Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TA 0422 7726
Archaeology & History
A once-impressive haunted burial mound on the southern edge of Folkton parish, all that remains of the place now are aerial images showing the ghostly ring of its former site. Commenting on the destruction of this burial mound before he had chance to give it his full attention, in William Greenwell’s (1877) magnum opus he wrote the following:
“Elf Howe had been removed to a great extent, and the grave had been dug out before I had an opportunity of examining it. I however got an account of what was discovered from the foreman on the farm, and I was able personally to inspect a small portion which had not been disturbed. The barrow had been 60ft in diameter and 6ft high, and was made of earth and chalk. Near the centre a deposit of burnt bones was met with, over which some large flints were placed; this was at a depth of 4ft, and as a great quantity of burnt earth was observed immediately round the bones, it is probable that the body had been burnt on the spot where the bones were placed. Two unburnt bodies were found on the south side of the mound, with one of which a vessel of pottery was associated. At a distance of 17ft south-south-east of the centre I found the body of a strongly-made man, laid on the right side, with the head to the south and the hands to the knees; he body was placed about 6in above the natural surface. Immediately below the head was the body of a very young child, the bones of which were too much decayed to admit of anything being made out beyond the fact that it was a child’s body which was laid there. Still lower, and on the natural surface, was a patella, a radius, and some other bones of a body, which had been disturbed, probably in the interring of the person who was found buried above. At the centre was a grave, lying northwest and southeast, 7ft by 6½ft and 2½ft deep. On the bottom at the north side was the body of a strongly-made man in the middle period of life, whose head…was to the south, but my informant could not remember on which side the body was laid; at the head was a ‘food vessel’, which, from the fragments that have been preserved, must have been a rudely-made one with unusually thick walls.”
Folklore
Although antiquarians and archaeologists such as Elgee, Grinsell, Gutch, Johnson and others each tell (in their own respective ways) that Elf Howe “testifies to a widespread belief in goblin-haunted barrows” — albeit in the linguistic ‘elven’ of the Scandinavian invaders — we appear to have lost the original tale behind this fairy-haunted site.
References:
Greenwell, William, British Barrows, Clarendon Press: Oxford 1877.
This once impressive tumulus a half-mile east of the village was first mentioned in the Bardney Cartulary in the early 13th century, where is was written as Spelhou. Suggested by Olof Anderson (1934) to have been an early moot site — “the meeting place of the Torbar Hundred” — this appears to be confirmed in Smith’s (1937) etymological analysis where he ascribes Spell Howe to be literally, “‘Speech mound’, from OE spell, speech and haugr” (burial mound). Rising about four-feet above ground level, this is a traditional ’round barrow’ type of tumulus. In recent years, reports tell that it has been built onto with some fencing. Hopefully the present land-owners now look after the place!
References:
Anderson, O.S., The English Hundred-Names, Lunds Universitets Arsskrift 1934.
Mortimer, J.R., Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, Brown & Sons: Hull 1905.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, Cambridge University Press 1937.
Cairnfield (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TQ 702 590
Archaeology & History
Ground-plan
In recent years it seems that very little has been written about this seemingly lost site, long since destroyed by the self-righteous advance of the Industrialists. It seems to have been an important place, as there were many cremated remains here in more than a dozen individual burial urns, some with flints deposited in them. The site was first described in a meeting of members of the Society of Antiquaries in 1898 by a Mr Frederick James. He talked about the site and some brief digging work around the area, thus:
“The site of the urnfield is on land belonging to Mr William Wigan, of Clare House, East Malling, and it was owing to his kind permission and active cooperation that I was enabled to visit the spot, which is on a small plateau above the River Medway, 350 yards to the southwest of New Hythe church, and between the river and the road leading from Rochester to Town Malling…
“The immediate neighbourhood…has been from time to time highly productive of archaeological remains dating from the Palaeolithic times and extended down to the Roman occupation… (But at) the Larkfield urnfield, the first indication that was afforded of the uses to which the area had been put in Romano-British times was the accidental discovery, whilst planting fruit trees, of some fragments of pottery (including portion of a Samian patera) found at the point marked A on the plan. A flat tile was found covering the fragments.”
Much more was found hereby, with the majority of the finds being “a group of urns containing cremated interments found in the urn-pits.” Although James (1898) described them as dating from the Romano-British period, from his description and illustrations it would seem that the remains here were probably of an earlier date, perhaps Iron- or even Bronze Age. But we may never know for sure.
Reference:
James, Frederick, “Discovery of a Romano-British Urnfield at Larkfield, near Maidstone,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 17:1, 1898.
From the Askwith Moor Road parking spot and walk up the road for about 500 yards an head to your right (east) onto he moor, above the rocky ridge known as Snowden Crags. After 100 yards or so of walking through the heather, the entire cairnfield is under your very feet! If the heather’s grown, you probably won’t see a thing.
Archaeology & History
First described in Eric Cowling Rombald’s Way (1946), where he mentions around 30 cairns on the moorland plain immediately west of the Snowden Moor settlement. These were plainly visible when Richard Stroud and I visited here in 2005, thanks mainly to the fact that the heather had been burnt away. Once it’s grown back, virtually all of these tombs will be hard to find. I first had fortune to see some of these tombs on a visit here with Graeme Chappell about 15 years ago, but only a little of the cemetery was then visible. Following another visit to the site this week, a great deal more has become visible, thanks again to heather-burning on the moors.
One of around 30 cairns on the ridge…and another one!
Curiously omitted from the Nidderdale Archaeological survey report of sites in this region (anyone know why?), the cemetery itself stretches from the western edge of the Snowden Moor settlement, several hundred yards west along the flat moorland plain towards the moorland road, stopping a short distance before the line of old grouse butts. It is highly likely that some of the stones in the grouse-butts originated in some of the prehistoric cairns along the ridge. And if summat aint done about it, there’s a likelihood this could easily happen again in the near future.
…and another!
The easternmost cairn touches the very edge of the D-shaped settlement; and another of them is right next to a cup-marked stone. Whilst a number of the cairns along this ridge are much like those found on the moors above Ilkley, Bingley, Middleton, Askwith Moor, Earby, etc — averaging 2-3 yards in diameter and less than 2 feet high amidst the peat and decaying herbage — one notable feature to many of these tombs is the inclusion of a rather large, singular boulder, against which or around are propped the smaller stones, typical of cairns found elsewhere in the region. This ‘large boulder’ characteristic is not common at other tombs in the mid-Pennines, but seems specific to this graveyard. Neither do the large boulders seem set in any particularly consistent fashion. There is the possibility that they were originally above the smaller cairn of stones, but this is purely hypothetical and non-verifiable without excavations.
The important Snowden Crags cairn circle, discovered by the hardworking Keighley volunteer Michala Potts on Thursday, 20 May, 2010, can be found on the northern part of this cairnfield.
References:
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Get here before the heather grows back! From the Askwith Moor parking spot, walk up the road (north) and turn left on the moorland track, past the triangulation pillar, then the ranger’s hut on the edge of the hill, and head WNW along and down the gradual slope. You’ll get to a row of grouse butts after a few hundred yards and, if you’re lucky to find it, an old OS trig-marked arrow carved on one of the low-lying stones. This stone is about 10 yards away from the cairn!
Archaeology & History
There are no previous references to this site. It was discovered by the hardworking Keighley volunteer, Michala Potts of Bracken Bank, on May 20, 2010, and was the most visible of at least three prehistoric cairns on the sloping edge of this hill. The main one illustrated here is about 3 yards in diameter and only a foot or two high. Typical of the many Bronze Age cairns scattering the moors north and south of here, several others are in close attendance. It seems as if some of the stone from this cairn has been robbed to build some of the grouse-butts that stretch across the moors hereby.
Single cairn on Askwith MoorSame cairn, looking uphill
About 50 yards away from the main cairn shown in the photos are a couple of others of the same size and nature. And if we walk over the other side of the nearby rounded hill immediately south, a couple of other cairns are in evidence. However, we didn’t spend too much time here getting any images, as other sites on the moor were beckoning and we were running out of good daylight!
The name of this area seems a little odd: “High Low” — and our old place-name masters say little about it in the Yorkshire directories. The name is shown in the earliest large-scale OS-maps, but the contradiction of a high low ridge probably derives from the word originally being lowe, or “hlaw”: which as A.H. Smith (1956) said,
“In (old english) the common meaning in literary contexts is ‘an artificial mound, a burial mound,'”
Cairn to centre, with 1 more on near horizon
which is exactly what we have found here — or several of them scattered about. This tumulus derivation is echoed by modern place-name authorities like Margaret Gelling (1988), etc. Gelling told how the word hlaw, or low, and its variants, “was used of burial mounds over a wide area, from the south coast to the West Riding.” Much as we’ve found on this hill at Askwith Moor! We’ve yet more exploring to do in and around this area in the coming weeks. God knows what else we’ll find!
References:
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Gelling, Margaret, Signposts to the Past, Phillimore: Chichester 1988.
Smith, A.H., English Place-Name Elements – volume 1, Cambridge University Press 1956.
From the large parking spot by the roadside along Askwith Moor Road, walk up (north) 250 yards until you reach the gate with the path leading onto Askwith Moor. Follow this along, past the triangulation pillar until you reach the Warden’s Hut near the top of the ridge and overlooking the moors ahead. Naathen — look due south onto the moor and walk straight down the slope till the land levels out. If you’re lucky and the heather aint fully grown, you’ll see a cluster of stones about 500 yards away. That’s where you’re heading. If you end up reaching the Woman Stone carving, you’ve walked 100 yards past where you should be!
Archaeology & History
Discovered on the afternoon of May 13, 2010, amidst another exploratory ramble in the company of Dave Hazell. We were out looking for the Woman Stone carving and a few others on Askwith Moor, and hoping we might be lucky and come across another carving or two in our meanderings. We did find a previously unrecorded cup-marked stone (I’ll add that a bit later) — and a decent one at that! — but a new cairn-field was one helluva surprise. And in very good nick!
Cairn A, looking northwestCairn A, looking east
There are several cairns sitting just above the brow of the hill, looking into the western moors. Most of these are typical-looking single cairns, akin to those found on the moors above Ilkley, Bingley and Earby, being about 3 yards across and a couple of feet high amidst the peat and heather covering. But two of them here are notably different in structure and size (and please forgive my lengthy description of them here).
We found these tombs after noticing a large section of deep heather had been burnt back, and a large mass of rocks were made visible as a result. Past ventures onto these moors when seeking for cup-and-ring carvings hadn’t highlighted this cluster, so we thought it might be a good idea to check them out! As I approached them from the south from the Woman Stone carving (where we’d sat for a drink and some food, admiring the moors and being shouted at by a large gathering of geese who did not want us here), it became obvious, the closer I got, that something decidedly man-made was in evidence here.
Cairn A, looking south
Walking roughly northwards out of the heather and onto the burnt ground, a cairn-like feature (hereafter known as “Cairn A”) was right in front of me; though this seemed to have a ring of small stones — some earthfast, others placed there by people — surrounding the stone heap. And, as I walked around the edge of this large-ish cairn (about 9 yards in diameter and 2-3 feet tall), it was obvious that a couple of these outlying stones were stuck there by humans in bygone millenia. The most notable feature was the outlying northernmost upright: a small standing stone, coloured white and distinctly brighter than the common millstone grit rock from which this monument is primarily comprised. As I walked round it — adrenaline running and effing expletives emerging the more I saw — it became obvious that this outlying northern stone had long lines of thick quartz (or some crystalline vein) running across it, making it shine very brightly in the sunlight. Other brighter stones were around the edge of the cairn. It seemed obvious that this shining stone was of some importance to the folks who stuck it here. And this was confirmed when I ambled into another prehistoric tomb about 50 yards north, at “Cairn B.”
Cairn B, looking northCairn B, looking east
Cairn B was 11 yards in diameter, north-south, and 10 yards east-west. At its tallest height of only 2-3 feet, it was larger than cairn A. This reasonably well-preserved tomb had a very distinct outlying “wall” running around the edges of the stone heap, along the edge of the hillside and around onto the flat moorland. Here we found there were many more stones piled up in the centre of the tomb, but again, on its northern edge, was the tallest of the surrounding upright stones, white in colour (with perhaps a very worn cup-marking on top – but this is debatable…), erected here for some obviously important reason which remains, as yet, unknown to us. Although looking through the centre of the cairn and onto the white upright stone, aligning northwest on the distant skyline behind it, just peeping through a dip, seems to be the great rocky outcrop of Simon’s Seat and its companion the Lord’s Seat: very important ritual sites in pre-christian days in this part of the world. Near the centre of this cairn was another distinctly coloured rock, as you can see in the photo, almost yellow! Intriguing…
The smaller “Cairn C”
Within a hundred yards or so scattered on the same moorland plain we found other tombs: Cairns C, D, E, F, G and H — but cairns A and B were distinctly the most impressive. An outlying single cairn, C, typical of those found on Ilkley Moor, Bingley Moor, Bleara Moor, etc, was just five yards southwest of Cairn A, with a possible single cup-marked stone laying on the ground by its side.
Just to make sure that what we’d come across up here hadn’t already been catalogued, I contacted Gail Falkingham, Historic Environment team leader and North Yorkshire archaeological consultant, asking if they knew owt about these tombs. Gail helpfully passed on information relating to a couple of “clearance cairns” (as they’re called) — monument numbers MNY22161 and MNY 22162 — which are scattered at the bottom of the slope below here. We’d come across these on the same day and recognised them as 16th-19th century remains. The cairnfield on top of the slope is of a completely different character and from a much earlier historical period.
We know that human beings have been on these moors since mesolithic times from the excess of flints, blades and scrapers found here. Very near to these newly-discovered tombs, Mr Cowling (1946) told that:
“On the western slope of the highest part of Askwith Moor is a very interesting flaking site. For some time flints have been found in this area, but denudation revealed the working place about August, 1935. There were found some twenty finished tools of widely different varieties of flint. A large scraper of red flint is beautifully worked and has a fine glaze, as has a steep-edged side-blow scraper of brown flint. A small round scraper of dull grey flint has the appearance of newly-worked flint, and has been protected by being embedded in the peat…One blade of grey flint has been worked along both edges to for an oblong tool… The flint-worker on this site appears to have combed the neighbourhood to supplement the small supply of good flint.”
All around here we found extensive remains of other prehistoric remains: hut circles, walling, cup-and-ring stones, more cairns, even a probable prehistoric trackway. More recently on another Northern Antiquarian outing, we discovered another previously unrecognised cairnfield on Blubberhouse Moor, two miles northwest of here.
References:
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Jack, Jim, “Ancient Burial Ground and Bronze Age Finds on Moor,” in Wharfedale Observer, Thursday, May 27, 2010.
From Earby, go eastwards up the steep moorland Coolham Lane. A coupla hundred yards up past the little reservoirs on your right there’s a tall, large wooden stile to climb over, up the old heaps of quarried stone and onto the flat moorland plain of Bleara Moor. You’re here! If the heather’s grown back however, you’ve no chance of seeing ’em!
Archaeology & History
One of at least a dozen small cairns on NW of Bleara Moor
When we came up here the other day (ostensibly to check out the great Bleara Lowe tombs on top of the moor), a grey wet day scattered its more darkened light across the moor, which thankfully had been burnt back a few months previous. If this hadn’t happened, we’d have never seen what we found: a scattering of at least a dozen small single cairns, typical of those found on the upper and lower slopes of Green Crag Slack on Ilkley Moor. They’re on the lower northwest-facing plain of Bleara Moor and all are roughly the same size: about 3 yards by 3 yards across and only a foot or two in height, much overgrown in peat and vegetation. Although we found a good number of these small cairns where the heather had been burnt away, there also seemed to be others in the long heather itself, but this was, of course, hard to say with any certainty. A few more exploratory ventures in and around the moor would be good after the next heather-burning sessions!
You can come from various angles to approach this site, but I reckon the best is from along the old trackway of Parson’s Lane, between Addingham and Marchup. From Silsden go up the long hill (A6034) towards Addingham until the hill levels out, then turn left on Cringles Lane (keep your eyes peeled!) for about 500 yards until you reach the Millenium Way or Parson’s Lane track, to your right. As you walk along this usually boggy old track, the rounded green hill ahead, to the left, if where you’re heading. Less than 100 yards past the little tumulus of High Marchup there’s a stile on your left that takes you into the field. You’ll notice the depression that runs across near the top, at an angle. That’s part of the earthworks!
Archaeology & History
The Counter Hill earthworks just over the far western edge of Rombald’s Moor – thought to be Iron Age – are truly gigantic. More than ¾-mile across along its longest NW-SE axis, and a half-mile from north-south at its widest point, this huge ellipse-shaped earthwork surrounds the rounded peaked hill that gives the site its name: Counter Hill. And although Harry Speight (1900) thought the hill got its name from the old Celtic conaltradh, or Irish conaltra, as in the ‘hill of debate or conversation’ — a possibility — the place-name master Mr Smith (1961) reckoned its name comes from little other than ‘cow turd hill’! We may never know for sure…
Earthworks south of Counter HillCowling’s 1946 plan
The Lancashire historian Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1878) appears to have been one of the first people to describe the Counter Hill remains, though due to the sheer size of the encampment he thought that it was Roman in nature. Within the huge enclosure we also find two large inner enclosures, known as the Round Dikes and the Marchup earthworks. Whitaker’s description of Counter Hill told:
“There are two encampments, on different sides of the hill, about half a mile from each other: one in the township of Addingham, the other in the parish of Kildwick; the first commanding a direct view of Wharfedale, the second an oblique one of Airedale; but though invisible to each other, both look down aslant upon Castleburg (Nesfield) and Ilkley. Within the camp on Addingham Moor are a tumulus and a perennial spring; but by a position very unusual in such encampments, it is commanded on the west by a higher ground, rising immediately from the foss. The inconvenience, however, is remedied by an expedient altogether new, so far as I have observed, in Roman castramentation, which is a line of circumvallation, enclosing both camps, and surround the whole hill: an area, probably, of 200 acres. A garrison calculated for the defence of such an outline must have been nothing less than an army. But it would be of great use in confining the horses and other cattle necessary for the soldiers’ use, which, in the unenclosed state of the country at the time, might otherwise have wandered many miles without interruption. The outlines of these remains is very irregular; it is well known, however, that in their summer encampments the Romans were far from confining themselves to a quadrangular figure, and when we consider their situation near the Street, and the anxious attention with which they have been placed, so as to be in view of Ilkley or Castleburg, there can be little danger of a mistake in ascribing them to that people.”
Counter Hill earthworks, looking west
And though Whitaker’s sincerity and carefully worded logic for the period is quite erudite (much moreso than the greater majority of historians in modern times), his proclamation of the Counter Hill earthworks as Roman is very probably wrong (soz Tom). The embankments are much more probably Iron Age in nature and are very probably the result of indigenous tribal-folk than that of the incoming Romans. Most modern archaeologists and historians tend to see the entrenchments as being from such a period and I have to concur.
Folklore
The old antiquarian Edmund Bogg (1904) wrote that the Counter Hill earthworks were built as a result “of the struggle between the Anglians and the Celt,” long ago. The great Yorkshire historian Harry Speight (1900) narrated similar lore just a few years earlier, but told that the tradition was “of how the Romans drove the natives from this commanding site of Counter Hill.”
References:
Bogg, Edmund, Higher Wharfeland: The Dale of Romance, James Miles: Leeds 1904.
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Fletcher, J.S., A Pictureseque History of Yorkshire – Part IX, J.M. Dent: London 1901.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire – volume 6, Cambridge University Press 1961.
Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.
Whitaker, T.D., The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, 3rd edition, Joseph Dodgson: Leeds 1878.
From Silsden go up the long hill (A6034) towards Addingham until the hill levels out, then turn left on Cringles Lane (keep your eyes peeled!) for about 500 yards until you reach the Millenium Way footpath, or rather, green lane track, to your right. Walk along this usually boggy old road for another 400 yards until you’re level with the small copse of trees below the field (about 100 yards away). The slightly raised ditched mound on the left side of the track ahead of you is what you’re after!
Archaeology & History
Unless this old tomb was pointed out, you probably wouldn’t give the place a second glance. It’s a seemingly isolated singular round tomb, subsided on top and surrounded by a small ditch, running into the edge of the walling. Gorse bushes and a few rocks are around the edges of the site. Harry Speight (1900) described this old tomb as a
“lonely isolated mound, to be seen in Parson Lane about a hundred yards west of the Celtic boundary, Black Beck, where some old dying chief has called his friends around him bidding them, “heap the stones of his renown that they may speak to other years.” It is a tumulus 80 feet in circumference and does not seem to have been disturbed.”
In Faull and Moorhouse’s (1981) magnum opus they describe the site as “the denuded remains of a ditched round barrow,” but say little else. It may have had some relationship with the settlement remains in and around the huge Counter Hill complex, immediately north.
References:
Cowling, E.T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
Faull, M.L. & Moorhouse, S.A. (eds.), West Yorkshire: An Archaeological Guide to AD 1500 (4 volumes), WYMCC: Wakefield 1981.
Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.
Once located on the south side of the stream between the ‘lost’ village of Eastburn and the cottages at Battleburn, this burial mound was one of many explored by the great J.R. Mortimer (1905), who told that:
“On June 24th, 1884, it measured about 40 feet in diameter and 4½ in elevation, and had a depression in the centre, which might have been caused by a former opening. By the old inhabitants of the neighbourhood it is known — like several other similar mounds near settlements — by the name of Mill Hill. A 15-feet square was cut from the centre and the natural ground beneath was found to consist of 3 feet of clay, resting upon chalk gravel. Through this clay and into the chalk gravel beneath was a roughly-cut trench, 3½ feet deep by about 3 feet wide, running north and south the whole width of our excavation and beyond, and from about the centre of the mound a similarly roughly-formed trench was observed to run east and west…”
In the sections that Mortimer and his fellows excavated, they uncovered various intriguing deposits, including the remains of ox, goats and horses. Later deposits were also located in and around the mound, showing it had been used in more recent centuries.
Folklore
Mortimer suggested this site was once an old moot site; comparing it to a place of the same name a short distance west at Kirkburn.
References:
Mortimer, J.R., Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, A. Brown & Sons: London 1905.
