Cairns: OS Grid Reference – SE 1493 1026
Take the A6024 road south out of Huddersfield for about 4 miles, past the turnings to Honley, and when you reach a section where the road runs through a nice bitta woodland, stop! Go into the woods on the western side of the road near the bottom end where a footpath runs up to Haggs Farm. The cairnfield is about 100 yards up into the woods, evidenced by small overgrown heaps in a small cluster. Good luck!
Archaeology & History
These are pretty difficult to locate even when the vegetation isn’t covering them! But if you’re diligent and enjoy a good foray in searching for archaeological remains, you might uncover summat. For here are the scattered remains of what was once a group of seven cairns with adjacent ring-banks, last excavated in the early 1960s by Neil Lunn and other members of the Huddersfield & District Archaeology Society. Little by way of datable material was found, although one of them did “reveal features typical of some Bronze Age barrows.” Beneath this one they found “the remains of a hut or shelter with a succession of small hearths and a group of stone-packed postholes.”
It would be nice to find out the precise status of this area as few other remains seem in evidence, which can’t be right surely?
References:
- Barnes, B., Man and the Changing Landscape, University of Liverpool 1982.
- Lunn, N., ‘Account of Recent Fieldwork in the Honley Area,’ Hudds Dist. Archaeo. Soc., 13, 1963.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
The woods are privately owned and no public rights of way exist.