Not quite halfway along the A828 road between Oban and Ballachulish, just before the village of Barcaldine, a large expanse of forested land unfurls on the slopes to your left (east). You can either just walk straight into the woods and follow your nose, or do the easier thing and head up the track into the woods from Mill Farm. As you walk up, keep an eye out for where the open land to your left starts fading. Once here, head straight north into the trees (it’s not too bad and a few animal paths help you along the way). Walk into the trees for a couple of hundred yards and look around. If you hit the triangulation pillar (Cnoc Reamhar), walk back 100 yards.
Archaeology & History
There are actually two monuments here: a small overgrown cairn not far from the forest edge, kerbed with several large boulders between one and three feet high – 15 of which were still in situ in 1974 – with the inner section lower than the surrounding stones. The other more impressive site and much easier to locate is the tall standing stone, nearly 8 feet tall, about 100 yards east of the cairn.
I liked the feel of this place. There’s good clean waters all round, a coupla decent little waterfalls close by, an abundance of healthy wildlife and an old holy well apparently dedicated to St. Columba in the trees a short distance away, though I never got a look at it.
References:
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Argyll – volume 2, HMSO: Edinburgh 1974.
Truly takes a bit of finding this one! I s’ppose the easiest way to locate it is by approaching it from the south, from Askwith village, up Hall Lane. Keep walking up the footpath to Top Moorside Farm; then past it, sticking to the same path. A hundred yard or so past here we get onto the moor itself. As you hit the moor, you’ll see that the land rises slowly ahead of you: this is Hollin Tree Hill and you need to walk up here (don’t do this in the summer as it’ll be covered in bracken and you’ll not find a damn thing!). Just before the land starts to levels-out at the top of this small rise, you’ll come across some hut circles. You’re here!
image courtesy of Graeme Chappell
You can also come to this carving via the Askwith Moor parking-bit, then walk along the well-trod footpath, past the triangulation pillar of Shooting House Hill for a coupla hundred yards, then walk straight south into the moor. But to those of you who aint got the nose for it, there’s no footpaths here and some folk might easily lose their way. However, if you reach the rise of Hollin Tree Hill a few hundred yards down the moor, watch out for those same hut circles mentioned elsewhere atop of the rising land. You’re damn close!
Archaeology & History
One of my very favourite cup-and-ring carvings this one! It was discovered about 1991 when Graeme Chappell and I were on one of our many archaeology wanderings, seeking out prehistoric remains on the moors north of Ilkley. First described and illustrated in Bob Trubshaw’s (1996) archaeomythics journal, it was later included in The Old Stones of Elmet (2001: 149-152). But when we first found it, this carving – on the vertical face of a small stone, beside an unexcavated hut circle – sent me a bit crazy, as the ‘human’ image in the carving struck me immediately. Needless to say, Graeme was all calm about it while I jumped around like an excited tit! As far as we’re aware, this is the earliest representation of a human figure in the British Isles. There are several other contenders in cup-and-ring design, but this seems the most probable of the lot. Graeme Chappell took a rubbing of the stone several years after we’d found it and the outline clearly shows the image of a human figure. The carving was later catalogued by rock art students Boughey & Vickerman (2003) in their Yorkshire survey as ‘stone 516.’ A female compatriot, the Woman Stone, can be found a few hundred yards east of here, at the bottom of the slope by the near horizon.
The fact that the carving occurs on the southern vertical face of a prehistoric hut circle may have had some significance about the structure itself. Petroglyphs on hut circles are rare—and this one occurs right at the entrance to the structure, the door into the circle. It may represent an image of the person who lived in this hut circle, or perhaps symbolized the nature of the character living there. The carving shows that the person was wearing a head-dress, akin to a horned-man figure – but much much earlier than anything previously recognised in British iconography. The figure may well be a shaman who, perhaps, lived at this circle. The carving was probably painted in lichens and other dyes
The Man Stone carvingBoughey & Vickerman sketch
Be careful not to wander around looking for this when there’s fog on the hills. You’re unlikely to find it! On an excursion up here several years back with Prof. Thomas Dowson and students from the Southampton University Rock Art course, we wandered about all over the place in the dense fog but were unable to find the damn thing! Twas a bittova freaky day, as half the students started crying (they thought I’d got them truly lost in the middle of nowhere as I didn’t have a map, a compass, walking boots, etc – which is how I usually do my wanderings, but they weren’t to know that!) and we must have walked within 10 yards of the carving, but it remained hidden from our prying eyes. But if you like your rock art, check this one out!
On this curious, broken, basin-shaped rock — thought by some to have at one time played a part in an old cross whose remains are in the Abbey Museum — are two deep cup-shaped hollows, in which were once “three noble globes of white marble” that were used for oracular purposes and were said to have originated in druidical rites. In Miss McNeill’s (1954) survey of the island, she tells that:
“near the edge of the path leading to St. Oran’s Chapel, there lies a broad, flat stone, with a slit and a cavity on its surface. Here there used to lie some small round stones which pilgrims were wont to turn sunwise within the cavity; for it was commonly believed that the ‘brath’, or end of the world, would not arrive until this stone should be worn through.”
The small stones that were once in the Brath were ordered by the Church to be thrown into the sea; but local folk replaced them with three other small stones, maintaining the traditional rites of this stone until they eventually stopped sometime in the 19th century. But in Major-General James Forlong’s (1906) study, he tells of a somewhat earlier mythic origin to this old stone, saying:
“In Iona the Druids are said to have made the flat altar stone called Clachan-nan-Druidhean, or Druid’s Stone, the stone of fate or of the last day, with round stones fitted into cup hollows on the surface, which the pious pilgrim turns round. The world will end when the stone is worn through. The Culdee monks preserved this monument.”
And what little is left is still preserved to this day. The curious “end of the world” motif was something that was grafted onto an earlier mythos: what Mircea Eliade called the “myth of the eternal return”, wherein Nature’s annual cycle —from birth, life to death and subsequent renewal, endlessly, through the seasons—was the original status, later transmuted by the incoming judaeo-christian cult of linear time and milleniumism relating to a literal “end of the world” when their profane myth of Jesus returning to Earth occurs. We might also add that the stones which once rested into the hollows of the Clach Brath would likely have possessed divinatory and healing qualities, as comparatiove studies suggest.
References:
Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return,
Forlong, J.G.S., Faiths of Man – volume 1, Bernard Quarithc: London 1906.
Holder, Geoff, The Guide to Mysterious Iona and Staffa, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
McNeill, F. Marion, Iona: A History of the Island, Blackie & Son: Glasgow 1954 (4th edition).
As you enter the village from the east, onto the A861 road, the Strontian Hotel is on the right-hand side of the road and you can’t fail to notice. Stop!
Archaeology & History
Clach a’ Phaonais on 1872 map
Shown on the first edition OS-map of the region in 1875, this old worn standing stone, more than six-feet tall, can be seen at the edge of the drive. There’s an iron ring is attached to it, which I thought might have made it an old Bull Stone in bygone days, but no such lore is remembered. Also known as the Branks Stone, it’s Gaelic name probably means the ‘stone of penance,’ and folk were chained to it in eaelier days for bad behaviour. It was widespread across the Highlands to tie criminals to stones and wooden poles, naked, for 24 hours and let the midges get to them. Crime was down to a minimum up here!
Folklore
As the locals at Strontian Hotel told me (thanks Finlay), “several stories have emerged locally. It marks a clan chief’s grave, a sighting stone for the equinox but the most plausible one is based on the fact that there is an iron ring on the side of the stone facing the loch and it was used to tie up barges taking lead from the local lead mine. It supplied the raw material for shot during the Napoleonic and Crimean wars.”
Aknowledgements: Big thanks to Anne and the Megalithic Portal for additional help on this one.
Cairn (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NZ 6950 1886
Archaeology & History
Frank Elgee’s 1930 plan
Another old site that has sadly succumbed to that bollox called ‘progress’! It’s in the North Yorkshire region some halfwits have taken to calling Cleveland — but which a lotta local folk still correctly call Yorkshire. But that aside…
In an article by local students William Hornsby and Richard Stanton written in 1917, we find that this was just one of at least seven hillocks presumed to be barrows here — but all the others had gone even in their day. When Crawford (1980) came to survey the site in the late 1970s, he told that,
“this large barrow is now only visible as a low swell in an arable field… (but) the profile of the barrow is retained in the hedgeline that bisects it from north to south, but the whole of its eastern half has been obliteratd by the Brotton-Kilton road.”
Elgee’s 1930 photo of one of the carvingsE.T. Cowling’s drawing of one of the carvings
When Hornsby and Stanton checked the place out it measured 54 feet in diameter and had an extensive covering of small stones, like a large cairn, with a single grave at the centre, aligned north-south; and a tree-trunk coffin on the southwestern side. Of the stones which filled the central grave, eight of them were found to have cup-markings on them; whilst 16 stones covering the tree-trunk grave also possessed cup-markings. Roughly equidistant between the two burials was another stone found to be resting face-down on the original ground-level, and covered with 20 cups and 5 cup-and-rings! Awesome stuff!
G.M. Crawford’s (1980) description of the site was as follows:
“Howe Hill was excavated by Hornsby and Stanton in 1914; they discovered that the mound was made up with a clay floor, overlain by ‘a cairn 30 feet long and 3 feet high’ of diorite cobbles, capped by a layer of earth. Cut into the clay floor were two graves: the first was oriented north-south and measured 2m long by 0.9m wide at the old land surface and was 0.7m deep. The grave was filled with ‘medium sized stones’ with a ‘thin dark layer,’ thought to be an inhumation burial, on the floor; 8 of the stones bore cup-marks. The second grave, oriented northeast-southwest, was 2.5m long by 0.9m wide at the old ground surface, reducing to 1.8m long by 0.5m wide at its bottom, 1.3m below. This grave, which was filled with stones, also contained a tree-trunk coffin or oak, measuring 1.5m long… At the head (northeast) were found the unburnt skull fragments of a man laid on its right side. Unaccompanied cremations had been placed at both ends of the coffin. 16 cup-marked stones were among the infill of the grave.”
This was obviously a site of considerable importance and it’s a huge pity (if not a disgrace) that today no trace of the site remains.
References:
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-east Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
Hornsby, William & Stanton, Richard, “British Barrows near Brotton,” in Yorkshire Archaeology Journal, 24, 1917.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, Cambridge University Press 1928.
Nearly twenty years have passed by since I last saw this rather small standing stone – ‘small’ for Argyll that is! It’s near the corner of a field half-a-mile east of Taynuilt village, about 300 yards off the main Oban road. The Scottish Royal Commission (1974) chaps describe it quire accurately, telling it to be,
“a granite boulder, roughly triangular in shape at the base, and measuring 0.75 metre by 0.60 metre by 0.55 metre at ground-level. It now stands to a height of 1.2 metres (nearly four-feet tall in normal language! – Ed), but pieces have been split off in comparatively recent times and it may originally have been taller.”
It’s about time I got my arse back up ambling and exploring around this part of Scotland. Tis a gorgeous part of the world…
References:
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Argyll – volume 2, HMSO: Edinburgh 1974.
Not too difficult – and its size makes it pretty easy to spot! About 100 yards across the river bridge from Llangynidr, there’s a small path heading into the trees by the riverside. Walk along it, or whichever way you find easiest to walk along the riverbank. Then as you reach the third field along, look up into the hedgerow-cum-fence above you and you’ll notice the old stone sticking up! Head for it!
Archaeology & History
A 14 foot tall standing stone with a most peculiar ‘modern’ history to it. Some of you will like this, others may have palpitations – but… In recent times, since the notion of “energy at megaliths” have been in vogue, this was one of the first monoliths found to possess magnetic anomalies. Described by the writer Francis Hitching (1976), he asked the Welsh dowser Bill Lewis to dowse at this stone and checked the results. Lewis dowsed a spiral of ‘energy’ rising up the stone as he did at many standing stones, and urged Hitching to see if he could bring his findings to the attention of any scientists. So Hitching contacted the physicist professor John Taylor — he of Black Holes fame, of Kings College, London — who felt that Lewis’ dowsing finds were probably due to him sensing subtle changes in the magnetic field of the stone. And so with this in mind, he sent a young Argentinian physicist called Eduardo Balanovski, armed with a gaussmeter, to see what they could find. As Hitching later wrote:
“What Balanovski found surprised him very much. After checking the background levels and setting the meter at zero, he pointed the measuring probe at the stone. The needle on the dial shot up, showing an anomaly far greater than the few thousandths or hundredths of a gauss that would have been normal…
“Balanovski has no doubt that the basic anomaly…is significant: ‘The point is that a water-diviner told us about it, and we went there and found something measurable. It may be the stone contains, geologically, the reason for the anomaly. Or it may be caused by something we don’t yet understand. But I do not personally believe that the stone was accidentally chosen or accidentally placed. The people who put it there knew about its power, even if they didn’t know about electromagnetism.'”
This initial finding brought Taylor himself to the place, where he, Balanovski and Lewis set to work.
“Lewis was filmed marking with chalk the places on the stone where he dowsed ‘energy nodes.’ When the gaussmeter probe was passed down the stone, it did register increases of magnetism at the marked points – there seemed to be ‘a very strong field on and around the stone, which seemed to fall in bands,’ as Hitching put it. It was a very impressive demonstration. Taylor urged caution, pointing out that much more work would need to be done to be sure of such reactions.”
Further work was eventually carried out by the Dragon Project, where no anomalous readings were found. Hmmm….
References:
Devereux, Paul, Places of Power, Blandford: London 1990.
Hitching, Francis, Earth Magic, Cassell: London 1976.
To find this, head for the line of old grouse-butts which run north-south, a few hundred yards west of the Askwith Moor Road. Just before y’ get to the one nearest the bottom of the line, frobble about a bit. If by any chance you end up at the Woman Stone carving, walk back up the slope until you’re on the level. Not far ahead of you are the upright stone remains of a grouse-butt. This carving is just a few yards away. You’ll find it.
This was another carving found on one of the many forays of Mr Chappell and I when we were young, sometime in 1993. A short while after, Graeme wrote to Edward Vickerman to inform him of the find, which ended up in their rock art survey a decade later.
It’s another one of those simple designs: what seems like at least 5 cup-markings on a small rounded rock, with two of them linked together by a groove — possibly natural, possibly man-made — though there may in fact be seven or more cups etched onto its upper surface. It’s difficult to tell. It gives you the impression that its present position isn’t its original one and is suggested by Boughey & Vickerman (2003) to have been “moved from pipeline?” close by. It may even have been dug out and cast here, possibly once being a part of a cairn. In the Boughey & Vickerman survey they give its OS-coordinate as SE 17163 50527 – and describe it as a “medium-sized, free-standing rock of fine grit. Five cups, some perhaps natural.” When Richard Stroud and I visited the site, he found the GPS coordinate was SE 17162 50530; and we have to say that instead of describing it as a free-standing rock, it’s a movable stone (though it’d take a bit of effort), that may once have been part of a larger monument.
References:
Bennett, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Personal Communication, 1993.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Aerial photo of the cursus (courtesy Antiquity journal)
Once to be seen running from the edges of Weston Grange northeast by the canal around Acrelane Bridge, this important mile-long neolithic monument beyond the southern outskirts of Derby has been damaged along much of its length due to the carefree approach of modern industrialists. Found just over 6 miles east of the Potlock or Twyford Cursus, this site was described by J.K. St. Joseph (1964; 1966) in Antiquity journal following an aerial survey of the region on August 7, 1962 — from whence the photograph here was taken, which shows the dead straight monument stretching southwest across the fields. The photo also gives a good idea as to how massive this prehistoric monument actually was! In Mr St. Joseph’s second short essay on this aligned site he told:
Aston Cursus (from Antiquity, 1966)
“The cursus at Aston upon Trent lies at a distance of half a mile from the left bank of the Trent, on gravel overlying New Red Sandstone, at a height of about 120ft O.D., some five miles southeast of Derby. No traces are visible on the surface, but photographs taken over the last few years enable the side-ditches of the cursus to be traced for a length of some 4500ft on a north-east to south-west alignment across six fields: the ditches are parallel and some 325ft apart. Though the entire length has not yet been recorded, the south-west end must lie near the farm of Weston Grange, while the north-east end is a little to the east of the road from Aston upon Trent to Shardlow. The north-western side ditch is interrupted towards the south-west end by two narrow gaps, 500ft apart.
“…Two ring-ditches lying within the cursus perhaps mark ploughed-out barrows. In diameter they measure some 120ft; one of them is defined by a double ditch. There are at least three small ring-ditches, of which one is intersected by the north-west ditch of the cursus. Five small square enclosures lying within the cursus towards its north-east end are less easy to explain. They are not unlike the square ditched enclosures recorded on the Yorkshire Wolds, and there identified as square barrows. About halfway along the length of the cursus a single ditch encloses an irregular area interrupted at two points for an entrance. One end of this area and the north-west ditch of the cursus overlap. Thereabouts, too, the cursus is crossed by elements of a system of linear ditches, which seem to be agricultural divisions of a kind often interpreted in the Middle Thames valley as of Iron Age or Roman date. A similar date is likely enough here, but the question is best left open until some examples have been tested by excavation. Lastly, the “pit-alignment” which extends for some distance towards the (River) Trent is seen to cross the whole width of the cursus, as does a double-line of pits nearer the north-east end…”
More than forty years later and the site is described on English Heritage’s website – at www.pastscape.org.uk, where a few additional aspects of the site are described:
“A cursus monument at Aston Upon Trent, orientated roughly southwest-northeast and located on the gravels of the trent valley, circa 1 kilometre northwest of the present course of the river. The cursus appears to be a regular rectangle, the long sides parallel and circa 100 metres apart. The southwest terminal is straight, and meets both sides at right angles. The northeast terminal has not been recorded as a cropmark, but may well have lain in an area which has been quarried away. If so, the cursus would have originally been a little over 1.5 kilometres in length.
“The cursus ditch was sectioned in the mid-1960s by D. Reaney, though no finds were made. The recorded stratigraphy suggested an internal bank. Further small-scale excavation occurred in 1986 at a point where the cursus ditch appeared to intersect with a ring ditch (SK 42 NW 59), towards the cursus’ south-western end. The cursus ditch appeared to run into and cut the ring ditch, and was therefore later in date. The slightness of the ring ditch and the nature of its fill suggests that there is unlikely to have been a mound of any substantial nature in its interior. Finds were few, and none from primary contexts. They comprised a thumb nail scraper, another worked flint, and a few sherds of pottery, identifiable as Grimston and Beaker ware.
“Adjacent to the ring ditch is another, not excavated, but also contained within the cursus. In 1995, an existing field drain alongside Acre Lane (in the area circa SK 4244 2968) was enlarged as part of work associated with construction of the Derby Southern Bypass.
“The sides of the drain were recorded archaeologically. The western cursus ditch was not present, suggesting the existence of a gap or causeway. The eastern cursus ditch, though not visible on air photographs at this point, was located. Pollen samples were collected, and a fragment of waterlogged wood is to be used for radiocarbon dating.”
The site has since been found to be at least 1700 metres (5610 yards) long, with its northeastern end, or terminus, still undiscovered. It was described by Loveday (2006) as being, “overlain at its mid-point by a tangle of fields and trackways of presumed Iron Age date.” One prehistoric track crosses the cursus at a right-angle then turns 90° just as it crosses the dead straight alignment, running parallel with the cursus ditch for some 300 yards. (see illustration below)
References:
Gibson, A.M. & Loveday, Roy, ‘Excavations at the Cursus Monument on Aston-upon-Trent, Derbyshire,’ in A.M. Gibson’s Midlands Prehistory, BAR 204: Oxford 1989.
Loveday, Roy, Inscribed Across the Landscape, Tempus: Stroud 2006.
St. Joseph, J.K., “Air Reconnaissance: Recent Results, 6,” in Antiquity, volume XL, no.157, March 1966.
Aston Cursus, with overlying Iron Age tracks & fields (after Loveday 2003)
From Ilkley, head up the road towards White Wells and keep going along the road. Shortly before the road becomes a dirt-track, just over a small stone bridge with gorse all around, there’s a noticeable footpath that runs west onto the moors, going roughly parallel to the wealthy houses by the moorside. Keep going along this footpath and you’ll hit the recently unneeded modern creation of a large sandy trackway (and excessive litter that it’s created) that takes you straight to the curious railings stuck upon some rocks a quarter-mile away. That’s where you’re going!
Archaeology & History
This famous carving was first described as a ‘swastika’ by a Mr J. Thornton Dale around 1880 – and the name seemed to catch on damn quick! The stone had become established with this title at the end of that decade, and seemed immortalized with the name when J. Horsfall Turner wrote about it in the very popular history book he co-authored with the reverend Collyer in Ilkley Ancient and Modern. (1885) By then, comparisons had already been drawn with the acknowledged swastika symbol in Tossene, Sweden, and by the time Harry Speight described it in his colossal Upper Wharfedale (1900), other near-identical European swastika carvings had been found in Valcamonica, northern Italy. (though these lacked the ‘tail’ found on Ilkley’s carving)
J.R. Allen’s drawing of Swastika StoneEric Cowling’s sketch of the carving
Earlier images of the swastika symbol can be found in most continents, but the earliest known example appears to be the paleolithic swastika carvings from the Ukraine, etched on pieces of ivory and dating from between 18,000-15,000 BC. Some swastikas have been found carved on mammoth tusks!
Invariably in modern history it is its mythic association of the swastika to certain political imbeciles which troubles many people, but this needs to be set into a much more ancient historical context. The symbol ostensibly relates to sacred notions of the cosmos in all the non-literate cultures where it appears. Numerous surveys by comparative religious scholars isolated the nature of the design many years ago. The Leeds Buddhist, Steve Hart, said that Ilkley’s Swastika Stone:
“to a Buddhist should be a sonorous gatha (a sutra or verse), a plenitude of transcendental boddhisattvic vision. The swirling wheel of the four arms suggests the four realms as experienced by Jains, upanishadic sages and ancient Buddists. They ARE samsara. The samsara is resolved into the nirvana at the hub. The four realms are the human realm, god realm, hell realm and the nature realm. There are no clear delineated demarcations between these realms. All interpenetrate.”
(Images of the popularised ‘modern’ swastika – a huge misnomer – can be found on several church bells in Yorkshire, where they were used as charms to protect against lightning, following in the mythic fashion of Thor. These swastikas date from the 15th century.)
Evan Hadingham’s rubbing of the carving
I first saw this carving when I was 10-years old and it had one helluvan effect on me! I stood and stared at it (or rather gazed, without thought…) for some length of time, knowing that I’d seen this somewhere before* and that it had some considerable importance – though about what, I knew not! The cups in the design align north-south and east-west. The northern line points directly at Simon’s Seat on the northern skyline. The eastern axis points directly at Almscliffe Crag, above which the equinox sun seems to rise from here.
For the real alignment fanatics, check out the alignment from Twelve Apostles to here: on the date of the last major lunar standstill (occurrent every 18.6 years), the moon set over the cairn at Lanshaw Lad. It wasn’t until I got home and checked the extension of this moonset line, that I realised if you follow it further along the course, you hit the Swastika Stone bang on! Though this is probably just a coincidence (we do have hundreds of cup-and-rings on these moors, so it’s bound to hit one or more of them).
The Swastika in 1930, with info-board
In this Swastika Stone, the curious single ‘outlying’ cup-and-ring at the edge of the four spiralling arms is very probably the point from which the four-arms originated and not the other way round. In traditional cultures and early cosmogenic patterns the world over, the cosmos itself emerged from the ’round’, the singular, the point, or uroboros — and this is what this Swastika Stone appears to represent here: the cosmos emerging from the singularity, giving birth to the world and the four cardinal points. Such an element is a simple one and is found in Creation myths the world over. (For those of you who aint into using psychedelics at sites, a good overview of this idea is in Erich Neumann’s Origins & History of Consciousness [although there’s no reference to this symbol] and which should be read by anyone pretending an interest in the nature of the archaic mind. It’s a good work on the psychology of the Dreamtime.)
As some local Ilkley folk are probably aware, a copy of the Swastika Stone carving was executed in the latter-half of the 19th century, probably by a local chap called Ambrose Collins, not far from the original swastika at the edge of the woodland. Some images and a brief history of this copied swastika and associated cup-markings will be published in due course on the Rombalds Moor Project website.
Other important cup-and-ring petroglyphs that are worth visiting on the moor with unique carved symbols in them include the Hanging Stones, the Idol Stone, Haystack Rock, Badger Stone and many many more.
Note:
A fella who used the pseudonym of ‘Pad’ suggests that the carving is only a few centuries old, and compares it to other much more recent etchings on these moors, where the erosion has been of no greater or lesser force. The suggestion has been made about other carvings on these moors and whilst I have an open mind about this, if this is the case, we would have to relate the same reasoning to countless other carving on these hills. In which case, a great deal of cup-and-ring art would have to be redesignated as medieval in nature.
References:
Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Collyer, Robert & Turner, J. Horsfall, Ilkley, Ancient and Modern, William Walker: Otley 1885.
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Hadingham, Evan, Ancient Carvings in Britain, Garnstone: London 1974.
Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Pennick, Nigel, The Swastika, Bar Hill: Cambridge 1980.
Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.
Wilson, Thomas, The Swastika – The Earliest Known Symbol and its Migrations, Smithsonian: Washington 1896.
* although I’d never seen the carving before, I had of course seen its archetypal manifestation in the shapes in Nature: spiral galazies, polar rotation (I was a budding astronomer as a kid!), hair growth from the crown, petals, swirling clouds, etc, etc. The Swastika, as we know, is representative of the creative spark itself: the life-essence, emerging from the centre and manifesting itself in the four worlds, which are its emergent arms.
Links:
Reclaim the Swastika – A fine website which is into doing just what it says on the tin!
