From Ilkley central, go up Wells Road and, several hundred yards past the cattle-grid, keep your eyes peeled and turn left up the small moorland road for a half-mile and park-up at the start of the track to Silver Well cottage. Walk along here and, on the way, you may as well pass the cup-and-ring marked Weary Hill Stone, and the other Silver Well carvings further west through the heather. From the Silver Well (3) cup-marked stone, follow the walling uphill for nearly 100 yards until your reach the small gate. Go through it and stick to the footpath for 200 yards and then keep your eyes peeled for a large wonky ovoid stone less than 20 yards to your right. It’s a big thing, so you’ll find it easily enough.
Archaeology & History
Hedges 1986 sketch
Although this is primarily a cup-marked stone (a faint ring is possible around one of them), it’s a good design. It does it for me anyway! Sitting on a ridge at the top of a slope overlooking the Wharfe valley, from here the landscape opens up for many miles ahead of us looking mainly to the north, although the horizons both east and west also call our attention as the rising and setting sun would speak around the equinoxes. But it’s the airt of north which mainly calls from here. A scatter of cups splatter the rock surface, all of them on one half of the stone acting out in usual disorderly conduct apart from one spot where there are three deep cups in a line: this is the most notable part of the carving. At the top (southern) nose of the stone is a triangle of them and they then becoming increasingly disordered as you move along the stone. There are seemingly twenty of them altogether (perhaps more) with one of them having a short groove oozing out of it which can be difficult to see when the light isn’t quite right.
Silver Well (1) carvingSilver Well (1) carving
It was first described in Hedges (1986) survey, where he told it to be a “large flat rock in bracken with sixteen clear cups, four other possible cups, grooves and one basin”—although at the same time somehow, erroneously, he thought the carving may have been uncovered by Stuart Feather in 1970, confusing this stone with two more complex petroglyphs 300 yards to the west of here. Give it your attention when you’re walking on this ridge, before walking to the two others 300 yards to the west. It’s certainly worth looking at.
References:
Allen, J. Romilly, “Notice of Sculptured Rocks near Ilkley,” in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, volume 38, 1882.
Anonymous, Walks Around Cup and Ring Stones, ITIC: Bradford n.d. (1995)
Boughey, K.J.S. & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Prehistoric Rock Art of Great Britain: A Survey of All Sites Bearing Motifs more Complex than Simple Cup-marks,” in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, volume 55, 1989.
Acknowledgements: Big thanks to the petroglyphic hands of Graeme Chappell and Tom Cleland for the work at this stone. Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Go up Wells Road out of Ilkley central, up and across the cattle-grid and, one-third of a mile (0.5km) past the grid, keep your eyes peeled for the small road on your left. Go up here for literally half-a-mile and park at the roadside. From here you’ll see the straight track leading to the Silver Well cottage in the trees. Walk 250 yards along the track (past the larger Weary Hill [3] carving on the slope just above) towards the cottage and, about fufty 100 yards before reaching the gate, walk up the slope through the heather to the small flat-faced rock that looks down at you. If you’re approaching the much larger, more notable boulder of the Silver Well (3) carving, you need to be about 20 yards east of it.
Archaeology & History
Line of distinct cup-marks
This is a simple but notable cup-marked rock. As you walk up the slope towards it, you get the impression you’re looking at the front-end of a tomb entrance of some sort—but it’s nothing of the sort (sadly). Once you reach the flat face of stone, you’ll see that its topmost section is a thin wedge of stone along which are three distinct and quite deep cup-markings. The stone was first mentioned in Hedges (1986) survey, where he also thought there may have been a fourth cup on the south-side of the stone. When I first saw photos of this, I thought it was either a modern one or just another of Nature’s carved handiwork; but when we visited it recently our opinions changed.
There’s a rock a short distance east of here with a single cup-mark on it—but it’s not really worth looking at and might not even be the real deal.
References:
Boughey, K.J.S. & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Acknowledgements: Big thanks for help and assistance on our day’s venture to Graeme Chappell and Tom Cleland.
Nice ‘n easy to find this one. Take the Wells Road up out of Ilkley central, up and over the cattle-grid and, one-third of a mile (0.5km) past the grid, keep your eyes peeled fro the small road on your left. Go up here for literally half-a-mile and park at the roadside. From here you’ll see the straight track leading to the Silver Well cottage in the trees. Walk 300 yards along the track (past the larger Weary Hill [3] carving on the slope just above) towards the cottage and, about ten yards before reaching the gate, walk uphill through the heather to the notable large boulder forty yards up the slope. Y’ can’t really miss it.
Archaeology & History
Cupmarks faintly visible
On a recent visit to this cup-marked stone, good old Mother E greeted us with a dark grey sky and so the design we were hoping to catch on this large sloping stone wasn’t quite what we hoped. The wide and half-inch deep cup-marks were visible when we stooped low to look across the surface of the stone, but from above they were difficult to make out. Altogether we counted eight cups—but Boughey & Vickerman (2003) reckoned there were nine of them. Also, well-defined grooves, half-natural and half-man-made, were just above visible, but we couldn’t see them in their entirety. In John Hedges (1986) sketch of the design, the cups and wide deep grooves are clear to see.
Hedges’ 1986 sketchSome cups faintly visible
In the event that you have a look at this petroglyph, it would be best to visit it on a clear day when the sun is low—and if you brush the surface with water it would highlight the design pretty clearly. It’s also possible that you’d see new elements on the carving as a result of your work.
One final note: when we came here recently, both Graeme Chappell and Tom Cleland related to me that the rock itself was quite a notable red colour—which was totally lost on me as I’m the colorblind dude in the bunch! But, as they both suggested, this distinct colouration was probably one of the ingredients the stone was chosen to be carved. Makes sense.
References:
Allen, J. Romilly, “Notice of Sculptured Rocks near Ilkley,” in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, volume 38, 1882.
Anonymous, Walks Around Cup and Ring Stones, ITIC: Bradford n.d. (1995)
Boughey, K.J.S. & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
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.
Along the A81 road between the Port of Menteith and Aberfoyle, ¾-mile (1.2km) west of the Port of Menteith you’ll see a small single-track road on the right—by a group of cottages—that takes you uphill. Go uphill for just over a half-mile and park-up on the rough grass on your left, ensuring there’s enough room for a tractor to get past (if some halfwit Englishman comes out and says “you can’t park there!”, remind him that this is Scotland!*). Just where you’ve parked-up there’s a dirt-track on your left; walk up it, go through the gate, and nearly 300 yards after this there’s a gate into the fields on your left. Go through here, and follow the straight line of fencing for 700 yards, passing one of the Netherglenny cairns, till you hit a wall. Go through the gate and, 60-70 yards south-west on a raised ridge of land is a long line of bedrock stone. You’ve arrived!
Archaeology & History
Cups & rings & solar sign?
In the early 1990s, rock art explorer Kaledon Naddair gave a talk at Kilmartin on the prehistoric rock art of Scotland. Amongst other carvings, he reported on a number of new finds that he and others had made at the Ballochraggan complex near Aberfoyle and, as I recall, it included this fascinating and almost unique design (Naddair and his team did hundreds of detailed drawings of many carvings, most of which are very hard to find nowadays). Some years later, in 2009, rock art student George Currie came across the same stone shortly before forestry plantation grew to obscure it entirely. It was described for the first time in Brouwer & van Veen’s (2009) fine survey of the Ballochraggan petroglyphs. My first visit here was in 2021 in the company of Prof Paul Hornby, when the forest was still standing and we had to cut our way through the trees to see a section of stone. A few years on, now that the forest has been cut down, all of the carving has come to light again—and it’s a bittova beauty!
Down the stone NE-SWBowls & troughs of water
Described erroneously by the Scottish Rock Art Project as being at Netherglenny, this impressive design is just north of Ballochraggan house and is a faded but impressive carving, possessing a rare ‘motif’ or symbol not usually found on Scottish petroglyphs. The line of rock on which the carving’s found runs in a northeast-to-southwest line, perhaps relating to the rising and setting of the solstice sun. Perhaps… Most of the carving is a scatter of cup-and-rings covering more than half the length of the rock surface, mainly on its more western section. But also, notably, there’s a series of geological bowls and troughs along the rock, primarily from the middle of the stone to the easternmost end where, perhaps significantly, there are few carved elements apart from a couple of cup-marks close to two of the deep bowls. The bowls and troughs are mainly along the central and northern edge of the stone. On my visit here recently, near the end of a lengthy heatwave, these natural ‘bowls’ were still filled with a lot of water! I was grateful—and used the water to highlight some parts of the carving.
First group of cup&rings
…And so…
First group of cup&rings
We approach the stone from its north-eastern end. Walking to the troughs and bowls of water, collecting some of it as we pass, it’s important to recognize that this water would have had some mythic relationship with the carving we are about to see. The water in these bowls may have been used to mix organic paints, or possessed some healing virtues relative to the spirit of the rock; it would certainly have had some relevance to the design, so it’s important to mention them even though they’re Nature’s handiwork. But as we get near the end of these watery cleavages, more of the cup-marks begin to appear.
The first suggestion of a cup-and-ring appears where a single cup has the beginnings of a ring, or an arc, on its eastern side; and there’s a single cup attached to the end of this arc. Just past this is another cup-mark which, when looked at from certain angles, seemed to have had a very faint ring round it—but I’m really not sure. A couple of other single cups are just past these two, roughly in line with them. They’re clearly visible in the photos. Continuing southwestwards we come across a small cluster of cup-and-rings—two of them touching each other gently, all but kissing each other! From these conjoined cup-and-rings, a step to the north brings us to another single cup-and-ring.
Cups & rings & thingsMore cups & rings & things
More intriguingly is what’s found a foot or so further west from the cup-and-rings that kiss! We come across a very faint double cup-and-ring that never seem to have been completed—instead, intruded upon by two or three cup-marks on its northern edge and, more curiously still, what looks to be straight lines intruding the outer ring at various angles, almost in the form of the letter ‘W’—or ‘M’ depending where you’re stood. It can be seen quite clearly in the photos here, both left and right. I couldn’t make my mind up about this particular ‘W’ ingredient, inasmuch as: which parts of it are natural, and which parts are man-made. As I walked round and round this element, crouching down, standing up and gazing at it from as many angles as I could, it never seemed to show itself fully one way or the other. There’s undoubtedly some man-made element about it, but its ambiguity should perhaps be left to the computer-tech rock art kids and give them something to do when they next get some grant money to line their pockets. 😉
Large isolated cup-markPhoto from 2021
Detached from this portion of the petroglyph, a yard south of the main line of rock, is a small, earthfast oval-shaped stone. On it is a large deep cup-marking, bigger than all the other cup-marks on the main stretch of carvings. But back onto the main length of the carving and continuing west, we next step over a notable (but not large) natural scar running roughly north-south across the stone. Stepping onto the other side of this scar, the petroglyphic symbolism gets more expansive and complex.
Spoked-wheels & moreThe first spoked-wheel
On the other side of the crack is another one of Nature’s carvings: a large, deep tear-shaped bowl. About twelve inches above this (north), albeit very faint and almost impossible to see in some lights, is a wide carved circle, at the centre of which is a small cup-mark and, emerging from this central cup and reaching to the outer edges of the ring are a series of at least nine straight carved lines, somewhat like spokes on a wheel (but in no precise geometrical order), giving the impression of what some folk like to call a ‘solar’ symbol. It may indeed have symbolized the sun—but we simply don’t know.
Next down the rock is a small scatter of single cup-marks and then we reach another spoked-wheel or solar symbol, about the same size as the first one and again made up of at least nine ‘spokes’ radiating from a central cup-mark. A couple of single cup-marks are outside or above the ring. Between the two solar wheels is another natural elongated hollow, albeit shallow compared to the others on this length of rock.
Multiple cup-and-ringFaint multiple rings
From here, a few steps further west brings us to two very faint multiple-rings. These intrigue me just as much as the spoked-wheels! Initial views of them seem to show them as double-rings around a central cup, but as I watered them and got views of them from different angles, it was obvious that there was more to them (as usual!), with one of the cups seemingly surrounded by four rings—although the outer ring is seemingly incomplete. I’m not 100% sure about it though and it would be good to get more views around sunrise and sunset when the light paints the stone with richer textures, bringing the spirit of the rock into greater life. The other multiple-ringed motif—three rings in all—is faint, but clearer in giving up its secrets: the outer ring of this looking somewhat deformed as it droops down in a more ovoid form.
As we walk now to the very end of this long stretch of rock, no more carved imagery greets the eye. If there was ever anymore to be seen, the elements and Time itself have faded them from view (the nearby Mask Stone exemplifying the difficulty we have in seeing eroded carvings). If, however we walk off the western end of this rock, down into the uneven mass of roots, branches and decaying trees and keep going westwards, a short distance away is another outcrop, albeit much smaller. It has a single cup-mark on its surface. And, quite obviously, other carvings will still be found beneath the mass of dead trees and vegetation across this piece of land. It was obviously a very important place indeed…
The entire carving is a pictorial narrative whose story has been lost. Its complexity fits into the scheme of other carvings in this locale, possessing a rich tapestry of complex symbols along one stony face. It reminded me somewhat of the equally impressive Blarnaboard (3) carving which, curiously enough, this Solar Stone points directly at four miles away to the southwest, and which also possesses a series of multiple complex symbols cut along a long thin stretch of bedrock stone.
Anyhow, to those of you who just need the simplistic shorthand of the archaeologists: this carving comprises of at least fifteen single cup-marks, five cup-and-rings, a cup-and-double-ring, two cup-and-triple-rings (one of which may actually be cup-and-four rings), and two spoked-wheels or solar symbols. It’s good—even by Ballochraggan standards!
Parish, Nick, “Perthshire: Nether Glenny Field Visit,” in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, 2023.
* Numerous people have reported encountering this dickhead, and a number of local folk as far as Aberfoyle also report him as a miserable angry little man. Please don’t be intimidated by his antics (he’s obviously an unhappy old control freak) as he has no legal basis in Scottish law for you to do what he commands. Just walk on by and leave him to stamp his little feet and rant.
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.
The best description to get here is, from Ilkley, to go up Wells Road, over the cattle grid, and about 500 yards past the cattle grid take the left turn up Keighley Road. This becomes a truly dodgy dirt-track when you hit the road to the Silver Well cottage on your right, but keep going uphill for another after a short while, but keeping walking uphill for another 500 yards till you reach a good-sized footpath on your right. Walk along here for 50-60 yards and then walk into the vegetation on your right and, just a few yards along, you’ll see a good-sized elongated stone in front of you.
Archaeology & History
Looking down on the cups
This large boulder has about nine cup-marked impressions, both on its eastern topmost part and others a few feet away on a lower south-facing section of the stone. But they’re not all man-made. The cups on the top-east surface are the ones we should be paying attention to. Of the three or four that we can see, at least two of them are man-made: it’s possible that all of them have been man-affected, but without a detailed geomorphological analysis, we’ll never know for sure. The cups and dips on the other, lower section of the rock are Nature’s handiwork. That doesn’t mean they had no importance in the overall mythic nature of the carving but, as with most British petroglyphs, we may never know one way or the other.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
In Adam Welfare’s (2011) second volume to his grand megalithic inventory, he described there being, next to the cup-marked Loanhead of Daviot (1) stone, another, that “has two on its outer face”— i.e., the east-facing vertical surface of the standing stone. It looked as if there were three cup-marks when we visited here recently, but I may be wrong. The main one, visible in the attached photo, is about two-inches across and a half-inch deep; another is above this and the other one is below it (you can just about see them in the attached photo). The design is in no way impressive.
Cup-mark to centre
Aubrey Burl (1979) suggested that the cup-marks on the neighbouring Loanhead of Daviot (1) stone were symbolic of the Moon, whose movement across the sky was recorded in the architecture of the circle itself. When he wrote such words, this secondary cup-marked stone hadn’t been noticed and, as it faces the opposite directly looking eastwards, it makes you wonder what he might have thought this design represented. (Welfare [2011] also reported that on the standing stone flanking the east-side of the recumbent stone, there is “a single cupmark a little above the ground surface on its inner face”.)
References:
Burl, Aubrey, Rings of Stone, Frances Lincoln: London 1979.
Welfare, Adam, Great Crowns of Stone – 2 volumes, RCHAMS: Edinburgh 2011.
Acknowledgements: Massive appreciation to Michelle and Steve Allan of Montrose for taking us to this site. Huge thanks to you both.
As you walk through the gate towards the stone circle, veer to the long fallen recumbent stone and, past the large upright that flanks the recumbent on the right-hand side, walk to the next standing stone along from here. That’s the one you need to be looking at!
Archaeology & History
This is one of at least two petroglyphs within the Loanhead of Daviot circle. Difficult to see unless the light is good (oh how often that’s the case!), on our visit here—under the fine guidance of Michelle and Steve Allan—the cups were hard to see clearly, and they proved troublesome getting good photos of them (we’d forgot our standard water-enhancing bottles this day too!). But we could just about make them out, as our fingers fondled their depressions.
It seems that the carvings were first noticed (please correct me if I’m wrong) by the Aberdeenshire antiquarian James Ritchie (1918) who, in a lengthy essay on rock art and megalithic rings, described seeing “twelve plain cups” on the standing stone in question. They are situated on the north-facing side of the stone, or, as Ritchie wrote,
The carved stone
Ritchie’s early photo
“on the inner face of the stone, which points towards the centre of the circle…. Near the western edge of the stone five cups are placed, one above another, in an almost perpendicular line. Each of the three lower members of this group is 2 inches in diameter and ½ inch in depth, while the two upper members are ½ inch less in diameter and only ¼ inch deep. A little to the left, near the upper end of the group, there is a single cup, 1 inch in diameter and ¼ inch in depth. Near the centre of the stone there is another group of cups very similar in appearance to that already described. It also consists of five cups in an almost perpendicular line, with a sixth, a little to the left, nearly in the middle of the stone. All the cups in this second group are about 1 inch in diameter and very shallow.”
The second group of cup-marks that Ritchie described were the most difficult to see on our visit here, due to the bright daylight. Under the Moon, or early sunrise when the stone is wet, they should stand out nice n’ easy. Thankfully, most of them are visible in Mr Ritchie’s old photo of the stone (above), taken in 1917.
An interesting idea was posited by Mr Browne (1921) in his classic on the Aberdeenshire sites, where he thought that the cup-marks here are marks that denoted “the registers of the magician in charge” of rituals at the Loanhead circle. More recently, the great megalithic archaeologist Aubrey Burl (1979) suggested that the cup-marks on this stone were representative of the cyclical movement of the Moon, as observed from this stone circle.
The second cup-marked stone at this stone circle is on the next stone along, going anticlockwise (east): on ‘Stone 5’ (as designated in the Royal Commission survey).
References:
Beckensall, Stan, British Prehistoric Rock Art, Tempus: Stroud 1999.
Beckensall, Stan, Circles in Stone: A British Prehistoric Mystery, Tempus: Stroud 2006.
Browne, G.F., On Some Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire, Cambridge University Press 1921.
Burl, Aubrey, Rings of Stone, Frances Lincoln: London 1979.
Cup-Marked Stone (missing): OS Grid Reference – NJ 747 289
Archaeology & History
When James Ritchie’s (1918) wrote his lengthy essay on the cup-and-ring designs on the megaliths of Aberdeenshire, he mentioned one of the two known carvings that are in Loanhead of Daviot stone circle, but also mentioned one “in the wood, a short distance to the northwest of the circle.” It’s not been seen since he wrote about it. Ritchie described there being several rocks in the trees and, “on the upper surface of one of these, two plain cups are to be seen.” He told them to be “similar in size and appearance to those on the standing-stone” in the Loanhead stone circle a short distance below, but he thought there was no connection between the two sites. The carving is likely to be still there, beneath the undergrowth. It would be worthwhile seeking it out during the Winter and Spring months, before the vegetation returns.
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.
From Wooler High Street, walk east past Market Place and then down The Peth, across the A697 road, go over the river bridge and then left up the long dead straight Brewery Road. It bends left about half-a-mile up and just over 100 yards past the bend (just where another sharp bend in the road occurs), make sure to take the hidden footpath that runs into the shrubs. 700 yards along, the path levels-out as you hit the edge of the moor and you reach a ‘crossroads’ of paths. Bear left (NE) and walk another 800 yards (past a gate or 2) where you hit a small woodland; keep walking straight along the same path until you hit the next copse of trees on your left, and here walk sharp right, through the field for 300 yards (past some more trees), through the gate and another 100 yards or so through the next gate. Ahead of you is a covered rocky ridge with some gorse bushes. Look around!
Archaeology & History
…from another angle
We were fortunate on our first visit here. For, in spite of what several tomes and local guides have said of this carving—i.e., “the site is hard to find as it’s covered by gorse bushes”—local folk have cleared it and made it accessible and much easier to find. Thank fuck! For on the day we came here, in spite of considerable cloud cover, it was very hot and humid—and the last thing I needed was working to rummage through vegetation on a day like that!
It was certainly in a crappy state when the old rock art writer Maarten van Hoek (1982) came here: “covered by sheep dirt” as he called it! But he cleaned it up – and thankfully the tradition amongst the local folks continues.
Arc of cups & double-ring
Close-up of main design
Cut into a rounded triangular-shaped flat rock are a series of multiple cup-and-ring designs, each with lines running in various directions to, or from, the central cup-mark. One of them—the smallest of the lot near the top-middle of the stone—is an incomplete double-ring, and all round the outer south- and western edge is a semi-circle of eight or nine cup-marks which, from my unconscious mind, brought about feelings of lunar phases defined by the cups as the Moon moved through the heavens—and then back on itself along the same movements through the skies. This simple ‘flash’, so to speak, was the unconscious of my youthful astronomical mind that brought it to the fore—and although ‘time’ in the neolithic was defined by the Moon (menstrual rites & all…), this impression, this ‘dreaming’ lacks consensus recognition and so, in the social Darwinian paradigm of modern archaeology, would be promptly put to bed! I still like the impression though; but it begs the question as to what mythos might underlie the rest of the design!
No such impression seems to have hit Maarten van Hoek (1982) upon his visit here. He described the carving thus:
van Hoek’s 1982 sketch
Beckensall’s 1991 sektch
“7 cupmarks, 5 of them surrounded by rings. On the N part is a cup and 4 rings with a tail from the cup running to the NW. Through this carving runs a large crack in the rock. Almost touching its outer ring to the S is a small cup and 1 ring. Further E is a cup and 2 rings with a tail from the cup running SE. Near the end of this tail is a single cupmark.
On the S part is a more complex figure: it is a cup and 4 rings, the two outer rings broken off at the edge of the rock. The outer ring is gaped to the NW to enclose the outer ring of a cup and 2 rings. From the central cup of this cup and 2 rings runs a tail to the NW ending in another cupmark.”
On van Hoek’s visit, it was obviously a cloudy grey day, as there are some obvious ‘extras’ on the design that he missed (somehow missing the distinct arc of cups surrounding the double-ring for one thing!). Beckensall (1983) wrote about the carving a year later and picked-up on the omissions, and subsequently updated the details in his later (1991) tome—as we can see from their respective drawings (above); although he too missed a cup or two along the same arc. It’s easily done…
References:
Beckensall, Stan, The Prehistoric Carved Rocks of Northumberland, Frank Graham: Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1974.
Beckensall, Stan, Northumberland’s Prehistoric Rock Carvings – A Mystery Explained, Pendulum: Rothbury 1983.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 1, Abbey Press: Hexham 1991.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
van Hoek, Maarten, The Carved Rocks near Wooler, privately printed: Oisterwijk 1982.
Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NT 98491 28424
Archaeology & History
Highburn House C&R, 2015
This carving was rediscovered by rock art explorer Jan Broewer in September, 2007, a few hundred yards out of Wooler on the way to Akeld and Kirknewton, in the field on the right-hand side of the road, on the embankment just a few inches above the waters of the High Burn. On a recent visit here by Tom Cleland and I, despite us rummaging amidst the gorse and other herbage all along the edge of the waters, we were unable to locate the carving and presume that it has either been destroyed or re-housed in someone’s garden, living a more comfortable life. We certainly hope it’s the latter!
Sketch of the design
Home of the lost carving
It’s design is nothing special: merely a singular, albeit scruffy cup-and-ring, with two other distinct pecked cup-marks and, possibly, a third shallow one just to the side of the cup-and-ring (but this is, in my opinion, highly suspect). The stone was obviously not in its original position when Jan first found it, and would seem to have come originally from the slope above the stream where a number of earthfast stones can be found. The numerous scratches across its surface shows that it’s been hit a few times by some (probably) metallic objects, or perhaps horses hooves, thus dislodging it from the slope above and rolling into the spot where Jan found it. Anyhow, we presently don’t know where it is or what’s become of it. Does anyone in Wooler know where it’s living?
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to Pete Chattaway for use of his photo; and to Tom Cleland for helping the search party!
