Get to the Cow & Calf Rocks, go up across the car-park as if you’re gonna go up onto the moor and walk up the steep footpath uphill to the left of the crags. Once you get level with the crags, take the footpath bending left and walk along here for 110 yards, keeping your eyes peeled for the low smooth rock on the right of the footpath, just where another path meets it. You’ll find it.
Archaeology & History
Close-up, from above
This quiet little stone has seen better days. Nearly destroyed a few weeks ago when the Emmerdale Farm film-crew churned up sections of the moor right over the side of this carving—but thankfully it still remains intact (you or I would have been prosecuted for such damage).* The carving is a simple one in graphic terms, comprising simply of three cup-markings, all on the southern side of the rock. Close to several other petroglyphs (the Wray Stone is 78 yards north and several other more ornate carvings are close by), the carving was first described in the Hedges (1986) survey as a “small, low smooth grit rock sloping slightly NW to SE in crowberry, bilberry, grass and bracken. Three clear cups.” But it has to be said, one of them is fading fast. Let’s hope this humble little carving doesn’t fall prey to those who are gradually turning our moorlands into a park.
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.
* As the footpaths on Ilkley Moor continue to be widened and paved by those who reckon they like these moors, it’s obvious that more prehistoric sites up here are going to get damaged. It’s difficult to see what the local archaeologist or Natural England are doing to ensure that these environmentally-damaging schemes don’t encroach on the mass of rich prehistoric sites on the moors, most of which have never been adequately assessed (the philosophy of “if we don’t know it’s there, it doesn’t matter if we destroy it” seems evident in some of those working for the local council). Before any work or structures are dug on Ilkley Moor, an archaeological assessment is, I believe, supposed to take place – but I think this ‘work’ consists merely of looking at their own limited records, without any detailed fieldwork being undertaken. As we know from research undertaken by rock art students at TNA, CSI and elsewhere, there are still many cup-and-ring stones, cairns and archaeological features constantly being discovered on these moors that are not in the record books.
Standing Stones (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SY 6070 8701
Also Known as:
Jefferey and Jone
Archaeology & History
Described in early field-name listings as ‘Jefferey and Jone’, this was another group of standing stones, whose precise nature is difficult to truly discern, that met with an untimely end in the middle of the 19th century. They may have been part of a large tomb, or even a stone circle. Marked on the early Ordnance Survey map of the area as ‘Standing Stones (site of)’, they appear to have been described firstly by John Hutchins (1774) close to other megalithic remains, who told that:
“A little north of Hell Stone near Blagdon are four upright stones, near to, and equally distant from each other, about two feet high, except that one is broken off even with the ground.”
In Warne’s (1866) classic text he mentioned these petrified monoliths,
“In a small valley, on the down of Portesham Farm, there stood within these last ten years, four upright stones… By the direction of the then occupier of the farm, Mr Manfield, these stones were built into an adjoining wall.”
A few years later another account by H.C. March, which referred to Mr Warne’s description, gave another report citing information from one who was present at the destruction of the site:
“Warne says they have been built into an adjacent wall: but a man who was present at the ceremony stated that, by the spot where they once stood, a hole was made for them, and they were decently interred. The place where they are said to lie can be pointed out, as well as a wall which contains four large stones.” (Harte 1986:54)
Historian and folklorist Jeremy Harte (1986) concluded that the megaliths must obviously have been destroyed around the year 1855. However, the historical references of Jeffrey & Jone being moved into the adjacent walling appears to be verified by independent researchers who’ve found standing stones hereby.
Folklore
Very probably the remains of petrified ancestors, a curious rhyme describes a forgotten folktale of these lost standing stones relating to them as possessing spirit, or once being alive. They were thought of once as being a family who lived in the hills:
“Jefferey and Jone,
And their little dog Denty
and Edy alone.”
Sadly, I can find nothing further that might enrich the folktales that were obviously once spoken of these monoliths.
References:
Harte, Jeremy, Cuckoo Pounds and Singing Barrows, Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society 1986.
Hutchins, John, The History and Antiquities of Dorset, John Bowyer & J Nichols: London 1774.
Warne, Charles, The Celtic Tumuli of Dorset, John Russell Smith: London 1866.
This fascinating looking carving (in my personal Top 10 of all-time favourites cup-and-rings in the UK!) was unfortunately destroyed sometime between 1918 and 1920. A huge pity, as the design on the rock is almost unique in its ‘linear’ system of cups running a considerable length across the surface of the stone (like the similar design found at Old Bewick in Northumberland).
Wilson’s 1851 drawing of the Witches’ StoneSimpson’s 1866 drawing of the Witches Stone
Shown first of all on Kirkwood’s Environs of Edinburgh map in 1817 (above), this legendary rock was found amidst a cluster of other cup-and-ring stones at Tormain (some are still there) and was initially said by Daniel Wilson (1851) to have been the giant capstone of a cromlech that once stood here, but whose structure had fallen away. This idea is implied in the earliest drawing we have of the stone in Wilson’s magnum opus (above); Sir J.Y. Simpson (1867) gave us a similar impression with his drawing a few years later. But upon visiting the Witches Stone just as his book was going to the press, Mr Wilson visited the site and proclaimed that he “altogether doubted if they are the remains of a cromlech”, and what rested here were more probably just fascinating geological remains, with even more fascinating carvings on top!
In the years that followed Wilson’s initial description, the Witches Stone was visited and described by a number of eager antiquarians. Simpson (1867) gave us a quite revealing account, telling:
“On the farm of Bonnington, about a mile beyond the village of Ratho…are the remains of ‘this partially ruined cromlech’…with the capstones partially displaced, as if it had slid backwards upon the oblique plane of the huge stones or stone which still supports it. Two or three large blocks lie in front of the present props. Its site occupies a most commanding view of the valley of the Almond, and of the country and hills beyond. The large capstone is a block of secondary basalt or whinstone, about twelve feet long, ten in breadth and two in thickness. Its upper surface has sculptured along its median line a long row of some twenty-two cup-cuttings; and two more cup-cuttings are placed laterally: one, half a foot to the left of the central row and at its base; the other, two feet to the right of the tenth central cup and near the edge of the block. The largest of the cups are about three inches in diameter and half an inch in depth; but most of them are smaller and shallower than this…”
A few years later another early petroglyph authority, J. Romilly Allen (1882), visited the Witches Stone and found “an Ordnance bench mark (had been) cut on the stone itself”! He then continued with his own description of this once-important megalithic site:
“The Witch’s Stone is a natural boulder of whinstone, rounded and smoothed by glacial action, whoso upper surface slopes at an angle of about 35° with the horizon. The length of the sloping face is 8 feet and at the top is a flat place 2 feet wide. The breadth of the stone is 11 feet 3 inches at the upper end, and 4 feet at the lower end. The thickness varies from 2 to 3 feet. The highest part of the stone is 6 feet 6 inches above the ground, and the lowest 1 foot 6 inches. It rests on what has originally been a portion of the same boulder, but is now a mass of whinstone broken up into several fragments, which serve as supports to prop up the stone above. Viewed from the north side the whole presents the appearance of a cromlech, the upper stone forming the cap, and the disintegrated portion below the supports. This notion, however, will be clearly seen to be erroneous on looking at it from the opposite side, as shown on the accompanying sketch…where the crack separating the two portions of the boulder is very apparent… The sculpturings consist of twenty-four cups varying in diameter from 1½ to 3 inches. Twenty-two of these cups are arranged in an approximately straight line along the sloping face of the stone, and divide it into two almost equal parts. The two remaining cups lie, one 7½ inches to the left of the lowest cup of the central row, and the other 2 feet 3 inches to the right of the ninth cup up the stone… The field in which the Witch’s Stone is situated is called “Knock-about.” The sloping face of the stone has been much polished by the practice of people climbing on to the top and sliding down. Some of the cups are almost obliterated in consequence. The stone forms a very prominent feature in the view, and must always have attracted attention from its peculiar shape.”
Some twenty years after Allen, the megalithomaniac Fred Coles (1903) came and checked the Witches Stone out for himself and, as happens, had a few additional things to say about the place:
“Although this huge boulder and its cup-marks have been more than once figured and described, I found, on a close examination of the broad surface of the Stone, that none of the illustrations showed the cup-marks in their exact relation to each other, nor in their true relation to the contour of the Stone. The drawing shown above…was made after a careful measurement by triangulation of the Stone; and it is claimed to be the first that shows that the cups, two and twenty in number, are not disposed in one continuous line, but that thirteen follow each other from the high south edge of the stone for a distance of exactly 6 feet, and nine others lie a few inches to the west, occupying a space 3 feet long of the overcurving edge of the north end. It is further shown that, at a point 2 feet 3 inches west of the ninth cup-mark, there is another one quite as large as the largest in the rows near the middle of the Stone. The south edge (A B) has slipped a little down from its original height, the boulder being frost-split horizontally; its height there above ground is 8 feet. The northern and narrower end is about 2 feet above ground, and does not touch the ground, as it rests upon its lower portion, beyond which it projects a few inches. The cup-marks run due north.”
Fred Coles 1903 drawing
If the Witches Stone was in fact a natural outcrop stone and not a cromlech, this very last point telling that “the cup-marks run due north” probably had much greater importance than a mere compass-bearing to the people who etched this carving. For in pre-christian religious structures across the northern hemisphere, north is commonly representative of death and the land of the gods. In magickal rites “it is the place of greatest symbolic darkness,” as neither sun nor moon ever rise or set there. Additionally, north is the place where, in shamanic traditions, the heavens are tied to the Earth: the cosmic axis itself that links heaven, Earth and underworld. In early neolithic traditions this mythic structure was probably endemic. Whether its magickal relevance was intended here, at this stone, we will probably never know…
Folklore
Folklore tells that the Witches Stone was one of the sites used in magickal rites by the Scottish occultist, Michael Scot. J.R. Allen’s (1882) description of “the sloping face of the stone has been much polished by the practice of people climbing on to the top and sliding down,” may relate to folk memory of fertility rites once practiced here, as found at similarly carved rocks in the UK and across the world.
McLean, Adam, The Standing Stones of the Lothians, Megalithic Research Publications: Edinburgh no date (c.1978).
Morris, Ronald W.B., The Prehistoric Rock Art of Southern Scotland, BAR: Oxford 1981.
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in the Counties of Midlothian and West Lothian, HMSO: Edinburgh 1929.
Simpson, James, Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, etc., Upon Stones and Rocks in Scotland, England and other Countries, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1867.
Healing Well (lost): OS Grid Reference – TQ 315 817
Also Known as:
Fagge’s Well
Archaeology & History
First described in local church records from around 1190 AD (Webb 1921) as Fageswelle; then again a few years later in early crime records of the region (Hardy & Page, 1892) as Fackeswell, there were a number of other references to this lost water source, which could once be found near the Skinners Well and the more famous Clerks Well, Finsbury. Gover, Mawer & Stenton (1942) believed the site owed its title to some long-forgotten local name, though could give no specifics. (i.e., they didn’t know!) The old dialect word ‘fag’, relating to old grass is as good a meaning as any!
The site was described by John Stow in his Survey of London, 1603, saying it was “near unto Smithfield by Charterhouse, lately dammed up.” In Mr Foord’s (1910) excellent work on the subject, he told that,
“In 1197 certain lands are described as lying between the garden of the Hospitallers and Smithfield Bar, “super rivulum de Fackeswell,” and other lands as between that brook and ‘Chikennelane’… This fixes the position of Faggeswell Brook as approximately at the boundary of the City.”
Further information about this site would be much appreciated. The grid-reference for this site is an approximation.
References:
Foord, Alfred Stanley, Springs, Streams and Spas of London: History and Association, T. Fisher Unwin: London 1910.
Gover, J.E.B., Mawer, Allen & Stenton, F.M., The Place-Names of Middlesex, Cambridge University Press 1942.
Hardy, W.J. & Page, W. (eds), A Calendar of Feet of Fines for London and Middlesex, 1197-1569 – volume 1, Hardy & Page: London 1892.
Sunderland, Septimus, Old London Spas, Baths and Wells, John Bale: London 1915.
Webb, E.A. (ed.), The Records of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, and of the Church and Parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield – volume 1, Humphrey Milford: Oxford 1921.
Healing Well (lost): OS Grid Reference – TQ 313 822
Archaeology & History
Like oh so many of the healthy old springs and streams in that dreadful metropolis, the blood and natural health of Skinner’s Well was killed long ago by the self-righteous arrogance of Industrialists. Even its precise whereabouts seems to have been forgotten… So we thank the written words of antiquarians to keep its memory alive.
Mentioned as far back as 1197 AD in early fine records of the region (Hardy & Page, 1892) as Skinnereswell — and thereafter in various local history records from 1200, 1244, 1385 and constantly from thereon — the place-name authorities Gover, Mawer & Stenton (1942) told that the prefix ‘skinner’, “clearly derive from personal names,” from “the occupational name skinner, of Scandinavian origin.” But this isn’t to everyone’s etymological fancy! When A.S. Foord (1910) sought for information on this healing spring, he found the same 1197 account, in which
“Skinners’ Well is there described as lying in the valley between the Nun’s Priory and the Holeburn, in which was a large fish-pond… Strype, in his continuation of Stow’s Survey (1720) say, ‘Skinners’ Well is almost quite lost, and so it was in Stow’s time. But I am certainly informed by a knowing parishioner that it lies to the west of the church (of St. James, Clerkenwell), enclosed within certain houses there.’ The parish would fain recover the well again, but cannot tell where the pipes lie. But Dr Rogers, who formerly lived in an house there, showed Mr Edmund Howard…marks in a wall in the close where, as he affirmed, the pipes lay, that it might be known after his death.”
Mr Sunderland (1915) thought Skinners Well a probable holy well, “because Mystery Plays were were performed yearly around it by the Skinners of London.” Citing as evidence the earlier words of John Stow in his Survey of London, 1603, which he narrated:
“In the year 1390…I read, the parish clerks of London, on the 18th July, played interludes at Skinners Well, near unto Clerkes’ Well, which play continued for three days together; the king, queen and nobles being present. Also in the year 1409…they played a play at the Skinners Well, which lasted eight days, and was of matter from the creation of the world. There were to see the same the most part of the nobles and gentles in England, etc.”
Whether this “matter from the creation of the world” was a tale of a Biblical nature, or more related to indigenous creation myths of the waters and lands around Skinners Well, we have no way of knowing.
References:
Foord, Alfred Stanley, Springs, Streams and Spas of London: History and Association, T. Fisher Unwin: London 1910.
Gover, J.E.B., Mawer, Allen & Stenton, F.M., The Place-Names of Middlesex, Cambridge University Press 1942.
Hardy, W.J. & Page, W. (eds), A Calendar of Feet of Fines for London and Middlesex, 1197-1569 – volume 1, Hardy & Page: London 1892.
MacLagan, David, Creation Myths, Thames & Hudson: London 1977.
Sunderland, Septimus, Old London Spas, Baths and Wells, John Bale: London 1915.
The standing stone that could once be seen here is long gone. Its existence was reported in John Stuart’s (1854) short essay on stone circles of the region, in which he told:
“On the summit of the Hill of Balnoon, or rather on its neck towards the east, there was till lately a lofty upright stone called The Conwath or Conway Stone, and by some The Charter Stone. It was surrounded by a slight ditch.”
A recumbent stone in the field immediately north may relate to Stuart’s old report.
Folklore
In the same article, Mr Stuart told some interesting folklore which strongly implies the stone to have had importance for women. He said:
“It has been said that funerals coming from the west end of the parish were accompanied to this stone by the females of the family, and that the funeral here rested for a time, and the females returned (the stone being in sight of the churchyard). My informant (the minister of the parish) states, that a cairn on the hill of Auchinhamper was used for a similar purpose by funerals coming from the east end of the parish. On visiting the stone, however, I found that the churchyard was not visible from that spot.”
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SP 641 715
Also Known as:
Oster Hill
Archaeology & History
At the northeastern edge of Torkington Lodge, nearly a mile east of West Haddon, the antiquarian John Bridge (1791) told of the existence of prehistoric barrow that was still visible here around the year 1720. Described by the Royal Commission lads (1981), when they visited the site they found that “no trace of a mound exists.” Just a few years earlier the place-name analysts, Gover, Mawer & Stenton (1975) told that:
“There is a tumulus here and it would seem most likely that the name goes back to Old Scandinavian austr, ‘east’, and haugr, hence “eastern barrow.”
Folklore
Mr J. Bridge (1791) reported how the local people said, “according to vulgar tradition, are buried several officers who fell in battle” within the tumulus. He also suggested the name of the mound derived from “the tumulus of Publius Ostorius”: a Roman statesman and general who governed Britain from 47-52 AD.
References:
Bridge, John, The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire – volume 1, Thomas Payne: Oxford 1791.
Gover, J.E.B., Mawer, A. & Stenton, F.M., The Place-Names of Northamptonshire, Cambridge University Press 1975.
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northamptonshire – Volume III: Archaeological Sites in North-West Northamptonshire, HMSO: London 1981.
On the A65 road from Skipton to Gargrave, just at the eastern end of Gargrave, take the small Eshton Road running north over the canal. Go through Eshton itself, making sure you bear right at the small road a few hundred yards past the old village. Keep your eyes peeled a few hundred yards down as you hit the river bridge and stop here. Just 50 yards before this is a parking spot where some Water Board building stands. Walk back up the road barely 20 yards and you’ll see, right by the roadside, a small clear pool on your left, encircled by trees. Go through the little stile here and you’re right by the water’s side!
Archaeology & History
This is actually a listed monument (unusual for wells up North!), just off the roadside between Nappa Bridge and Eshton Hall. Two or three old stone heads (deemed to be ‘Celtic’ in age and origin, though I had my doubts) have recently been stolen from this holy pool close to where the water emerges from the ground, just beneath the surface. You can see where the water bubbles up strongly from the Earth when you visit here, forming the small pool in front of it, around which at certain times of year people still attach ‘memaws’ (an old word for ritual ‘offerings’) on the small shrubs. If you drink from here, just where the water bubbles up (careful not to fall in!), it’s freezing — but tastes absolutely gorgeous! And better than any tap-water you’ll ever drink!
Mentioned briefly in Mr Hope’s (1893) fine early survey; the earliest description of this site in relation to the mythic ‘Helen’ dates from 1429, where T.D. Whitaker (1878) described the dedication to an adjacent chapel, long gone. Whitaker’s wrote:
“…One of the most copious springs in the kingdom, St. Helen’s Well fills at its source a circular basin twenty feet in circumference, from the whole bottom of which it boils up without any visible augmentation in the wettest seasons, or diminution in the driest. In hot weather the exhalations from its surface are very conspicuous. But the most remarkable circumstance about this spring is that, with no petrifying quality in its own basin, after a course of about two hundred yards over a common pebbly channel, during which it receives no visible accession from any other source, it petrifies strongly where it is precipitated down a steep descent into the brook. To this well anciently belonged a chapel, with the same dedication; for in the year 1429, a commission relating to the manor of Flasby sat “in capella beate Elene de Essheton; and on the opposite side of the road to the spring is a close called the Chapel Field. This was probably not unendowed, for I met with certain lands in Areton, anciently called Seynt Helen Lands.”
When the old countryman Halliwell Sutcliffe (1939) talked of this healing spring, his tone was more in keeping with the ways of local folk. Sutcliffe loved the hills and dales and old places to such an extent that they were a part of his very bones. And this comes through when he mentions this site. Telling where to find the waters, he continued:
“Its sanctuary is guarded by a low mossy wall. Neglected for years out of mind, it retains still clear traces of what it was in older times. An unfailing spring comes softly up among stones carved with heart-whole joy in chiselling. Scattered now, these stones were once in orderly array about what is not a well, in the usual sense, but rather a wide rock-pool, deep here and shallow there, with little trees that murmur in the breeze above. Give yourself to this place, frankly and with the simplicity is asks. It does not preach or scold, or rustle with the threat of unguessed ambushes among the grassy margin. Out of its inmost heart it gives you all it knows of life.”
Old well in the field
In the field across the road where the chapel was said to have been, we find another stone-lined fresh-water well bubbling from the ground into a stone trough (at grid-ref SD 93118 56958). The waters here are also good and refreshing. But whether this fine water source had any tales told of it, or curative properties (it will have done), history has sadly betrayed its voice.
Folklore
The waters here have long been reputed as medicinal. R.C. Hope (1893) said “this well was a certain cure for sore and weak eyes.” Whitaker and others told there to be hangings of rags and other offerings (known in Yorkshire as ‘memaws’). Sutcliffe described,
“The pilgrims coming with their sores, of body and soul… The Well heard tales that were foul with infamies of the world beyond its sanctuary. Men came with blood-guilt on their hands, and in their souls a blackness and a terror. Women knelt here in bleak extremity of shame. The Well heard all, and from its own unsullied depths sent up the waters of great healing. And the little chant of victory began to stir about the pilgrims’ hearts…and afterwards the chant gained in volume. It seemed to them that they were marching side by side with countless, lusty warriors who aforetime had battled for the foothold up the hills. And, after that, a peace unbelievable, and the quiet music of Helen’s Well, as her waters ran to bless the farmward lands below. All this is there for you to understand today, if you will let the Well explain the richness of her heritage, the abiding mystery of her power to solace and to heal.”
And so it is with many old springs… The rite of memaws enacted at St. Helen’s Well is a truly archaic one: whereby a person bringing a cloth or stone or coin — using basic principles of sympathetic magick — asks the spirit of the waters to cleanse them of their illness and pass it to the rags that are tied to the adjacent tree; or perhaps some wish, or desire, or fortune, be given in exchange for a coin or something if personal value. The waters must then be drunk, or immerse yourself into the freezing pool; and if the person leaving such offerings is truly sincere in their requests, the spirit of the water may indeed act for the benefit of those concerned.
Such memaws at St. Helen’s Well are still left by local people and, unfortunately, some of those idiotic plastic pagans, who actually visit here and tie pieces of artificial material to the hawthorn and other trees, which actually pollutes the Earth and kills the spirit here. Whilst the intent may be good, please, if you’re gonna leave offerings here, make sure that the rags you leave are totally biodegradable. The magical effectiveness of your intent is almost worthless if the material left is toxic to the environment and will certainly have a wholly negative effect on the spirit of the placehere. Please consider this to ensure the sacred nature of this site.
…to be continued…
References:
Hope, Robert Charles, Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, Elliott Stock: London 1893.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire– volume 6, Cambridge University Press 1961.
Sutcliffe, Halliwell, The Striding Dales, Frederick Warne: London 1939.
Whelan, Edna, The Magic and Mystery of Holy Wells, Capall Bann: Chieveley 2001.
Whelan, Edna & Taylor, Ian, Yorkshire Holy Wells and Sacred Springs, Northern Lights: Dunnington 1989.
Whitaker, T.D., The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, Joseph Dodgson: Leeds 1878.
Ornate cup-and-ring in Queens Wood (after RCAHMS 2004)
From Kenmore, take the road towards Acharn on the south-side of Loch Tay for about a mile. Just as you go out of Acharn, watch for the small road of Queens Drive on your left going uphill. Go up here, following the tree-lined burn (stream) towards the superb Falls of Acharn, crossing the track over it and winding uphill still, until the track veers left across open fields towards the large woodland 400 yards east. Just before the track meets the trees, notice the small burn running into the woods. Follow this for some 200 yards – and where it bends more sharply to go uphill, keep going for another 75 yards upstream until you meet with another opening going east. The rocky outcrop here is where this carved stone is found. Look around!
Archaeology & History
Hidden deep within the woods where wet feet and good ankles come together, is this fine example of a cup-and-ring stone, perhaps having something in times of olde to do with the meeting of the waters. A cluster of urisks and prehistoric remains scatter this lovely rolling section of southern Loch Tay, but I’ve found nothing specific to this bitta woodland that might give added mythos to the site. The carving was described in Mr Stark’s (2005) fine little work on the local rock art, saying:
“A rock outcrop, situated in woodland between Acharn Burn and the burn running down to Remony House, bears at least thirty-six cupmarkings. There are twenty-four plain cups, three cups each with a single ring, three cups each with double rings, and a cup surrounded by three faint rings, which has a gutter leading to the NW. The cups range from 40mm to 75mm in diameter and from 60mm to 120mm in depth.”
The next time we visit the place, I’ll make sure I get some good photos – and visit the stone circle and settlement a few hundred yards further up the hill…
References:
Stark, Gordon (ed.), Cupmarked Stones in Strathtay, Breadalbane Heritage Centre 2005.
Cairn Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NM 2721 2371
Also Known as:
Angel Hill
Cnoc nar-aimgeal
Sithean More
Archaeology & History
There have long been rumours of stone circles on the druid’s isle of Iona, but many are dismissed as little more than errors on behalf of antiquarians, or false descriptions of hut circles and settlement remains. The stone circle of Sithean Mor however, does seem to have existed until only a century or two ago. It was first mentioned by the great traveller, Thomas Pennant (1776), who visited Iona more than once. He told us:
“On my return I saw, on the right hand, on a small hill, a small circle of stones, and a little cairn in the middle, evidently druidical, but called the hill of the angels, Cnoc nar-aimgeal; from a tradition that the holy man had there a conference with those celestial beings soon after his arrival. Bishop Pocock informed me that the natives were accustomed to bring their horses to this circle at the feast of St. Michael, and to course round it. I conjecture that this usage originated from the custom of blessing the horses in the days of superstition, when the priest and the holy-water pot were called in: but in latter times the horses are still assembled, but the reason forgotten.”
Site of the Sithean Mor on the 1881 OS-map
The day of the “feast of St. Michael” that Pennant mentioned was our indigenous heathen New Year, or Halloween, now usurped and misrepresented by countless plastic pagans and christians alike. It would appear from Pennant’s description that the circle in question was more likely a cairn circle. The fact that the heathen islanders celebrated annual rites here at Samhain, strongly implies there was once a hero-myth and a creation myth in evidence, but I am unaware of any remaining tales that may help confirm this. The coming of St. Columba may be responsible for this lack of oral tradition.
More than a century after Pennant’s visit here, the ring of stones had been destroyed. We know this from the description given by Archie MacMillan (1898) in his fine text on the antiquities of Iona, where he said,
“Angel Hill, called in the vernacular Sithean More. There was, not so very long ago, a circle of standing stones on the top of this hillock. They have been used for other purposes.”
Folklore
The most commonly recited tale of this grassy rise is that when St. Columba brought christianity to the island, he communed here with the angels. This is a simple displacement tale: of a new faith replacing an older one. The old name of the hill, Sithean Mor, tells that the littlepeople or fairy folk once held influence here.
References:
Cumming, C.F.G., In the Hebrides, Chatto & Windus: London 1883.
MacMillan, Archibald, Iona: Its History and Antiquities, Houlston & Sons: London 1898.
Pennant, Thomas, A Tour in Scotland, 1772 – Part 1, Benjamin White: London 1776.
