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The Northern Antiquarian Forum

Archaeology, folklore & myth of Britain's pre-christian sites & heritage: stone circles, holy wells, maypoles, tombs, archaic cosmologies and human consciousness. Everyone welcome - even Southerners!


3 posters

    WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND, CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432

    lowergate
    lowergate


    Join date : 2010-11-01
    Age : 75
    Location : CLITHEROE

    WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND, CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432 Empty WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND, CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432

    Post  lowergate Sun Jul 03, 2011 11:45 am

    WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND,CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432

    DOWNHAM CAR PARK TO WORSTON

    Leave the car park to go up the 1st drive on the R & pass through stile by gate. Follow path on to go through gate. Follow line of RH fence/edge of wood, …

    Now the great bulk of Pendle dominates our vision, while over to the right deer secretly mark our passing below Downham Hall.

    ... through kissing-gate & on to end of wall. Here veer to the L & cross the fields to go through kissing-gate & on to go through next kissing-gate. The path leads us below Worsaw Hill …

    I find myself in early autumn high above Sfakia in the village of Anopoli. A culture of hospitable tables, at which one sat in groups of a warm evening to eat cheese and olives, drink cool wine and converse. An open space unrestricted by walls sited below the Lefka Ori looking out over the Libyan Sea. Such a setting liberates the human soul and the conviviality affords the recounting of many a beguiling tale. Fact is here mixed with fantasy, times and places are misstated, legends are born, myths arise.

    It is here that I meet with three English fellows, cavers who have spent the last ten days exploring a cave system above Anopoli. The food is good and the krasi (rough red wine) flows as it does when Northerners meet in foreign parts, they hailing from Manchester and Leeds. On gleaning that I reside under the shadow of Pendle, they inform me of an illegal ‘cave dig’ they undertook near the village of Worston below an ancient burial mound, only to be halted in their nocturnal endeavourers by stewards of the Downham Estate. The information I gleaned I now share here:

    For permission to view the mound on Worsaw summit ask at the farm.

    To view the mound follow RH track up alongside the hill, passing a number of old lead workings to a point where you are above the saddle that links Worsaw Hill & Warren Hill. From here start to climb the hill till you reach the summit.

    Here we find a large and very prominent round barrow, possibly of Bronze Age origin, that has so far never been investigated. To the west, just below the barrow is a man-made platform in front of a scar of rock. The scar itself is a filled-in cave entrance, the passage of which is known to go in 20m. and then becomes a water sump.

    During the excavation of the cave amounts of course brown earthenware pottery were discovered. When I investigated the site I found it not unlike the ‘Fairy Holes’ Bronze Age cave burial and habitation site above Whitewell in Bowland. The site faces east and is sheltered and hidden in the mouth of the scar. The platform is bounded by a semi-circular revetment of stone, and I visualize a timber and turf-roofed dwelling to have been built against the scar. From what I know the earthenware fragments were not taken from the site when the cavers back-filled their illegal activity.

    I have always considered Worsaw Hill to be the ‘navel’ to the ‘head’ of Pendle, a shamanic Altai concept explained to me by Danil Mamyev on a visit to the sacred mountain of Uch-Enmek. To the people of the Altai mountains Uch-Enmek, rising in vertical planes of granite high above the Karakol Valley, represents the ‘woman’s spirit in man’, that rises from the solar-plexus region giving rise to the ‘sacred breath’ - transmutation breathing, a mechanism for helping the lungs transform it’s energies for the betterment of the whole body. Worsaw Hill is the sacred navel, a place of meditation and contemplation upon that which is the embodiment of that that is not apparent.

    Return the way you came up to the track above the saddle.

    Here notice below on the saddle a rectangular ditched earthwork 16.9m x 9m with an internal platform of 14.5m x 6.3m. Look to the slope leading to the fields of Worsa End Farm to observe numerous ditched pillow-mounds, being not uniform in shape or dispersion. This is the site of a mediaeval rabbit warren that was last used by the Downham Estate during the famine caused by the Napoleonic Wars. The rectangular platform may represent the Warren Keeper’s dwelling. In the field below the ‘warren’ is a quarried cave opening that I take to be an old lead mine.

    A Romano-British settlement has been located between Worston and Worsaw End, but its exact location is available only on a ‘need to know’ basis as no formal investigation has yet been undertaken.

    The Roman road between Ribcheser and Elslack passes below Worsa Hill on the north side, and it was here that during road works in 1778 a large coin horde was discovered. Some Roman nobleman or Romano-British reeve had deposited 1,000 silver denaru of the Higher Early Empire and a bronze lamp within an earthenware urn. The nine workmen who found the horde divided the coins amongst themselves, but about 350 were recovered and given to the ladies of the manor and a Mr. Robinson. The earliest of the coins were those of Augustus.
    Paulus
    Paulus


    Join date : 2009-08-20
    Location : Yorkshire

    WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND, CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432 Empty Re: WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND, CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432

    Post  Paulus Mon Jul 04, 2011 3:04 pm

    Hi John -

    I'd like to visit this place. Lord Downham mentioned it to me when we met. He was a really helpful and informative man. The hill does sorta shout at you! Aerial imagery shows at least 2 sites just where you mention, with a possible third to the north. And I note the shadow of some remains on top of Pike Law on t'other side of Pendle Hill. Do you know owt about this John? (the place-name's a bit suggestive) Could we have a Pendle Hill walkabout, starting at Worsaw?

    All the best - Paul
    lowergate
    lowergate


    Join date : 2010-11-01
    Age : 75
    Location : CLITHEROE

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    Post  lowergate Tue Jul 05, 2011 12:12 am

    Hi Paul,

    Which Pike Law do you refer to ? There are a number with that name that I know of.

    Do you have a link for the aerial photo's /

    john
    Paulus
    Paulus


    Join date : 2009-08-20
    Location : Yorkshire

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    Post  Paulus Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:01 pm

    Hi JOhn!

    lowergate wrote:Which Pike Law do you refer to ? There are a number with that name that I know of.

    Do you have a link for the aerial photo's

    The Pike Law on the north-eastern side of Pendle Hill, at SD 812 419, in the middle of the map, here:

    http://getamap.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/getamap/frames.htm?mapAction=gaz&gazName=g&gazString=SD812419

    I'll try sorting out an aerial image if I can get a clear one and send it tomorrow.

    ttfn - Paul
    lowergate
    lowergate


    Join date : 2010-11-01
    Age : 75
    Location : CLITHEROE

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    Post  lowergate Wed Jul 06, 2011 6:58 am

    Ha yes, that Pike Law ..

    Pike Law is also known as 'Alainsete', refering to the lands of Alan de Percy in Craven (C11) that reached their high point here at Pike Law. The summit is marked by an ancient cairn of stones.

    There is much evidence of quarrying here, for all the field walls no doubt, yet I get the feeling that there is more here than meets with the casual eye. It is a natural foci point in the area, and the names mentioned in the 1147 charter below are significnt:

    ‘Notification by Henry de Lacy as to the boundary between Barnoldswick and his Forest of Blackburnshire as perambulated by him and his men when he delivered Barnoldswick to the monks of the Cistercian Order for the erection of an abbey there: namely the stream called Blakebroc up the moor to Gailmers and so directly to Ellesagh across Blacko hill to Oxegill and up Oxegill to the Pikedlawe called Alainsete thence to the ancient ditch between Middop and Coverdale.’(Farrer’s ‘Early Yorkshire Charters’)

    john
    Sunbright57
    Sunbright57


    Join date : 2011-02-10
    Age : 67
    Location : Nelson - the one in Lancashire sorry to say!

    WORSA HILL BURIAL MOUND, CAVE & SETTLEMENT SITE. SD 779 432 Empty Worsa Hill Burial Mound, Cave & Settlement Site, SD 779 432

    Post  Sunbright57 Wed Jul 06, 2011 7:10 am

    Again, some very interesting info John. The abbey at Barnoldswick never apparently got going, probably not the right place for them there. I presume there is nothing to see of the Annel Cross now, not even a base. Wonder where it went to. Could it be in a wall somewhere in close proximity. There is a rather nice mile post (stoop) at Four Lane Ends with finger pointers carved onto it etc. I have a few photos of it.
    Smile
    lowergate
    lowergate


    Join date : 2010-11-01
    Age : 75
    Location : CLITHEROE

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    Post  lowergate Wed Jul 13, 2011 12:40 pm

    Hi Ray,
    There should be a base somewhere for the Annel Cross - but it has not been located yet, though many have sought it.

    All that I have records for is that there once stood a jibot by the crossroads at Annel Cross, and that the last person to be hung for sheep stealing in the area lies under the said milestone.

    The Abbey at Barnoldswick stood where the parish church and Gyll Hall now stand.

    The East Coast awaits - see you all soon

    john
    Paulus
    Paulus


    Join date : 2009-08-20
    Location : Yorkshire

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    Post  Paulus Wed Jul 13, 2011 2:00 pm

    Hi John Wink

    I thought you'd already gone off for a week or 2. Gizza shout when you return and we'll talk more about that book idea.

    Have a good 'n'.

    Cheers - Paul

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