Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SP 2946 3090
Archaeology & History
Only known drawing of Gough’s Barrow
In days of olde there were heathen sites around the edges of the beautiful Rollright Stones complex that have sadly fallen prey to the intensive agriculture of more modern ‘civilized’ times. It’s become the way of things….. One site of importance in this geomythic pantheon was the ‘Gough’s Barrow’—so named after a drawing was done of the site by Richard Gough, editor of the 1789 edition of Camden’s Britannia. As far as I’m aware, it is the only one ever done of this monument. The Oxford archaeologist George Lambrick (1988) saw “every reason to accept the position and details of the barrow”, upon which stood at least two large stones—one of which gained the description of a ‘druidical pillar.’
Stukeley’s 1743 drawing
The same barrow may have been recorded in one of drawings of the great William Stukeley, who visited the Rollright Stones in 1710 and then again in 1723. On the left-side of the adjacent drawing you can see a denuded mound close to the edge of the picture, similar in shape and form to that drawn by Richard Gough. It is probably the same tumulus or barrow. Trial excavations at the site in 1983 looked for any remains of the old tomb, but nothing significant was uncovered. Lambrick estimated that the site probably measured “about 18m wide and 20m long east-west,” and “was a megalithic barrow and was therefore probably Neolithic in origin.”
References:
Bennett, Paul & Chanter, James, The Complete Rollright Stones, forthcoming
Bennett, Paul & Wilson, Tom, The Old Stones of Rollright and District, Cockley Press: Chipping Norton 1999.
Burl, Aubrey, Great Stone Circles, Yale University Press 1999.
Lambrick, George, The Rollright Stones, English Heritage 1988.
Take the A809 road several miles north out of Glasgow, between Bearsden and Drymen. Once out of the suburban sprawl, passing Milngavie, you’re heading to the famous Carbeth hutters. Before this, note the gold course on your right (east). Park here and cross the road where a gate and overgrown footpath takes you onto the grassy hills. Keep to the fence-side for about 700 yards until it veers downhill. Don’t walk downhill! Keep in the same direction into the short grasses and, veering gradually left, downhill for a couple hundred yards ahead and, across a small boggy area, you’ll note some large upright stones in front of a mound. That’s it!
Archaeology & History
The SE stone ‘entrance’
There is no previous reference to this site which was found, quite fortuitously, by Nina Harris of Organic Scotland a few years ago. She visited the site a number of times, puzzling over the curious line of possible standing stones at the edge the grass-covered mound—wondering if it was anything at all. A few months ago she took us to see the place…
Modern gunshot cup-marks on entrance stone
The site has been damaged and elements of it have been stripped for walling that are visible all around here. The cairn is more than 55 yards in length, running from its southeastern stone ‘entrance’ to the gradually diminishing northwestern edges. At its widest it is 14.6 yards (13.5m) across, near its southeastern end. The main three standing stones at its entrance are four-feet tall at the highest, with one of them leaning upon another; an adjacent fourth stone, smaller than the main three, is more embedded into the cairn mass a couple of yards away. Cup-marks on one of the three larger uprights here are recent gunshot marks; whilst the possible cup-marks on the largest upright are natural.
Line of ancient wall runs up and over the cairn
Looking NW along the cairn mass
In standing on top of the long cairn, just above the large stones, you can see how sections of it have been stripped away. Just beneath the surface is a line of internal walling, with what seems to be another one running parallel. These run for a few yards until we reach a large circular depression within the overall cairn mass, a yard deep and 6-7 yards across; on the northern edge of which we can clearly see a section of walling beneath the surface. When we look at the aerial view of this on Google Earth, we can clearly see how this walling actually begins way outside of the cairn mass itself, as a much denuded line of it (probably medieval in origin, though possibly Iron Age) curves across the grasslands from the west, crosses the long cairn and re-emerges on the other side of the adjacent boggy ground at its southeastern edges and continues on its way: indicating that the cairn mass beneath the wall is much older than the walls running across it.
“X” marks the spot!
The main three ‘entrance’ stones
Audrey Henshall (1972) described the existence of another prehistoric chambered tomb like this one at Cairnhowit 1.95 miles (3.14km) southwest, and we find the Stockie Muir long cairn 3.12 miles (5.02km) to the northwest, clearly showing that the incidence of this monument is not an isolated one. Others can be found not much further away. The existence of the raised geological plate known as Carneddans Wood just over a mile south may have once been home to another chambered cairn.
Please note that the grid reference for this site fixes on the southeastern section of the cairn, where the upright stones are.
References:
Henshall, Audrey S., The Chambered Tombs of Scotland – volume 2, Edinburgh University Press 1972.
Acknowledgements: First and foremost to Nina Harris, for unknowingly finding the place; also to Paul Hornby and Marion Woolley for visits to the site.
This fascinating and very ornate prehistoric carving was found on the underside of a grave-slab beneath Old King Coil’s Grave, or an adjacent prehistoric burial feature (we don’t know for sure). In Daniel Wilson’s (1851) superb early work on prehistoric Scotland is a detailed drawing of this ornate petroglyph—similar in design and form to those found across the waters in Ireland—copied “from a drawing presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Colonel Hugh Montgomery of Shielmorly, in 1785.” Mr Wilson informed us that,
“It formed the cover of a cist, discovered in digging a gravel-pit at Coilsfield, in Ayrshire, and underneath it was found an urn filled with incinerated bones. The dimensions of the stone were about five feet in length by two and a half feet in breadth”
James Simpson’s 1866 sketch
A few years later Sir James Simpson (1866; 1867) wrote and published the earliest (and still one of the finest) books on aboriginal rock carvings in the British Isles, and all but echoed what Wilson had described. He added a further description of the designs that were carved onto the stone, telling us that,
“it had cut upon it a series of concentric circles, consisting of six rings placed around a central cup, the rings traversed by a straight radial groove. On the drawing are marks of other cups and rings, or rather volutes, and a number of angular lines… This sculptured stone covered an urn…”
Following the descriptions of our early authors, many archaeologists and antiquarians explored the site but could find little else about the carving. In Ron Morris’ (1981) most recent survey, he told us that it was,
“a gritstone slab, 1½m by ¾m (5ft x 2½ft), possibly broken after carving, had on one side (not now known if this was the inner of outer face); a cup-and-six-complete-rings with radial groove from the cup – diameter 50cm (20in) – 5 other cups-and-rings, mostly partly broken off or incomplete, an irregular ‘reversed-S-shaped’ single spiral with 3 convolutions at each end, other irregular grooved figures, 4 cups and about 7 ‘dots’ (6 of these are in the cup-and-six-rings).”
The Royal Commission at Canmore tell us that “the present location of the food vessel and cist cover is unknown”; yet the rock art researcher Ronald W.B. Morris (1981) reported the petroglyph was “said to have been given to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland but (is) now missing”; whilst the local writer E.H. Letham (1900) told us “the urns were conveyed to Eglintoun Castle.” This aint good. Has anyone subsequently found out what became of it?
Folklore
The tumulus of King Coil’s Grave was the legendary resting place of the “Old King Cole” of popular rhymes. There were two such northern kings in ancient times and, as William Robertson (1889) said, “the only difficulty is to say which of the King Coils he was, whether the Coilu who lived three hundred and thirty years before Christ; or Coel, King of the Roman districts, who must have lived in the third century.”
References:
Letham, E.H., Burns and Tarbolton, D.Brown: Kilmarnock 1900.
Morris, Ronald W.B., The Prehistoric Rock Art of Southern Scotland, BAR: Oxford 1981.
Simpson, James, Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, etc., Upon Stones and Rocks in Scotland, England and other Countries, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1867.
Smith, John, Prehistoric Man in Ayrshire, Elliot Stock: London 1895.
Wilson, Daniel, The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Sutherland & Knox: Edinburgh 1851.
Barrow (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SU 6018 5013
Archaeology & History
Downs Farm tumulus on 1897 map
On the western edges of Basingstoke, at Kempshott, could once be found this ancient site—destroyed many decades ago. It was one of number of similar prehistoric burial mounds in the area. First described in a listing of tumuli by Mr Andrews (1898) who told us that it was “oval” in shape, the monument was completely destroyed in 1939 and according to the Royal Commission (1979) lads,
“its site now lies beneath a house at the southwest corner of Kempshott Lane and Homesteads Lane.”
When the house where it once stood was being constructed, a collared urn was recovered from the tomb, which the Royal Commission thought indicated “that the monument (was) likely to have been of early Bronze Age date”—but obviously we cannot be sure. The site was listed in Leslie Grinsell’s (1979) extensive survey of prehistoric tombs in the area, in which he suggested it may have been a long barrow.
References:
Andrews, S., “A Short List of Some Tumuli in North Hampshire,” in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society, volume 4, 1898.
Grinsell, Leslie V., “Hampshire Barrows – part 3,” in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society, volume 14, 1940.
Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, England, Long Barrows in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, HMSO: London 1979.
Willis, G.W., “Bronze Age Burials round Basingstoke,” in Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club & Archaeological Society, volume 18, 1953.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TA 0584 6128
Archaeology & History
Ruston Beacon tumulus on 1854 map
A fallen tumulus that once marked the southwestern side of the village boundary line, and was once adjacent to the prehistoric Green Dikes earthworks that once passed here. Sadly however, sometime early in the 20th century, this ancient burial mound fell victim to usual ignorance of arrogant land-owners who place money ahead of history and local tradition and it was ploughed-up and destroyed. Thankfully we have an account of the site in J.R. Mortimer’s (1905) incredible magnum opus. Listing it as ‘Barrow no.272’ in the number of tombs excavated, he told us that:
“It is situated on elevated ground about half-a-mile (south)west of Ruston Parva. On September 20th and 21st, 1886, it measured about 70 feet in diameter and 2 feet in elevation; and had originally been several feet higher, as an old inhabitant remembered assisted in removing its upper portion, which was carried away and spread on the surrounding land many years previously. At the base of the barrow, near the centre, was a long heap of cremated bones which had been interred in a hollow log of wood with rounded ends, about 3 feet in length and 14 inches in width, well shown by impressions in the plastic soil, and by the remains of the decayed wood. The heap of bones was rather large and probably consisted of the remains of more than one body. No relic accompanied them. Several splinters and flakes of flint were picked from the mound.”
The tumulus (as its name implies) became a spot besides which one of East Yorkshire’s many ancient beacons were built. In Nicholson’s (1887) survey of such monuments, he told that
“the modern beacon, apparently, stood on the site of the old one, on the high ground in the angle of the road from Driffield to Kilham. It was a prominent object and would be well-known to the coachmen and guards…for it stood on the side of the road from Driffield to Bridlington. Mr John Browne, of Bridlington, remembers it; and says, ‘It would be the last of the beacons that remained in this district and was removed between fifty and sixty years ago. My recollection of it is that it was a tall pole, with a tar barrel at the top, and had projected steppings to reach the barrel.”
One of the earliest accounts of the beacon from the late-1500s told that it took signal for its light from the beacon at Rudston, which stood upon one of the Rudston cursus monuments, a short distance from the massive Rudston monolith.
References:
Mortimer, J.R., Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, Brown & Sons: Hull 1905.
Nicholson, John, Beacons of East Yorkshire, A. Brown & Sons: Hull 1887.
Inside the once prominent prehistoric tomb on the Cow Keeper’s Field, the northern antiquarians William Hornsby and John Laverick (1920) came across two small petroglyphs in association with a cremation burial, several feet south of the central cist: the Cow Keeper’s Field 2 carving, plus this small, triangular-shaped stone, 8in by 6in, consisting of five standard cup-marks, with two of the cups (as the photo shows) connected to each other. It is akin to the numerous ‘portable’ cup-marked stones which, in other cultures, were deposited onto cairns in remembrance of the ancestral spirits of the tomb. Such widespread practices may also have occurred here. Petroglyph researcher and writer Graeme Chappell (2017) informed us that the carving “is in storage in the Dorman museum in Middlesborough.”
References:
Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Chappell, Graeme, Personal communication, October 4, 2017.
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-East Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
Hornsby, William & Laverick, John D., “British Barrows round Boulby,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 25, 1920.
Inside the once prominent prehistoric tumulus on the Cow Keeper’s Field (now destroyed), the northern antiquarians William Hornsby and John Laverick (1920) came across two small portable petroglyphs: the Cow Keeper’s Field 1 carving, plus this “peculiarly marked stone” as they put it, some “5ft south of the centre” where a cist, or stone-lined burial existed. Measuring 18in by 7in, the rock carving consists of at least one large cup-marking which is clearly evident on top of the stone, plus what seems to be another one next to it, half-covered. Along the side of the stone, a series of twelve roughly parallel lines have been carved out, running down to the bottom of the stone. Rock art researcher and writer Graeme Chappell (2017) tells us the carving is supposed to be “in storage in the Dorman museum in Middlesborough,” although no one has seen it in years. It would be worthwhile if fellow research students could visit the said museum to recover this and other portable cup-marked stones that were found in the area.
References:
Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Chappell, Graeme, Personal communication, October 4, 2017.
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-East Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
Hornsby, William & Laverick, John D., “British Barrows round Boulby,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 25, 1920.
This prehistoric tomb was one in a cluster of tumuli in the Boulby district, uncovered by the northern antiquarians, William Hornsby and John Laverick in 1918. Most of them have subsequently been destroyed – this one included. When they visited the site, they described it as “a barrow…with a diameter of 36 feet.” Once they began digging into it,
“at the centre we found a cist, the top of which was 2ft 7in below the present surface. The cist lay north 64° west, and south 64° east. It had no cover and the slab at the north-west end was wanting. The cist measured: side 3ft 6in, end 3ft 2in. Its depth was 2ft 2in. In it we found nothing except sandstone chips. With these there was no admixture of soil. Above the cist and covering a space of 5 ft by 5 ft there was a layer of burnt earth and black ashes (of furze bushes). At a distance of 5 ft south of the centre, and 1ft 10in below the present surface, there was a burnt burial, 20in in diameter. With this we found many flint chips, a shale pendant, and the peculiarly marked stone” we’ve called, simply the Cow Keeper’s Field 2 carving.
A second cup-marked stone was also found inside the tomb, a few feet south of the cist. When G.M. Crawford went to survey the burial mound in the late 1970s, he reported “there is no trace of it” and “has probably been destroyed by ploughing.”
References:
Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-East Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
Hornsby, William & Laverick, John D., “British Barrows round Boulby,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 25, 1920.
Occupying a prominent position above the ever-closer North Sea, upon which an old beacon was subsequently placed, this denuded prehistoric tomb was first surveyed by the Ordnance Survey lads in 1913, and subsequently in an essay by Messers Hornsby & Laverick (1920) on the ancient sites of Boulby, east of Easington. This was the first one they explored, calling it ‘Mound No.1.” They located it,
“due south of the ‘Soldier’s Garth’ in the east corner of the field called The Falls. It was a cairn with a diameter of 50ft. Two-and-a-half feet northwest of the centre peg, at a depth of 21 inches below the present surface, there was an unaccompanied burnt burial, which occupied a space of 15in by 18in. In a centre cut 7ft 6in by 6ft, at a depth of 3ft 6in, we found much burnt bone and many potsherds of the Bronze Age type, scattered over the whole space of the trench, down to a further depth of 3ft 10½in. In the south corner there were four stones set on edge and running in a direct (straight) line. The interment had been placed upon the clay, the soil of the original surface having been cleaned off. With this burial we found a good flint made from a polished celt and worn smooth at the point—possibly through having been used for striking fire on iron pyrites—many chips and several cupstones.”
The “several” cup-marked stones they describe at the end seem to have been lost; perhaps sleeping in some museum cellar somewhere (does anyone know?).
This cairn was one in a complex of eight that Frank Elgee (1930) suggested may have been laid out deliberately in the form of the constellation of Ursa Major, or The Plough, also known as ‘Charles Wain’.
References:
Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-East Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
Hornsby, William & Laverick, John D., “British Barrows round Boulby,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 25, 1920.
The quickest way here is still a long one. From Gargunnock village, take the road west towards the A811, turning left just before the bend down to the main road, and up through what looks like private estate gates. Walk all the way along this road as if you’re visiting the Leckie broch and its carvings, but keep going, until it becomes a track. Continue into the woods, uphill and out the other side until you have the Gargunnock cliffs rising a few hundred yards ahead of you. On your right a few yards up is a long straight length of walling running to the first set of cliffs. Go up it and up the next rise and the next. When you’re on top of the moors, look for the highest spot close by. You can’t miss it!
Archaeology & History
Cairn-edge, looking NW
Nearly 1600 feet above sea level, this seemingly isolated giant cairn sits on the highest point of the Gargunnock Hills, giving a truly fantastic 360º view, looking across a diameter of perhaps 100 miles on a clear day—which is what I was greeted with when I visited. Giant cairns scatter hilltops all across the British Isles, many of them peopled with creation myths of giants, devils and thoroughly animistic creatures! But I can find no such tales here… Equal lackings are in the archaeological texts which, it seems, only catalogued the site in recent years.
Caerlatheron, looking SE
The name of the site is intriguing. The element caer is a fort, but no such ‘fort’ seems to be here. But we’ll come back to that shortly. The element latheron and its variants apparently relates to a mire or swamp (Watson 1926), whose existence to the immediate south and west is considerable (a small loch was once hereby, but its size has decreased over the last 150 years), and it is very boggy across the tops here. When I visited, it was a scorching day (I was fucked by the time I got here!), but in many places the ground was very dangerous to walk over. It was superb! So it seems that the place-name indicates Caerlatheron was ‘the fort by the swamp’. It works perfectly, except that this is listed as a cairn – and it’s a large one at that!
Note the overgrown raised embankment (lower centre)
The cairn sites on top of a large mound. This mound seems to be artificial and is between 10-12 feet high. The cairn and mass of rocks on top of the mound (within which is a triangulation pillar) is itself 4-5 feet high—although much of this relates to Ordnance Survey and walkers piling up many of the loose stones to create an enclosure or wind-break to protect any traveller up here in stormy weather. The cairn-pile is 20 yards across at the top, and as you walk around it you become aware that this appears to be slightly raised on top of its parent mound with an evident ’embankment’, particularly on the eastern side. As you follow this round, you lose sight of it completely on the southern edges, which is covered by the extended cairn-mass; but some of it seems in evidence on the northwest and northern side. A number of stones marking this out would seeeem to be in evidence. A few larger flat stones on the south and western top of the cairn might suggest that it was once a chambered cairn – but this is highly speculative. The late great Audrey Henshall never got here; and I don’t know whether the great local archaeologist, Miss Christian MacLagan, ever got her fingers here either, so we don’t have their expertise to help us out.
Caerlatheron, looking ECairn-mass of the huge mound
The mound upon which the ‘cairn’ sits is also intriguing. When walking round and around the bottom of it, you note the unmistakable substantial mass of overgrown rocks, particularly around from the northwest, to north, to northeast, both on the slopes and at the bottom, seeming to imply that the entire mound is artificial. I kept walking up and down and around it, to see if these had simply fallen from the top, but wasn’t 100% sure and wished there was a geologist at hand to tell me, one way or the other. In truth, the shape of the mound from the bottom, from most angles, reminded me of an overgrown broch and not a cairn. And there are a few brochs nearby—the closest of which is just at the bottom of the hill from here: the Leckie broch (I aint done the site profile for it yet, soz….). It was only when I got home and looked for the meaning of Caerlatheron that the ‘broch’ idea came back to me with a little more fortitude, perhaps making sense of it as a ‘fortified structure by the bogs and swamps’. Perhaps… Without an excavation, we may never know for sure.
Singular cairn, 350yd NNW
About 350 yards northwest, across truly dodgy swampy ground (walk up here at night and it’ll probably be the last thing you ever do!) is another small singular cairn, made up of quite large rocks, with a few smaller ones filling it up. It looks to be either a shepherd’s cairn, or one for his sheepdog perhaps, a few centuries old. I can find nothing about it in any local history or record-books.
The place is well worth visiting—but it’s a full day out and you’ll be knackered when you get back. However, from here Nature grants us a stunning view of these tiny parts of Her body. It’s well worth the effort!
References:
Watson, W.J., Celtic Placenames of Scotland, William Blackwood 1926.
