Another Cup-and-Ring Stone Discovered

Here's another previously unrecorded cup-marked stone we found earlier today. Bob and me went on the moortops south of Ilkley on a nice grey day, with a bitta rain in-between and finding this made the day even better! It's an odd carving, with the design shown in the photo below replicated elsewhere in larger cups on the same rock. The edge of the stone was open to the elements with just a couple of cups showing, but after spending an hour here we found there at least 20 more of them, with this fascinating 'rosette' design standing out. There's still more of the carving hidden beneath the earth on this rock, so we're going back up sometime soon to see what else remains hidden.

Paul, the cup-marks look similar to those at Wycoller on the coping stone on the late medieval pack-horse bridge, but those are not in a rosette design. Interesting.

Sunbright57 wrote:Paul, the cup-marks look similar to those at Wycoller on the coping stone on the late medieval pack-horse bridge, but those are not in a rosette design. Interesting.

There's a lot more to this one aswell Ray. It's obvious from the condition of some of the cups that they've not seen the open-air for centuries - they're in really good nick! Here's a somewhat mud-covered image of the carving, as we uncovered it. It gives a slightly better idea of the carving, though the muck's hiding some features that we'll clean up next time we're up there.