Mayburgh Riverine Project
The area under consideration is encompassed by the courses of the Rivers Eamont and Lowther. The rivers themselves would not support river traffic, however they do delineate the surrounding landscape and in the case of the Eamont in particular, determine the main North / South route on the Western side of Britain, the main ford being at Yanwath.
Writers are always drawn to stone circles and henges get less attention. This does not make any sense as the monuments are contemperaneous. In Cumbria we have a fine crop of stone circles, but little attention is paid to numerous henges apart from Mayburgh and King Arthur's Round Table. There are at least 4 henges in this group which also includes Little Round Table and the lost large henge north of Mayburgh across the Eamont (which is called Brougham Hall - leading to the suspicion of a fifth henge at Brougham Hall east across the Lowther). There are a further 2 henges south of Stainton upstream and another one at Castlesteads near a ford across the Lowther.
South in Shap, we have a major complex of stone avenues and circles. In between the two rivers, we have the major complexes at Mayburgh near the confluence and further upstream, at Moor Divock. Here we are documenting this rich Neolithic / Bronze Age landscape before 1400BC. This leads on to the more pragmatic Late Bronze Age / Iron Age era and ending up with Roman.
Neolithic / Bronze Age
The extensive ramp leading up to Mayburgh seen on the right, does not seem to align properly with Mayburgh Class 1 Henge. Mayburgh has a distinct Eastern alignment - the single entrance facing the sunrise on the equinoxes, due East. What C.W.Dymond’s 1891 CWAAS survey seems to show, is an earlier structure which has a rectangular end, akin to a Neolithic cursus perhaps, now buried under the later henge, rather than a coherent contemporary approach to the henge.
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Mayburgh Cursus? NY 5200 2845
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King Arthur's Round Table NY 523 284
If you look carefully, King Arthur's Round Table, near Mayburgh (CWAAS 1938), is neither round nor a table, as for King Arthur… The irregular oval shape with irregularly positioned entrances, both point to a Clamshell Henge rather than a Class 2 Henge. Along with Brocavum (Brougham) Roman fort, the Mayburgh Henges are the most obvious locations for Eimot, where Athelstan took homage from Constantine of Alba, Hywel Dda of Wales and Owain of Strathclyde in 927 AD establishing the English nation state.
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There are 2 Castlesteads sites near Lowther. The southern Early Norman site has been excavated recently. The northern site may be a Neolithic / Bronze Age site consisting of 3 concentric circular banks. The inner bank is about 50m across. The circles were flattened in the North and has a single entrance on the midpoint of the flattened section. It doesn't look like the forest track was responsible for the flattening, as the inner ring is also flattened. It is overlain by a Late Iron Age curvilinear site which spreads out to the East. The internal structures and the ad-hoc entrances and path to the South probably belong to this era. As well as the main Iron Age site, there also seems to be an attached extension to the East. It is possible that this is recent forestry work however.
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The Enclosure / Hill fort on top of the conical hill at Dunmallard (NY 4675 2460) may date from the Bronze Age as is suggested by the location of a Type IIC Perforated Stone Axe. The irregular flattish enclosure on the summit probably follows the shape of the hill (bottom right).
On Lidar there is a very clear 60m Circle / Henge at C. To the ENE of the Circle, there appears to be a large Enclosure centred on E. North of this enclosure, there might be a Double Ditched Enclosure at D. The track going up Dunmallard starting at the northern end, may also be part of the same complex.
Dr M.W.Taylor in CWAAS Transactions 1874 seems to offer 2 different explanations for the name Dunmallard - "from the Celtic Dun maolin, the hill of the beacon. The names of the hills of Mell Fell, and Dunmaile, behind Helvellyn, are both from the Celtic maoile, the heap or sepulchral mound."
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At Maiden Castle and Stainton, we have a couple of sites of very similar size. They are essentially circular with banks inside the ditch. Maiden Castle is generally thought to be an Iron Age farmstead, but I suspect that the site may be a much older henge monument, partly due to its similarity with Stainton.
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Maiden Castle NY 4510 2435
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Stainton NY 4845 2750
The Stainton circular henge is the quite distinct. Part of the site has eroded away down the scarp. The causeway entrance over the outer ditch to the WNW showing up beautifully on Google Earth. The northern half of site appears to have been walled off and contains rectilinear structures which are probably modern. Similar rectilinear structures can be seen in the field below the scarp to the South East. There also appears to be a second smaller 30m circular feature, also on the edge of the scarp to the East, giving a rather good impression of a possible concentric structure.
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Towards the northern end of Brownrigg Spur there is a small elliptical site (20m x 30m). Interestingly a Celt was found very near in 1860. In 1848 a Celt and a Stone Sinker were found about 450m to the North. The site lies on a small dry spur between 2 becks. Looking at the Lidar, it is possible that the entire spur may have been enclosed at the time, suggesting a rather nice Bronze Age landscape beneath the modern farm. The spur lies between Great Mell Fell and Little Mell Fell.
The summit of both these fells are occupied by Bowl Barrows. The GMF Bowl Barrow supposedly is a rare example in Cumbria of a bowl barrow surrounded by a 20m wide ditch. The site might also be described as a Ring Cairn with Barrow. Ring Cairns are also commonly placed on hilltops. Historic England says that "workmen discovered a cinerary urn 0.48m tall containing calcined bones together with two small pieces of bronze c.0.5m below the LMF Barrow's surface". So the Barrows would appear to be Bronze Age. No mention of the 41m ditch which also occupies the summit of LMF.
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The first thing that you notice about Druid Stones, apart from the big boulders, is that a good part of the boundary prescribes a perfect Ellipse. The site is overlain by an extensive Late Iron Age curvilinear settlement which extends towards the robbed out cairn to the East and to the South. This Southern extension is scooped into the hillside. Large scale scooping is more common in the Cheviots, as in College Valley, than in Cumbria. They didn't go in for ellipses in the Late Iron Age, so this may represent an earlier Late Neolithic / Bronze Age banked enclosure. If so, this may bridge the generational gap with the extensive rock art found on the opposite side of the Patterdale. This site is very similar to 2 sites in nearby Kentmere and together they form the Cumbrian Henge Ellipse class.
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Druid Stones NY 3980 1165
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Deepdale Beck NY 3995 1415
Deepdale Beck is near to Druid Stones and occupies an similar location at the end of the neighbouring mountain spur. Difficult to draw any precise conclusions from the Lidar data, but suspect that it may have been a companion site to Druid Stones, possibly in the Late Iron Age.
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We are indebted to Dr Michael Waistell Taylor for the only account of a possible Stone Circle at Yamonside NY4735 2560 in his 1870 CWAAS article, Vestiges of Celtic Occupation near Ullswater:
Usually the circle is single, but sometimes the stones are set in a concentric form, in a double, triple, or quadruple series. Our circle at Yamonside, which will afterwards be described, is an instance of a quadruple circle. (c.f. Triple concentric stone circle at Shapbeck).
At the distance of eighteen yards from the river side, you notice the first hillock; strike the ferrule of your stick through the soft sod; it impinges on a block of stone, occupying a considerable surface, and evidently of considerable size; observe all around, there are similar hillocks; here and there the stones crop out of the surface, and you can estimate their probable magnitude. By a little circumspection, the eye of the observer can begin to trace a series of concentric circles. In the midst, there is a stone much larger than the rest. The top of it is of a hog-backed shape; it stands about a foot out of the ground, and its back is eight-and-a-half feet long and three feet thick. This I take to be the principal "maenhir" or long stone.
Here then, we have a complete peristalith of four concentric circles set round a monolith; of which circles the outermost has a diameter of 52 yards, or 156 feet, and in the formation of which there are at least fifty boulders of which we can mark the position.
Unfortunately the proposed plan of Yamonside did not make it into the published article. The fact that even the substantial central stone is now missing, suggests that the stones have probably been cleared for agricultural reasons, before further assessment could be made.