For those who may not know, the terms ‘cairns’ and ‘tumuli’ are just prehistoric tombs. Another word we find as we move further north into Scotland is ‘cist’, which has a similar affiliation. A cairn is a pile of loose rocks and stones, which tends to be erected over a single or multiple burial or cremation – though without excavation we can never be sure which one it’s gonna be! A tumulus meanwhile (‘tumuli’ is the plural) is a heap of earth piled up over a burial or cremation. Small cairns and tumuli tend to cover single graves; whilst larger ones can have multiple burials therein. However we sometimes find that huge tombs have only one or two burials/ cremations inside. In such cases it’s likely that the people entombed there were of considerable importance: perhaps a tribal chief, a king, a queen, or powerful shaman. In many places across northern Britain, where there’s a profusion of cairns/tumuli we tend to find a good examples of prehistoric rock art, or cup-and-ring stones.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TL 6091 6304
Also Known as:
Newmarket Heath 1
Ninescore Hill Barrow
Archaeology & History
Ninescore Hill on 1834 map
Upon the small and curiously-named Ninescore Hill on the edge of Newmarket’s race-course, the old-school archaeologist Cyril Fox (1923) told that “800 yards due east of Running Gap”, was a prehistoric burial mound that was destroyed in 1885. Highlighted on the 1834 OS-map, a 19th century excavation found that the tomb “contained two inhumation interments associated with beakers,” along with some “flint arrowheads, and a secondary interment, probably Saxon.” In more recent times, the doods from the Royal Commission (1972) added the site to their inventory and noted that a faint outline—known as as ring ditch—is visible from the air when conditions are just right. But there’s bugger all left of it at ground level.
References:
Fox, Cyril, The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, Cambridge University Press 1923.
Royal Commission Ancient Historical Monuments, Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Cambridgeshire – Volume 2: North-East Cambridgeshire, HMSO: London 1972.
I prefer the much longer walk to this site, from Askwith Moor carpark some 5 miles to the west, but this wouldn’t be most folks cuppa tea. So for the lazy buggers amongst you: whether you’re coming via Ilkley (cross the bridge to Middleton and turn left, following the long winding road for several miles) or Bolton Bridge (hit Beamsley village and turn left up Lanshaw Bank), you need to get up to Langbar village. On the north side of the village is a distinct small rough carpark. From here, cross the road where the footpath sign is and walk straight up the steep hill to Beamsley Beacon at the top. Keep walking for exactly ¼-mile where you’ll find a large heap with boulders round its edge. You’re there.
At the highest point of these hills where the moorlands of Langbar and Beamsley meet, is this prominent rocky pile on the same skyline as Beamsley Beacon. The two are ancient cairns, both robbed of most of their stones, but still a good site to sit and behold the vast landscape which reaches out for miles in all directions. And, from this highest point, looking south to the highest point across the Wharfe valley on Ilkley Moor, the remnants of another giant prehistoric cairn is visible: looking across at each other, eye to eye.
Of the two great cairns on Beamsley moor, The Old Pike is the more peculiar of the two because—unlike its partner along the ridge—several large boulders near its top give the impression of being Nature’s handiwork. This may be the case, but Nature isn’t the lass who laid down the mass of smaller rounded stones that are mainly visible on the west and southern sides. These have been placed there by people. But it’s not until you step back 40 or 50 yards that you get a more distinct impression of the place. The Old Pike rises up like a rocky nipple out of the heath, showing a very embedded overgrown man-made heap, typical of the overgrown prehistoric cairns that scatter our northern uplands.
The site is included on the archaeologist’s Pastscape website, albeit citing it as a ‘possible’ cairn. But the more we look at it, the greater the impression becomes that this old heap is man-made – certainly on its eastern and southern sides. The rise of boulders on its west may be natural, and then ancient man placed the cairn material up and around them. Only an excavation would tell us for sure. But its old name of Howber Pike tells a tale before we even visit the place. When the great Yorkshire historian Harry Speight (1900) came here he picked up on this element, telling us,
“Howber literally is the ‘Hill of Tombs’, from the Teutonic haugr and Anglian how, a burial mound, and berg also her, a hill, often fortified.”
The great place-name authority A.H. Smith (1956) not only echoes this but goes into greater etymological detail, noting that as well as haugr or how being “an artificial mound, a burial mound,” it’s a word that is particularly used in the northern counties. He does note however, that this may not always be the case and can sometime just relate to a “a hill or hilltop resembling an artificial mound.” However, we also find in Smith’s tome on place-name elements that the latter part of ‘Howber’ deriving from beorg, can also mean a tumulus or burial mound. But there are cases where this has been corrupted and means, as Speight states, a fortified hill. So at Howber Pike we seem to have the ancient name of some probable burial site. As for its neighbour a quarter-mile west, the giant cairn of Beamsley Beacon is also known as the Howber Hill….
References:
Smith, A.H., English Place-Name Elements – volume 1, Cambridge University Press 1956.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire – volume 5, Cambridge University Press 1963.
Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to James Elkington for use of his fine photos on this site.
Cist (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 1192 4759
Archaeology & History
Urn found below Cowpasture Rd in 1874
In a lecture given by Frank Hall at the Ilkley Library in February, 1910, he described a number of prehistoric remains found in the area—including the remnants of a “cinerary urn, containing calcined human remains” and more, as illustrated in the old photo here. He contextualized the findings as being typical of the remains found “under a large heap of earth and stones which we now call a ‘barrow’, ‘cairn’ or ‘tumulus'” and believed that one must have existed here in bygone times. The urn, he told us,
“was found within a few yards of these premises, for it was dug up when the excavations were being carried out for the erection of Messrs Robinson and Sons’ buildings on the opposite side of Cowpasture Road, in March 1874.”
Although we list this site as a cist, we don’t know for sure; but due to the lack of descriptive and historical data about a mound of any form in this area, it is most likely to have been a cist burial and not a tumulus or barrow which Mr Hall inferred. Its location near the valley bottom is unusual when we consider the huge number of cairns on the moors above here; but a cist was found in a similar low-lying geographical position on the south side of the moors near Bingley, 5.8 miles due south, when construction of local sewage works were being done.
References:
Hall, Frank, The Contents of Ilkley Museum, William Walker: Otley 1910.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 1676 1504
Archaeology & History
The only thing we know of this long lost site comes from a tradition narrated by the Canon Hulbert (1882) in his definitive history of Almondbury parish. High up the hill near the very top of the village where All Saints Church was built, he told how tradition said,
“that a tumulus or mound existed at the west end where now the Clerk’s house stands; which may have been an ancient British site and led to the erection of the church.”
Sadly, there seems to be no further information about the site.
References:
Hulbert, Charles A., Annals of the Church and Parish of Almondbury, Longmans: London 1882.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 3222 5211
Archaeology & History
Site of tomb on 1894 map
We are thankful that the antiquarian James Wardell (1881) gave us some details of this long lost site in his survey of prehistoric remains, otherwise information about it would certainly have been lost. Prehistoric burial mounds are rare in this part of Yorkshire, but on the rise of land behind Follifoot Ridge house could once be seen “a large barrow measuring 50 feet in diameter.” Believed by Challis and Harding (1975) to have been a late Bronze Age structure, the story of its demise was told by Wardell as follows:
“This monument of a former age…exists no longer, owing to the ignorance and cupidity of the surveyors of the highways of the township in which it was situate; by whose orders the stones, of which it was partially composed, were carted away at intervals, during a period of some five or six years, to keep in repair a neighbouring road. At the base were several very large stones, probably a kistvaen, and at the same time were found fragments of urns, bones and ‘pieces of brass’, which immediately became dispersed. Some of the latter articles came into the possession of the village smith, from whom this information was obtained, and were disposed of by him to a brass-founder as old metal, and in due time, doubtless, found their way to the foundry. From the description given of them by this person, there seems to have been amongst them some spear-heads and a palstave, but after a most diligent inquiry, there could not, as might be expected, anything whatever be recovered. I should say that from weapons of bronze being found in this huge sepulchral mound, it was not one of the most ancient kind, but has perhaps covered the remains of British warriors slain in conflict with the Roman invaders… I am indebted to Mr John Dixon of Leeds for the information relating to the demolition of this barrow, which was only obtained by him after a lengthy enquiry; and he states that on his visit to the site, it could distinctly be traced by the grass there being of a darker hue than in other parts of the field.”
A mile to the northwest, one would have been able to see the Stone Rings of Pannal, also destroyed, and the two sites may have served some geomantic relationship with each other.
References:
Challis, A.J. & Harding, D.W., Later Prehistory from the Trent to the Tyne, BAR: Oxford 1975.
Wardell, James, Historical Notes of Ilkley, Rombald’s Moor, Baildon Common, and other Matters of the British and Roman Periods, Joseph Dodgson: Leeds 1869. (2nd edition 1881).
Acknowledgements: Big thanks for being able to use the 1st edition OS-map for this site profile, Reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
This was an impressive site by the sound of things. Sadly destroyed, its exact whereabouts isn’t clear but should—if the description of the site is anything to go by—be on one of the highest points of land around Langside Farm. In Irving & Murray’s description (1864), they tell the cairn to have been one amidst a cluster of tombs that could once be seen “a mile to the south of his residence”, but this seems to be contested by the definitive pen of the Lesmahagow historian, John Greenshields. (1864) He told us:
“The late Lord Corehouse had an excavation scientifically made of a karn or cairn on his farm at Longside. It is to be regretted that information cannot now be obtained of so accurate a nature as the subject merits; but there were stones so arranged in the centre as to have been evidently intended for sepulchral purposes. Two rude urns of baked clay, one very large, the other smaller, were found inside a stone coffin. The small urn contained bones partially calcined and broken or pounded, some of them perfectly fresh. It has been erroneously stated in Swan’s “Views of the Clyde,” that there were eighteen small urns around the large chest, in the form of a circle, which gave rise to the idea that the remains of the chief had been surrounded by those of his family or warriors. One of the urns has been lost sight of: the smaller one, about 6 inches in diameter at the top, and 4 in height, is now in the possession of Miss Edmondstoun Cranstoun, as well as a still smaller funerary urn, recently restored by kiln-burning it with some fresh clay.”
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Lanarkshire: An Inventory of the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, HMSO: Edinburgh 1978.
Swan, Joseph, Views on the Clyde – Historical and Descriptive, Joseph Swan: Glasgow 1830.
When the local historian John Greenshields (1864) wrote his definitive history of Lesmahagow parish, the book was just going to press when the remains of an ancient tomb was unearthed. We are fortunate that he held publication of the book before adding the brief information about the findings. He told us:
“When these pages were passing through the press, a stone cist was discovered on the farm of Eastwood, by the hollow sound emitted when the ploughshare struck its lid. It was of the usual dimensions (about three feet by two), and contained fragments of bones, and a cinerary urn. There were no indications that a cairn had ever been heaped on its top, but the stones may have long since been removed, as the field was in a high state of cultivation. The bones were much decayed, and the urn was shivered to fragments by the finder, in his anxiety to discover hidden treasures of gold or silver.”
No further information is known to exist about this site. In all probability the cist was Bronze Age in nature, possibly earlier. We surmise this from the rapid rate of decay of artefacts upon it being unearthed.
References:
Greenshields, John B., Annals of the parish of Lesmahagow, Caledonian: Edinburgh 1864.
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Lanarkshire: An Inventory of the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, HMSO: Edinburgh 1978.
High up in the landscape on the northwestern edges of Bradford, where we now find the Chellow Heights reservoirs, ancient man saw fit to place the remains of their dead. It’s in a damn good location too, typical of burial sites. The views to the immediate north are directly at Rombalds Moor where, as we all know, Bronze Age and other prehistoric remains are found in huge numbers.
It was during the construction of the Chellow Heights reservoirs when the site was uncovered. Twas here, in June 1921, where segments of three urns and,
“an incomplete incense cup, 2 inches high and 3 inches diameter at its base, were found together with partly burnt bones”,
of what were thought to be a young female adult. There are few other details. The fact that there was no mention of any covering mound, nor mass or stones, strongly implies that neither a tumulus or cairn covered these urns—and neither place-name evidences nor early maps indicate anything to suggest such a monument—so it would be fair to surmise they had been deposited in a stone cist.
References:
Barnes, Bernard, Man and the Changing Landscape, Merseyside County Council 1982.
Longworth, Ian, Collared Urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland, Cambridge University Press 1984.
Rowe, J.H., “An Ancient Burial at Chellow, near Heaton,” in Heaton Review, volume 2, 1928.
Cist (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 1196 3824
Archaeology & History
The remains of a prehistoric tomb existed near the foot-bridge on the south-side of the canal at Dowley Gap, but was destroyed during the building of the sewage works there in 1951. It was reported by a Mr Duncanson to Bradford’s Cartwright Hall archaeology group, who told how they accidentally uncovered it during construction work. He told that the
“stone cist (was) about 3½ feet long and 1½ feet deep and was found on rising ground at the western end of the works where the storm water tanks are now situated.”
We obviously don’t know the age of the cist, but such grave monuments are most commonly Bronze Age. The existence of the Crosley Wood Iron Age enclosure 4-500 yards NNW and the prehistoric circle 800 yards east are the nearest other known early period monuments.
References:
Jackson, Sidney, “Stone Cist at Bingley,” in Cartwright Hall Archaeology Group Bulletin, 3:6, 1958.
Dead easy. From the top of the hill at Bettyhill, take the road east out of the village along the A836 Thurso road. At the bottom of the hill, on your left, you’ll see the white building of Farr church Museum. Walk to it and instead of going in the door, walk past it and round the back, or north-side of the church where, up against the wall, you’ll see this small stone-lined hole in the ground. Y’ can’t really miss it.
Archaeology & History
Originally located 7½ miles (12.1km) to the south at Chealamy (NC 7240 5017), in the prehistoric paradise of Strathnaver, it was uncovered following road-building operations in 1981 and, to save it from complete destruction, was moved to its present position on the north-side of Farr church museum. It was fortunate in being saved, as it was covered by a large boulder which the road operators tried to smash with a large jack-hammer; but in breaking it up, they noticed a hole beneath it. Thankfully, old Eliot Rudie of Bettyhill—a well respected amateur historian and archaeologist in the area—was driving past just as it had been uncovered by the workmen. He recognised it as being a probable cist and so further operations were stopped until it was investigated more thoroughly.
The relocated cist
The cist—measuring some 4 feet long by 3 feet wide and about 1½ feet deep—contained the burial of what was thought to be a man in his mid- to late-twenties. The remains were obviously in very decayed state and it was thought by archaeologist Robert Gourlay (1996), that the body itself had been “deposited in the grave (when it was) in an advanced state of decomposition.” Also in the cist they found a well-preserved decorated beaker, within which Gourlay thought “probably contained some kind of semi-alcoholic gruel for the journey of the departed to the after-life.”
References:
Gourlay, Robert, Sutherland – An Archaeological Guide, Birlinn: Edinburgh 1996.
Gourlay, Robert B., “A Short Cist Beaker Inhumation from Chealamy, Strathnaver, Sutherland”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries Scotland, volume 114, 1984.
Gourlay, Robert & Rudie, Eliot, “Chealamy, Strathnaver (Farr) Beaker Cist”, in Discovery Excavation Scotland, 1981.
Acknowledgments: To that inspiring creature Aisha Domleo, for her bounce, spirit and madness to get me up here; and for little Lara too, for meandering to the church museum where this cist can be seen; and to Eliot Rudie, who pointed it out to us.
