Tag: leys ley lines

Lower Glovershaw, Baildon Moor, West Yorkshire

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Ring Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13201 40124

Getting Here

Easy to find if you go at the right time of year — very troublesome to find if you go at the wrong time!  Check the place out at the end of winter, beginning of Spring.  It’s at the top end of Shipley Glen, just past where the road bends round and goes uphill.  About 50 yards up, on the left side of the road walk into the grasslands for less than 100 yards.  Look around!

Archaeology & History

An intriguing site this one.  Intriguing as it wasn’t in the archaeological registers when I first came across it — and I’m really unsure whether it’s in there now.  It probably has, as John Barnatt came here with some earth-mystery folk in 1982!  But when I first visited this site in 1975 it seemed no one knew about it — and little has changed since then.

It is an enclosed ring of stones less than 30 feet across with an earth embankment separating it from what seems like a secondary ring on its outer edge, a foot or two away.  This didn’t appear to surround the complete ring and may have been damaged.  It had an appearance similar in size, shape and form to the Roms Law and Harden Moor sites, and thankfully in reasonable condition. I don’t think any excavation has yet been performed here though.

There are a number of other small standing stones on the outskirts of this ring that may have some relationship with the site, but we need excavation to prove one way or the other.  Several very well-preserved cup-marked stones are close by.

Folklore

Intriguing to those of you who are fascinated by alignments between sites, or ‘leys’, as an impressive lines runs through this site. Starting at the little known Hirst Woods Circle and terminating at the giant Great Skirtful of Stones cairn, once passing over the now destroyed Weecher circle and the Brackenhall Green ring on its way.

References:

  1. Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Chieveley 2001.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Maxey Cursus, Cambridgeshire

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Cursus (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – TF 125 078

Archaeology & History

Much of this site has unfortunately been completely destroyed.  Thought by Colin Burgess (2001) to be one of the earliest cursus monuments,  it was Paul Devereux (1989) who gave the clearest early description of this site,* telling:

“This site is to be found…between the village of Maxey and the River Welland, south of Market Deeping. When discovered by aerial photography the cursus was already partially destroyed… The northwest segment ‘starts’ almost on the banks of the Welland and goes southeast on a straight course to an obliterated point where a change of alignment occurred, and the cursus continues in a different direction. The total known length is 1930 yards (1.77km), and the width averages 190 feet (58 metres). The ditches themselves display subtly different orientations, but are in straight sections. The investigations of F. Pryor suggests that the northwest length of the cursus was constructed long after the southeast portion, when the latter’s ditches had become silted up (banks do not seem to have been present). The southernmost ditch of the southeastern section bisects two circular sites. Site A is particularly interesting. It occurs just east of the…change in direction, or junction of the two cursuses if such was the case.”

And such is the case, as recent discoveries have found. But before this was known for sure, Devereux wrote, that “a segment of cursus ditch emerges from this vaguely henge-like site, 450 feet in diameter, in the direction of the nearby church” of St. Peter.

The “henge-like site” described here has been defined by Oswald, Dyer and Barber (2001) as one of the enigmatic ’causewayed enclosure’ monuments – out of which emerges the other seperate alignment, the Etton Cursus, heading southeast.

References:

  1. Burgess, Colin, The Age of Stonehenge, Phoenix: London 2001.
  2. Loveday, Colin, Inscribed Across the Landscape, Tempus: Stroud 2006.
  3. Oswald, A., Dyer, C. & Barber, M., The Creation of Monuments, EH: Swindon 2001.
  4. Pennick, N. & Devereux. P., Lines on the Landscape, Hale: London 1989.
  5. Pryor, Francis, Britain BC, Harper-Collins: London 2003.

* The OS-reference for this site is of the northwestern end of the cursus. The southeastern terminal is at TF139063.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian