Tag: neolithic

Fornham All Saints, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk

megalithix

Cursus:  OS Grid Reference – TL 8406 6732 to TL 8291 6876

Also known as:

  1. All Saints Cursus
The Forham All Saints Cursus (image courtesy, Paul Devereux)
The Forham All Saints Cursus (image courtesy, Paul Devereux)

Archaeology & History

The remains of this cursus can be found in the valley of the Lark.  In Paul Devereux’s (1989) survey of these gigantic neolithic features he described how today we can only see it as crop-markings, stretching in a

“roughly northwest to southeast direction for about a mile; its width approximately 140 feet (42.5 metres). It is comprised of three straight lengths, each at slightly different orientations – there is no way of telling at present (c.1988) whether or not these segments were built at different times, as is believed to be the case at certain other cursuses where changes of direction occur. The northmost terminus has not been located, but the southern one is visible from the air and is next to a circular crop-mark.”

Some 350 yards further on from the end of the cursus is the village church of All Saints, whose old festival date centred around Halloween, or the old pre-christian New Year.

Central section of cursus

Starting at the southern end of the cursus (A), it headed northwest for more than 650 yards (0.6km) before it took its first slight change of direction.  Almost all of this first section has been built over by the village; but we can see it in aerial views again on the north side of the village at the edge of the field, at TL 8365 6774 (B).  Changing direction slightly, it moves more NNW for another 590 yards (539m) and then kinks again slightly more NNW at TL 8325 6809 (C), before heading onto its final change in direction 464 yards (424m) away at TL 8299 6843 (D).  From this point, more recent surveys have shown it to continue further onwards, with another minor alteration in its direction to the north.  It goes in a dead straight line for another 336 yards (334.5m), seemingly terminating a short distance before the old Mill Farm at Hengrave, at TL 8291 6876.  Just as at the start of the cursus at point ‘A’, where the terminus is curved in a slight arc, so the northern terminus was also curved.  The total length of this monument is 1.2 miles (1.9km).

As can be seen in the aerial view (above), a faded double-line of earthworks exists immediately west (left) of the cursus, intersecting and going across the monument.  This is the Fornham All Saints causewayed enclosure: another early neolithic monument which may or may not be earlier than the cursus itself.

A curious architectural coincidence (?) can be seen roughly 500 yards west of the central section of the cursus. Running roughly parallel with the prehistoric earthwork is another dead straight avenue leading out, southeast, from Hengrave Hall and, near its terminus, kinks slightly left, just as the cursus monument does about 550 yards away. Fascinating…

References:

  1. Loveday, Roy, Inscribed Across the Landscape, Tempus: Stroud 2006.
  2. Oswald, A., Dyer, C. & Barber, M., The Creation of Monuments, English Heritage: Swindon 2001.
  3. Pennick, N. & Devereux, P., Lines on the Landscape, Robert Hale: London 1989.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Acharra, Duror, Argyll

megalithix

Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NM 9866 5455

Also known as:

  1. Achara

Getting Here

Not hard to find really.  From Ballachulish, take the western coastal road south, as if you’re going to Oban.  After about 5 miles you’ll hit the lovely hamlet of Duror (nowt much here: a hotel, small school and a few cottages).  Stop here and walk across the River Duror.  A couple of fields down on your left-hand side you’ll see what you’re looking for!

Archaeology & History

Described as “one of the most impressive standing stones in Lorn,” northern Argyll, it “is situated in a level field 180m NW of Acharra. It measures 3.7m in height and 1.1m by 0.6 m at the base, and tapers to a pointed top about 0.4m in thickness; the long axis lies NE and SW.”

Aubrey Burl (Thom, Thom & Burl 1990) thought: “it is possible that this, and other stones near Loch Creran, once marked a prehistoric trackway, 4.5 miles in length.”

Folklore

On the potential folklore side of this monolith, Burl mentions how this monolith – also known as the Hard Stone – “and the site on which it stands, is called Cnoc nam Aingeal, or ‘Angel’s Hillock.'”  Does anyone know the story behind this?

References:

  1. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Argyll: volume 2 – Lorn, HMSO: Edinburgh 1974.
  2. Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, A., Stone Rows and Standing Stones, BAR: Oxford 1990.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Achacha, Barcaldine, Argyll

megalithix

Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NM 9444 4075

Also Known as:

  1. Canmore ID 23330

Getting Here

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:

  1. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Argyll – volume 2, HMSO: Edinburgh 1974.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Man Stone, Askwith Moor, North Yorkshire

megalithix

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 16722 50595

Also Known as:

  1. Carving no.516 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

Man Stone (by Inmaculada Ibanez-Sanchez)
Man Stone (by Inmaculada Ibanez-Sanchez)

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!

Man Stone
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 carving
Boughey & Vickerman sketch
Boughey & 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!

References:

  1. Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
  2. Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS 2003.
  3. Trubshaw, Bob, “Unique British Anthropomorphic Rock Carving”, in At the Edge, no.4, December 1996.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Clach Brath, Baile Mor, Iona

megalithix

Bullaun Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NM 286 244

Also known as:

  1. Clacha Brath
  2. Clachan-nan-Druidhean
  3. Day of Judgement Stone
  4. Druid’s Stone
  5. World’s End Stone

Folklore

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:

  1. Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return,
  2. Forlong, J.G.S., Faiths of Man – volume 1, Bernard Quarithc: London 1906.
  3. Holder, Geoff, The Guide to Mysterious Iona and Staffa, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
  4. McNeill, F. Marion, Iona: A History of the Island, Blackie & Son: Glasgow 1954 (4th edition).

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Clach a’ Phoanais, Strontian, Inverness-shire

megalithix

Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NM 81581 61360

Also Known as:

  1. Branks Stone

Getting Here

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.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Brotton Howe, Brotton, Cleveland, North Yorkshire

megalithix

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 carvings
E.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:

  1. Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way, William Walker: Otley 1946.
  2. Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
  3. Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-east Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
  4. Hornsby, William & Stanton, Richard, “British Barrows near Brotton,” in Yorkshire Archaeology Journal, 24, 1917.
  5. Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, Cambridge University Press 1928.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Taynuilt, Lorn, Argyll

megalithix

Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NN 0120 3115

Also Known as:

  1. Canmore ID 23497

Archaeology & History

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:

  1. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Argyll – volume 2, HMSO: Edinburgh 1974.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Llangynidr Bridge, Llangynidr, Breconshire

megalithix

Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SO 1562 2039

Also Known as:

  1. Gliffaes Stone
  2. Llywn y Fedwen

Getting Here

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:

  1. Devereux, Paul, Places of Power, Blandford: London 1990.
  2. Hitching, Francis, Earth Magic, Cassell: London 1976.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Askwith Moor (521), North Yorkshire

megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 17162 50530

Also Known as:

  1. Round Rock

Getting Here

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.

Archaeology & History

Image © Richard Stroud

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:

  1. Bennett, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Personal Communication, 1993.
  2. Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian