Along the A822 road from the Gilmerton junction on the outskirts of Crieff, heading up towards the Sma’ Glen, after literally 1¾ miles (2.8km) on the right-side of the road you need to follow the route to reach the Connachan rock art cluster by walking up the dirt-track leading up past Connachan Farm. Walk past the carving of Connachan (2) and up the track past Connachan (4), then onto the level ground and walk right to the low-lying ruined Connachan cairn. From here, look up the gentle slope to the fence. A small-ish stone protrudes out 40 yards away. Head straight for it!
Archaeology & History
Close-up of line of cups
You’ll check this out when you’re doing your tour of this petroglyph cluster and sit here to admire the view. It’s the last of the small bunch of carvings, on level ground, close to the denuded cairns. It consists of just eight cup-marks, all of which are carved close to the edge of the stone on its upper sloping surface; although this doesn’t tally with Margaret Stewart’s (1967) description of any of the carvings hereby. There’s nowt much more to be said about it to be honest; apart from saying how it’s highly likely that other carvings remain hidden, undiscovered, not far from this stone along the edge of these hills.
References:
Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Connachan, Crieff – Cup Marks and Hut Circle,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, 1967.
Along the A827 Loch Tay road, halfway between Fearnan and Lawers just beyond the forestry, a track goes up into the fields across from Feadan house (big shed above you in field). Careful, or you’ll miss it. Go up here and head all the way up the steep winding track for 700 yards (as the crow flies) until, where the land starts levelling out, you hit the long straight line of old walling. Go over it and walk to your right (northeast) for a few hundred yards until it bears sharp left (NW), keep walking along it for another 45 yards and, where the fence turns down to the water, just keeping walking up the slope to the scatter of rocks. Look around!
Archaeology & History
Looking down at the cups
When you consider there are multiple-ringed carvings close by on the same geological ridge as this carving, there’s little wonder this fella hardly gets any attention: the design here is nothing special compared to its close neighbours. That aside: on this small flat surface we have six or seven simple cup-marks; most of them quite small, with the largest of the lot having what looks like a small carved arc around one side of it—although I couldn’t make my mind up one way or the other to be honest. A few more visits might prove more conclusive.
Folklore
The stream at the side of this carving and others nearby—the Allt Coire Phadairlidh, or Padderlie’s Burn—was the haunt of an urisk, who gave his name to the waters. He lived a little further up on the knoll. Several other carvings are just below here. Urisks were plentiful in this area. They are variously described as demonic creatures, referred to by Alexander Carmichael as “a monster, half human half goat, with abnormally long hair, long teeth and long claws.” (teeth aside, that sounds like me! 🙂 ) They mainly live by lonely waterfalls and a small beautiful fall is very close by. They are associated in some places with cup-marked stones, where offerings of milk were made to placate them. In truth, these nature spirits seem to be folk remnants of solitary shaman figures cast into the edges of hills. A local lady who lived in this area said she’d met an urisk near here and he was anything but the fearful creatures they are made out to be…
References:
Currie, George, “Kenmore: Allt Coire Phadairlaidh (AP1): Cup-Marked Rock,” in Discovery & Excavtion Scotland, vol. 9 (new series), 2008.
Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NU 2299 2989
Archaeology & History
Tait’s 1971 sketch of the carving
When the Beadnell Caravan Park was being constructed in 1970, in cutting into the Earth the workmen destroyed a couple of prehistoric tombs—but not before one of them (the northernmost one of the two) was thankfully excavated. It was looked at by John Tait (1971), who described the covering cairn as measuring “nineteen feet in diameter and four feet high”. Beneath it, within a cist that had been modified at two very different periods in time, were a large number of human remains that had been deposited over equally extended periods, suggesting it was a place of considerable importance to either one family lineage or the tribal lineage (unless it was just a dumping spot for any old Tom, Dick and Harry!). Outside of the cist itself, but within the rocky mass of the cairn, this cup-marked stone was found (illustrated). It had already been moved by the workmen before Tait came to excavate it, so he was unable to ascertain its precise position in the tomb. Carved into a piece of sandstone were a number of odd-sized cup-marks, smaller than usual. Tait wrote:
“It measures 38cm by 36cm and bears 29 small cup-marks and one slightly sinuous duct leading into what may be part of an earlier and larger cup. It also seems probable that additional cups were added in antiquity, since some are distinctly more shallow than others and, in one instance, two cups impinge upon one another. The stone had been broken in antiquity and may have come from a larger inscribed slab, as is perhaps the case with some other “portable” stones of burials or cairns and other monuments of the second this nature.”
It is thought that the carving was laid back in the ground whence it was found.
References:
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 1, Abbey Press: Hexham 1991.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
Healing Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TQ 3496 9623
Also Known as:
King Ring Well
Tim Ringer’s Well
Archaeology & History
Site shown on 1879 map
Highlighted on the 1879 Ordnance Survey map, on the south-side of Southbury Road close to Ponders End, this curiously-named water source has a somewhat mundane history to it. It’s likely that an old stone conduit that was shown on John Ogilby’s 1698 road map of the area is the King’s Ring Well—although it hadn’t acquired that name at the time. It was described for the first time in Robinson’s (1823) classic work, located “on the south side of Gouldsdown-lane,”—which later became known as Nag’s Head Lane and today is Southbury Road. Anyhow, he continued telling us that here,
“there is a moat dividing two square fields. In the first there are remains of stables, barns, &c. and hollows, as of vaults, among the trees. There is a deep well, bricked, called “King Ring” or “Tim Ringer well,” (Timothy Ring was an opulent farmer who occupied the lands; and it is supposed from his arrogant manner obtained the nic-name of “King Ring.”) whose spring, it is said, never freezes nor dries up, and the water is esteemed very efficacious in disorders of the eyes.”
Robinson noted that the local drovers, “who from being so much exposed to the dust are subject to sore eyes, frequently turn up the lane to use the water, and there have been instances of children being cured of sore eyes by it after the measles.” He also alluded to a tradition that a religious house or convent once stood hereby, although he never obtained accurate information to prove his idea. If that was the case, the site may have been a holy well. The medicinal properties of the waters were repeated in Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary (1848); and again in Hodson & Ford’s (1873) subsequent survey of Enfield, emphasizing that it was “considered infallible as a remedy for inflammation of the eyes.” Sadly the well has long since been destroyed.
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.
If you’re coming up to Oxenhope from Keighley, up the A6033 road, when you reach the school on the right-hand side of the road, a one-way street (Cross Lane) is where you need to walk down, for 200 yards, and keep your eyes peeled in the walling just before Cross Farm Court. Alternatively, via Haworth, go along Marsh Lane for a few hundred yards until your reach Moorhouse Lane on your left. Go down here for ⅓-mile (0.5km) and then go up Cross Lane on your right. About 120 yards up, in the walling just past the entrance into Cross Farm Court is where you’ll find it.
Archaeology & History
Very little seems to be known about the remains of this cross, embedded into the old walling. When it was described by Brigg & Villy (1914), they could find no information about it, and surmised that it marked the original track or road to Oxenhope from both Haworth and Halifax, “on the line of the old road by Withens.” Ostensibly it would seem to have been a wayside cross, marking old trackways (ley hunters take note!).
Visitors looking at it today can see that it’s barely noticeable. It looked no different even in Brigg & Villy’s days. It simply consists of only part of the original head of the cross, “the shaft having been broken off flush with the horizontal limb.” Some of the other stones that make up the bottom of this very poor-looking excuse of a cross were probably not part of the original, but were assembled into the wall to at least leave of memory of what it used to look like. It’s in a sorry state to be honest. A historic plaque should be placed here.
References:
Brigg, J.J. & Villy, F., “Three Ancient Crosses near Keighley,” in Bradford Antiquary, New Series 6, 1921.
Easy to find: get into the middle of the village where the shops are in the main street and where another road veers off, the cross sits there in the middle in the traffic island. The photo here shows its location clearly.
Archaeology & History
Doune’s Mercat Cross
Found at the meeting of the roads in the centre of this old lovely village, the Mercat Cross in its present state was, according to Act of Parliament, erected a few years prior to 1696. Set on a square base of six steps in traditional pyramidal fashion, near the top of the 12-foot tall shaft are carvings on the sides of the stone. On the east-face was carved the Moray arms, and on the west face were carved sundials. John Small (1900) told how the top of the cross is crowned by the figure of a lion, “holding in its paws a circular shield or escutcheon, surrounded by a ribbon enclosing he Moray crest, and bearing the motto, ‘Salus per Christum.’
John Small’s 1900 sketch
It has been damaged a few times over the years. Sometime around 1800, Moray Mackay (1953) told that “the lion fell of and was damaged”, but was repaired shortly afterwards by a local man. He also told, with considerable indignation, how the local authorities were responsible for damaging what used to be “four short pillars which stood at the corners of the base,” when they were “smashed off and removed , impairing the balance of the whole (cross) for the sake of six inches more traffic room”! There are two such short pillars at the edges, but these aren’t the original stones. There used to be a water pump in front of the cross, but this was removed many years ago.
Standing Stone (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SK 5779 0644
Also Known as:
Little John’s Stone
Archaeology & History
Nichols 1804 drawing
This once impressive megalithic site was first mentioned in 1381, giving its name to the field Johnstone Close. Shown on the early Ordnance Survey maps standing on a raised portion of land in an area north of the modern town centre, not far from the Abbey, its destruction had been a slow one until it finally disappeared about a hundred years ago. One of the early descriptions of it was by John Nichols (1804) in his immense series of works on the county. He called it ‘Little John’s Stone’* and gave us the first known illustration of the monolith (right), telling it to be “7 feet 2 inches high, and 11 feet 3 inches wide”—although he obviously meant circumference and not ‘wide’, as his illustration clearly shows. Although this slight error was perhaps the reason that Historic England proclaimed the stone to have been little more than “a natural feature”—which it clearly wasn’t.
Stone shown on 1885 mapJohn Flower’s 1815 sketch
The stone stood in what Nichols called “a kind of amphitheatre”, and what James Hollings (1855) subsequently called a sloping hollow which, he thought, had “been excavated by the hand of man.” It was located “in a meadow, a little to the west of the Fosse-way,” he said, “not far from the ancient boundary wall of the Abbey of St. Mary de Pratis.” There’s little doubt it was a prehistoric standing stone. Hollings described it as standing erect and told it to be one of those “monolithic erections, or hoar stones, anciently sanctified by the rites of Druidic worship,” comparing it to “similar rude columns” in Cornwall, Scotland and just about everywhere! He also told that it was a place of summer solstice gatherings, being
“in the memory of many living, annually visited about the time of Midsummer by numerous parties from the town in pursuance of a custom of unknown antiquity.”
When James Kelly (1884) wrote about the stone, little was left of it save at ground level. He repeated much of what Hollings had previously written, but had a few notes of his own. One related to the local mayor and MP for Leicester, Mr Richard Harris, dated January 1853, who told him:
“When a boy, he had frequently played on the spot where it was customary for the children to resort to dance round the stone (which he thought was about eight feet high), to climb upon it and to roll down the hill by which the stone is in part, encircled. The children were careful to leave before dark, as it was believed that at midnight the fairies assembled and danced round the stone.”
More than fifty years later when Mrs Johnson (1906) wrote about the place she said that only a small section of the stone still remained, just “a few inches above the earth.” It had been incrementally “broken to pieces down to the surface of the ground and used to mend the road.” (Kelly 1884) Alice Dryden (1911) lamented its gradual demise in size, summarizing:
“At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was about 7 feet high, but by the year 1835 it had become reduced to about 3 feet. In 1874, according to the British Association’s Report, it was about 2 feet high, and it has now completely disappeared.”
Local tradition tells that some small pieces of St John’s Stone were moved to the nearby St. Luke’s church, where bits of it can still be seen. Has anyone found them?
More recent lore has attributed St John’s Stone to have been aligned with the Humber Stone (SK 62416 07095) nearly 3 miles to the east, in a summer solstice line—but it’s nowhere near it! A similar astronomical attempt said that the two stones lined up with the Beltane sunrise: this is a little closer, but it still doesn’t work. The equinox sunrise is closer still, but whether these two stones were even intervisible is questionable.
* this was probably the name it was known by local people who frequented the nearby Robin Hood public house (long gone); its saintly dedication being less important in the minds of Leicester’s indigenous folk.
References:
Cox, Barrie, The Place-Names of Leicestershire – volume 1, EPNS: Nottingham 1998.
Devereux, Paul, “The Forgotten Heart of Albion,” in The Ley Hunter, no.66, 1975.
Dryden, Alice, Memorials of Old Leicestershire, George Allen & Sons: London 1911.
Hollings, James Francis, Roman Leicester, LLPS: Leicester 1855.
Kelly, William, Royal Progresses and Visits to Leicester, Samuel Clarke: Leicester 1884.
Nichols, John, The History and Antiquities of Leicestershire – volume 3: part 2, J. Nichols: London 1804.
Trubshaw, Bob, Standing Stones and Markstones of Leicestershire, Heart of Albion Press 1991.
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.
Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NX 68700 44699
Archaeology & History
Coles’ 1895 sketch
This impressive-looking carving was rediscovered in the 1880s during one of Fred Coles’ ventures uncovering many of the petroglyphs in this area. It could be found, he said, “some three hundred yards south-east of Balmae House.” When the local historian Malcolm Harper visited Samuel Fletcher who lived in the cottage at Balmae a few years after it had been discovered, he spoke enthusiastically about the carvings and knew much about them, but Harper doesn’t specifically mention whether or not he’d seen this stone (he probably did). Nowadays the carving is covered in thickets of gorse and and, as a result, it hasn’t been seen in many a year. The great Scottish petroglyph hunter Kaledon Naddair may have been one of the last people to visit it.
It’s impressive, as Mr Coles’ (1895) sketch shows, comprising, as he said, of
“two sets of concentric rings, one having four, the other five and a central cup. It is smooth, and slopes to the W. at an angle of 40°. The largest ring is 24 inches in diameter.”
A number of other impressive multiple-ringed carvings exist hereby that have also fallen prey to the cover of gorse. So get some hedge-cutters and decent gardening gloves if you’re gonna look for this one!
Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Cup-and-Ring Marks and Similar Sculptures of South-West Scotland,” in Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, volume 14, 1967.
Morris, Ronald W.B., The Prehistoric Rock Art of Galloway and the Isle of Man, Blandford: Poole 1979.
Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments & Constructions of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in Galloway – volume 2: County of the Stewatry of Kirkcudbrightshire , HMSO: Edinburgh 1914.
OK—I’m cheating here, as I’ve not visited this site (bad of me!). The directions given here are from Harper’s 1876 Rambles in this area. He told that the stone “stands about 100 yards to the north of the march dyke betwixt Upper Ervie, now Ken-Ervie and Nether Ervie. There is little to indicate its whereabouts, but the visitor coming from Kenmure Bridge, and leaving the road on the left, opposite Ringour and Bennan farms, on the opposite side of Loch Ken, would come upon it without much trouble by following the march dyke half a mile up.” Basically, along the A713 just over 2 miles north of the bridge at Parton (½ mile before reaching the Galloway Activity Centre), 60 yards from the “Farm Access No Parking” spot, in the trees a long straight line of walling runs uphill. That’d be my route—straight up!
Archaeology & History
This is a curious entry that I’ve added without visiting the site; but as I might never get to see it I thought it should be displayed in the hope that others might check it out. The earliest literary reference to it is from Crosbie’s (1845) entry in the New Statistical Account, where he implies that the markings on the stone are not of Nature’s handiwork. In Malcolm Harper’s (1876) fine work exploring the history and folklore of this region, he gave us the first illustration of the stone, which looks suspiciously like elements that we find on cup-and-ring stones. Many years later when the Royal Commission (1914) lads followed up on Crosbie’s entry, they thought the markings were probably Nature’s handiwork. They told that:
“It is an irregular mass of outcropping rock about 3 feet in diameter, and bears on its surface certain depressed markings supposed to represent a cow’s foot, a horse-shoe, and impressions which might be made by a man’s foot and knee in the act of kneeling. The markings appear to be natural.”
But it’s the animistic elements and traditions here which are important and which gave the stone its very name…
Folklore
When Rev. W.G. Crosbie (1845) first wrote about this stone, he was narrating the tale told of it by local people, whose traditions were greatly neglected by the majority of writers at that time. Such stories should be preserved at all times, as they tell us more about the psychocosms of pre-industrial cultures. Here,
“On the farm of Arvie, there is a flat stone about three feet in diameter, on which are the marks of what might be supposed a cow’s foot, a horse shoe, the four nails on each side being very distinct, and the impression which might be made by a man’s foot and knee while he was in the act of kneeling, the knot of the garter being quite evident. The tradition connected with this remarkable stone, commonly called the ‘Cow Clout,’ is, that the proprietor, in order to get up arrears of rent, “drave the pun,” or in other words, carried off the hypothecated stock, while a fierce resistance was made by the people, and that over this stone, on which a man had just been praying for relief against his enemies, the cattle passed followed by an officer on horseback, and that it remains as a memorial to posterity of the cruel deed.”
If someone in that neck o’ the woods can find out if the stone’s still there and perhaps send us a photo, or stick it on our Facebook group, that’d be great! 🙂
References:
Coles, Fred, “The Recent Cup and Ring Mark Discoveries in Kirkcudbrightshire”, in Proceedings Dumfriesshire & Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, volume 5, 1888.
Crosbie, W.G., “Parish of Parton,” in New Statistical Account of Scotland – volume 4, William Blackwood: Edinburgh 1845.
Harper, Malcolm M., Rambles in Galloway, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1876.
Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments & Constructions of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in Galloway – volume 2: County of the Stewatry of Kirkcudbrightshire , HMSO: Edinburgh 1914.
Cross (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 2546 3537
Archaeology & History
Location of the old cross
In medieval times an old stone cross was erected at the edge of Bramley where two old tracks once met, and which today is the junction where Broad Lane meets with Outgang Lane. The cross is long gone – and even the stone cross base on which it stood no longer existed when the Ordnance Survey lads came here in the 1840s. All that remained when they came here were the place-names which have forever kept a memory of its former existence: Stump Cross Stile and Stump Cottage. It was mentioned, albeit briefly, in Wardell’s (1890) survey of Kirkstall Abbey where he told simply that a
“stone cross formerly stood some distance south of the Abbey by the side of the Old Road to Bradford, at the junction of the lane leading to Bramley, called the Outgang, but no remains of it are left; the site, however, is still known by the name of ‘Stump Cross Stile.’ Whether this cross marked the extent of some boundary, or was erected by the monks or others for the purposes of devotion for wayfarers, I am unable to ascertain.”
References:
Wardell, James, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, Samuel Moxon: Leeds 1890.
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.
