Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 13066 40095
Also Known as:
- Carving no.9 (Hedges)
- Central Design Stone
From the old Glen House pub, walk up the road onto ‘Shipley Glen’ as all locals call the place. Go up the Glen Road for about half a mile, watching out for the small dirt-track turning going the slope on your left-hand side just near where the road starting swerving uphill to the right. At this point where the track heads down and into the trees, there’s a footpath going into the bracken along to the right, heading onto level ground. Walk up and along here. After 100 yards or so you’ll notice the disused quarry on your left. Keep walking along the footpath (two end up running parallel to each other) and you’ll see this carving right beneath your feet!
Archaeology & History
This was one of the very first examples of “cup and ring stones” that I ever saw, when I was a mere 10 or 11 years old! I’m not quite sure what I expected to find, but something about this stone with its deeply set cup-markings obviously had an effect on me – as I’m still foraging about looking at them more than 35 years later! About 20 yards away from the Glovershaw quarry carving (Baildon Moor 122), this central design stone — as I used to call it — was first recorded in W. Paley Baildon’s (1913) magnum opus and was then all-but-forgotten until the Bradford Archaeology Group mentioned it again more than forty years later. Although you can only see three distinct cups on this small rock, another 2 or 3 seem in evidence under better lighting conditions, and a small line runs below the cups in the photo here, which you can just make out above the central cup.
This carving and others close by give the distinct impression that they were once part of some seemingly lost cairn-field, awaiting rediscovery…
References:
- Baildon, W. Paley, Baildon and the Baildons – parts 1-15, Adelphi: London 1913-1926.
- Bennett, Paul, Of Cups and Rings and Things, unpublished: Shipley 1981.
- Bennett, Paul, Megalithic Ramblings between Ilkley and Baildon, unpublished: Shipley 1982.
- Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
- Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way, William Walker: Otley 1946.
- Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
