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The New Northern Antiquarian

Subscribers will all have noticed that I’ve hardly been adding any site-profiles over the last year.  I can only apologise for this.  The reasons for this are simple:  I’ve been working on upgrading the blog into a website — which at long last has become active.  It’s exhausted me at times — not least because, from the outset I didn’t have the foggiest idea on how to create a website.  Added to…

St. Margaret’s Stone, Dunfermline, Fife

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NT 10837 85060

Getting Here

St Margarets Stone, 1856 map

Take the A823 road out of Dunfermline south towards Rosyth. A half-mile before you hit the motorway roundabout, at the roundabout where Carnegie Avenue takes you east, turn west and park up along the road where the modern business park lives.  30-40 yards from the roundabout, set back on the pavement,…

Flat Howe (1), Sleight Moor, Sleights, North Yorkshire

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NZ 85483 04866

Also Known as:

Flat Howe (north)

Getting Here

Flat Howe on 1853 OS-map

Along the A169 road that runs may miles from Whitby to Pickering, as you go through the small town of Sleights, the road gets steep for a mile or so, until you reach the moorland tops, where the road runs dead straight.  After 1.2 miles (1.93km) along the straight road, a small minor…

Little Almscliffe Crags, Stainburn, North Yorkshire

Legendary Rocks:  OS Grid Reference – SE 23237 52275

Also Known as:

Little Almes Cliffe

Little Almias Cliff Crag

Getting Here

Little Almscliffe on 1851 map

Coming from Harrogate, take the B6162 and B6161 road to Beckwithshaw, through the village and, 4-500 yards on, turn right onto Norwood Lane.  2 miles along, keep your eyes peeled on your left for a gravelled parking spot and you’ll see the…

Stone Circle (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NO 0808 5985

Archaeology & History

Kirkmichael parish was an area that was described by George Chalmers (1887) as possessing “a vast body of Druid remains,” there being “a number of Druid cairns in the vicinity of Druidical circles.”  As we know, the term ‘druid’ has long fallen out of favour; and with it in this area, the sites themselves have taken…

Clowder (1), Arncliffe, North Yorkshire

Enclosures:  OS Grid Reference – SD 9165 6968

Also Known as:

Clouder

Getting Here

Looking down on Clowder-1

To the right of The Falcon Inn across from Arncliffe village green is a trackway called the Monk’s Way.  Walk up here for about 450 yards until there’s a stile on your right which is the start of the diagonal footpath SW up the hillside.  Once you hit the limestone ridge several hundred…

Heygate Stone, Baildon Moor, West Yorkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 15942 40187

Heygate Stone

Archaeology & History

This excellent cup-and-ring marked petroglyph was found fortuitously in September 2001 by the land-owner at Near Hey Gate field to the northeast of Baildon village.  He was clearing out remains of some old walling in the field and, adjacent, a rock that was protruding out of the ground got turned over. …

Cloven Hoof Well, Shipley Glen, West Yorkshire

Healing Well:  OS Grid Reference – SE 12839 39331

Also Known as:

Raygate Well

Getting Here

Cloven Hoof Well, Shipley Glen

On the roadside at Shipley Glen, from Brackenhall Circlewalk up for about 250 yards, where you’ll notice the land dips as it drops into the woods below. Follow this dried stream down until you reach the mossy Loadpit Beck in the valley.  By the waterside is a footpath: follow…

Lower Headley Farm, Thornton, Bradford, West Yorkshire

Tumulus (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SE 099 321

Archaeology & History

Lower Headley Farm urn

There are no longer any remains of the prehistoric burial site that once stood in one of the fields by Lower Headley Farm.  We don’t know whether the site was a cairn, a tumulus, or just a stone-lined cist; but in all probability it would have been a low rounded hillock whose existence had long since…

Holy Well, Baildon, West Yorkshire

Holy Well (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SE 1609 3961

Archaeology & History

Site of the Holy Well in 1852

This site is all but unknown to the great majority of folk in Baildon, and even some of the local historians have let it slip from their investigative tendrils.  According to the primary Baildon historian, W.Paley Baildon, it was first known as the ‘Halliwell Holy Well’.  In his magnum opus

Gawk Hall Stone, Middleton Moor, North Yorkshire

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13004 53097

Getting Here

Gawk Hill Stone

Probably the easiest route to find this is via the Roman Road from Blubberhouses. Go up Cooper Lane a few hundred yards, turning right (west) on the footpath past the Manor House and onto the moor. Walk along the footpath until you hit the dead straight Roman Road and walk 1⅓ miles (past the cup-marked Eagle Stone)…

Kalemouth Carving, Eckford, Roxburghshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NT 714 275

Archaeology & History

Kalemouth carving (after R.W.B. Morris 1981)

Now housed in the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh, this little-known petroglyph was rediscovered in 1957 by a Mr G.F. Ritchie, not far from the once-large Kalemouth neolithic tomb.  A carving that seems to be quite isolated (no others are known about in this area),…

Tumble Beacon, Banstead, Surrey

Tumulus:  OS Grid Reference – TQ 2432 5902

Archaeology & History

This ancient “bowl barrow” as the modern archaeo’s are wont to describe it, is a Bronze Age tumulus that has seen better days.  But at least it’s still there – albeit slightly damaged and enclosed by modern housing, in the back of someone’s garden.  I expect that if you were to ask the owners, it would be OK to see this 4000 year…

Bedford Park, Tooting, Surrey

Tumulus (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – TQ 288 726

Archaeology & History

This long lost prehistoric tomb is one of many that has fallen under the destructive hammer of the christian Industrialists in this part of the country.  Located somewhere in the parkland grounds of Bedfordhill House (also destroyed), its memory was thankfully preserved by the renowned folklorist and historian Walter…

St. Peter’s Well, Leeds, West Yorkshire

Holy Well (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SE 308 336

Archaeology & History

Position of the now lost St Peter’s Well on 1852 map

This is one of three wells that were dedicated to St Peter in the Leeds district.  The first of them, near the city centre, was described by the northern antiquarian Ralph Thoresby (1715) as being in St. Peter’s Square—which has now been completely built over, but was…

Horn Bank, Rigton, North Yorkshire

Settlement (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SE 2905 5035

Archaeology & History

Horn Bank site on 1910 map

Upon the top of the old ridge where ran the ancient trackway between Rigton and Pannal, could once be found a multi-period settlement, long since gone – as happens all too often in this neck o’ the woods.  And unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any sketch plans of the site.  It was…

Briscoe Rigg, Rigton, North Yorkshire

Settlement (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference — SE 2581 5100

Archaeology & History

Briscoe Rigg on 1851 map

Highlighted on the 1851 OS-map of the area as a ‘Camp’, all trace of this ancient settlement would seem to have been destroyed.  It was already on its way out when the Ordnance Survey lads looked at it again in 1888, finding barely a trace of it.  Thankfully though, when the clearer eyes of…