There is still a lot of industrial archaeology left on Grassington moor. Whilst walking and exploring on the moor I heard the echoes of the hard toil from the men and children who worked in the leadmines. Around Yarnbury there is enough to explore and then around the chimney there is a lot more. We are very lucky to have it on our doorstep.

In the first picture, the larger hole is the main shaft and the smaller hole behind is the access shaft. Imagine a pit head winding gear over the main shaft to remove ore and a ladder peeping out of the smaller hole for the miners to go underground.

The condenser flue runs from the Cupola Smelt Mill to the Chimney. This shaft serves two purposes: Firstly to take noxious mercury and sulfur gases away from the workers at the Smelt Mill and secondly allow lead particles to settle out of the cooling gases. Periodically boys would be sent up the shaft to sweep out the lead partilces.

Lead Mine – Main shaft with Miners entrance behind.
Photo by Hanneke

Lead Mine – Dressing floor with Mine Captain’s house behind.
Photo by Hanneke

Adit driven into hill side
Photo by Hanneke

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Photo by Hanneke

Condenser Flue
Photo by Hanneke

Sunrise over the chimney
Photo by Hanneke

Collapses on the Condenser Flue
Photo by Hanneke

Cupola Smelt Mill Information board
Photo by Hanneke

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The Neolithic period, starting about 6000 years before the present, marks the beginning of a society based on farming. The earth mounds dating from this time are generally thought to be  collective tombs and they are among the oldest structures ever built. Two types can be distinguished: stony mounds (cairns) and those covered with turf (barrows). Although there are many well  known examples in the Yorkshire Wolds it was thought until very recently that there were few, if any, in the Dales. This is because they are particularly difficult to discern in a limestone landscape dominated by glacial deposits and the clearance banks of early field systems. Many have also been degraded by tillage.

Yvonne Luke’s research has revealed the existence of numerous long mounds in the Dales, although not all can be identified with certainty. A key feature is their alignment, particularly with regard to prominent high points on the horizon and with the rising or setting sun at the solstices. A long mound at Burnsall is aligned with Simon’s Seat. The cairn at Dudderhouse Hill is generally aligned with Pen-y-Ghent but the end bay shows a different alignment, to Cosh Knott, nine miles away. In a particularly interesting example, the cairns on Little Hard Rigg, Scales Moor are aligned with the dramatic passage of the shadow of the midwinter sunrise over Ingleborough.

Yvonne Luke is undertaking a PhD in archaeology at Bradford University.

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San Agustín is home to the largest complex of megalithic funerary monuments in South America. There are 20 burial mounds, some as big as 30 metres in diameter, connected to each other by terraces and platforms, causeways and paths. These cover the large and elaborate stone tombs of elite individuals, surrounded by some 600 statues. These monuments all date from the regional
Classic period of 1-900AD. The second site, high in the rugged territory of Tierradentro, has a huge concentration of hypogea (80 shaft tombs with side chambers) cut deep into the rock. These housed collective secondary burials for elite groups and were built in the period 600-900AD. They incorporate rockcut stairways, chambers and pillars and are elaborately decorated with black,
red and white murals of geometric and anthropomorphic design.

Gold has been worked across Meso- and South America from 1500BC, and the ancient craftsmen developed the full range of techniques that are still in use today. Gold ornamentation was worn, particularly by chieftains  and shamans, both for body adornment and for spiritual transformation and artefacts were designed to make full use of light and movement in order to enhance the power of their effects. A selection of highlights from the gold museum’s collection featured the key animal spirits of jaguar, bat, serpent and eagle, and culminating in the wonderful ‘La Ofrenda’ golden raft, which has been linked to the legend of El Dorado.

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The site comprises three standing stones, with a fallen stone among them, set on a circular bank 15 metres in diameter, 2.7 metres wide and about one metre high. A second fallen stone lies about 5m south of the mound. A further, indistinct and lower mound lies about 40m to the west. The location of the Druids’ Altar is such that it affords views to the distant south and south-west horizons. The setting of the southernmost moon aligns with the outline of Pendle Hill and the setting midwinter sun coincides with Weets Top. This suggests that the site was deliberately chosen by its builders for its astronomical properties.

Most Four Poster stone circles of this type are concentrated in Eastern Scotland. It has been speculated that this isolated example may be associated with Craven’s deposits of lead and copper. Perhaps Bronze Age mineral prospectors came to Craven bringing their astronomical knowledge and architectural notions with them?

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