Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 17204 51280 — NEW FIND
From the Askwith Moor Road car-parking spot, walk up the road (north) for 350 yards and go thru the gate on your left. Once thru it, keeping walking up and along the edge of the fence following the line of the road until the path goes downhill. Near where it levels out, walk into the moor proper for about 150 yards or so. You’re close!
Archaeology & History
First found by Messrs Dave Hazell and Paul Hornby on the afternoon of Thursday, June 3, 2010, amidst scouring operations on the moors hereby. This large stone has one conspicuous cup on its south-facing slope with faint remains of a half-ring on its eastern side. A distinct arc above the immediate top of the cup joins up with the pecked quarter-ring section and may have been added to by human hands aswell, certainly giving it a half-ring effect. There are a couple of decent natural cups along the top-edge of the stone aswell.
A brief discussion then began as to why someone would only carve half a ring, or less, surrounding the cup-marking. But the fella doing this could have easily been distracted by a boar, a wolf, or even worse – his northern wife!
A little further west, barely 100 away, rising up the edge of the slope, Geoff, Dave and Paul found several more examples of what seem to be distinct remains of prehistoric cairns on the edges of High Low Ridge. Like Dave and Paul’s Boomers Stone, they aren’t in any previously published archaeological surveys either.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
