Northumbria – Page 2

Hawklemass Well, Whittingham, Northumberland

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Healing Well: OS Grid Reference – NU 0683 1228

Archaeology & History

Hawklemass Well on 1866 map

References to this site seem very scarce. A well is highlighted on the 1866 OS-map of the region close to the spot which D.D. Dixon (1895) said it was found, “near to the Howbalk Lane end, where is also the Hawklemass Stile and Hawklemass Well.” A stone trough could once be seen here, but its presence today needs to be confirmed by local researchers. The site is listed in Binnall & Dodds (1943) survey, but with no additional comments to those made by Mr Dixon.

Folklore

The historian D.D. Dixon (1895) told that the village of Whittingham only had one ghost, but it was known as the “Hawklemass Ghost” and was occasionally encountered at the Hawklemass Well:

“This was a place never passed after nightfall by the youth of the village without feeling an eerie, creepy sensation, and with many a furtive glance on either side. This unearthly visitant, in its gambols and uncanny pranks, was said to rattle the chain by which it was supposed to be bound in a fearsome manner. It was usually seen or heard by persons who, having lingered long at the village inn, could say with Tam o’ Shanter,

“While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An gettin’ fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and styles,
That lie between us and our hame.”

One Saturday night many years ago—perhaps fifty—a poor fellow on his way from Whittingham to Glanton fel into the roadside at Hawklemass, where he was found, quite dead, the next morning by some persons on their way to Glanton meeting. This sad affair may have given rise to the tradition of the Hawklemass Ghost.”

The name of the old lane at whose junction the Hawklemass Well once flowed, ‘Howbalk Lane’, may derive from a lost tumulus, as the word how (and its variants) regularly relate to prehistoric mounds in our more northern climes. Such an ancient tomb, close to the well, may be the origin of the ghost story.

References:

Binnall, P.B.G. & Dodds, M.H., “Holy Wells in Northumberland and Durham – part 2”, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 10:2, 1943.
Dixon, David Dippie, Whittingham Vale, Northumberland, Robert Redpath: Newcastle 1895.

Acknowledgements: With thanks to Gill Rutherford for prompting me to finish this; and to Claire Heron for the OS-map reference.

Pike Hill, Stamfordham, Northumbria

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Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – NZ 0774 7048

Archaeology & History

Pike Hill CR, Stamfordham, Northumberland — 1928 photo of carving

Found inside a prehistoric tomb that was excavated in the late 1920s “by Messrs R.C. and W.P. Hedley at Pike Hill, near Stamfordham,” this fascinating-looking carving was found on a stone that “was overlying the primary burial” cist in the middle of the tumulus, measuring “2 feet 9 inches long by 2 feet wide and 12 inches deep, with an orientation on the longer axis of NE.” As we can see in the old photo that accompanied Mr Hedley’s (1928) short article in Antiquity journal, four single cups are arranged in a rough square and are joined with each other by a single line, running from cup to cup, outlining a clear quadrilateral formation. Two other single cups are outliers on the left and right side of the ‘square.’

A second smaller cist was also found inside the same mound and on the central inner face of this was another, more simplistic carving described as “a very fine cup-mark 1½ inch in diameter and ¾-inch deep.” These carvings are no longer in situ (I think they’re in Newcastle Museum) and apparently this second single cup-marked stone can no longer be located.

References:

Beckensall, Stan, Northumberland’s Prehistoric Rock Carvings, Pendulum: Rothbury 1983.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 2: Beanley to the Tyne, Abbey Press: Hexham 1992.
Hedley, R. Cecil, “Ancient British Burials, Northumberland,” in Antiquity Journal, volume 2, December 1928.

Fowberry Moor Farm, Wooler, Northumberland

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Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – NU 029 261

Also known as:

Deershed Plantation Stone

Archaeology & History

This is a small but impressive stone, presently housed in the Musuem of Antiquities in Newcastle. It was first mentioned by Mr H.L. Honeyman (1934) as being donated to Newcastle’s Society of Antiquaries by a Mr J.M. Strother of Fowberry Moor Farm in 1934. He described the carving as,

“a sculptured ring-marked stone, 1ft 2in by 1ft 2in, bearing a cup with three rings and duct. Found in Island Plantation (camp), Fowberry Moor, Chatton, 22.7.34, by Mr Wake.”

Stan Beckensall (1983:127) described it in passing his early work on Northumberland rock art, then again in his updated edition.

References:

Beckensall, Stan, Northumberland’s Prehistoric Rock Carvings, Pendulum: Rothbury 1983.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
Honeyman, Herbert L., ‘The Society’s Meetings: July,’ in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (4th Series), 4:7, October 1934.