Neolithic

Rudston and the Ritual Landscape of the Great Wolds Valley

Continuing my tour of the Wolds, I couldn’t drive past Britain’s tallest standing stone and not stop and say hello. I spent a little time just sitting in the sun watching the to and fro of visitors coming to admire the mighty stone.

In East Yorkshire, owing to the absence of suitable stone, megaliths are rare. Yet it contains the tallest monolith in the county if not England. It stands even yet on a sacred site, in Rudston church yard, five miles west of Bridlington. it is 25 1/2 feet high, 3 1/2 feet higher than the tallest sarsen at Stonehenge., and is 6 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet thick at the base. It has been shaped out of a block of grit, the nearest outcrop of which occurs in the cliffs and scars of Cayton and Carnelian Bays over ten miles away. It doesn’t appear to have been noticed that on the north-east side of the churchyard there is an upright stone of grit, rudely triangular in shape, and 3 to 4 feet high. Near it is a cist of sandstone slabs, probably unearthed by some sexton.

Frank & Harriet Wragg Elgee. 1932

What Frank & Harriet Wragg Elgee didn’t realise was that the Rudston monolith is just one element in a ritual landscape with a monument complex that is unequalled in Britain.

The Yorkshire Wolds are elevated upland plateau with an underlying geology of chalk and limestone. There is very little running water on the Wolds because the groundwater seeps through the chalk bedrock to form a network of underground streams and reservoirs. The Great Wold Valley, in the north of the Wolds, is the only valley close enough to the water table to sustain any amount of free-flowing surface water.

The stream that flows along the floor of the valley is called The Gypsey Race, the most northerly chalk river in Britain. The Gypsey Race is known as a winterbourne stream as it only flows when the water table is high enough to reach the valley floor. In summer the stream may only flows in small sections, if at all, before disappearing underground.

The stream rises at a series of springs close the Great Barrow of Duggleby Howe, it then flows eastwards along the Great Wolds Valley until it reaches the sea at Bridlington, a distance of about 20 miles.

The short course of the Gyspey Race is marked by a large number of prehistoric monuments, most of which date to the Neolithic. These monuments include a number of great barrows, cursuses (The greatest concentration in Britain), at least 1 henge, long barrows and various enclosures. This density of prehistoric monuments dating to around 3000-3500 BC makes it one of the most important Neolithic landscapes in our islands.

Little Argham Henge

The Rudston monolith is located on a spur in the angle of the Great Wolds Valley, the spur is the focus for 3 cursus monuments with 4th running along the valley. This indicates that Rudstone was probably an extremely important site 5000 years ago.

The area continued to be occupied throughout the Bronze and Iron ages. There are the remains of a large Roman villa close to the village, which, when excavated, revealed a couple of beautiful mosaic floors which can now be seen in the museum in Hull.

The church beside the Rudston monolith was founded in 1100AD, 4000 years after the monuments of the Great Wold Valley were constructed. It could be argued that Rudston is one of the oldest, continually-occupied sites in Britain. The builders of the church obviously still considered this site to be a ‘special’ place and chose to build their church next to the monolith rather than destroy it.

I’ve visited the Rudston monolith a number of times but had never previously set foot inside of the church, I took a look. One point of interest was the Norman font, that pattern is very similar to the font I’d seen at Weaverthorpe. The church is nice enough but to be honest, it cannot compete with its rude-stone neighbour and the ancient ritual landscape buried beneath the fields of the Great Wolds Valley.

I was recently having a conversation with a friend and mentioned my visit to Rudston. I told her about the Great Wolds Valley, she was quite surprised that she wasn’t aware of this huge ritual landscape. Perhaps these sites would be better known and understood if they were located in the south of our island rather than in a ‘remote’ corner of East Yorkshire.

Folklore

The Gypsey Race

Occasionally the Gypsey Race floods, this has happened roughly every 50-60 years causing devastation in the villages and farms along the Great Wolds Valley. The last flood event was Christmas 2012 and caused a number of homes to be flooded. As far back as the Middle Ages, the flooding of the Gypsey Race was said to foretell a national disaster. The stream is said to have flooded prior to the Great Plague of 1665, it is also said to have flooded prior to both World Wars. Thankfully 2013 was fairly uneventful in terms of national disasters.

The Rudston Monolith

The huge stone shares a legend with many other great stones that the stone was thrown at the church by the devil, as usual, the devil missed his target.

Sources

The Archaeology of Yorkshire by Frank & Harriet Wragg Elgee. 1933

The Archaeology of Yorkshire – An assessment at the beginning of the 21st Century. Edited by T.G. Manby, Stephen Moorhouse and Patrick Ottaway. Yorkshire Archaeological Society Occasional Paper No.3. 2003

A Gypsey’s Warning by Mike Haigh. Northern Earth. Issue 133. 2013

Lidar Image – https://www.lidarfinder.com/

Aerial Image – https://earth.google.co.uk/

At Thwing

I arrived at Thwing, the lovely church is tucked-away at the back of the village but before I say anything about the church I have to mention the significance of Thwing in British prehistory.

A mile or so NNW of the village is Paddock Hill. The site was identified as a cropmark and was excavated by Yorkshire Archaeologist Terry Manby between 1973 & 1987. What Manby discovered was a site that had been utilised since the Mesolithic period. The site was then used throughout the Neolithic period. In the late Neolithic a henge monument with a chalk outer bank approximately 60m in diameter was constructed.

The site was remodelled during the Bronze age, the ditch was re-cut and a timber circle approximately 17m in diameter was erected. In the later Bronze age the site was remodelled once again to create a circular enclosure 115m in diameter with a substantial ditch and rampart.

The site then fell out of use for a millenium until a Romano-British square enclosure with hut circles was built on the site. The ring earthwork was re-occupied from about 700 AD onwards and an area east of the centre used as a cemetery. A palisaded enclosure was constructed with timber buildings.

There is also a Teesside connection to Thwing. After the Domesday survey the land was granted to Robert de Brus.

Back to the church

This plaque dating to 1686 sits over the north entrance to the church

Pevsner tells us that this drum shaped font with a regular lozenge pattern was found at Sewerby. He also thinks that the pattern was carved some time later, Rita Wood doesn’t explicitly state this but implies it.

There is a lovely chancel arch and the usual capitals, I’d probably make more of these if they were on a more northerly church but they seem to be fairly standard on the Wolds churches so I won’t bore you with details.

A lovely Squint or Hagioscope. This allowed members of the congregation who were unable to see the altar, the medieval version of the cheap seats, to watch the priest lift the eucharist.

I took a walk around the outside of the church and was confronted by this beautiful tympanum set over the south doorway, it represents the Agnus Dei, the lamb of god, and it’s a stunner. The elongated lamb appears more fox-like than anything, I guess the sculptor wanted to fill the whole space, I love it.

There are other bits and bobs dotted about the walls but that tympanum has me smiling.

The site has one more surprise for me as I leave, a lovely Shap Granite erratic boulder at the side of the lane.

Sources

Heritage Gateway

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: York & the East Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave 1997

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. YAS Occasional Paper No.9 2012

John Piper made me do it – Romanesque East Yorkshire Pt.1

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about Romanesque stone carvings recently so decided to take a trip into East Yorkshire to seek out a couple of sites. My previous brief explorations of Romanesque East Yorkshire were inspired by a series of images taken by John Piper so once again I allowed Piper to be my guide. Scrolling through the Tate’s collection of his photographs I found an image of a font in the church at Langtoft. A combination of the image, and the Scandinavian sounding name of the village, gave me a destination.

A diversion into Prehistory

Driving into the Wolds I passed through the village of Duggleby. I stopped briefly to say hello to the Great Barrow of Duggleby Howe, formerly known as Odin’s Howe.
Dating from the Neolithic, the Great Barrow sits at the centre of a concentric ditched enclosure with an external diameter of 370m making it one of the largest Neolithic monuments in Britain. The enclosure, discovered in 1979, is only visible as a cropmark.

Back to the Romanesque

Moving on to Langtoft I arrived at the lovely church located on the outskirts of the village and was greeted by one of my favourite signs ‘Church Open’.

The church is very nice, Nikolaus Pevsner tells us that the tower is early C13 and that the church was thoroughly restored in 1900-3

To be honest I wasn’t here to admire the church, I was here to see this gem, a drum shaped baptismal font.

The font came from the nearby deserted Medieval village of Cottam. All that remains of Cottam are a series of cropmarks and a ruined brick-built church.

Pevsner describes the carvings on the font as primeval, I like that. Rita Wood describes this panel as a complex threefold tree (probably a Tree of Life, the heavenly reward)…In this tree, two parts rooted in heaven, entwined with one standing on earth. The tree of life or world tree is an archetype which occurs in almost all major belief systems. It generally represents a link between different realms, a cosmic axis.

This scene depicts the fall of man, Eve is tempting Adam with forbidden fruit while the serpent looks on.

This carving represents the crucifixion of Saint Andrew on his X-shaped cross.

Rita Wood tells us that this is a carving of a combination of a bird and a snake. I think it could just as easily be a Wyvern. The combination of a rooster and a snake is known as a Cockatrice. The Cockatrice is mentioned in the bible, it is said to have the ability to kill with just one look, the only animal immune to its glare is a weasel.

This carving depicts the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. Lawrence was martyred by placing him upon a large iron grid set over hot coals. Whilst undergoing this horrible procedure Lawrence is reputed to have said to his torturer, “you can turn me over now, this side is done”. For this the catholic church made him the patron saint of cooks and comedians.

The final carving depicts St. Margaret of Antioch bursting out of the gut of a dragon. Margaret survived being swallowed by the beast because she was wearing a crucifix. The cross irritated the beast’s gut causing it to split and expel the saint. Margaret was finally killed by beheading.

I took a walk around the outside of the church. During the restoration of the church, most of the original stonework was redressed I was however able to find a few bits of graffiti including one possible Marian mark. The overlapping Vs of the mark are thought to represent the Virgin Mary.

Sources

John Piper’s photographs of Yorkshire

Duggleby Howe aerial view via Google Earth

Map Image

The Archaeology of Yorkshire. An assessment at the beginning of the 21st century. Yorkshire Archaeological Society Occasional Paper No.3. 2003

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: York & the East Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave. 1997

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. Yorkshire Archaeological Society Occasional Paper No.9. 2012

Megaliths Exhibition – Zetland FM

I had the pleasure of chatting about our current exhibition to Dave Robson of Zetland FM. Interview starts at around 2:20:00

Copper & Henges

On a sunny Lammas morning I decided to take a drive over to Middleton Tyas. I parked up at the lovely church of St. Michael and All Angels.

‘The majestic N arcade has six bays with round piers (except for one octagonal one), scallop captials, square abaci, and single-step arches, i.e. must date from before 1150.‘ N. Pevsner

The lepers window and priests door have been blocked, I love this beautiful irregular walling.

A fragment of a Saxon Cross and a carved spiral on an exterior wall hint at a pre-Norman church.

One the church wall stones is copper-stained, The presence of veins of copper in the local rocks is something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. Records show that copper has been mined in this area since at least the 15th century and continued until the 18th century. Yields were generally low but copper concentrations from Middleton Tyas ores were found to be up to 65% pure, making them some of the highest grade ores in Europe.

The fields around the church are dotted with earthworks know as shaft mounds. These were vertical shafts sunk to the level of the copper veins, these shafts are also known as bell pits.

In the woods beneath the church are the ruins of a mine pump house and workshops. There are a number of sites in this area where veins of copper have been found. We know that copper was used extensively by our ancestors, so I suppose the question is, were these sites exploited during prehistory?

Fieldwork at the Iron Age royal site of Stanwick revealed evidence of copper working. Excavations at Melsonby and Scotch Corner have also revealed evidence of copper smelting in the Roman Period. ‘Excavations in 2015 at Scotch Corner suggest that its Flavian inhabitants were engaged in metalworking, perhaps exploiting copper from nearby Middleton Tyas: if so, the odds that this source were already being exploited in the pre-Roman period must be considerably shortened.’ C. Hazelgrove Et al.

A later excavations, as part of the A1 widening scheme, of the Iron Age settlement at Scotch Corner discovered hundreds of fragments of moulds known as pellet moulds. These moulds were used to manufacture small metal balls, the balls were then used as blanks for coin production. Analysis of the moulds showed evidence of gold, silver and copper. Pits have also been discovered at Scotch Corner that may indicate that the inhabitants were prospecting for copper locally. There was also evidence of copper processing in the same area.

There has been no physical evidence found of prehistoric copper working at Middleton Tyas but mining is a destructive process, later workings may have destroyed any evidence of previous workings.

What we do know is that there was definitely evidence of prehistoric activity in this area dating as far back as the end of the last Ice Age. There is plenty of evidence to show that this area was occupied during the Neolithic and Bronze ages, a prehistoric burial mound, known as Five Hills, sits in woodland on the northern edge of the village.

In 2016 a newly discovered henge was spotted on a LIDAR survey. The henge is located on the outskirts of the village of Moulton just 2km to the south of Middleton Tyas.

Moving further south, a wealth of prehistoric monuments have been found. A large cursus monument was discovered at Scorton, 6km south of Middleton Tyas, most traces of it have now been lost to gravel extraction. The monument was comprised of two double ditches 32m apart, 1m deep and from 2 to 3m wide, it ran for over 1.5km across the landscape, later work has suggested that the Cursus may have been even longer. Another possible cursus, a palisaded enclosure, a timber circle, a chambered cairn and a henge are just some of the prehistoric monuments that have been found around Catterick, just 7km from Middleton Tyas.

The Catterick henge is of particular interest to me, on excavation it was found that the monument lacked an outer ditch and the oval bank of the monument was constructed using river cobbles from the nearby River Swale. What I find fascinating is the only other henge on mainland Britain that shares this construction method is Mayburgh henge, which is located beside the River Eamont on the outskirts of Penrith and less than half a kilometre from the modern A66. So, what we have is 2 henges close to rivers, located at either end of a trans-pennine route that is still in use today. Both The A1 and the A66 have a number henges located on or very close to their routes, the A1 corridor through North Yorkshire has at least 8. This implies that these two modern roads, a major north-south route and a major east-west route probably have their origins in prehistory.

The trans-pennine route would also have provided access to the Irish Sea, there are prehistoric monuments in Ireland that share similarities in construction and style with the henges at Mayburgh and Catterick. Perhaps this indicates connections with communities in Ireland. Access to the west coast could also provide a potential route for Cornish or Breton Tin to travel eastwards across the Pennines, allowing North Yorkshire metalworkers to manufacture Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin.

Sources

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: The North Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner. 1966. Penguin Books.

Cartimandua’s Capital/ The late Iron Age royal site at Stanwick. Colin Haselgrove Et al. CBA Research Report 175. 2016

Catterick Racecourse, N. Yorkshire, The reuse and adaptation of a monument from prehistoric to Anglian times. C. Moloney et Al. Archaeological Services (WYAS) Publications 4. 2003

Living Between the Monuments: The prehistory of the Dishforth to Barton A1 Motorway Improvements. G Speed. 2021. Northern Archaeological Associates.

Lidar Image

The Penrith henges: a survey by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. P Topping. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 1992

Bronze images – Early Man in North-East Yorkshire. Frank Elgee. 1930. J Bellows

Fylingdales Fire

I recently found a bag of photographs that I thought were lost. Amongst the photographs were a few that I took in 2003 after a devastating fire swept across Fylingdales Moor. The fire burned off the peat deposits along with dense heather and bracken cover and in the process gave us a brief look at the prehistoric landscape that potentially exists beneath many of our moorlands.

The fire revealed a wealth of archaeology on the moor ranging from prehistory to the Second World War. If you are interested in finding out more I’d recommend seeking out Local Archaeologist Blaise Vyner’s excellent booklet, Fylingdales Wildfire and Archaeology. 2007. Published by North Yorkshire National Park.

A Memory – The Major Lunar Standstill 2006

Remembering Margaret Curtis Teacher and Archaeologist, born 7 June 1941; died 26 March 2022

Isle of Lewis

Escaping the mad parade

Walking from Farndale up towards Rudland Rigg, we followed the track up the side of Monket Bank. The track climbs up through the old jet workings and quarries along the moor edge.

In the 14th century this route was known as Monckgate and linked Bransdale with Farndale. The track was used as a Church or Corpse Road with coffins being carried over the rigg to Cockan Kirk in Bransdale.

The road across the rigg is now known as Westside Road, in the past, it was known as Waingate, running from Kirkbymoorside Market Place in the south to Battersby Bank in the north.

We cut out across the moor towards Ousegill Head and the Three Howes. Flint tools had been found by the gamekeepers for a number of years so in September 1973 Raymond Hayes and others excavated the area. His small excavation yielded over 800 flints from an area of 3.50 x 3.0m. The site was interpreted as ‘A temporary camping site in a forest clearing, probably being occupied by hunters following red deer or other game.’

Whilst at the Three Howes we saw a Red Kite being harassed by an anxious Curlew. Once the Kite had rid itself of its tormentor it flew directly over us, a joyful moment, this was my first sighting of a Kite on the moors.

We walked back across the old peat workings and rejoined the track, moving on to the waymarker at Cockam Cross and then onto our final goal, the Cammon Stone.

The Cammon Stone is a prehistoric standing stone that sits just beside the main track. The stone is about a metre and a half tall and leans towards the west. I have been visiting this stone on and off for at least two decades, my perception is that the lean of the stone has increased over the years but I may be wrong, I hope I am. The southern views from the stone look down along Bransdale, the axis of the stone is also aligned in this direction, which is probably no coincidence.

There are a number of faded letters carved onto the western face of the stone, in the past, antiquarians had speculated as to whether these letters were Phoenician in origin. They are actually Hebrew and spell out the word halleluiah. They are thought to be the work of the Reverend W Strickland, Vicar of Ingleby. Strickland is thought to be responsible for carving a number of inscriptions in this area.

There is a second stone, a large flat slab. No one knows whether this slab ever stood upright. There is no obvious weathering patterns to indicate that it might have been upstanding but I guess that question could only ever be answered by an archaeological investigation.

We picked our way along a track that ran from the moortop into Farndale and joined the daleside road at Spout House. If you are a fan of stone walls and troughs, you will love this road, it has massive walls with stone-lined gutters and numerous multiple carved stone troughs. The stonemasons and wallers were once kept busy in this area.

Also on this road is the Duffin Stone, a massive boulder that has tumbled down from the escarpment side and is embedded into the verge of the narrow lane. The stone bears the scars of contact with many vehicles.

Etymology

Waingate – OE Waen Way – Waggon Road

Monket – The ‘Mun(e)k(e)’ spellings suggest ‘monks’, but in the absence of monastic associations one might suspect an earlier ‘Mened-cet’ (Welsh Mynydd-coed) – ‘forest hill’. Here one might compare ‘Monket House’ in north-east Yorkshire.

Cammon Stone – Cam Maen – Bank Stone.

Rudland – OE hrycg ON hyrggr ‘ridge’.

Sources

Old Roads & Pannierways in North East Yorkshire. R. H. Hayes.1988. The North York Moors National Park.

Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. Vol.67. 1995. The Yorkshire Archaeological Society.

The Consise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Eilert Ekwall. 1974. Oxford.

The World of Stonehenge

I took a trip down to London to see the British Museum’s The World of Stonehenge exhibition. It was wonderful to see items that I’d read about over the years all gathered into one place and beautifully displayed. If prehistory is your thing, I’d definitely recommend a visit. here’s a few images to whet your appetite.

Prehistoric Postcards

A few years ago I bought an album of old french postcards themed around prehistoric monuments and natural rock features.

This sparked a short obsession with prehistoric postcards. I bought most of them from ebay and boot sales, setting myself the challenge of paying no more than a pound or two for each card. The obsession burned itself out after a year or two so and I decided to put the collection online for anyone to use. I uploaded about a third of the cards and then kind of lost interest. I’ll return to it one day and finish the job.

If this sort of thing interests you, the collection can be found here