Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 11229 43143
Also Known as:
- Carving no.93 (Hedges)
- Carving no.110 (Boughey & Vickerman)
From East Morton village, take the moorland road, east, and up the steep hill. Where the road levels out there’s a right turn, plus (more importantly!) a trackway on your left which leads onto the moor. Go up this track and keep walking till you hit a moorland ‘footpath’ signpost. Just before this walk due west (your left) into the heather for about 10 yards. Look around! (if the heather’s long and overgrown, you might have trouble finding it) If you find carved stone 109, you’re less than 10 yards off this one!
Archaeology & History
First reported by Stuart Feather and described in a short note of the Yorkshire Archaeological Register* of 1977. This was one of two small carved stones next to each other amidst the “denuded remains of a cairn 3m in diameter and 0.35m high.” The stone we can still see here is a small one, seemingly near the very centre of the cairn, with its carved face looking northwards. The carving is a simple double-ring surrounding a central cup: an almost archetypal cup-and-ring stone.
The other ancient carved stone that was once seen next to this (catalogued as carving 111) has in recent years been stolen by an archaeological thief no less! Any information that anyone might have telling us who’s stolen this heritage piece, or where it might presently reside, can be emailed to me in confidence. Or…the thief who’s taken it can return the carving to the site and put it back where it belongs before we find out where you live. Simple as!
(Soz about the poor photo of this carving. For decent ones of this stone you need to get here when the sun’s in a better position. I’ll hopefully get some better images next time we’re up there when the light’s better.)
References:
- Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS 2003.
- Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
- Moorhouse, S. (ed.), “Yorkshire Archaeological Register: 1977,” in Yorkshire Archaeology Journal, volume 50, 1978.
* Does anyone have any idea who you report such new discoveries to so that they can be reported in Yorkshire Archaeology Society’s ‘Register’? I’ve asked ‘em several times about a number of previously unrecorded sites that we’ve located, so that they can make a record of them, but I never get a reply.
©Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
