The best description to get here is, from Ilkley, to go up Wells Road, over the cattle grid, and about 500 yards past the cattle grid take the left turn up Keighley Road. This becomes a truly dodgy dirt-track when you hit the road to the Silver Well cottage on your right, but keep going uphill for another after a short while, but keeping walking uphill for another 500 yards till you reach a good-sized footpath on your right. Walk along here for 50-60 yards and then walk into the vegetation on your right and, just a few yards along, you’ll see a good-sized elongated stone in front of you.
Archaeology & History
Looking down on the cups
This large boulder has about nine cup-marked impressions, both on its eastern topmost part and others a few feet away on a lower south-facing section of the stone. But they’re not all man-made. The cups on the top-east surface are the ones we should be paying attention to. Of the three or four that we can see, at least two of them are man-made: it’s possible that all of them have been man-affected, but without a detailed geomorphological analysis, we’ll never know for sure. The cups and dips on the other, lower section of the rock are Nature’s handiwork. That doesn’t mean they had no importance in the overall mythic nature of the carving but, as with most British petroglyphs, we may never know one way or the other.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 0467 6373
Archaeology & History
Hartlington Moor (2) stone
After visiting the Hartlington Moor Lane carving, walk further up the track for bang-on 400 yards and you’ll reach a gate on your right. In the field here, about 150 yards in, is an ornate cup-marked stone, which has had the dung of a hundred animals and other natural effects dumped upon it in recent years and, as a result, remains hidden at the mo. A sketch of it was made some time back, showing it’s general design, but it would be good to get some good photos of it (let us know if you manage to locate it).
The carving covers most of the surface of this low rounded stone and a number of the cups are quite deep, which suggests that it had been hidden from view for a long time. There are up to 54 cups, several of which are linked together by carved grooves, giving it what some folk call an ‘hour-glass’ feature. Near the middle of the stone it looked as if there was a faint cup-and-ring with a carved line running out of it.
The worst part about getting to this stone is finding somewhere to park on the B6265 road if you’re visiting by car! The best spot (as of writing) seems to be a small clearing that the farmer has made by the roadside near one of his gates. From Hebden village travel literally one mile (1.62km) east up the B6265 road and (keep your eyes peeled!) you’ll reach the small left-turn down to Hartlington Raikes (and on your left is a dirt-track) – but keep going straight on past this turning for another 450 yards where the farmer’s cleared the edge of the road against his field. Do not obstruct his field! (he’ll have every right to move it with his tractor if you’re an idiot) Naathen – walk back on yourself to the dirt-track (known as Hartlington Moor Lane) 450 yards away and walk up it for 300 yards where there’s a small tree on to your left. On the opposite side of the track, just below the wall right at the very edge of the track itself, you’ll see the small rounded carved stone.
Archaeology & History
Adjacent to a large, flat, elongated ovoid stone that nearly covers the width of the dirt-track is this much smaller stone with a decent scatter of cup-marks on it that was rediscovered only a few years ago by Yvonne Luke of Ilkley.
A rock art menagerie of Morley, Chappell & HothamHartlington Moor Lane (1)
The petroglyph comprises of two standard cup-and-rings, one of which has a carved groove running from the cup to the ring. There may be up to nine other single cup-marks on the stone, many of them quite worn (as you’d expect with it living on a track!); but some of these may be the result of natural erosion. Nonetheless, most of them seem to be the real deal. There are also several oval ‘notches’ on the design, but these may have been made by agricultural/farm machinery scratching across the stone.
From this carving, if you venture another 400 yards up the Hartlington Moor Lane track and go through the gate on your right, about fifty yards into the field is another carving at grid-ref SE 0467 6373, covered in cup-marks, but now covered over in vegetation. If you get a chance to make the stone visible again, let us know! It’s likely that other unrecorded carvings are hiding away in the adjacent fields.
Acknowledgements: With appreciations to Tony Morley, John Hotham and Graeme Chappell for getting us up to this olde stone. Cheers fellas!
From the Cow & Calf car-park, walk towards and past the gigantic Calf rock, swerving round the fallen mass of rocks and into the trees at the back. Walk uphill to the Hanging Stones cup and ring stones, then keep heading—down the slope then back up the next one—west, for barely 100 yards until you’re on the level ground again, following the footpath alongside the heather. Barely 50 yards along, keep your eyes peeled in the heather for a low flat rock just a few yards in. Forage around and you’ll find it.
Archaeology & History
You’ll no doubt be seeing this carving after you’ve visited the impressive Hanging Stones petroglyphs 150 yards to the east. And you’ll probably be disappointed in its lack of visual grandeur when compared to its more ornate eastern neighbour. But the petroglyph fans among you should give it your attention.
Hedges 1986 sketchLooking to the SE
When the dawn or evening daylight cuts across the rock, the design looks much better than at sun high, perhaps telling us that the message of the stone coincided with those periods of the day. The gentle folds of the stone itself morph into the carving: evening and morning light cutting subtle shadowy folds across the rock, giving it an organic texture that our aboriginal ancestors told to be a vital essence of stone itself. The two small clusters of cup-marks upon this stone become greater than their basic design when brushed with the shadows and glows of a sunset. And when our aboriginal peoples painted them in ochre and other colours, an even greater mythos emerged—but sadly it is forgotten here….
When looked at with the simplistic eyes of the archaeo-mind, this and its compatriots are little more than a number of marks on lifeless rocks. This stone for example was described in John Hedges’ (1986) survey as being just “two groups of four and five cups and grooves”—nothing more—with naught but an echo in Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003) later work. The carving has neighbours even more basic in the heather close by…
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
You can walk up from Menston, up Moor Lane north-west towards the moor, then turning left when you hit the moorland road of Hillings Lane. Nearly 350 yards along, turn right up the track known as Occupation lane onto the moor. More than half-a-mile up, past the gate at the Bee Stone, where the track splits, keep to the left and head further uphill, roughly parallel with the fence on your left. Literally ¼-mile (0.4 km) up from the split, you’re looking almost straight down at the reservoir; but to your left, walk towards the fence. Zigzag about! You can also approach it from the Grubstones and Great Skirtful area, by following the Occupation Lane track eastwards down the slope until you’re roughly level with the same reservoir.
Archaeology & History
On this somewhat isolated stone on the northern sloping edge of Craven Hall Hill we find a small cluster of shallow cup-marks, first noted in the 1980s and eventually mentioned in a survey by Boughey & Vickerman (2003) where they described it as a,
“Low, medium striated rock lying in slope of hill. SE end carries possibly up to eleven cups, possibly two sets grouped in arcs running into natural striations of rock, one of which may have been artificially enhanced by pecking.”
Shallow cup-marks
The view from here is quite something: gazing east to the heathen hilltop of Otley Chevin (Beltane rites and rock art — albeit not much), north-east to the far uplands of the White Horse of Kilburn, then across the northern panoramas of Askwith and Denton Moors, and beyond. Some archaeologists have started to believe that such vistas may have had relevance with such carvings, sometimes. They’ve caught up at last! 🙂 Anyhow, the carving itself is pretty simplistic and probably only of interest to the real petroglyph nuts amongst you – although it’s mebbe worth checking out if you’re visiting the Great Skirtful giant cairn and its very impressive hengi-form neighbour.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding – Supplement, YAS 2018.
Acknowledgements: With thanks to Tom Cleland for help in relocating the site on a recent visit.
Numerous ways to get here: probably the easiest (direction wise) is if you’re coming from Dick Hudson’s public house on the southern road surrounding Rombalds Moor. From the pub, head left (east) along Otley Road (passing Weecher reservoir) for 1.9 miles (3.1km) until you reach Reva reservoir where a track leads you to the waters. A small parking spot is on the left-side of the road. From here, go through the gate and along the footpath across the field for nearly 300 yards to the next gate. Go through here and immediately follow the walling down to your left for about 135 yards to the edge of the rushes. It’s there!
Archaeology & History
Single cupmark nr the top
On a recent visit to the Fraggle Rock carving, Tom Cleland foraged about at the edge of what was, in centuries gone by, a good flowing stream below the west slope of Reva Hill. An old pathway cut across one section of it near where the walling now runs, covered these days in the mass of Juncus reeds, typical of mashy grounds. And here, just where folk would cross the waters, Tom found a good sized stone with a single deep cup-mark on its crown, calling through a feast of lichens to be seen once more. There may be a second cup-mark by its side, but the light wasn’t good when we were here, so that’ll be worked out some other day. Anyhow, this one’s probably only for the crazy petroglyph hunters out there. It’s the Fraggle Rock and its companios that you’re gonna be looking for, nearby….
An important water source for local folk in Castley hamlet in previous centuries, this was one of several so-called ‘Wishing Wells’ above the higher banks of the River Wharfe a few miles from each other. It’s a title which, to be honest, was afforded the place when its original local name was removed. It was quite obviously a sacred well in earlier times, as it’s found beneath the slope of Chapel Hill, looking eastwards towards the rising sun, when the waters here (as at countless others) had their greatest remedial or magickal powers. Tradition told there was once a small chapel above the well itself. The spring was highlighted on early Ordnance Survey maps, but all that seems left here today is an occasional boggy mass in the trees at the bottom of the sloping hill.
The old folklorist and antiquarian Edmund Bogg (1904) wrote the following about it:
‘Wishing’ Well on 1888 map
“On the terraced bank near the garden, ’neath an overhanging hawthorn, is a beautiful spring of clear sparkling water, which is locally known as Castley ‘wishing-well.’ More than once we have heard the women-folk declare how, in their maidenhood, they loitered down the bank to the well, usually at eventide, when the birds were warbling their vesper song, and placed their offerings there in silence, yet breathing, as it were, the mute longing of their heart’s desire. It is a natural grotto fit habitation of fairies or the traditional elves. The bank, in which the well is situated, is known as ‘Snake Bank.’”
References:
Edmund Bogg, Higher Wharfeland, James Miles: Leeds 1904.
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.
Your best starting point is from the Great Skirtful of Stones giant cairn. From here follow the fencing that runs down the slope to your left (south-east) for roughly 160 yards (148m) – past the Great Skirtful Ring – until you reach the gate. Go through it and keep walking down the same fence-line for 300 yards then walk south onto the moorland proper (there are no paths here). You’ll pass over several undulations in the heather (some of these are the edges of ancient trackways) and 55-60 yards south from the fencing you’ll walk over and into this overgrown prehistoric ring. It’s very difficult to see when the vegetation is deep, so persevere!
Archaeology & History
Site shown on 1851 map
This is an interesting site. Marked on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map as a “barrow” (right), it is shown with trackways on either side of it to the north and south, and with an opening or entrance on its northwestern side. Yet since that date, very little archaeological attention has been given to it and the site remains unexcavated, despite its location being repeated on all subsequent maps since then. The designation of the site as a barrow or burial site, without being excavated, was educated guesswork at the time as the place seems to be what we today define as a ring cairn. And whilst this seems likely, there are some oddities here.
Measuring roughly 25 yards (SE – NW) by 21 yards (NE – SW), this overgrown oval ‘ring’ is a similar architectural structure to the more famous Roms Law circle more than half-a-mile northwest of here—but bigger! And, unlilke Roms Law, this overgrown circle seems to have been untouched for many centuries. The oval surrounding ‘ring’ itself is composed of thousands of small packing stones between, seemingly, a number of much larger upright stones, reaching a maximum height of more than three feet high at the northernmost edge. The ‘ring’ ostensibly looks like a wide surrounding wall which measures two yards across all round the structure.
Track running into the ringRaised line into the ring
Internally, there seems little evidence of a burial — although our recent visits here, as the photos indicate, took place when the moorland vegetation was deep and covered almost the entire site. The outline of the site is obviously visible, even in deep heather, but the smaller details remain hidden. But in addition to the main ring, another very distinct ingredient here is the existence of an extended length of man-made parallel walling, probably a trackway, that runs into the circle from the southeast all the way through the circle and out the other side and then continuing northwest heading roughly towards the Great Skirtful giant cairn on the horizon 500 yards to the northwest.
Stone at NE arc of walling
Due to the landscape being so overgrown, it’s difficult to ascertain where this ‘trackway’ begins and ends. Added to this, we find that there are additional ‘trackways’ that run roughly parallel to the one that runs through the circle—and these ‘trackways’ are very old indeed, some of them likely have their origins way back in prehistory. The one that runs through the middle of this ring cairn may be a ceremonial pathway along which, perhaps, our ancestors carried their dead. If we follow it out from here and keep walking along the track 300 yards to the southeast, we eventually run right to the edge of the Craven Hall (3) circle. Parallel to this is another ancient trackway that runs northwest to the edge of the Roms Law circle. It seems very much as if we have ceremonial trackways linking sites to each other: ancestral pathways, so to speak.
Have a gander at this when you’re next in the area. There are many other sites nearby that are off the archaeological radar. In recent years, a number of northern antiquarians wandering over this landscape are finding more and more ancient remains: walling, circles, cairns, trackways. It’s a superb arena—but sadly, most of it is hidden beneath deep moorland vegetation.
References:
Faull, M.L. & Moorhouse, S.A. (eds.), West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Guide to AD 1500– volume 1, WYMCC: Wakefield 1981.
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 – SE 2556 4687
Also Known as:
Carving no.556 (Boughey & Vickerman)
Archaeology & History
We know very little about this carving, which was first highlighted on Eric Cowling’s (1940) map of Wharfedale petroglyphs. Described simply as one of the “cup-marked rocks”, he mentioned it briefly in Rombald’s Way (1946) as being “the most easterly carving” in mid-Wharfedale—which it was at the time (a very recent find by Benn Potts of a cup-marked stone at Weeton has pushed the boundary further eastwards). Oddly for Cowling, he left no further notes nor sketch of the carving and when Stuart Feather (1961) came to write of it, he merely copied Cowling’s earlier words. It’s not been seen since. In Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003) survey, they could find no cup-marked stone in the wood but thought instead that,
“this may be due more to confusion than to loss of the carving. Riffa Wood does contain a carving: of a Native American on a conspicuous rock alongside one of the many woodland paths. Furthermore, one or two local residents recall a German prisoner carving something on a rock in Riffa Wood during the Second World War. Presumably, this is the origin of the Native American carving. Could it be that this man added something of his own to what was already a carved rock, in which case the Native American as he now appears is the site noted by Cowling before the War?”
No cup-marks exist on this Native American carving, and it’s highly unlikely that Cowling would have made such an elementary mistake. The carving no doubt lies covered in woodland vegetation waiting, once more, for the day that someone comes along and exposes its visage to the world again. Let us know if you manage to find it…
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Cowling, E.T., ‘A Classification of West Yorkshire Cup and Ring Stones,’ in Archaeological Journal, volume 97, 1940.
Cowling, E.T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Feather, Stuart, “Mid-Wharfedale Cup-and-Ring Markings,” in Cartwright Hall Archaeology Group Bulletin, volume 6, no.3, March 1961.
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.
Naathen… I’d give you the directions of how to find this stone, but I’m not sure of its precise location. Just get to the top of Reva Hill, on its more westerly side, and it’s somewhere on its upper slopes. I was up here again recently and hoped to find it, but the grasses might have grown back over it. If one of you petroglyph fans manages to locate it, please can you send me its exact grid-reference, so I can update the site profile.
Carving when wetFaint Reva Hill carvingCarving when wet
Archaeology & History
This was one in a cluster of carvings that were rediscovered in 2011 and which I’ve not managed to re-locate (bad boy). It’s very plain and simple, as you can see. Indeed, I was lucky to even notice it, as the central photograph above shows how faint and eroded the cup-marks are in normal light. Thankfully with a bit of water, what I initially thought may have been two cup-marks, turned into three or four of them. So the next time you’re having a look at the Fraggle Rock carving and its companions, remember that this little fella is hiding somewhere close by…
