Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 15867 41244
Getting Here

In Hawksworth village, less than 100 yards past the primary school, take the footpath on your left into the open fields. 200 yards down the fields, go over the stile on your right, into the next field and walk diagonally across it (SW) for 250 yards until you reach the wall; then walk alongside it, west, for another 150 yards where the walling goes due south and walk down here for 135 yards, going through the gate at the bottom into the next field and, at the bottom of this one go through the gate and bear right. OK, now walk along the wall-side for 55 yards and you’re just about standing on it! Alternatively you can reach it via the Hawksworth Spring (1) and (4) carvings, following the wall along for roughly 150 yards till you reach the gate. Go through here and walk diagonally NNW across the field for nearly 150 yards where you’ll see the stone stuck out in front of the wall.
Archaeology & History
My first sight of this came about as I walked alongside the walling. Approaching the stone, I noticed what looked like a recent cup-like marking with a curved line emerging from it on its eastern surface; but it didn’t look too old and was more like the scratch-marks you see sometimes when farmers have been dragging rocks along to be used in walling. So I shrugged in slight disappointment—until the far-side, the western-side of the stone came into view.


Sloping ever-so-slightly down into the ground, the surface of the stone had a cluster of quite worn, shallow, but distinct cup-markings between one and two inches across, four of which ran in a line from the top to the edge of the stone in a slight curve. As I walked round it, looking from different angles, it became obvious that two or three other cups existed—mainly from the top to the western side of the rock. One seemed to exist near the edge, whilst two other faint ones sat to the side of the line-of-four—almost creating a square formation. From some angles it looked as if there may be faint lines running between some of the cups but (as usual) the sunlight didn’t really help highlight them and they could just be faded erosion lines.


It was obvious that a section of the stone on its southern edge had been broken off in the not-too-distant past, raising the idea that the design may originally have been larger than its present form. This thought returned when I walked another 60 yards west along the wall and came across a broken section of stone that had been placed into it, pretty recently, and on its vertical face noticed a single cup-mark in a good state of preservation, indicating that it had either been cut recently or instead been dug out of the ground not too long ago and shown intself to the world after a sleep of several millenia. Look at it when you have a gander at the main carving here and make up your own mind….
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian