Mother Cap Stone

Nearest town:
Dronfield (10km E)
OS reference:
SK252805
OS sheet:
110
Latitude:
53° 19' 13.69 N
Longitude:
1° 37' 17.96 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Mother Cap Stone (Natural Rock Feature) by thesweetcheat

Landscape context – the outcrop is prominent on the skyline just right of centre. Seen from the hillside above Grindleford to the southwest.

Image credit: A. Brookes (10.11.2016)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Nov 13, 2016
Image of Mother Cap Stone (Natural Rock Feature) by Kozmik_Ken

Sunset at Mother Cap, Hathersage Moor. On evenings like this, it’s not difficult to imagine chanting druids leaping around the place!

Image credit: Andy H
Kozmik_Ken
Kozmik_Ken Aug 10, 2009
Image of Mother Cap Stone (Natural Rock Feature) by Kozmik_Ken

Sunset at Mother Cap, Hathersage Moor. On evenings like this, it’s not difficult to imagine chanting druids leaping around the place!

Image credit: Andy H
Kozmik_Ken
Kozmik_Ken Aug 10, 2009

Articles

Mother Cap Stone

Kozmik_Ken
Kozmik_Ken Apr 20, 2009

I have developed a bit of a fascination with Mother Cap recently!

Considering the history of Hathersage Moor and it’s conspicuous positioning, I thought that a bit of research may be called for. I came across a piece of information (probably StuBob’s notes) that suggests that Mother Cap may have been used as a marker for much of the prehistoric activity in the surrounding hills and was possibly illuminated by fire at night.

This caught my imagination and I thought it may be fun to try to recreate how the massive outcrop may have looked by firelight (of course not wanting to set half of the moor on fire, I used a 5 million candle power torch). So on Tuesday night, I found myself trudging up the lower slopes of Over Owler Tor by the light of a brilliant full moon. Over Owler is an odd place at the best of times, a bit of a geologist’s playground with rocks worn into all manner of strange shapes. But by moonlight it is amazing!

The exposures were about two and a half minutes at f8 to catch the colours in the sky, with short blasts from the torch to fill areas of the rock in. Some shots look as if the light is coming from within the rock. The moon is dropped in from a different exposure as the long exposures blew it out to a non-descript glare.

Mother Cap Stone

stubob
stubob May 2, 2002

Easy access from the ‘Surprise View’ car park.
The stone marks the Mid-Winter full moon rise minimum when viewed from ‘Wet Withers’. Several books mention that fires may have been lit behind the stone to help with the alignment.

Sites within 20km of Mother Cap Stone

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