The easiest route to get up here is probably from Wooler (locals, please forgive me!). Head up the B6348 road then, after about two miles, turn left over the old bridge, then keep going uphill where the road veers right and keep going for nearly a mile where (keep your eyes peeled!) you’ll see a dirt-track on your left that heads to West Horton Farm. Walk up the dirt-track, keeping north past the farm until you enter the field. You’ll walk past the newly-found West Horton (1a) cup-and-ring and, walking along the side of the fence, you’ll eventually reach the little copse of trees. Once here, in the field over the fence you’ll see a scatter of low-lying rocks in the field. Head for them and look around!
Archaeology & History
Cluster of cup-marks
Found a hundred yards or so to the east of the much more renowned and impressive West Horton ridge carvings (the raised spine in the land in the background up the slope in the photo), this basic cup-marked stone has (curiously) not previously been reported and was re-discovered by rock art explorer Tom Cleland in the summer of 1996. It’s nowt special to look at, and consists of merely four notable cup-marks—possibly five—that are quite deep and eroded, with one of them seeming to have a channel linking it it another, smaller cup. There is a scattering of other rock surfaces by this stone, none of which have any features on them apart from this stone.
From Wooler High Street, walk east past Market Place and then down The Peth, across the A697 road, go over the river bridge and then left up the long dead straight Brewery Road. It bends left about half-a-mile up and just over 100 yards past the bend (just where another sharp bend in the road occurs), make sure to take the hidden footpath that runs into the shrubs. 700 yards along, the path levels-out as you hit the edge of the moor and you reach a ‘crossroads’ of paths. Bear left (NE) and walk another 800 yards (past a gate or 2) where you hit a small woodland; keep walking straight along the same path until you hit the next copse of trees on your left, and here walk sharp right, through the field for 300 yards (past some more trees), through the gate and another 100 yards or so through the next gate. Ahead of you is a covered rocky ridge with some gorse bushes. Look around!
Archaeology & History
…from another angle
We were fortunate on our first visit here. For, in spite of what several tomes and local guides have said of this carving—i.e., “the site is hard to find as it’s covered by gorse bushes”—local folk have cleared it and made it accessible and much easier to find. Thank fuck! For on the day we came here, in spite of considerable cloud cover, it was very hot and humid—and the last thing I needed was working to rummage through vegetation on a day like that!
It was certainly in a crappy state when the old rock art writer Maarten van Hoek (1982) came here: “covered by sheep dirt” as he called it! But he cleaned it up – and thankfully the tradition amongst the local folks continues.
Arc of cups & double-ringClose-up of main design
Cut into a rounded triangular-shaped flat rock are a series of multiple cup-and-ring designs, each with lines running in various directions to, or from, the central cup-mark. One of them—the smallest of the lot near the top-middle of the stone—is an incomplete double-ring, and all round the outer south- and western edge is a semi-circle of eight or nine cup-marks which, from my unconscious mind, brought about feelings of lunar phases defined by the cups as the Moon moved through the heavens—and then back on itself along the same movements through the skies. This simple ‘flash’, so to speak, was the unconscious of my youthful astronomical mind that brought it to the fore—and although ‘time’ in the neolithic was defined by the Moon (menstrual rites & all…), this impression, this ‘dreaming’ lacks consensus recognition and so, in the social Darwinian paradigm of modern archaeology, would be promptly put to bed! I still like the impression though; but it begs the question as to what mythos might underlie the rest of the design!
No such impression seems to have hit Maarten van Hoek (1982) upon his visit here. He described the carving thus:
van Hoek’s 1982 sketchBeckensall’s 1991 sektch
“7 cupmarks, 5 of them surrounded by rings. On the N part is a cup and 4 rings with a tail from the cup running to the NW. Through this carving runs a large crack in the rock. Almost touching its outer ring to the S is a small cup and 1 ring. Further E is a cup and 2 rings with a tail from the cup running SE. Near the end of this tail is a single cupmark.
On the S part is a more complex figure: it is a cup and 4 rings, the two outer rings broken off at the edge of the rock. The outer ring is gaped to the NW to enclose the outer ring of a cup and 2 rings. From the central cup of this cup and 2 rings runs a tail to the NW ending in another cupmark.”
On van Hoek’s visit, it was obviously a cloudy grey day, as there are some obvious ‘extras’ on the design that he missed (somehow missing the distinct arc of cups surrounding the double-ring for one thing!). Beckensall (1983) wrote about the carving a year later and picked-up on the omissions, and subsequently updated the details in his later (1991) tome—as we can see from their respective drawings (above); although he too missed a cup or two along the same arc. It’s easily done…
References:
Beckensall, Stan, The Prehistoric Carved Rocks of Northumberland, Frank Graham: Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1974.
Beckensall, Stan, Northumberland’s Prehistoric Rock Carvings – A Mystery Explained, Pendulum: Rothbury 1983.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 1, Abbey Press: Hexham 1991.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
van Hoek, Maarten, The Carved Rocks near Wooler, privately printed: Oisterwijk 1982.
Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NT 98491 28424
Archaeology & History
Highburn House C&R, 2015
This carving was rediscovered by rock art explorer Jan Broewer in September, 2007, a few hundred yards out of Wooler on the way to Akeld and Kirknewton, in the field on the right-hand side of the road, on the embankment just a few inches above the waters of the High Burn. On a recent visit here by Tom Cleland and I, despite us rummaging amidst the gorse and other herbage all along the edge of the waters, we were unable to locate the carving and presume that it has either been destroyed or re-housed in someone’s garden, living a more comfortable life. We certainly hope it’s the latter!
Sketch of the designHome of the lost carving
It’s design is nothing special: merely a singular, albeit scruffy cup-and-ring, with two other distinct pecked cup-marks and, possibly, a third shallow one just to the side of the cup-and-ring (but this is, in my opinion, highly suspect). The stone was obviously not in its original position when Jan first found it, and would seem to have come originally from the slope above the stream where a number of earthfast stones can be found. The numerous scratches across its surface shows that it’s been hit a few times by some (probably) metallic objects, or perhaps horses hooves, thus dislodging it from the slope above and rolling into the spot where Jan found it. Anyhow, we presently don’t know where it is or what’s become of it. Does anyone in Wooler know where it’s living?
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to Pete Chattaway for use of his photo; and to Tom Cleland for helping the search party!
On our first visit to Wooler, in seeking out (and not finding!) a cup-and-ring stone alongside the old burn just on the northern side of town, we looked up at the ridged hillside of Humbleton Hill ahead of us and proclaimed, something along the lines of: “That look’s like something man-made up there!” And so it turned out. But the heat of the summer kept us from ascending the hill, so just an old account must be penned, from the quill of the great rock art pioneer George Tate (Home & Tate 1857) who, following a visit here in May 1852 with various members of the Berwickshire Natural History Society, penned the following:
“On the north side of Humbleton burn is a conical hill truncated at the top, and rising abruptly about 100 feet above the level of the burn; the slope, though considerable, is less steep on the other sides. This was one of the strongholds of the ancient Hritons. A rampier (now obliterated) ran around that part of the hill not protected by the ravine of the burn. The summit of the hill is 180 yards in circumference, having a hollow in the centre of the area; it is surrounded by a rampier of stone and earth, which is yet in some parts 3 feet high. This entrenchment is commonly called ‘The Cup and Saucer Camp’.”
The Hillfort itself is in very good condition overall, is very extensive and has a very clear series of walled ramparts all round the summit of the hill. It has yet to be excavated.
Folklore
The local folk-name given to this old hillfort—the Cup and Saucer Camp—related to the shape and lay-out of the enclosure, and with it, the tradition that the chiefs of the tribe inhabited the topmost enclosed section of the hillfort: the so-called ‘Cup’; whilst the tribal familes inhabited the realms immmediately outside and below the chief’s domain: the so-called surrounding ‘Saucer’. On the northern edges of the outer ‘saucer’ walls are several ‘hut circles’ (for want of a better term), that would house people, or their animals—or both.
References:
Home, Robert & Tate, G., “Address to the Members at the Anniversary Meeting, held at Embleton, Sept 8, 1852,” in Proceedings of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club, volume 3, 1857.
We took the B6348 road up east, from Wooler, turning left 2 miles up and crossing the small river bridge, going past Weetwood Hall where the road bends to the right and goes uphill for about a mile where, just before West Horton farm, there’s a a dirt-track on your left. 200 hards up, walk past the farm up and along the dead straight track for another 400 yards until you hit the field. Diagonally ahead of you (NW) less than 100 yards away, a small hillock rises in the field where a large metal animal feed-trough sits. Once there, the slope to your right (east) is where the stone lives. If you potter about you’ll find it.
Archaeology & History
On a visit to the impressive West Horton carvings on one of the searing hot days recently, Tom Cleland and I thought to check on an otherwise unimpressive petroglyph on a rocky rise of land before heading to the beauties 250 yards northwest of here. The covering soil around a scatter of earthfast rocks on this rise in the land had been eroded by cattle and on one of them we noted what seemed to be a distinct cup-marking. And, as happens when you look closer, a more expansive design came into being.
Main design from aboveFaint ring round the cup
On the east-sloping-face of this rock are between six and seven cup-marks, most of them quite distinct. The topmost of the cups has a faint incomplete ring round it which you can just make out in a couple of the photos. It seemed that there was another even fainter ring around one of the other cups, but on the day we visited this the heat was taking its toll of me and I could only stand a short time before we had to move, so we left without getting any good images of the other ring.
More recent cup-marks
It’s more then likely that other unrecorded carvings are hiding beneath the soil which, no doubt, the cattle will slowly help uncover as the years go by. 🙂 A little further up the slope from here, approaching the West Horton (1b) carving, a small oval-shaped rock has what looks like a single cup-mark on it and another, more recent marking at its side. This impression is likely due to an incision made by the metal legs of one of the animal feeders and is unlikely to be prehistoric.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NY 88542 74175
Archaeology & History
Site location on 1866 map
Highlighted, albeit in the past tense, as a “Druidical Temple” on the first Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1866, these megalithic remains were seen by earlier antiquarians, but seemingly met their demise sometime in the early 19th century. Some halfwit land-owners no doubt wanted their little garden extended to where local folk would have traditionally met at certain times each year—so in getting rid of the stones, it would help to keep the riff-raff away. (many of these elitists still think this way) It had certainly gone when the Northumbrian historian John Bates (1895) wrote about it, where he told simply:
“The fine circle at Nunwick, on North Tyne, described by Bishop Gibson, has long since disappeared.”
It was still standing in the 17th century, three or four thousand years after our ancestors put it there. We know this because the remains of the stone circle were told about in Gibson’s (1695) edition of Camden’s Britannia, where mention is made of “large stones erected at several places” in Northumberland, including this place where,
“near Ninwick in the Parish of Simondburn, four such stand still erected, and a fifth lies fall’n to the ground.”
The situation hadn’t changed when John Wallis (1769) visited Nunwick. On his trip to these megaliths he told that,
“In an adjoining field, called, Nunwick-east-field, were five upright stone-pillars, in a circular order; four of them perfect and entire in 1714, the other broken; the perfect ones eight feet high, and nine feet and an half over; the circumference of the area in which they stood, ninety feet.”
It was obvisouly a decent-sized circle! The great megalithic archaeologists Barnatt (1989) and Burl (2000) included the site in their respective catalogues, but could add no further details apart from saying there was a drawing made of the stones sometime around 1715 which, apparently, is in volume 15 of the History of Northumberland. Has anyone got a copy…? 🙂
References:
Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain– volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1989.
Bates, John C., The History of Northumberland, Elliot Stock: London 1895.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Dodds, M.H. (ed.), A History of Northumberland – volume 15: Simonburn, Rothbury, Alwinton, etc, Andrew Reid: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1935.
Gibson, Edmund (ed.), Camden’s Britannia, F. Collins: London 1695.
Wallis, John, The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland – volume 2, W. & W. Strahan: London 1769.
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-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.
Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NU 013 264
Also Known as:
Cairnfold Field
Archaeology & History
In James Hardy’s (1889) essay describing new archaeological finds from the Lilburn area, he told of seeing a triple-ringed petroglyph that seems to have been cast up from one of the cairns in the adjacent field. I can find no other reference to this. He wrote:
“On a wall top, near a gate not far from the Cairn-fauld’s field, lies a detached stone, supposed to have come from a cairn, with three circles and a hollow central cup incised on it, which no one seems to care for.”
Does anyone know what has become of it? Mr Hardy also described a series of other carvings a few fields away to the east, some with quite ornate cup-and-ring designs. These have never subsequently been seen and remain hidden.
References:
Hardy, James, “Further Discoveries of Pre-Historic Graves, Urns and other Antiquities, on Lilburn Hill Farm,” in Archaeoogia Aeliana, volume 13, 1889.
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.
All remains of this prehistoric burial site have obviously long since fallen into only the vaguest of memory, but its incidence deserves reviving for those who may live nearby and seek for a place where our truly ancient ancestors once faired. Here, beneath the modern buildings of homo-profanus, less than a mile north-east of Newcastle city centre, a small prehistoric burial chamber, or cist, was uncovered quite accidentally by a Mr Russell Blackbird (1832) in the first-half of the 19th century. In a letter to the newly-formed (as it was back then) Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle in April of that year he told,
“In trenching some ground for planting, this morning, we discovered a stone vault, 4 feet long by 2 feet wide, and 20 inches deep, deposited in a dry hard marl below the soil, which we were taking out for making the walks in the garden. It contained the bones of a man, the head, in particular, quite perfect, with all the teeth in it. Also a small urn (was found)… There was some red-coloured earth in the urn which the labourers threw out.”
Mr Blackbird sent the antiquarian society a sketch of the urn that he and his colleagues discovered, reproduced here.
References:
Blackbird, Russell, “Account of the Discovery of a Stone Vault and Urn, at Villa Real, Jesmond,” in Archaeologia Aeliana, volume 2, 1832.
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.
Tumuli (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NU 273 046
Archaeology & History
In a lengthy letter describing the cist burial at Cliff House, its author, Mr W. Dunn (1857) told that there were additional prehistoric remains nearby, that had only recently been destroyed. He told:
“It appears that, a few years ago, in the immediate proximity of the present discovery (at Cliff House, Ed.) two or more tumuli were found which contained urns and bones; and flint arrow heads of elaborate finish have been occasionally met with.”
I can find no additional information about these sites.
In the same article, a Mr Kell told that during the construction of the Amble piers a half-mile to the west, “some years ago, he was sojourning in the neighbourhood, and …human remains were found on the removal of sand by the waves in a violent gale from the East.” What else is known of this place?
References:
Dunn, W., “Ancient Sepulchral Remains,” in Proceedings Society of Antiquaries Newcastle-upon-Tyne, volume 1, no.34, 1857.
