Along Halifax Road (A649), get to the Shears Inn and then take the footpath at the back of the pub that runs down the side of the fields and alongside the allotments. Less than 150 yards down, just through the stile into the edge of the field on your left, you’ll see the side-edge of a large flat stone in the grasses. Check it out!
Archaeology & History
Along with the Attack Well and Tree Root Well, this was one of three springs close to each other that gave local villagers their water supply in bygone times. When we visited here at the height of a long warm spell in the summer of 2023, there was still was a small amount of clear water trickling beneath the long flat slab of stone — although it was somewhat clogged-up with vegetation. It wouldn’t take much work to completely clean this out and use the fresh drinking water once again.
The well gained its name from its position in the land, with balk, being “a portion of a field left unploughed”, or “a strip of ground left untilled” and variants thereof.
References:
Wright, Joseph, The English Dialect Dictionary – volume 1, Henry Frowde: London 1898.
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to the great Gary Ferner, for use of his photo and the day’s venture!
Located down the slope behind Shears Inn on Halifax Road (A649), past the stone-lined Balk Well, then round the other side of the allotments up where the footpath cuts to your right, the waters from this site can barely be found in the now large mass of brambles that make it virtually inaccessible to reach. When Gary Ferner and I visited here, it seemed that a very small pool of water existed in the hollow beneath the prickly vegetative covering—but even I didn’t struggle to get through it all and so we don’t know if the waters are still running as once they were. It was obviously one of the wells that fed local people in earlier times, but I can find no historical references to the site apart from its showing on the 1908 Ordnance Survey map.
Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NS 4631 7307
Also Known as:
Trees’ Well
Archaeology & History
Photo of the Well in 1893
Sadly there are no longer any remains of this holy well which was found, “beside the church dedicated to St Patrick — which was said to be built on soil brought from Ireland in honor of its patron,” wrote John Bruce in 1893. He told that its waters had “been used until lately from time immemorial by the villagers, but now has been found unfit for use and consequently ordered to be closed up.” Although its waters were used for baptisms, he made no mention of any medicinal repute, which it surely would have possessed.
Site of well on 1939 map
The original position of the well, according to Mr Bruce, was “adjoining the church” but, according to the Ordnance Survey lads, when they came here in 1963 they located a drinking fountain on the other side of the road about 80 yards to the west and designated that as being St Patrick’s Well. The place had earlier been given a wooden sign saying “St Partrick’s Well.” Local tradition attributes St. Patrick as originally coming from this village, whose saint’s day is March 17.
The place was also known as Trees’Well, suggestive, perhaps, of a local person, although I can find no reference as to who or what that might have been.
References:
Bruce, John, The History of the Parish of West or Old Kilpatrick, John Smith: Glasgow 1893.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Holy Well (lost): OS Grid Reference – SE 134 331 (approximation)
Archaeology & History
This site is both interesting and frustrating at the same time. Interesting inasmuch that as early as 1258 CE, “the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem in England, had in Allerton a manor called the manor of Crosley.” The Hospitallers, as some will know, were the immediate successors of the more famous Knights Templars. As their name suggests, their patron saint was St John, whose festival date was summer solstice and had his name given to many holy wells. But this one has left us with no name and its location has long since been lost. In J.H. Bell’s (1888) essay on the early medical history of the area he told that local people with certain afflictions, “were wont to resort to them to drink their waters for their supposed medicinal virtues: there was one between Cemetery Bridge and Crossley Hall”. But he doesn’t give its exact position. In John James’ (1841) classic History of Bradford he thinks that near the place where the local stream known as the Hebble, “there was undoubtedly in former times a Holy well,” but is unable to cite a location. No well is shown on the early maps between the old Hall and the cemetery and the only definitive reference to wells close by are in the early boundary perambulation record, which describe a Brock Well and a Cold Well. Perhaps the the most probable contender and location is cited in Harry Speight’s (aka Johnnie Gray) Pleasant Walks (1890) where, taking a route between Great Horton and Allerton, he told us to,
“go through fields on to Necropolis Road, opposite Scholemoor cemetery, turn down lane left outside cemetery, ½ mile, descending steps, cross beck (here used to be the Spa Beck public gardens, now removed higher up) and ascend, at second field, leaving the forward path and turn left, following beck with Crosley Hall and trees to right.”
The location of the said Spa Beck gardens is very close to where Mr Bell described the medicinal spring and is/was the most likely position of what James (1841) thought to be a long lost holy well. If we could get more information about the history of the Spa Well, we may be able to make more definitive statements about the place.
From East Morton, head up the winding Street Lane for just over a mile until, on your right-hand side, you hit the long straight Roman Road, or Ilkley Road as it’s known. Literally 690 yards (0.63km) up, on your left a footpath is signposted. Take the path alongside the wall, through the first gate (note the pile of stones at this gate, which are the remains of the destroyed Bradup stone circle) then keeping on for ⅓-mile till you reach another gate, then 200 yards to the next one where you reach the moorland proper. From here you need to walk through the heather, just over 300 yards southwest where you’ll reach this large rock. Y’ can’t miss it!
Archaeology & History
Looking down at the CnR
Considering the size of this stone, visitors might expect there to be more on it than there actually is; although a large section of it has been quarried off and there might have been more to it in earlier times. A basic cup-and-ring with one or two single cup-marks elsewhere on its surface, the carving was first described by Stuart Feather (1964) following one of his many rambles hereby, when he was checking out the Rivock carvings a short distance to the west (calling it the Rivock 18 stone). He wrote:
S. Feather’s 1964 sketch
“On the eastern edge of the Rivock plateau, about half-a-mile west of the stone circle at Bradup Bridge, is a cup-and-ring marked rock of a pronounced triangular shape. This at present measures 10ft by 8ft and is 3ft high at its western side… At some time in the past it has been quarried, probably to build part of the adjacent gritstone walls. The 8ft side of the rock has quite distinct drill marks visible…
Close-up of the CnR
The rock has…on its sloping surface a very fine cup-and-ring mark, the ring 6in in diameter around a cup 2in deep, all finely executed and well preserved. Running south from this cup-and-ring mark is a level area 3ft long and 5in wide, which ends alongside the ring at one end and at the quarried edge of the rock at the other. This is probably the former position of a fossil which has weathered out and its alignment onto the cup-and-ring may be due to the carving having been deliberately sited in juxtaposition to this very distinct natural feature. Only one other 2in deep cup remains on the surviving original portion of the rock; others may have been quarried away.”
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Feather, Stuart, “Mid-Wharfedale Cup-and-Ring Markings – no.18, Rivock”, in Bradford Cartwright Hall Archaeology Bulletin, 9:2, 1964.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Cup-Marked Stones (lost): OS Grid Reference – SE 9657 8840
Archaeology & History
In the autumn of 1848, antiquarian John Tissiman (1850) and his associates took to uncovering two burial mounds amidst a large cluster of them on the eastern edge of West Ayton Moor. This one at Way Hagg was quite a big fella, measuring 36 yards across. When they cut into its northern edge towards the centre, 8-10 feet in, they came across an upright stone, nearly two feet high, on which five cup-marks had been cut. (see sketch, no.2) Slightly beyond this were three other stones (in sketch, nos.1, 3 & 4), each with cup-marks on them, beneath which was a tall urn. Whether or not the carvings had been deliberately positioned to cover the urn, we do not know. Nonetheless, we can be reasonably assured that these petroglyphs had some mythic association with death when they were placed here.
Tissiman gave us the following detailed measurements of the respective carvings:
“1: Nearly even surface. Length, from 16 to 18 inches; breadth, 10 to 20 ditto; depth, 8 to 9 ditto; with large oval hole cut in the centre, 7½ inches long, 4 inches broad, and 3½ inches in depth. On the opposite side are three holes, from 2 to 3 inches in diameter, and from 1 inch to 1½ deep. 2: Uneven surface. Length, 23 inches; breadth, 14 inches; depth, 13 inches; with five holes, from l½ to 3½ inches in diameter, and 1 to 1½ inches in depth. 3: Uneven surface. Length, 33 inches; breadth, 22 inches; depth, 10 inches, with four holes, the largest being 4½ inches in diameter and 3 inches deep; the others, from 1½ inches to 2 inches in diameter, and 1 to 1½ inches deep. 4: Uneven surface. Length, 27 inches; breadth, 23½ inches; depth, 10 inches, with 13 holes, from 1½ inches to 5 inches in diameter, and ¾ of an inch to 3 inches in depth; also three lines at the end of the stone.”
The carvings were included in Brown & Chappell’s (2005) fine survey, but they weren’t able to find out what happened to them after Tissiman’s excavation. They remain lost. If anyone has any information as to where they might be, please let us know.
References:
Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Tissiman, John, “Report on Excavations in Barrows, in Yorkshire,” in Journal British Archaeological Association, April 1850.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
1½ miles out of St Fillans on the A85 road towards Lochearnhead you reach the boating marina by the lochside. 100 yards or so past this, park up. Cross the road and walk 50 yards to your right then follow the dirt-track up into the trees. After ⅓-Mile (0.5km) turn left to the old house on your left and follow the green path around it, then around the right-side of the rocky knoll to the Wester Glentarken (1) and (2) carvings. From here walk straight uphill, direct north, past the pylon and onto the rocky outcrop behind the gorse shrubs. You’re here!
Archaeology & History
Away from the edge of this relatively flat rock surface, hemmed in between three geological scars, this decent petroglyph shows its memory to prying eyes. It was first described by George Currie (2005) as being just “17 cups (and) one pair of cups are linked”, but there are, as usual, more elements to it than that.
Faint cup-&-rings visible
As we can see quite clearly in the photos here, two of the cups possess rings around them. One of the cup-and-rings near the middle of the mass of cups is complete, with a short line running out of it and into the longest of the natural cracks that frame the design and that runs all the way across the surface of the stone. This cup-and-ring plays a part in a rough circle of cup-marks surrounding a central cup, with one of the outer cups possessing a companion just outside the ring. Two cups in this circle are elongated. There is a possibility that the cup-and-ring I’ve mentioned has another line running from it into the cupmark at the centre of the circle.
On the same side of the long natural crack, outside the circle of cups, is another cup with a faint ring around it. Tis difficult to say whether or not this was originally complete, but when we zoom in it’s pretty damn close!
Framed secondary clusterThe carving when dry
On the other side of the long natural crack is a haphazard spread of nine more cup-marks, with at least one of them seeming to possess a very faint incomplete ring around it. You can just make it out in one of the attached photos. From some angles it seems that two other cups may possess fragments of carved rings around them, but more visits are needed in better light before we can say this with any certainty. One of the cups in this cluster is elongated, whilst two other cups in this bunch are conjoined. Another crack to the side of this secondary cluster has one or two more cups cut into it. Altogether we have between 19 and 21 cups on this petroglyph, with rings around several of them. Worth checking out when you visit this neck o’ the woods. And, of course, if you’re a serious rock art researcher, scan the slopes hereby as other carvings yet remain hidden. You can almost feel them breathing…..
References:
Currie, George, “Wester Glentarken, Perth and Kinross (Comrie parish), Cup-marked Rocks,” in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, volume 6, 2005.
An intriguing find, made not too long ago by Jeff Wallbank of Silsden. Simplistic in design, it’s found on a small ridge of rocks adjacent to an old quarry (so there may have been other carvings here in times gone by), rising up immediately south of Haw Farm about 20 yards away, from where you can ask permission of the kind land-owner to have a look at the stone.
It’s pretty basic: consisting of a distinct triangle of three plain cup-marks on one side of a natural crack that runs across a section of the stone. Immediately adjacent and on the other side of this crack, is another singular cup. This appears to have a carved line running from it and possibly an elongated semi-circular element around the cup itself. It’s not too special when compared to the much more ornate petroglyphs further east, but is worth checking out if you’re walking in this gorgeous western edge of Rombalds Moor.
Acknowledgements: HUGE thanks to Sarah Walker, without whose help and permission to use her photos, this site profile could not have been written.
Sacred Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 3953 1570
Archaeology & History
The precise whereabouts of this site isn’t known with absolute certainty, but, following research by the respected folklorist and pagan historian Steve Jones of Wakefield, the grid-reference cited here has a high degree of probability about it. I certainly agree with Steve about its location.
Pond in Fairy Wood, shown on the 1893 OS-mapFairy Wood near Nostell, probable home of the Well
Known about in the 19th century, I was fortunate in coming across what seems to be the only reference to the place whilst perusing the scrapbook notes of local historian John Wilson (1903). Were it not for him we would have lost all knowledge of its existence and the local tale told of it, albeit watered into a dying belief in these supernatural creatures, would have faded completely before its final physical demise. Wilson was described as a “diligent a student of local history,” who possessed a great collection of rare booklets and pamphlets on Yorkshire history and was a “careful an observer and recorder of all pertaining to past times.” Of this Fairy Well, Wilson scribed the following poem:
At Nostell is a Fairy Well,
Hard by the margin of a wood
Wherein once dwelt, as old men tell,
The little folks of fickle mood ;
Till smoke and steam denied the dell
And made them quit both wood and well.
Blythe Henry Carr, mine ancient friend,
— So bravely keeping on his feet ;
May death long spare him,
still to wend His way along the village street,
Within the cobbler’s shop to spend
A pleasant hour — mine ancient friend.
The woodman at the Priory
In old Sir Rowland’s halcyon days
Was Thomas Watson, gay and free,
Who roused with song the woodland ways
A friend of Henry Carr’s was he,
—The woodman at the Priory.
This Watson many a tale could tell
Of fairies red and fairies green,
That in the wood and by the well
On summer evenings he had seen:
Of elves that thereabouts did dwell
This Watson many a tale could tell.
Whoever heard of such a thing!
He said that persons, known to him,
At eve would flasks of liquor bring,
And leave them, lying near the brim
Of this — the wondrous Fairy Spring —
Whoever heard of such a thing !
Was ever such a tale yet told ?
He said, that, when the morning came,
Each flask lay empty, and, behold !
Near each a drunken elf. O, shame !
The vice of those of mortal mould :
— Was ever such a tale yet told ?
Then question I mine ancient friend:
“Did no one seize the tipsy sprites? ”
“Not they ! for sudden is his end
On whom the fairy vengeance lights.”
With solemn eyes that fear portend
Thus answers me mine ancient friend.
Steve Jones already knew of the Fairy Wood, which was highlighted on the 1841 and 1854 6-inch-to-the-mile OS-map of the area—but no “Well” is shown in the woods. However, as Steve discovered, following a subsequent visit by the Ordnance Survey lads in 1891, they showed on their 25-inch-to-the-mile map of the woods a distinct small pond in the trees not far from the roadside. This, he thought, was probably the Fairy Well referred to by Wilson. It would seem so. Adjacent to the woods, the 1853 Tithe Award cite the existence of a field also dedicated to the fairy folk, known simply as Fairy Close.
References:
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire – volume 1, Cambridge University Press 1961
Huge thanks to the research by Steve Jones of Wakefield, without whose work the location of the Fairy Well would have remained a mystery. Also, thanks as always for use of the early edition OS-maps, Reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Follow the same directions as if you’re visiting the Gab Woods (1) carving—which you’re probably visiting if you’re checking this one out. Walk south into the middle of the woods and you’ll soon notice the road/houses on the other side of the trees. Once here, staying in the woods, follow the walling down for about 100 yards, keeping your eyes peeled for a reasonably large flat stone about 15 yards from the wall in the trees. If you can’t find it at first, patiently zigzag back and forth until it eventually appears!
Archaeology & History
One of two known petroglyphs in this woodland (there may be more hidden away) that was first found in the 1940s by Dan Cole. The main feature here consists of a cup-mark encircled by two large, well-defined oval-shaped “rings”, a bit like a large eye. From the central cup, a long carved line runs down the gently sloping surface of the stone and, roughly halfway down from the cup-and-ring to the edge of the stone, another carved line cuts across at rough right-angles, giving the carving a slight anthropomorphic (human-like) appearance when looking up the stone. This humanesque figure may have been the intention—though for my part I have to say that I’m slightly skeptical about it. We may never know either way. Several other single cups are on the stone: one to the side of the large “eye” and two or three below the elongated “arms.”
Vague humanesque figureLarge eye-shaped element
An additional, interesting non-petroglyphic feature is the name of the woodland in which the stone resides. In Thomas Wright’s massive dialect work, Gab is a northern dialect word meaning “to talk”, or “idle chatter” (and variants thereof); this is echoed in Blakeborough’s (1911) Yorkshire survey; and Wilkinson’s (1924) local study tells simply it’s “idle talk…able to talk glibly and with much plausibility—a Town Hall Square orator for instance.” This makes the place as something akin to being “the woodland that talks”, “the chattering woods” or “the talking woodland”, etc. You can make up your own mind as to what this might mean… *
References:
Blakeborough, Richard, Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, W. Rapp: Saltburn 1911.
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks must go to Peter Murphy for recovering this impressive carving from the archives, and from beneath the carpet of soil and vegetation, so enabling it to see the light of day once again. Also big thanks to the usual culprit of James Elkington, as well as Sarah Walker and Sarah Jackson.
* a Scottish dialect variant of gab relates to the mouth, tongue, taste.
