I found this lovely fossil echinoid on the beach between Marske and Redcar. The fossil is smooth to the touch and heavy in the hand, the rock is beautiful dense flint with an unmistakable five pointed star on its upper surface. Fossil echinoids are not uncommon finds in areas with chalk bedrock but this is the first example that I have found on our beaches.
Fossil echinoids have been valued by humans for many thousands of years, the earliest evidence is a 400,000 year old Acheulean handaxe found in Kent. The axe had been carefully knapped to preserve and display the fossil.
Fossil echinoids have also been found in prehistoric graves across Europe and North Africa. The most famous British example is probably the Bronze Age Dunstable Grave which was excavated in the late 19th century. The grave contained the entwined bodies of a woman and a child, the pair were encircled by a couple of hundred of fossil echinoids.
In southern England these fossils are also known as Fairy Loaves or Shepherds Crowns. There is a folk tradition that if you keep a fairy loaf on your window ledge you will never run out of milk and your bread will always rise. They are also used as amulets, when placed on or around a doorway they will keep the devil at bay.
a late Bronze Age house, outbuilding and enclosure
an early Iron Age enclosed site, consisting of a stout wall with a shallow ditch across the isthmus connecting the islet to the mainland
a middle Iron Age broch, with later alterations, and a blockhouse with a central passage and cells erected within the ring-fort
a later Iron Age wheelhouse-type building, inserted within the broch tower, and a stone causeway leading to the site.
It is possible that some of the structures around the broch tower are of even later date; it is not uncommon to find Pictish settlement on such sites. Source
Plan – Hamilton, John, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Prior to the lowering of the level of Clickimin Loch in 1874, the only way to access the Broch was via this Iron Age causeway.
Just before you reach the Broch there is a flat slab with the shape of a pair of feet carved into it.
‘Surrounded on all sides by crosses, the Recumbent stone circle & flankers of this circle look for all the world like the gigantic horned god rising out of the living earth.‘
Etymology – Ythsie (for Suidhe Chuith). Place near a fold. Suidhe, site, place; chuith, gen. asp. of cuith, fold. By transposition the name had become Chuith Suidhe. Ch had become silent and had been lost with u. Suidhe had lost dh, which is often silent. There remained Ith Suie, which is now Ythsie. Source
Standing on a gentle hillside and unfortunately incarcerated in a modern drystone wall, this is a beautiful site to visit. Its prehistoric builders had pleasing polychromatic tastes.
A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland & Brittany. Aubrey Burl. 1995
Etymology – The name derives from Gaelic and has been interpreted as ‘field of prayer’ (from ‘auch’ or ‘achd’ meaning ‘field’, and ‘ortha’ meaning ‘prayer’) or ‘field of pillar stone’ (‘achadh choirthe’).
When I saw the flyer for the Fellfoot Sounds event I jumped at it, I knew my friend Martyn would also be keen to attend. Who wouldn’t enjoy the prospect of spending a couple of days in this lovely corner of Cumbria in the company of a group of sound artists and musicians? It turned out, Martyn knew many of the people who were working at the festival.
Martyn and I arrived at the lovely Into the Woods site, ticket sales were limited to 150 so the place had a nice relaxed, family-friendly atmosphere. The campsite is set-up around a large field with a bar, stage, kitchen, clubhouse and various other facilities on site.
We went along to a couple of workshops, Field Recording and Sampling with Jayne Dent and Folk Voices with Jennifer Reid, both of which were excellent.
On the evening the artist’s performances were held in the lovely nearby church of St. Michael and the Angels. The little red sandstone church was the perfect venue. Jorge Boehringer filled the church with the sound of his droning distorted viola, I’m currently listening to this as I write. Jayne Dent followed with a piece built around sound samples and field recordings collected during the earlier workshop. Jayne performs as Me Lost Me, her latest album, RPG is currently getting lots of play in our house. Ore concluded the performance with an improvised piece played and tuba, trombone and a pair of resonant gong speakers which I found mesmerising. You can find their work here, I can now add Doom Tuba to my list of favourite musical genres.
The sound artist performances combined with the setting left me feeling calm, slightly entranced and ready for the wander to the stone circle. The procession was led by the gold foil bedecked Noize Choir. We walked along an ancient holloway dodging deep muddy puddles and the entrances to a large badger sett, it was a joyful chaotic affair.
On arriving at the stones half of the group walked around the circle in a clockwise manner around the stones, the other half went anticlockwise, the air was full of laughter, chanting and children shouting. There were a number of people visiting the stones when we arrived, I’m not sure what they made of our rag-tag group but I’m pretty sure that our arrival will have created a lasting memory of their visit.
Returning to the campsite, a large fire was burning, people were eating and drinking and generally having a good time. Folk artist Jennifer Reid topped off the night with a brilliant performance of chat and songs. Jennifer’s energy, humour and positivity is completely infectious, she’s wonderful.
The following morning, after a great recovery breakfast from the kitchen, we headed over to the stone circle for Paul Frodsham’s walk and talk around the stones. Paul is a professional archaeologist who has worked throughout northern England. He told us that he has had a lifelong interest in the Long Meg circle since first visiting it as a student. He an led an excavation at the circle in 2015.
Paul started at the Long Meg standing stone and talked about his theory that the carvings on standing stone may have been made prior to the stone being transported from the banks of the river Eden to its current location. He then moved onto the stone circle describing the structure of the circle and its alignment to the winter solstice. He also explained how there had been a large enclosure around the area now that is now occupied by the farm buildings. This enclosure predated the circle and is the reason that one edge of the circle is flattened.
Paul also expressed his frustration at how little investigative archaeology, compared to other large British prehistoric monuments, has been done at what is essentially one of the oldest and largest stone circles in our Islands. Paul is trying to redress this issue but to do so requires resources and funding. He is also working with others to set up a Friends of Long Meg group to promote the and hopefully attract resources for further investigations.
All in all I think everyone who attended this little family-friendly festival had a very positive experience. The site was lovely and organisation of the event was first rate. Well done to everyone involved, I look forward to future events.
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
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.
The Smell of Water 