Cat Nab, Brotton, North Yorkshire

Tumulus (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NZ 6692 2154

Archaeology & History

Location on 1930 OS-map

This long lost burial mound was first located by the local antiquarian William Hornsby in the early 20th century.  It had been constructed close to the summit of the prominent rise  of Cat Nab, immediately east above Saltburn.  Its position was shown on the 1930 OS-map of the area.  Destroyed by quarrying, it was thankfully excavated by Hornsby in 1913; and although his finds were never published, he left notes which told us that,

“there were two cremations and the sherds of at least three vessels: a collared urn, a pygmy cup and a vessel with an everted rim.” (Crawford 1980)

Crawford (1980) told that these finds could been seen in the Middlesborough Collection.

References:

  1. Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1980.

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

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian


Wester Glentarken (4), St Fillans, Comrie, Perthshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NN 66412 24837

Getting Here

Wester Glentarken (4) in situ

1½ miles out of St Fillans on the A85 road towards Lochearnhead you reach the boating marina by the lochside.  100 yards or so past this, park up.  Cross the road and walk 50 yards to your right then follow the dirt-track up into the trees.  After ⅓-Mile (0.5km) turn left to the old house on your left and follow the green path around it, then around the right-side of the rocky knoll to the Wester Glentarken (1) and (2) carvings. From here walk straight uphill, direct north, past the pylon and onto the rocky outcrop behind the gorse shrubs. You’re here!

Archaeology & History

Away from the edge of this relatively flat rock surface, hemmed in between three geological scars, this decent petroglyph shows its memory to prying eyes.  It was first described by George Currie (2005) as being just “17 cups (and) one pair of cups are linked”, but there are, as usual, more elements to it than that.

Faint cup-&-rings visible

As we can see quite clearly in the photos here, two of the cups possess rings around them.  One of the cup-and-rings near the middle of the mass of cups is complete, with a short line running out of it and into the longest of the natural cracks that frame the design and that runs all the way across the surface of the stone.  This cup-and-ring plays a part in a rough circle of cup-marks surrounding a central cup, with one of the outer cups possessing a companion just outside the ring.  Two cups in this circle are elongated.  There is a possibility that the cup-and-ring I’ve mentioned has another line running from it into the cupmark at the centre of the circle.

On the same side of the long natural crack, outside the circle of cups, is another cup with a faint ring around it.  Tis difficult to say whether or not this was originally complete, but when we zoom in it’s pretty damn close!

Framed secondary cluster
The carving when dry

On the other side of the long natural crack is a haphazard spread of nine more cup-marks, with at least one of them seeming to possess a very faint incomplete ring around it.  You can just make it out in one of the attached photos.  From some angles it seems that two other cups may possess fragments of carved rings around them, but more visits are needed in better light before we can say this with any certainty.  One of the cups in this cluster is elongated, whilst two other cups in this bunch are conjoined.  Another crack to the side of this secondary cluster has one or two more cups cut into it.  Altogether we have between 19 and 21 cups on this petroglyph, with rings around several of them.  Worth checking out when you visit this neck o’ the woods.  And, of course, if you’re a serious rock art researcher, scan the slopes hereby as other carvings yet remain hidden.  You can almost feel them breathing…..

References:

  1. Currie, George, Wester Glentarken, Perth and Kinross (Comrie parish), Cup-marked Rocks,” in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, volume 6, 2005.

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian

Gab Wood (2), Cookridge, Leeds, West Yorkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 24602 40614

Getting Here

Gab Woods (2) carving

Follow the same directions as if you’re visiting the Gab Woods (1) carving—which you’re probably visiting if you’re checking this one out.  Walk south into the middle of the woods and you’ll soon notice the road/houses on the other side of the trees.  Once here, staying in the woods, follow the walling down for about 100 yards, keeping your eyes peeled for a reasonably large flat stone about 15 yards from the wall in the trees.  If you can’t find it at first, patiently zigzag back and forth until it eventually appears!

Archaeology & History

One of two known petroglyphs in this woodland (there may be more hidden away) that was first found in the 1940s by Dan Cole.  The main feature here consists of a cup-mark encircled by two large, well-defined oval-shaped “rings”, a bit like a large eye.  From the central cup, a long carved line runs down the gently sloping surface of the stone and, roughly halfway down from the cup-and-ring to the edge of the stone, another carved line cuts across at rough right-angles, giving the carving a slight anthropomorphic (human-like) appearance when looking up the stone.  This humanesque figure may have been the intention—though for my part I have to say that I’m slightly skeptical about it.  We may never know either way.  Several other single cups are on the stone: one to the side of the large “eye” and two or three below the elongated “arms.”

Vague humanesque figure
Large eye-shaped element

An additional, interesting non-petroglyphic feature is the name of the woodland in which the stone resides.  In Thomas Wright’s massive dialect work, Gab is a northern dialect word meaning “to talk”, or “idle chatter” (and variants thereof); this is echoed in Blakeborough’s (1911) Yorkshire survey; and Wilkinson’s (1924) local study tells simply it’s “idle talk…able to talk glibly and with much plausibility—a Town Hall Square orator for instance.” This makes the place as something akin to being “the woodland that talks”, “the chattering woods” or “the talking woodland”, etc.  You can make up your own mind as to what this might mean… *

References:

  1. Blakeborough, Richard, Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, W. Rapp: Saltburn 1911.
  2. Wilkinson, John H., Leeds Dialect Glossary and Lore, privately published: Leeds 1924.
  3. Wright, Joseph, English Dialect Dictionary – volume 2, Henry Frowde: London 1900.

Links:

  1. Dan Cole’s Image Archive, The Thoresby Society

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks must go to Peter Murphy for recovering this impressive carving from the archives, and from beneath the carpet of soil and vegetation, so enabling it to see the light of day once again.  Also big thanks to the usual culprit of James Elkington, as well as Sarah Walker and Sarah Jackson.

* a Scottish dialect variant of gab relates to the mouth, tongue, taste.

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian

Gala House Museum (2), Galashiels, Selkirkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NT 49165 35897

Archaeology & History

Gala House (2) carving

One of two petroglyphs housed in the Gala House Museum, whose background is somewhat of a mystery.  When the northern antiquarian Paul Hornby visited the museum, his enquiries regarding its history and place of origin drew a blank.  This small squared block of stone has obviously been broken from a larger piece, but the whereabouts of its adjoining fragments are unknown.  The section that remains that we see here is somewhat more complex than it’s companion petroglyph, comprising as it does (in the photo on the right) a concentric cup-and-two-rings,with another arc above it that has a carved line running vertically into it.  An elongated cup-mark sits to the side of this line.  On the lower-left side we can see where a fragment of the stone has been broken off and here is a cup marking with a double arc above it, that may originally have been another cup-and-two rings.  The curious angular lines at the bottom of the stone look like more recent scratches, perhaps from an industrial machine (tractor?) created when the stone was moved from its place of origin.  If anyone knows anything about this carving, please let us know.

Acknowledgments:  Big thanks to Prof Hornby for use of his photo. 🙂

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian 

Gala House Museum (1), Galashiels, Selkirkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NT 4917 3590

Archaeology & History

Gala House Museum stone

A curious stone, inasmuch as nothing seems to be known about it!  When the northern antiquarian Paul Hornby visited the Gala House Museum he was pleasantly surprised to find this multiple-ringed petroglyph on display.  Upon enquiring as to its history and original location, he was informed that it had been donated locally but nothing was known about it.  Incredible!  One of two carvings in the museum (the origin of the other carving is equally mysterious), this portable petroglyph has three rings surrounding the central cup, which has a short line running out of it and to the edge of the third ring.  The petroglyph may have come out of a nearby prehistoric tomb.  If anyone knows anything about this carving, please let us know.

Acknowledgments:  Big thanks to Prof Hornby for use of his photo. 🙂

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian 

Priest’s Stone, Lethnot & Navar, Angus

Standing Stone (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NO 5404 6892

Archaeology & History

Priest’s Stone on 1865 map

Despite being shown on the early OS-maps of the area, I can find few references this place.  The Ordnance Survey lads themselves, when visiting here in 1863, merely told that this it was “a standing stone of which nothing is known except the name.  It is 3 feet high, three feet in diameter at base, and a foot and a half at top.”  Even in Cruikshank’s (1899) definitive survey of this township he could add little more, merely telling:

“About a quarter-of-a-mile north of Bellhill is a field known as “the Priest’s Field.” There is a large right stone in the middle of it, called “the Priest’s Stone,” and it is so given on the Ornance Survey map. not simply because such is the local name, but also because the skilled surveyors after examining it concluded that it had been used for sacrifice. It stands just behind the site of the old farm steadying of Upper Argeith, or vulgarly, Townhead.”

Quite what he meant by saying that “it had been used for sacrifice,” god only knows!  But the writer was the local minister and so would have been possessed by the usual delusions.  Anyhow, the stone was uprooted and destroyed by the farmer at Newbigging, sometime prior to 1958.  Idiot!

A half-mile north of this could once be seen a stunner of a site: a double-ringed giant tomb from where hundreds of cartloads of stone were taken.  It too no longer exists!

References:

  1. Cruikshank, F., Navar and Lethnot: The History of a Glen Parish in the North-east of Forfarshire, Black & Johnston: Brechin 1899.
  2. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, The Archaeological Sites & Monuments of Central Angus, Angus District, Tayside Region, HMSO: Edinburgh 1983.

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

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian

Fernybank, Glen Esk, Lochlee, Angus

Ring Cairn (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NO 5381 7877

Archaeology & History

Location of site on 1864 OS-map

This is one of many sites that were thankfully recorded by the fine pen of Andrew Jervise (1853) in the middle of the 19th century, without whose diligence in antiquarian interests all knowledge would have vanished.  His works remind me very much of those by the late-19th early-20th century writer Harry Speight in Yorkshire, whose veritable madness on that region’s history remains unsurpassed even to this day.  But I digress…

Jervise told us that,

“About the year 1830, while the tenant of Fernybank was levelling a hillock in the haugh between the farm-house and the Powpot Bridge (about two miles north-west of Colmeallie), he removed a number of stones varying in length and breadth from eighteen to twenty-four inches. They were ranged singly, and stood upright in a circle at short distances from each other, enclosing an area of about twelve feet in diameter. On the knoll being trenched down, the encircled part (unlike the rest of the haugh, which was of a gravelly soil) was found to be composed of fine black earth; but on several cart-loads being removed, operations were obstructed by a mass of stones that occupied much the same space and form as the layer of earth. Curiosity prompted the farmer to continue his labours further, but after digging to the depth of three or four feet, and finding stones only, he abandoned the work in despair, without having discovered anything worthy of notice… Had this cairn been thoroughly searched, it is probable that some traces of sepulture might have been found in it.”

A short time after this however, Jervise reported the finding of “old warlike instruments, both in the shape of flint arrow-heads and stone hatchets, have been found in the same haugh, and so late as 1851 a spear-head made of iron, and about fifteen inches long, was also discovered; it was much corroded, but had part of the wooden hilt in it.”  These were prehistoric artifacts that were subsequently moved to Edinburgh’s central museum where, I presume, they remain to this day.

About ten years later the Ordnance Survey lads came here and were fortunate to be able to meet with the same man who’d uncovered the site.  They told that,

“in contradiction to (Jervise’s narrative), the tenant of Fernybank who gave the information to Mr. Jervise, states that he continued the search to the bottom of the Cairn and found a quantity of Charred wood.”

There were a number of other prehistoric sites in this neck o’ the woods, many of which were also destroyed but, again, were thankfully recorded by Mr Jervise.

References:

  1. Jervise, Andrew, The History and Traditions of the Land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns, Sutherland and Knox: Edinburgh 1853.

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

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian

Wellford, Fern , Angus

Standing Stone (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NO 483 603 (approximation)

Archaeology & History

In an area once teeming with megaliths, this is but one that lost its life in the 19th century.  It would seem that the only reference of its existence—and demise—comes from the pen of the great regional historian Andrew Jervise (1853) who, in a description of the nearby holy well of St Ninian, in a field near Wellford,

“within the last half century there were two or three large rude boulders nearby, which were called Druidical stones.”

References:

  1. Jervise, Andrew, The History and Traditions of the Land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns, Sutherland & Knox: Edinburgh 1853.

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian

Clunskea Burn, Glen Brerachan, Moulin, Perthshire

Cup-Marked Stone (lost):  OS Grid Reference – NO 003 650

Archaeology & History

When you’ve visited the impressive cup-marked stone at Dalnavaid, this long lost carving might be worth seeking out by the real explorers among you.  It’s not been seen for a hundred years and was only reported in brief by the reputable local historian Hugh Mitchell (1923).  It’s located a mile north of the Dalnavaid carving, up in the hills on the other side of the road, “on the East side of Clunskea Burn, and on the West shoulder of Ben Skievie.” He described the carving as “having some 16 or 18 cups, and at present it forms part of a grouse butt.”

So if we locate the grouse-butt (they’re usually not too difficult to find), the carving will obviously follow.  Mitchell gave us an extra piece of info regarding its location.  He described the existence of several other seemingly prehistoric remains within a few yards of the grouse-butt, curious “pit dwellings”, three of them:

“they are of circular shape, about 9 feet in diameter and nearly 5 feet below the surface of the ground, and had evidently been roofed over at one time.  The entrance to each is at the lowest level and acts as a drain, to keep the house dry.  They are almost the only examples in the district of neolithic dwellings.”

Let us know if you find it!

References:

  1. Mitchell, Hugh, Pitlochry District: Its Topography, Archaeology and History, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1923.

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian

Chacefield Wood (1), Denny, Stirlingshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NS 81636 81281

Getting Here

The Chacefield carvings

We took the A872 road on the south-side of Denny to Dennyloadhead and Longcroft, but a few hundred yards before you go under the M876, keep your eyes peeled for Drove Loan on your left.  Go down here for literally ¼-mile (0.4km) where there’s a footpath into the woods on your left.  Walk on the path into the trees and you’ll reach a track that heads to your right (east). Less than 200 yards on, you’ll see a pond on your right and above here is a small quarried rock outcrop.  This carving’s up top, on the gently sloping rock behind carvings no.2 and no.3.

Archaeology & History

Half-covered in mud and vegetation, the first thing you’ll notice on this sloping smooth surface is what looks to be a standard cup-marking, all on its own.  But it has company—albeit quiet and faint.  A single incomplete cup-and-ring can be seen about 18 inch above (north-ish) this single cup-mark, which may itself be natural.  You can make out the cup-and-ring pretty clearly in the photos.

When we found this, we began to clear the rest of the stone but stopped pretty quickly as a scatter of broken glass was mixed into the mud and I was lucky not to cut my hand open.  Some kids have evidently been getting pissed here and have left their mess on the rock.  But there may well be more symbols beneath the mulch, so if any local folk want to clean it, please make sure to wear some good gardening gloves to protect your hands!  And if you find any other hidden elements, please let us know! 🙂

© Paul BennettThe Northern Antiquarian