It is best approached from the track at the side of Weecher reservoir (site of the destroyed Weecher stone circle) on the east side of Rombalds Moor, where you should follow the natural curve of the track till you reach the tiny hamlet of Faweather where, on your right, just in the garden edge, you’ll see this faded old carving. This has only recently been incorporated into the garden (it used to sit on a small triangle of grass where three old tracks meet), but the people living here seem pleasant enough and will let you look at the carving if you ask.
Archaeology & History
Hedges 1986 drawing
Just off the far-eastern edge of Rombald’s Moor and north of Baildon Moor, this faded cup-marked stone might only be for the real fanatics amongst you! I like it though. Described in Sidney Jackson’s rare Bradford archaeology journal, the site was added to Hedges (1986) survey, and the subsequent Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003) work, neither of whom said much about it. It’s a pretty basic carving though, consisting of several cups and lines that run over the top of the stone, some of which seems to be due to natural weathering — it’s hard to say for sure.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, West Yorkshire Archaeology Service 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council: Wakefield 1986.
Crowned by a clump of trees (planted in 1740), this hilltop site is one of the more impressive of a number of tombs hereby, with its nearest other neighbour being 70 yards southeast of here. One of Dorset’s early tribal meeting places (Anderson 1934), the tomb was illustrated on Isaac Taylor’s 1765 map of the region and was dug into in 1858 “on the orders of a local magnate” (Marsden 1999), damaging some substantial portion of the tomb. Of this, craniologist and antiquarian John Thurnam was most displeased; for in his description of the opening of Culliford Tree he wrote:
“A wide trench had been dug through it one side, from the summit and the rubble which had been thrown out had not been replaced… Another subject of regret was the fact that though, as we were told by the neighbouring rustics, human remains, with pottery and certain other relics, were found in the barrow, no authentic account of the exploration had, so far as we could learn, been put to print.”
Leslie Grinsell (1959) found the same trouble in his assessment of this site; and the Royal Commission (1970) lads could only describe the site thus:
“Large trench on south and top almost certainly dug in 1858 when four secondary extended inhumations, one with necklace of amber and two gold-plated beads, and cremation with incense cup in collared urn, were found.”
However, it seems that the necklace and gold-plated beads have been “lost” — i.e., someone has them in their own private collection somewhere!
Folklore
This is one of very few tombs in this part of the country where we find the tradition of fairy music. Grinsell (1959) told that:
“The Culliford Tree barrow, formerly the meeting place of the Hundred of Culllingford Tree, is also known as the Music Barrow from the belief that music could be heard beneath the mound by those who listened at the apex at midday.”
References:
Anderson, O.S., The English Hundred-Names, Lunds Universitets Arsskrift 1934.
Marsden, Barry M., The Early Barrow Diggers, Tempus: Stroud 1999.
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset – Volume 2: South-East, Part 3, HMSO: London 1970.
Warne, Charles, Celtic Tumuli of Dorset: An Account of Personal and other Researches in the Sepulchral Mounds of the Durotriges, Smith: London 1866.
This once impressive tumulus a half-mile east of the village was first mentioned in the Bardney Cartulary in the early 13th century, where is was written as Spelhou. Suggested by Olof Anderson (1934) to have been an early moot site — “the meeting place of the Torbar Hundred” — this appears to be confirmed in Smith’s (1937) etymological analysis where he ascribes Spell Howe to be literally, “‘Speech mound’, from OE spell, speech and haugr” (burial mound). Rising about four-feet above ground level, this is a traditional ’round barrow’ type of tumulus. In recent years, reports tell that it has been built onto with some fencing. Hopefully the present land-owners now look after the place!
References:
Anderson, O.S., The English Hundred-Names, Lunds Universitets Arsskrift 1934.
Mortimer, J.R., Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, Brown & Sons: Hull 1905.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, Cambridge University Press 1937.
Although there are several routes to this site, for those who are not used to walking or find maps difficult to read [get a life!], it is best approached from the Ilkley side of the moor. Follow the old track that cuts the moor in half past the remains of Graining Head quarry where the moor begins to level out. Once here cut straight east until you find the footpath which, after a while, you will see leads to a wooden seat right in the middle of nowhere. Here is our Badger Stone.
Archaeology & History
An eroded but quite excellent cup-and-ring stone — one of the very best on Ilkley Moor — comprising nearly a hundred cups, ten rings, what seems to be a half-swastika design, plus a variety of other odd motifs. It’s one of the best carvings on the entire moor and has been written about by many folk over the years. First described in an early essay on cup-and-ring stones by J. Romilly Allen (1879) — who must have visited it in poor light, as some elements of the carving weren’t noticed — he described it as a “sculptured stone near Grainings Head”, saying:
“This stone…is a block of gritstone 12ft long by 7ft 6in broad, by 4ft high. The largest face slopes at an angle of about 40° to the horizon, and on it are carved nearly fifty cups, sixteen of which are surrounded with single concentric rings. At the west end of the stone are a group, three cups with double rings and radial grooves. At the other end, near the top, is a curious pattern formed of double grooves, and somewhat resembling the “swastika” emblem… At the highest part of the stone is a rock basin 8in deep and 9in wide. On the vertical end of the stone are five cut cups, three of which have single rings. This is one of the few instances of cup and ring marks occurring on a vertical face of rock.”
Badger Stone on 1910 map
The title “badger” dates back to at least medieval times when, as the Yorkshire historian Arthur Raistrick (1962) explained, the word represented “a corn dealer, corn miller or miller’s man.” It is likely that this traditional title goes much further back, probably into prehistory, as grain was one of the earliest forms of trade. Very close to this sacred old stone are place-names verifying this, like Grainings Head and Green Gates. A little higher upon the moor is the twelfth century Cowper’s Cross (which used to have cup-markings etched upon it) where, tradition tells, a market was held that replaced an older one close by.
The Badger Stone carvingClose-up of cup-and-rings
Our Badger Stone rests beside the prehistoric track which Eric Cowling termed “Rombald’s Way” (after the legendary giant, Rombald, who lived with his old wife upon these hills): an important prehistoric route running across the mid-Pennines. This ancient route runs east-west, traditionally the time of year when agricultural needs are greatest at the equinoxes. This may have been the time when any ancient grain traders met here. (In modern times a number of archaeologists have emphasized such routes as “trade routes”: a notion that derives from the modern religion of Free Market Economics in tandem with the rise of Industrialism and social Darwinism, much more than the actuality of them as simple pathways or means of accessible movement).
There are accounts from other places in Yorkshire about these badger men. We find a number of other “badger” stones, gates, ways, stoops and crosses on our Yorkshire hills. One of them in North Yorkshire, wrote Raistrick (1962), “is an ancient trade way.” In Richmond, North Yorkshire, around the time of the autumn equinox, Badger men from across the Dales followed the old routes over the hills into town, held annual festivities and sold their grain. (see Smith 1989; Speight 1897) It is perhaps possible that our old Badger Stone would have been a site where some form of indigenous British Demeter was revered.
Sketch of Badger Stone carving
Some elements of the Badger Stone carving have what could be deemed as primitive human images (anthropomorphic) mainly on the northwestern side of the rock, emerging from the Earth Herself. And certainly amidst the same portion we have a very distinct ‘solar’ symbol, very much like the ones found at Newgrange and, for that matter, many other parts of the world.
Some New Age folk have given the fertility element to the Badger Stone a deeper status, using imagination as an aid to decode these old carvings. When feminist New-Age writer Monica Sjoo visited Badger Stone she described it as “erotic”, with the carvings giving her a distinct impression of “vulvas” and she also thought orgies of sorts had been enacted here. (Billingsley & Sjoo, 1993) The vulva imagery is a well-known idea to explain cup-and-rings and in some cases this will be valid; but when I passed an illustration of this rock-art to a number of people (all women), there was not a vulva to be mentioned — merely the OM symbol, sperm entering the egg, a snail, a bicycle, a willy, a paw-print, eyes, a face, a tadpole, cartoon breasts, the rear end of a dog, grapes, letters, numbers, ears and a snake! Awesome stuff! Take a look at the design yourself and see what you can see in it. Answers on a postcard please! (The dilemma of making specific interpretations of these carvings is that we tend to approach them with dominant ego perspectives, many of them reflecting little more than our own beliefs or search for identity, imposing unresolved journeys and conflicts on that which we encounter, as with the above case.)
As with prehistoric rock-art in general, they are a number of things: functional, ritual, history, spirit; different at each and every site. As if to exemplify this at Badger Stone, note how the detailed carvings have been executed mainly on the southern face of the stone. The northern face has little if anything to show on it. It would suggest therefore, that this stone had some mythic relationship with events during daylight hours. But we have to be careful here…
At sunrise on a good morning, we note how the eastern edges of this stone show up very clearly indeed. If Nature’s conditions are damp and wet (as they tend to be each morning on the hills), the visible outline of these cup-and-rings show up very clearly indeed. Oddly, as the sun then passes through the daytime sky each and every day on its cyclical movement, the petroglyphic content becomes a little less visible unless the stone is wet. Indeed at sun-high (midday period) the carving doesn’t show up as well as it did in the morning light. And we find the same characteristic as the sun goes to set in the west: where that part of the carved stone shows up very clearly again — much clearer than during full daytime hours. If rain has fallen, the glyphs stand out very clearly indeed.
As all cultures imbued the natural world with animistic, living qualities, it seems probable that these periods of the day (sunrise and sunset) were significant at this particular carving. It may be, very simply, that the Badger Stone “came to life” with the sunrise and its mythic nature was alive during this period; whereas with many other carvings (both on these moors and elsewhere in Britain) their strong mythic associations related to the northern Land of the Dead. But then, I could be talking bullshit!
The Badger Stone is also a strong contender for it being a painted stone. Many petroglyphs like this in other cultures were ceremonially coloured-in using lichens and other plants dyes at certain times of the day or year, relating specifically to important mythic relationships between the people and the spirit of the rock at such places. This probably occurred here.
References:
Allen, J. Romilly, “The Prehistoric Rock Sculptures of Ilkley,” in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, volume 35, 1879.
Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
Billingsley, John & Sjoo, Monica, “Monica Sjoo in West Yorkshire,” in Northern Earth Mysteries, no.53, 1993.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Raistrick, Arthur, Green Tracks on the Pennines, Dalesman: Clapham 1962.
Smith, Julia, Fairs, Feasts and Frolics: Customs and Traditions in Yorkshire, Smith Settle: Otley 1989.
Speight, Harry, Romantic Richmondshire, Elliot Stock: London 1897.
Take the road from Ilkley town centre up towards the White Wells and keep following it along until it curves up and onto the moor itself and becomes a rocky dirt-track. Go up here, past the old quarries (left) until you hit the footpath which runs east (left) onto the flat level of the moorland. Follow this footpath along for literally half-a-mile, where a footpath runs up onto the tops of the moorland. Go up here for 100 yards and you’ll see a small standing stone by the right-hand side of the footpath; on the left, into the moorland about 20 yards away, this carving is to be found!
Archaeology & History
This is an excellent, archetypal cup-and-ring stone carving and is in a very good state of preservation. Found just a few yards away from the aptly-named Pitchfork Stone, the carving here on a large single stone mainly comprises of a double cup-and-ring. A couple of other possible outlying cup-marks can be seen: one just below the double-ring, and the other towards the top-end of the rock. It was first reported by Stuart Feather in the Bradford Archaeology Group’s journal in 1961, then listed in the surveys of Hedges (1986) and his followers.
Carving 257, looking NE
When Michala Potts, Dave Hazell and I we visited this carving the other day, some halfwit had been up here in the not-too-distant past and, as with some of the carvings on the moors north of Ilkley, had daubed some paint or oily resin onto the carvings themselves to specifically highlight aspects of the carved rock (not one part of the uncarved stone had anything on it). We aint quite sure exactly what the substance is that’s been daubed onto the carvings (it aint ordinary paint), but seems like an oil or industrial substance. And, whoever’s done this, obviously seems to have some knowledge of the rock art they’re painting over: they certainly have good grid-references and enjoy walking the hills. This aint just some idiot/s into vandalizing the carvings for the sake of it, nor the whim of some airy-fairy New-Ager. Whoever’s done this (and it’s been done on other cup-and-rings around this locale) have deliberately set out to locate and paint over specific carvings — a number of them off-path — with the intention it would seem to highlight them for photographic enhancement. So — whichever retard has done this, might I suggest that you keep your industrial waste where it belongs: in your own house you fucking moron! If anyone knows who is doing this to the carvings round here, please email me (anonymously if necessary) with all relevant info. Any such communications regarding this matter will be kept strictly confidential.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Walk up from Ilkley to the White Wells and keep following the footpath upwards, up the steps and onto the moor itself. Once you’ve got to the top of the steps above the rocky valley, look straight up the slope in front of you and walk directly up the hill. As you near the top, there’s a large cairn sat on the brow of the hill (known as the Coronation Cairn). This ‘ere carving is just a few yards below it.
Archaeology & History
Very little has been written of this albeit innocuous carving — if indeed it is a carving! Found on the large (though overgrown) flat stone just a few yards below the Victorian cairn, all that we appear to have here is a large cup-marking with a small arc pecked around its southern side and a distinct straight line running outwards from the cup (though the line doesn’t actually touch the cup-mark and does give the distinct impression of being pretty recent). A sort of “cup-and-half-ring” with extended line is perhaps the best description!
Close-up of cup & linesCarved Stone 270
It was first reported by some English Heritage archaeologist — which, as is generally acknowledged, isn’t necessarily a good pointer for authenticity when it comes to identifying prehistoric rock art.* But it’s certainly got a bit more about it than some “carvings” they’ve reported in the past! Boughey & Vickerman (2003) made the following notes of this stone:
“”Low, flat gritstone rock quarried away on E side, fairly smooth but uneven. One large cup and deep groove slightly curving round edge of cup.”
Which is about right. I don’t really think too many of you will be into this unless you’re a real rock-art fanatic!
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
* A number of cup-marked stones identified by English Heritage archaeologists have transpired to be nothing more than natural erosion.
From Skipton centre get to the Horse Close estate on the southern side of the town and look up to the fields on the sloping hill above it with the small woods above ’em. Head up towards the trees, but before you get there go into the fields on your right, and in one of them you’ll see what looks like a pile of rocks near the middle. Head for it!
Alternatively, follow the directions to reach the Horse Close Hill enclosure, then walk down into the field on its western edge. You can’t really miss it!
Archaeology & History
This carving first saw the light of pen-and-paper in the early 1960s, soon after the Yorkshire antiquarian Eric T. Cowling (he of Rombald’s Way fame) was led to the site by his wandering nose and the aid of local people. He sent a letter to the editor of the Bradford archaeology group at the time (a certain Mr Sidney Jackson), which told:
“South-west of the wood which gives its name to the Great Wood Laithe at the western end of Rombalds Moor and overlooking Skipton from the east, is a cup-marked boulder: NGR – SD 99625055. In the middle of the field alongside the wood is an outcrop of rock which has been almost levelled with the adjacent field surface by the dumping of boulders from the surrounding ploughlands.
“The top of the outcrop rises to a dome-shaped projection which bears simple cup-markings. These average two in diameter and total 17 in number. The whole surface of the stone is weathered, and suitable light may reveal more details.”
And, faded though it is, in better lighting conditions it seems there may be more than twenty cup-marks on the rock. Certainly this is what the surveys of Hedges (1986) and Boughey & Vickerman (2003) concluded. There are other carvings close by and, on the hillside immediately above you, the denuded remains of a very impressive prehistoric settlement site known as Horse Close Hill. Well worth having a look at!
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Cowling, E.T., “Cup-and Ring Boulders,” in Cartwright Hall Archaeology Group Bulletin, 9:5, May 1964.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Pretty simple. Get to the chapel in front of Marlborough College, and look at the stepped hill in the grounds thereof (with a big hole cut into the top where a water tower once stood). That’s it! Please be aware that this monument is on college ground, so it might be worthwhile telephoning them if you wanna wander upon the hill.
Archaeology & History
Merlin’s Mount (from Colt-Hoare’s Ancient Wiltshire)
This curious rounded, pyramidal hill is thought by some to have given the town of Marlborough its very name. Described in Domesday as ‘Merleberge’, which is reckoned to derive from “the hill or barrow of Maerla”: Maerla in this case being a lost olde English name, said in local folklore and tradition to have been our old heathen magickian, Merlin, of Arthurian fame and legend. Long ago his bones were laid to rest here and this great ‘tomb’ built over him. We might never know…
The exact nature and date of this mound has yet to be satisfactorily explained. Commonly ascribed as Norman in origin (based mainly on the notion that it wasn’t mentioned before Domesday and there being motte and bailey ruins here), the finding of Roman remains near its base then led some to think they had built the hill; but when “antler picks used by its prehistoric builders were unearthed in the late nineteenth century and again in 1912 when a trench was cut for the flue of a new engine-house chimney” (Burl 2002), the dates for its origin went a lot further back!
One of the earlier commentators on this archaeological curiosity was Sir Richard Colt-Hoare (1812) in the days when much more of this and other sites were visible in the landscape, saying:
“The Mount within the gardens of the Castle Inn is a remarkable earthwork: it is a huge pile of earth, and inferior in proportions only to Silbury Hill. Each is situated on the River Kennet; the one near its source, the other near its margin; and I have no doubt but that in ancient times each had some corresponding connection with each other.”
A sentiment echoed by our modern megalithic scholar, Aubrey Burl. (2002) But as Burl points out, the distance between Silbury and Merlin’s Mount would have been measured not in distance by those who constructed these giant mounds, but in time. And the focus of our ancestors here in relation to these two great artificial mounds, would not be esteemed as much by engineering or measurement — for both mounds are gigantic — but a wholly mythic one. Colt-Hoare continued:
“This mound has been so mutilated, as well as lowered in its height, that it is impossible to calculate an exact measurement of either its circumference or height; but as nearly as we could guess with our chains, we found the base to be about 1000 feet in circumference, and the diameter of the summit 100 feet.”
A piece of Merlin’s Mount!
When the reverend A.C. Smith (1885) described Merlin’s Mount — or ‘Marlborough Hill’ as he preferred it named — more than seventy years later as, “an artificial tumulus which deserves careful examination”, it seems little further investigation had been done. And despite Smith’s wish for such care and attention, even today no detailed archaeological investigation has been undertaken. Astonishing! This fascinating-looking pyramidal “barrow” was thought by several early writers to have been constructed along similar architectural designs as that of Silbury Hill. In Massingham’s (1926) fascinating Egyptian-origin hypothesis, he tells us the following:
“Merlin’s Mount encompasses only an acre-and-a-half of ground in comparison with Silbury’s five-and-a-half, and reaches a trifle more than half its height (60 feet). In every other respect the twain are alike. Both were raised at the foot of a gentle slope, both were made of chalk resting on a thin layer of clay, both were trenched around the bases, and in both were buried the antlered picks of the builders. Both were built near the banks of the (River) Kennet within five miles of one and other.”
It certainly is impressive! When Michala Potts and I came here last year in the fine company of Pete Glastonbury and others, we were somewhat in awe of the fact that so little has been said of this site in modern archaeological terms. Indeed, the fact that the jury is still out as to the age of its construction we found quite surprising at the time. Though another quick reading of Mr Burl’s Avebury work, combining the Roman finds and the antler picks here, makes him think that “a prehistoric origin for the mound likely.”
The name of Marlborough itself has been given a number of interpretations, most notably the attempt to derive it from the great shaman-poet Merlin. But on a down-to-earth peasant level we find, in John Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica there’s a note in the margin concerning the ‘marl’ element in the place-name that was told to him by a local man called Edward Leigh, which said,
“Marga, marle, we use instead of dung to manure our ground. It (Marlborough) lieth near a chalky hill, which our ancestors knew. They borrowed this name ‘chaulk’ of the Latin, calx, named marle.”
More recently Margaret Gelling (1984) thought that the name of this hill or mound “is variously interpreted as a plant-name or a personal name.” Which for some brings us back to Merlin! We might never know…
References:
Best, J., “The Marlborough Mound,” in A. Whittle’s Sacred Mound, Holy Rings (Oxford 1997).
Burl, Aubrey, Prehistoric Avebury, Yale University Press 2002.
Field, David, Brown, Graham & Crockett, Andrew, “The Marlborough Mound Revisited,” in Wiltshire Archaeologial & Natural History Magazine, 94, 2001.
Gelling, Margaret, Place-Names in the Landscape, Phoenix: London 1984.
Hoare, Richard Colt, The Ancient History of South Wiltshireand the Ancient History of North Wiltshire, London 1812.
Massingham, H.J., Downland Man, Jonathon Cape: London 1926.
Smith, A.C., Guide to the British and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire Downs, WANHS 1885.
Follow the directions to find the Tree of Life Stone, then follow the main footpath uphill from it. Once on the level, look out for a couple of large rocks abaat 100 yards to your left. Check ’em out, cos it’s on one of ’em!
Archaeology & History
This is another decent carving living on these prolific moors. Found near the end of a lengthy line of prehistoric walling that runs east-west over this part of the moor, the general Rorsharch-response to this carving is of some sorta skull or screaming face. My impression of it the other day was, “it looks like a pig!”
Although mentioned by numerous writers, the first description of it was in Eric Cowling’s (1937) essay on the cup-and-ring stones north of Otley, saying:
“On an isolated table stone, situated at the upper end of the shallow valley which drains Snowden Carr, the writer found a marking having a strangely skull-like appearance, but which is really a group of three large cups which are linked by inter-turning curved grooves.”
Close-up of main designThe Death’s Head Rock
He then strives to make links between this carving and the design on the Swastika Stone above Ilkley — which in some way is a little similar, i.e., as a three-armed triskele swastika; but the notion is perhaps as accurate as saying it represents a cloud, or a tree, or bird-flight, or any number of other natural phenomena. Beckensall’s (1999) brief note of the stone — despite getting his grid-ref off by a few hundred yards — described it as “four cups linked and enclosed by grooves, unconvincingly suggesting a skull to some people.” With Boughey & Vickerman (2003) saying:
“Fairly large, upstanding rock with surface sloping down to N. Figure of four cups linked by and enclosed by grooves: entire pattern resembles a skull, hence the name ‘Death’s Head Rock.'”
References:
Beckensall, Stan, British Prehistoric Rock Art, Tempus: Stroud 1999.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS 2003.
Cowling, Eric T., “Cup and Ring Markings to the North of Otley,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, part 131, 33:3, 1937.
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Get to the Fence Stone carving and walk up to the top of the hill about 50-60 yards away. Once on the long flat rock, walk less than 20 yards WNW until you see the stone in the picture.
Archaeology & History
So named due to it being shaped like a little singular step on a stone, this cup-marked carving was first found in the middle of May, 2010, around the same time Michala Potts located the Snowden Crags cairn circle.
Step Stone, Snowden CragsClose-up of the cups
First described and illustrated on the Avebury Forum on June 3, 2010, this cup-marked rock is found in association with a number of (as yet) unexcavated prehistoric remains, close to some Iron- or Bronze Age walling and a distinct hut circle, close to one of the D-shaped enclosures 20 yards away.* When I first found it there seemed to be just two simple cups on it, but upon viewing it several times over the last few weeks in differing lighting conditions, it seems there may be as many as 4 cups on the southwestern face of the rock. In one of the images here, you get the impression that there could actually be five cups — but I’m gonna play safe and just say there are three such cups here.
* At least 3 large, prehistoric, D-shaped enclosures have been isolated on these moorlands, with diameters ranging between 15 and 80 yards. None of these have yet to receive serious archaeological attention!
