6 north, above Shap.  John Waterhouse (1985) told that “a rescue excavation” was carried out here with help from the kids at Penrith Queen Elizabeth School, shortly before its destruction in 1952, but now there is no trace left of it.  When it was first described by J.E. Spence (1935), the circle had already been damaged by a wall that cut right through its centre.  He told:

Spence’s 1935 plan

“The circle, which is 6o feet in diameter, is composed of 35 stones, 20 being on the west and 15 on the east side of the boundary wall running through the circle from north to south.  The stones of which the circle is composed are Borrowdale erratics, a large number of which are scattered over the adjoining ground on both sides of the wall but more thickly in Sweet Holme Pasture. The  stones, which vary up to 5 feet 9 inches by 3 feet, are larger and more numerous in the north-west quadrant where the tallest stands 1 foot 8 inches above the level of the turf.  The ground within the circle is level, but to the south and west it slopes gently down from the edge of the circle in such a manner as to suggest that the area within the circle has been levelled.”

1952 plan laid over Spence’s 1935 plan

Spence told that an ancient “sunken trackway” led outwards from the circle to the south-west in the direction of Rosgill, but when the 1952 excavation occurred, no remains of such a track were found; nor was the wall that had cut through it; and the north-easterly section of the circle had been cut into and re-laid, presumably by the quarrymen.  It was quite plain, wrote G.G. Sieveking (1984), “that this portion of the monument was encroached upon in the summer of 1952, and hastily reconstructed for the benefit of the archaeologists.”

Their excavation found that some internal sections of this ring had been paved with thin limestone slabs and they also uncovered two small cairns, neither of which possessed anything.  However, they did find four funerary deposits within the monument: one at the northeastern section of the circle (no.1); another near the centre (no.4); and remains of a cremation west of centre (no.3); but the most complete find was at the western side of the ring, where a “disarticulated inhumation burial was lying immediately beneath the turf line in a shallow grave 1.35 m long, surrounded by a setting of small boulders.”  It was a near complete human skeleton.  This place was obviously, at times, used in ceremonies for the dead.

Shortly after the archaeological examination of the site, it was blasted away by quarrying.  Gone!

References:

  1. Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain – volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1989.
  2. Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
  3. Farrah, Robert W.E., A Guide to the Stone Circles of Cumbria, Hayloft: Kirkby Stephen 2008.
  4. Seton, Ray, The Reason for the Stone Circles in Cumbria, privately published: Morecambe 1995
  5. Sieveking, G.G., “Excavation of a Stone Circle at Wilson Scar, Shap North 1952,” in Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, volume 84, 1984.
  6. Spence, J.E., “A Stone Circle in Shap Rural Parish,” in Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, volume 35, 1935.
  7. Waterhouse, John, The Stone Circles of Cumbria, Phillimore: Chichester 1985.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

The Spinsters’ Rock, Drewsteignton, Devon

megalithix

Dolmen:  OS Grid Reference – SX 70092 90783

Also Known as:

  1. Drewsteignton (1)

Archaeology & History

Highlighted on Benjamin Donn’s map of Devon in 1765, this impressive neolithic dolmen consists of three large granite support stones between 5 ft 7 in and 7 ft 7 in tall, surmounted by a large capstone measuring 15 feet by 10 feet.  It collapsed in 1862 but was restored later the same year.

 

Folklore

In Murray’s (1851) Handbook for Travellers he told the following tale of the site:

This interesting old monument derives its name from a whimsical tradition that three spinsters (who were spinners) erected it one morning before breakfast; but “may we not,”* says Mr. Rowe (Peramb. of Dartmoor), “detect in this legend of the three fabulous spinners the terrible Valkyriur of the dark mythology of our Northern ancesters – the Fatal Sisters, the choosers of the slain, whose dread office was to ‘weave the warp and weave the woof of destiny.'”

Polwhele informs us that the legend varies, in that for the three spinsters some have substituted three young men and their father, who brought the stones from the highest part of Dartmoor; and in this phase of the legend has been traced an obscured tradition of Noah and his three sons.

.. The hill on which it stands commands an excellent view of Cawsand Beacon. About 100 yds. beyond the cromlech on the other (N.) side of the lane, is a pond of water, of about 3 acres, called Bradmere Pool, prettily situated in a wood. It is said to be unfathomable, and to remain full to the brim during the driest seasons, and some regard it as artificially formed and of high antiquity – in short a Druidical pool of lustration connected with the adjacent cromlech..

.. The country-people have a legend of a passage formed of large stones leading underground from Bradmere to the Teign, near the logan stone..

References:

  1. Baring-Gould, Sabine, A Book of Dartmoor, London 1900.
  2. Crossing, William, Gems in a Granite Setting, Western Morning News: Plymouth 1905.
  3. Falcon, T.A., Dartmoor Illustrated, James G. Comin: Exeter 1900.
  4. Murray, John, A Hand-book for Travellers in Devon & Cornwall, John Murray: London 1851.
  5. Ormerod, G. Waring, Notes on Rude Stone Remains Situate on the Easterly Side of Dartmoor, privately printed 1873.
  6. Page, John Lloyd Warden, An Exploration of Dartmoor and its Antiquities, Seeley: London 1892.
  7. Worth, R. Hansford, Worth’s Dartmoor, David & Charles: Newton Abbot 1967.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Snowden Carr, Askwith Moor, North Yorkshire

megalithix

Ring Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – SE 1786 5129

Getting Here

Low remains of cairn mass

From the Askwith Moor car-park (SE 1757 5067), walk along the road north for several hundred yards and go through the gate on your right.  Head northeast through the heather to the Death’s Head carving and keep along the same direction for barely another hundred yards onto the ever-so-slight crown of a small hillock.  This is a hut circle you’re standing in/on.  A few yards away just to the southeast of where you’re standing is the very denuded remains of this ring cairn.

Archaeology & History

Low remains of rubble wall

Not visible when the heather’s in full growth, it’s nonetheless worth visiting if you’re trying to get a picture of the prehistoric landscape hereby.  Less than 10 yards southeast of the notable hut circle on the small crown of a hill, it was first noticed by Sarah Walker on a group visit here recently.  Roughly 12 yards across, the most notable section of the circle is the remains of the rubble bank on its east and southeastern sides, raised a few feet above ground level.  The majority of the monument comprises of a scatter of various rocks and small stones within and round the edges of the circle.  There’s a lot of scattering from other adjacent remains, such as the hut circle and nearby walling, that give the initial impression of it being little more than a spurious mess of stone; but the more you walk around and inside it, the more you come to recognize its structure.

It has that Bronze Age hallmark look about it, but without an excavation this is just educated guesswork.  It might actually be older.  The widespread mass of prehistoric remains all round here shows that it was once a mass of activity in prehistoric times.  It’s a brilliant area, even if you can’t find this particular site!

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Connachan, Crieff, Perthshire

megalithix

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 88098 27498

Getting Here

The stones mark the cairn

A couple of miles east of Crieff, take the A822 road from the Gilmerton junction and head up towards the Sma’ Glen.  After literally 1¾ miles (2.8km), on the right-side of the road, you can park-up right opposite the dirt-track that leads up to Connachan Farm a half-mile away.  Walking up and then past the farm, go past the Connachan (2) petroglyph, keeping on the same track uphill and just past the (Connachan 4) carving the land levels out where the track curves.  From here, walk to your right, into the grasses, and about 90 yards along you’ll see a small rise in the ground with two or three fallen stones in the middle.

Archaeology & History

The cairn, looking N

There’s nothing truly notable about this much-overgrown cairn and you could very easily walk past it without noticing it was even there!  Much of its original mass has been removed and, no doubt, its stones reused in the old walling a few yards to the north (a long section of that walling appears to have a prehistoric provenance). It measures roughly 10 yards across and its outer edges are clearly visible as a raised grass-covered mound all round, just one or two feet high at the most.  Obviously it was much larger when first built, but all that we see now are its final ruins, four or five thousand years after its birth…  The one thing of great note here is the view: you’re looking from east to south to west across an awesome landscape for many many miles.  Check it out!

References:

  1. Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Connachan, Crieff – Cup Marks and Hut Circle,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, 1967.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Craigpark, Ratho, Midlothian

megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone (removed):  OS Grid Reference – NT 128 709

Archaeology & History

“M” marks the cupmark

A simple cup-marked stone was located inside a prehistoric burial cist that was discovered by quarry workmen in November 1897.  The cist was subsequently excavated by Fred Coles (1898) who found therein (amongst other things) a simple cup-marked stone whose present locale is a box somewhere in Edinburgh’s National Museum (could someone send us a photo please?).  The carving comprises simply of two complete cups and portion of a third, all close to each other on a small stone that was located on the south-side of the cist (see ‘M’ in the attached diagram).  Coles described the carving thus:

“During the removal of (some) small stones, one, when the damp soil was rubbed of, showed two cup-marks, about 1½ inch wide each and ½ inch apart.  The stone itself measures 5 inches by 4¾, and appears to be but a fragment of a larger one, one edge showing part of a third cup.  The cups all show the tool-marks usually noticed on these mysterious sculpturings.”

References:

  1. Coles, Fred, “Notice of the Discovery of a Cist with a Double Burial at Ratho Quarry”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 32, 1898.
  2. Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Cup-and-Ring Marks and Similar Sculptures of Scotland: A Survey of the Southern Counties – part 2,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 100, 1969.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian