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| NEW FINDS IN SOUTH WEST NORTHUMBERLAND The area of Britain named the North Pennines is now tranquil but has been very busy in the past. Although lead was the main product, other ores have been exploited and most of the seams are recorded. The Rev. Michael Taylor, of Penrith, came into the possession of a broken two-piece stone mould in 1883. He elaborately reconstructed it and described how the removable core, for the leaf-shaped spearhead, was made and used. Croglin, where the mould was found, is on the western margin of the North Pennines, seven kilometres north of Long Meg, and just six kilometres west of the Bold Venture copper mine, which is believed to have worked out in the 1920's. The mineshaft enters a steep riverside bank beside where two brooks converge. The spoil has, presumably, just been tipped into the river, and has now mainly gone, but the remnant of a burial cist is just sixty metres from the entrance. There's no lid or cairn left but similar intact cairns and mounds have survived, in the pastures above, and these are unexplored. Upstream from the mine, a short distance, are the foundations of a hut or shelter beside a bed of slag. The river spates have removed the lighter fractions of material from the spoil heap and there's no identifiable crucible fragments or charcoal. An ancient track to Croglin used to bridge the river here and the nearest hamlet is Slaggyford. Further upstream is a large dome-shaped stone cairn. The stones are weathered and the mound is overgrown with grass and lichen. Casual examination suggests that there may have been a passage from the north east, into the cairn, and that this has been filled with rubble and topped by several hefty boulders. At the front of the cairn are the ruined foundations of a rectangular fold, with a doorway broad enough for sheep or young cattle. The cairn commands an impressive panorama of the valley, with a long view to the Cheviots. Behind the mound is a long tapering 'tail' of stone, perhaps a hundred metres long. Some stone has been taken from this to build a recent sheepfold nearby and the small quarry pits show as paler areas in the grey lichen-covered stones. The tail of the cairn is shaped like a spearhead and points upward, into the hillside. A few hundred metres behind it there's a simple drystone construction built in an outcrop of free stone. A simple rectangular enclosure, about three metres by two, is butted into the hill and is fronted by a now-decrepit concave wall. There's a flat area before it with enough space for a couple of people to sit or stand. Looking down the hill, the eye is drawn over the tail and cairn and beyond, to the horizon and a low round hill. This is the alignment of the southernmost moonrise and, ideally, a shadow of the cairn might fall over the cairn tail. Perhaps the large boulders that top the cairn trimmed the outline for a closer fit. The symbolic value of the moon's shadow, in prehistory, is unknown and, although various writers have hypothesised an ancient astronomer-priest, perhaps the term 'astrologer-priest' is more appropriate. There are other large cairns in the area. One is a sausage-shaped mound of collected stones a hundred metres long which seems to be completely undisturbed. It has a peripheral limpet-shaped cairn nearby and the possibility of a forecourt being incorporated into its southern flank. Another long cairn overlooked the Knar valley and was crushed to make a moorland road a few years ago. The new road is about a kilometre long and was built without planning consent, in a S.S.S.I., within the A.O.N.B. On the hillside below the quarried cairn, near to the Hut Burn, are the remnants of a roundhouse. The low ruined wall, with a diameter of about four or five metres, has some of the wall plates still in place and is now protected by the incursion of bracken. Almost impossibly a pair of drystone cairns, just a couple of paces in diameter, have survived. They have a domed profile and casual excavation shows that they are seated deep in the peat. They would have been prominent from below and perhaps were intended to frame the setting sun or moon from a site that has now been lost. Sandwiched in the peat, on the southern slope of the Knar valley, is a profusion of bog oak pieces. Most are the roots and knotty parts of Scotch pine and they often have a slicing tool mark at either end. They may be scraps left over from the extraction of roundwood – and a single complete piece has been recorded. The main South Tyne river valley held substantial monuments at several sites. Within oral lore is the practise of decorating north-facing fieldwall with ochre and an old stone railway bridge has been decorated in this manner. The Kirkhaugh gold ornament was excavated from a hillside cairn during 1935 and in the riverine meadow, below the cairns, are substantial heaps of jumbled stones. Some show signs of being burned, but a large section of a concentric stone circle can be identified – though the smallish stones are all fallen. Near the centre of this circle is a rectangular feature directed toward the northernmost moonrise. Two sides of it survive, perhaps twenty or thirty metres long, and a third, four or five metres wide. Little ‘teeth-like’ stones are set into a narrow bank, which seems to have at least one formal entrance, and there is a hint of an external ditch. Ditch widening at another site in the main valley, a few years ago, uncovered a rectangular stone with strange carvings. Preserved by silt, half of one face is covered in deep pear-shaped cupmarks. Another corner has a deep cleft carved into it and another one has broken off. The anthropomorphic fissure appears unique and is certain to provoke controversy. It's not impossible that the workers making stone moulds also produced secular pieces. These pear-shaped cupmarks extend to local standing stones, where they occur in a very eroded form, and three boundary markers are complicated by having little buttons of fused copper as decoration. A portable stone has been found with just one deeply formed cupmark. This is curious as the rounded stone has the shape of a mushroom cap, perhaps alluding to a connection between psychomimetic agents and rock art. O’Brien, W., Bronze Age Copper Mining in Britain and Ireland Timberlake and Prag, 2005 Taylor M. W., Notice of Two Stone Moulds for Casting Spear-Heads, Recently Found at Croglin, Cumberland Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Volume 18 (1883-4) Thom A., Megalithic Lunar Observatories O.U.P. 1970 Reply | with quote |  28th November 2008ce 09:20 In reply to: Re: Just Watch This! (nigelswift) |
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