Hob Hurst’s House

An interesting site but what a mess. It sits in it’s own little enclosure on Harland Edge with an information board next to it showing a plan of the bank, ditch, central cairn and cist which you need to study to get any understanding of the monument as the whole site is covered in a layer of bracken and heather. It consists of a central raised cairn (with traces of a stone kerb) that measures about 8 metres square and is about a metre above the surrounding square ditch. Within this central area is a cist which Bateman illustrated as being edged with 13 stones and containing a layer of charcoal with a collection of bones towards the north with a further group of bones as well as fragments of lead ore contained within an arc of stones in the south-eastern corner. He noted that the bones as well as the arc of stones were all fire scorched. The 3 metre wide ditch leads to square bank that measures a further 3 metres in width and stands about a metre tall although the northern side has been lost to a packhorse track.
I got the distinct impression that Hob Hurst’s House and the group of barrows that follow the northwest-southeast line of Harland Edge formed part of a boundary or division of the moors between the sites of Gibbet Moor to the north and those of Beeley Warren on lower ground to the west.