A PATH ACROSS THE MARSH: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL AND

TOPOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OF THE YARBOROUGH STONE, BANWELL,

NORTH SOMERSET
Introduction and wider archaeological background
In the Neolithic period, the British Isles were tied firmly into a megalithic
tradition that encompassed virtually the whole of north-west Europe, and which
underpinned what was, essentially, a unified cultural province. And in those
areas, it is reasonable to observe that monuments of stone have cast a very
particular spell over every subsequent generation of people not directly involved
in their creation; that is, pretty much from the Iron Age onwards. Stone circles,
individual standing stones, and chambered tombs, of all kinds, doubtless
gathered around them, even in those 'early' post-megalithic periods, complex
and dynamic canons of myth; so that legends were spun out of attempts to
rationalise the existence of monuments which simply could not be explained
within the context of a normative, 'secular' understanding of the world. In southwest Ireland, for example, O'Brien has attempted to characterise the nature of
late prehistoric perceptions of monuments inherited from earlier periods, and
discerns direct influences on belief systems and ritual practices. He remarks how:
in the Iron Age we see a.....transformation of religious belief, as the older
monuments come to represent a mythical past.....elements of an older Bronze
Age belief system were incorporated into an Iron Age cosmology that
attached special significance to the 'ancient stones' on the landscape.....the
older monuments were symbolically charged components of a mythologised
landscape that they helped to create.....(and) changing attitudes to older
monuments, reflected in new patterns of use and interpretation, were an
important part of the process of 'becoming Iron Age' in south-west Ireland.
The 'ancient stones' were proof of the enduring nature of this supernatural
power.....(O'Brien 2002, 174-175).

Some, including, indeed, O'Brien himself, claim that pre-modern megalithic lore
is not entirely lost to us, and that elements of it, filtered through the medium of
much later folk tales, can be reconstituted1. This is a perhaps contentious
argument, and is outside the scope of the present essay; what is certain is that
while some of the myths surrounding megalithic sites that survived long enough
to be recorded by relatively 'modern' research (ie from the 19th century

See especially O'Brien 2002, 169-170, where the author traces a direct line of
development from the Iron Age to heroic folk tales of early medieval Irish mythology. A more
general, theoretical perspective which considers the influence of earlier monuments on the
nature of Iron Age belief systems is expounded in Barrett 1999.

onwards), have indeed been shown to be reinventions of earlier traditions,

others turn out to be often surprisingly late in origin2.
The main subject of this study, the Yarborough Stone in the parish of Banwell,
may itself be the subject of one of the 'standard' British megalithic origin myths
that was, evidently, locally current by the early 18th century (see further below).
Its 'cousin', the famous Wimblestone, standing just under 4.5km away to the
east-north-east in the parish of Shipham, certainly acquired a long-standing
reputation for nocturnal jaunts3. However, John Aubrey's 'discovery' of
megalithic Avebury in the mid 17th century can now be seen to have marked a
defining moment in the way that the prehistoric past began increasingly to be
pulled out of the realm of the purely supernatural; and alongside the constant
and continuing recycling and reinvention of local folkloric traditions, there arose
in parallel a far more rational and almost self-consciously scientific approach to
the study of lithic monuments, a movement which essentially laid the
foundations of evolving methodologies in this area of British archaeology until
relatively recently4.
It has now long been understood that the overwhelming majority of megalithic
monuments are of Neolithic or early Bronze Age date, and up to the early 1990s,
the central concern of archaeologists studying megaliths, and the cultural milieu
from which they sprang, was the sites themselves5. Where these were complex,
2

Leslie Grinsell's groundbreaking survey of 1976 remains the only full-length study of
the nature of folklore as it relates to British prehistoric sites of all kinds. There are, however,
numerous studies of individual sites and regions, for which the journal Folklore is probably the
primary source. A modern theoretical approach to folk traditions as they relate to archaeological
sites, can be found in an important collection of international essays edited by Schwartz and
Holtorf, 1999. In this context also, Hutton's seminal book of 1991 remains a mine of highly
authoritative information, grounded firmly in the archaeology, and much of which has not yet
been superseded.
3
For a typical example of the kind of behaviour in which the Wimblestone is reputed by
local tradition to have indulged, see Tongue and Briggs, 1965, 12. Purely in terms of its
landscape affinities however, Wimblestone probably should not be considered to belong to the
Yarborough/Knoll Hill Farm 'group' (see further below), because it lies well outside the Lox-Yeo
basin.
4
A useful overview of the historical background to the antiquarian 'rediscovery' of
Avebury can be found in Ucko et al, 1991.
5
Although it is now clear that there was wide regional variation in the dates at which
megalithic structures ceased to be erected; in Scotland, for example, Bradley notes that stone
circles were still being built during the Later Bronze Age (Bradley 2007, 200), and the same is
true of south-west Ireland (ibid, 218). Over most of Britain, however, the Middle Bronze Age
marks a striking shift in the nature of society, and the ways in which it expressed both its
cohesiveness, and its cosmological affinities; one element of this metamorphosis was a move
away from the construction of megalithic structures of all kinds, and a growing investment in
more explicitly economic activities, especially the establishment of large-scale field systems
(Bradley 2007, 187-190).

researchers paid particular attention to the interplay and relationships of the

various elements of which they were composed. The irresistible 'presence' and
brooding, immanent physicality of the stones and their immediate settings,
continued to exercise their influence on field research projects, and in many,
perhaps most studies of this kind, considerations of landscape context were the
exception rather than the rule6.
What nonetheless became very clear as archaeologists began to explore, by
excavation, at least the immediate settings of some of these monuments, was
that almost invariably, the surviving elements represented merely the remaining,
visible part of what had once been sometimes extremely complex, dynamic and
'busy' sites, whose evolution over long periods was attested by the presence of
an often bewildering variety of archaeological features. The phrase 'tip of the
iceberg' may be somewhat hackneyed, but in this context it really does provide
an excellent analogy for the story that archaeology was beginning to reveal
about the multi-faceted nature of megalithic sites. Perhaps most surprisingly, this
discovery was found to be as true of individual orthostats (ie standing stones),
as it was for sites whose surviving form gave at least the impression of far greater
complexity, such as, for example, stone circles; and it is now quite apparent that
many of our surviving orthostats, looking out today over their landscapes in
perhaps rather melancholic isolation, occupy sites that may once have supported
much more extensive stone, and indeed timber settings7.
A striking change of perspective was, however, marked with the publication in
1994 of A Phenomenology of Landscape, by Christopher Tilley. Building on
more localised and restricted landscape studies by both himself and others,
Tilley's was the first sustained and explicit attempt to anchor prehistoric
monuments into the context of the perceived landscapes and cosmologies of the
6

But this said, it would also be unfair, and untrue, to say that matters of contemporary
perceptions of landscape and topographical context were ignored by all workers in this field
prior to the early 1990s. Indeed, it has even been suggested recently that William Stukeley
himself may have been an unwitting early proponent of an approach to prehistoric monuments,
and their landscape settings, that might now be characterised as phenomenological. See
Peterson 2003. In the Millfield Basin, Northumberland, it was noted as early as 1987 that the
entrances of a series of henges seemed clearly to take their cues from natural features on the
skyline (Richards 1996, 329; I am indebted to Katharine Walker for this reference).
Nonetheless, even as late as 2002, Chris Scarre could still claim that few fieldwork reports
attempt to understand the symbolic or cosmological significance of a particular location; Scarre
2002, 3.
7
For example see Williams 1988 for a synthetic survey of the archaeological evidence
for Wales, Ireland and the westernmost part of south-west England (that is, Devon and
Cornwall) up to that date. Where, subsequently, archaeological excavation has been possible
at standing stone sites, it has served merely to reinforce the general impression of concealed
complexity; Murphy 1993 and Williams 1990 are cases in point.

communities which both built them, and for whom, as successive generations
passed, they came to assume a role as landscape mnemonics, the repositories of
collective memory and myth. Based on his own experimental exercises in
adopting a first-hand, experiential approach to prehistoric landscapes, involving
walking through them in various locations, Tilley was especially concerned to
stress the importance of paths and lines of movement, and the highly dynamic
relationship, in perceptual terms, between traveller, landscape and monuments.
And although he was by no means the first to do so, he also made much of the
way in which many monuments appear to be placed in the landscape with
extraordinary care, so as to seem explicitly to reference prominent natural
features, and especially hills, mountains and natural rock outcrops.
This brief summary hardly does justice to the ambitious conceptual scope of
Tilley's seminal work, but as with many truly pioneering studies, after an initial
flurry of implicit accolades by widespread application and extension of the
original precepts, growing concerns about what was perceived as the
fundamental and flawed subjectivity of the phenomenological perspective,
found expression in something of a revisionist backlash8.
Nonetheless, despite these misgivings, the academic pendulum has now, perhaps
inevitably, swung back rather more towards a general appreciation of the danger
that in rejecting Tilley's thesis lock, stock and barrel, a potentially extremely
useful and conceptually important 'baby' might well be thrown out with the
bathwater. The position now appears to be that, for the time being at least,
something approaching an intellectual accommodation has been reached,
underpinning a new orthodoxy; so that matters of landscape context, references
to natural topographical features, and ideas about cosmologies and the
perceived relationship of the individual to both the wider, experienced world,
and to monumental sites of all types, are all now placed at the centre of research
relating to landscape as a social construct in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.
There is now a large and rapidly growing literature in this field of British
prehistory, but a brief survey of some of the more fundamental concepts will be
useful to provide a context for the discussion of the specific case of the
Yarborough Stone, which is the main subject of this paper. Tilley himself, as
might be expected, has been at the forefront of this movement, and has
8

A brief survey of a sample of views critical of (indeed, sometimes outrightly hostile to)
Tilley's work in this specific context, up to 2002, can be found in Corcos 2002. However, a more
recent, sustained, and closely argued and referenced critique is provided by Brck 2005. I am
very grateful to Katharine Walker for drawing my attention to this latter essay.

developed and expanded his own ideas, and those of others, by applying them
recently to underpin a survey of the menhirs of Brittany (Tilley 2004). For Tilley,
the menhirs
took on their meanings in relation to the experiences and feelings of those
people who lived with them in the landscape through particular modes
of encounter and engagement.....the origin of the stones too.....was an
important 'hidden' dimension to their meaning and potency (Tilley 2004,
35-36).

In terms of the physical nature of the stones themselves, Tilley is anxious to stress
that an almost bewildering range of parameters, far beyond our ability to
understand, let alone interpret today, would have been significant to the
communities for which the menhirs provided an expression of at least an
element of their cosmological system:
The visual encounter of size and scale, shape and proportion was only
one experience among many. The nature and character of the raw
material, the stones themselves their colours, the constituent elements
of the rock, the personal and intimate experience of touching their
surfaces and the aural experience of the sounds emitted when struck or
the echo generated from people chanting or drumming in their vicinity
may have been of equal importance (35).

A recurring theme in both Tilley's Brittany survey, and in the work of others
elsewhere, is the apparent concern on the part of the orthostat builders
deliberately to select, in certain specific circumstances, rock types containing high
concentrations of reflective crystalline minerals such as mica or quartz (Tilley
2004, 38 and 65). This is a point to which we will return, but Tilley also notes
that in some cases, there are aspects of the menhirs' physical properties and siting
that seem to be intended consciously to manipulate the visual perception of the
viewer in a highly dynamic way. Of some of the orthostats in the Haut Lon
district, for example, he remarks how
These stones must have been deliberately chosen so as to create quite
distinctive
visual
experiences
when
seen
from.....different
directions.....the visual contrast is as great between the sides or faces of a
menhir as between the menhirs themselves.....indeed the visual character
may have specifically defined how you moved about through and around
the local space close to a menhir (54).

A strong link with sources of water, whether streams or springs, is another key
element in Tilley's overall 'package' of defining characteristics of at least some of

the Brittany menhirs (73); but perhaps surprisingly, some of his views in this key
area relating to the dynamic, tripartite relationship between monument,
landscape and observer, are actually rather less strident than those of some of
his contemporaries (see further below): most notably on how, if at all, the stones
may reference more distant and physically prominent landscape features, chiefly
hills and upland areas; and conversely, how visible, or otherwise, the
monuments themselves may originally have appeared to observers moving
through the landscape:
Despite the great size and mass of many of the menhirs, most are not highly
visible when viewed from long distances. It is as if their presence was known and
their encounter anticipated through this knowledge. Visual prominence in the
wider landscape was not their principle expression. Today, in a landscape with
relatively few trees, none, except those forming pairs or short settings of three
stones, are intervisible. In the much more densely wooded Neolithic
environment, given even that many menhirs have been removed or destroyed,
we can be reasonably certain that all or most stones would not have been
intervisible (81).

This assertion is not without foundation, as there is an increasing body of,

particularly, environmental evidence to suggest that at least some of the great
Neolithic burial, and other types of monument, were indeed erected in
woodland clearings, perhaps with highly specific sight lines established by
differential tree-felling (Cummings and Whittle 2003; and 2004, 69-72). A
recent review of palaeoenvironmental evidence provided by the fossil beetle
record, remarks explicitly of the British Neolithic that
Many areas remained substantially uncleared of woodland. These areas are
major monument complexes and potentially could be viewed as exceptional
within the wider landscape......natural environmental patchiness may have
been important in the siting of concentrations of monuments in this
landscape. This finding is very much in line with other palaeoenvironmental
evidence which suggests that apart from the large ritual landscapes of
Wessex, and other areas where large monumental complexes were
important and which may have been subjected to sustained
clearance......Neolithic clearance for agriculture was relatively small scale, at
least until the later parts of the Neolithic, and that cultivation may have been
more akin to garden type agriculture at this time (Whitehouse and Smith
2010, 549).9
9

I am grateful to Matt Law and Faith Cairns for drawing my attention to this paper. It is,
however, worth noting that what appears to amount at least to a partially contrary view is put
forward by a recent survey of palaeoenvironmental, and particularly molluscan evidence, from
various parts of the Wessex downlands. This has concluded that extensive areas of the chalk
had probably never sustained woodland, of any description, in the post-glacial Mesolithic,

This might, therefore, have involved a process not unlike that which gave rise
to the wholly artificial parkland landscape that might surround a great 18th
country house. But whether by skilful adaptation of existing, natural openings
in the woodland, or by deliberate, differential felling and clearance, or a
combination of both, the objectives were very similar: to control and
manipulate visual perspectives both to and from the landscape focus, be it
Palladian mansion or Neolithic henge.10
Interestingly, however, and contra Tilley, Cummings and Whittle conclude quite
explicitly from their survey of Neolithic burial monuments in Wales that
A consideration of the landscape settings of monuments remains a valid
approach and......the presence of trees does not remove the significance of
relationships between monuments and their surrounding topography (2003,
264).

One must of course be cautious here and recognise that in drawing analogies
between individual orthostats, and major chambered tombs and long barrows,
like is not being compared with like. Nonetheless, it is, again, a surprise when
Tilley infers from his own study of the Brittany menhirs that
the orientation of the broad face, or long axis......barely has any significance in
terms of a relationship with other stones or distinct topographic features of the
landscape such as watercourses or nearby rock outcrops. Menhirs do not point
towards or reference these local places......what seems to be important instead
is one good broad face of the menhir and what it 'looks' out on, or towards
(Tilley 2004, 81).

having always remained as open grassland and scrub throughout that period and into the
Neolithic. It seems, then, that at least on the chalk, the construction of many Neolithic
monuments did not involve tree clearance of any kind whatsoever, because the areas in which
they were located had never sustained woodland in the first place (Allen and Gardiner 2009; I
am very grateful to Niall Sharples for this reference). On Mendip, environmental data of
sufficient resolution is, regrettably, not yet available to enable us to reach a judgement one way
or the other on whether we should entertain a similar possibility there.
10
I am very grateful to Dr Jodie Lewis for her invaluable guidance on this point. A similar
argument has recently been adduced by Peter Herring in relation to the prehistoric moorland
landscapes of south-west England, and specifically, the numerous alignments of small standing
stones, the so-called stone rows, which appear for the most part to date to the Early Bronze
Age. Herring draws parallels with what he sees as one of the intended purposes of these
alignments, and the use, by the great 18th and 19th century landscape designers, of what are
known as bursts; that is, a sudden opening up of a significant view the house, a lake, a
church tower when moving along a carefully placed drive or ride (Herring 2008, 82).

This statement seems to me not only both internally and externally

contradictory, but almost counter-intuitive in terms of a growing awareness of
the existence of strong relationships, direct and causal, between Neolithic
monuments and their landscape settings. Just a few pages previously (on p73),
and as I have already noted, Tilley asserts that the presence of water, in a variety
of forms, was an important determinant in the siting of at least some menhirs;
but here, he appears by contrast to deny that relationship. He seems also, in the
same statement, to be both denying, and reinforcing the suggestion that the
menhirs are so sited as deliberately to 'reference' landscape features, whether
water sources or other kinds of natural topography.
Such conceptual ambiguity may help to give structure and form to the polemical
framework of Tilley's narrative; others, however, are more convinced of, and
more unequivocal in their adherence to, the need to anchor Neolithic
monuments, of all kinds, firmly to the wider landscape context from which they
spring. Cummings's and Whittle's major, detailed survey of the evidence of
chambered tombs in Wales makes this point forcefully. They are quite clear that
rivers and other watercourses, natural rock outcrops, hills, mountains and the
sea, all represent crucial and directly causal referents in the siting of their chosen
monument type (Cummings and Whittle 2004, 80-86). Specifically for the
purposes of this paper, and as I hope will become apparent, a key element of
the argument adduced by these authors is their suggestion that
monuments were consistently located at places of transition, where rivers
began......where rivers entered the sea......where tributaries joined.......or
between lower-lying areas and the uplands.......sites were not simply placed
in locales which were already significant.......Each site.....seems to have been
'fitted' into the local landscape so that a range (authors' emphasis) of
symbolic places could be referenced (87-88).

The apparent multi-faceted propensities of their landscape referencing is an

immanent and defining characteristic in the nature of Neolithic monuments, and
it is a theme which recurs time and again in the modern literature. A study of
the evidence from Breconshire by Children and Nash, for example, remarks on
the perceived (my phrase and emphasis) tendency of Neolithic monuments to
refer to prominent features in the natural landscape, and on the intervisibility of
the region's chambered tombs (Children and Nash 2001, 11-14). The same writers
point to the incidence of pre-Neolithic flint scatters found beneath many
chambered tombs to support the idea of the marking out of 'ancestral pathways'
even before the Neolithic (15), and speculate that tombs sited in river valleys
may represent territorial markers designed to imbue the landscape with a

constructed sense of identity (27). However for both the Neolithic and the
Bronze Age, a common thread of modern perspectives is the idea of monuments
as guides through the landscape, in which their own physical stasis stands in
contrast to the dynamic of the individual moving among and between them.
Children and Nash note a series of standing stones on low ground flanking the
lower Usk Valley which they characterise as processional or guiding markers,
and which, as they suggest, appear to be strongly related to cairns sited on much
higher ground on the surrounding uplands. As I hope will become clear later on,
especially telling in the context of the present study is the observation that many
of these stones are placed at strategic points either along the valleys of
tributaries (of the Usk) or else marking the mouths of smaller streams (ibid, 94).
In any event, this and other recent studies embody a strong sense in which the
deliberate manipulation of space, orientation and the physical body of the
individual, produces a kind of movement to which is imparted a distinctly
'processional' quality: there were, we infer, right ways and wrong ways to move
in relation to the monuments, be they standing stones, barrows, chambered
tombs, cairns, or stone rows or circles.
As a further development of this kind of perspective, there is a growing
awareness, highlighted by recent research, that the sheer scale at which this
dynamic may have operated in some landscapes, may itself have been
monumental. In north-east England for example, Blaise Vyner, building on
earlier work in this region by Richard Bradley and Mark Edmonds, has
postulated the existence of a long distance north-south routeway traversing the
Vales of York and Mowbray in the Neolithic period, but most notably focussed
on the flood-plain corridor between the rivers Swale and Ure. This putative
route was explicitly integrated into a cohesive unity by a whole series of
monument types, including cursuses, standing stones, henges and other
enclosures, and with some of the latter, such as those at Thornborough,
representing major complexes in their own right. Implicit in Vyner's premise is a
sense that the routeway can be understood to function at a number of different
levels: individual monuments or groups thereof acted as foci for more local
attention concerned chiefly with ritual and religion; but at the same time, the
system as a whole was linked specifically to east-west routes across the Pennines,
and its existence was ultimately underpinned by the Lake District axe trade
(Vyner 2007). This said, it is of course important to recognise that these activities
were almost certainly not only not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary, were
mutually dependent and inextricably connected in Neolithic cosmology (see for
example Sharpe 2007).

However, while coherent, unifying monument assemblages may suggest much

about the long-distance movement of people across the landscape at what
might be termed the macro level, and through whatever imperatives, it is also
important to consider the affinities and nature of monuments at the other, micro
end of the scale; that is, at the level of individual sites, and specifically for the
purposes of the present discussion, isolated standing stones, and stones as
discrete elements within megalithic settings such as circles. In narrowing our
focus in this way, we inevitably confront the issue of the physical nature of the
stones themselves, and some recent literature has attempted to resolve and
reconcile the highly variable physical affinities of megaliths through a consciously
theoretical approach. Gillings and Pollard, for example, have constructed a
conjectural narrative 'biography' of one of the stones (Stone 4) in the great circle
at Avebury, and in doing so, have highlighted certain physical characteristics of
the individual sarsen orthostat which may have direct implications for the
Yarborough Stone. Importantly, a key element of the narrative is the suggestion
that over the course of the millennium or so before their incorporation in the
Avebury monument itself, local communities would inevitably have experienced
recurrent encounters with the individual stones of which it would later be
composed; and, these writers argue, locations in which these directly
experienced engagements occurred
would have constituted a powerful physical presence of the social appropriation of
the landscape for these groups. As they accrued meaning, explanations would have
been engendered for their presence, and it is easy to envisage how stones came to
be the focus of myth, and veneration, with the larger and more conspicuous blocks
perhaps becoming named locales around which stories would be woven (Gillings
and Pollard, 1999-2000, 183)11.

The nature of this interaction between stones and people did not, however,
represent merely a passive experience for those individuals; but rather, as
Gillings and Pollard suggest, the stones themselves attest to human participation
in a very active relationship which has, quite literally, left its mark on both those
stones which later became part of the Avebury monument, and those which did
not:
A number of the sarsens at Avebury show evidence for working that had taken
place prior to their careful relocation within the confines of the henge. This takes
the form of percussion marks and discrete polished areas of mirror-like
smoothness, where flint and stone axes........had been ground on their
surface.........The antiquity of such markings is not in doubt, the most extreme
11

I am very grateful to Katharine Walker for this reference.

10

and rare of such 'polishing' stones containing very deep grooves that bear witness
to centuries if not millennia of repeated activity........High up on the smooth face
looking out towards the ditch and bank of Avebury, Stone 4 exhibits a small
zone of stone polishing and grinding, glass-like and smooth to the touch. In
addition, scattered across the face are circular concussion marks, resulting from
the impact of stone hammers (ibid).

We need also, according to these authors, to consider the orientation of Stone

4 in its position within Avebury's great circle:
Facing into Avebury the surface of the stone is rough, pocked with fossil
root holes. The opposite side in contrast is worn smooth (Gillings and
Pollard 1999-2000, 181).

The potential significance of this is problematic, but the clear implication is that
it represents deliberate exploitation and manipulation of the physical
characteristics of the stone, although driven by what imperatives we do not
know.
This idea of an incipient, 'pre-monument' relationship between local
communities, and stones lying recumbent in the landscape in their 'natural'
positions, is taken up by Jodie Lewis in her recent discussion of the Stanton Drew
stone circle complex in northern Somerset, second only in absolute size to
Avebury itself:
The stones may.....have referenced their place of origin, places with their
own mythologies and histories. The raw materials may have been imbued
with meaning prior to their incorporation in the monuments. If these
stones were visible in prehistory, (they).......may have been significant
places.......(and) by incorporating the stone into the monuments at
Stanton Drew, the narrative of such places becomes caught and entangled
within the broader meaning of the site. The origins of materials, the
memories of other places and other people, become part of the story of
Stanton Drew, recalled and recounted during its use (Lewis 2007, 18).

We have already noted, from Tilley's work on the Brittany menhirs, how
researchers have also drawn attention to the potential significance for
contemporaries of other aspects of the natural material from which orthostats
are formed, and to one specific quality in particular. For Stanton Drew, Jodie
Lewis notes that the monument builders exploited very varied geological sources
that were not necessarily in the immediate vicinity of the complex:

11

whilst the precise location of the sources has not been identified (the
general areas where such stones naturally occur are, however, known), it
is possible to calculate that certain stones would have been transported
distances of between 2.5 and 12 kilometres (author's emphases; Lewis
2007, 16).

There are, it seems, at least five different lithologies represented at Stanton

Drew: two different kinds of sandstone, a limestone (probably oolite), and two
different kinds of Dolomitic Conglomerate. We may note here that the
Yarborough Stone is also made from conglomerate (see further below), and
indeed, it is the conglomerates which are overwhelmingly the dominant rock
type at Stanton Drew (Lewis 2007, 17, Table 1.3). In noting the very particular
physical characteristics of each of the different rock types, Lewis lays special
emphasis on the nature of the conglomerates, drawing attention to the fact that
several are
fantastically knobbly, with 'shaggy' surfaces and large numbers of hollows,
conspicuously red from iron impregnation whilst others are a smoother, more
muted grey. The conglomerates also contain quartz and William Stukeley
poetically noted how the ......fluours and transparent crystallisations.....shine
eminently and reflects (sic) the sunbeams with great lustre. Quartz, or rocks with
a high concentration of quartz......often occurs as deliberate inclusions in
Neolithic monuments suggesting that it had particular meaning. The deployment
of these different stones may have been linked to these particular aesthetic and
textural qualities (Lewis 2007, 17-18).

The southern face of the Yarborough Stone displays precisely this kind of highly
rugged micro topography. Others, such as Tilley, whose work I have already
cited, have also noticed the prominent status that quartz appears to enjoy in the
Neolithic mindset when it comes to the choice of rock types considered
appropriate, or even indispensable, for monumental lithic structures; Timothy
Darvill, for example, reviewing the use of quartz, and most notably quartz
pebbles, in Neolithic monuments on the Isle of Man and beyond, takes a similar
line to Lewis, remarking that
Quartz attracts attention not only because of its colour, but also because of its
natural sparkle and luminescence (Darvill 2002, 75).

Summary
If there is one thing above all else that this brief survey has highlighted, it is
perhaps how current understandings of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age lithic
monuments have become profoundly informed by, and are now deeply rooted

12

in, concepts of relationships both to surrounding landscape, and to the

perspective of the individual moving through it. We find that a whole raft of
important ideas, expressed in sometimes extremely challenging theoretical
discourse, if stripped to their essentials, are underpinned by what are, in fact, a
number of key, recurrent themes that we might perhaps label as 'elemental'. The
idea, for example, of pre-monument cosmologies becoming attached to
individual stones in their 'natural' state, through long and repeated encounter
by local communities; the suggestion that the physical quality of the stone itself
has a bearing, firstly, on initial selection, and subsequently, on explicit placement
within the 'finished' monument; and the premise, now virtually an orthodoxy
in its own right, that natural landscape features acted as literal and highly specific
referents for, and lent direct, causal topographical cues to, the siting of
monuments in their local landscapes. And above all of this, uniting every
element of this conceptual edifice into a coherent, structured narrative, is the
assumption (for such it is) that it was overwhelmingly the quality of human
spirituality, defining but itself indefinable, which made the individual
components absolutely mutually dependent, and was driven by concerns of
ritual, religion, and cosmology. These all-pervading preoccupations, it is now
believed, were inextricably woven into the day to day domestic and subsistence
activities with which pre-industrial societies, in winning their continued existence
from the land, were so deeply involved; and this of course must surely be
correct12. Yet it does sometimes seem as though current models tend rather to
play down these very earthy, 'functional' concerns, preferring instead to
promote the cosmological/ritual perspective almost to the exclusion of other
considerations. There is perhaps a useful analogy to be drawn here.
Archaeologists have long eschewed explanations of settlement and economy
which might be viewed as remotely 'deterministic' in tone, specifically in terms
of a range of geographical parameters such as availability of natural resources,
soil types, water supply and so on. However, as so often happens with academic
revisionist movements, there is now an increasing concern that the pendulum
has swung far too far in the opposite direction, towards a perspective that might
be characterised as extreme anti-geographical determinism, and to the extent
that considerations of natural landscape and resources should have, effectively,
no role to play in our views of the settlement patterns and economies of preindustrial societies (Corcos 2002a, 190-191). In a similar way, it might perhaps
seem that as presently framed, concepts of Neolithic behaviour founded chiefly
12

The idea of a fully-integrated cosmological view in which both domestic and

ritual/religious spheres were inextricably bound together in mutual dependency, has attained
virtual orthodoxy probably for the majority of specialists in both the Neolithic, and indeed later
periods. For a useful review and discussion, see, for example, Bradley 2003.

13

upon explanations of ritual and religion, have themselves hardened into a form
of cultural determinism, amounting almost to dogma, which might sometimes
blind us to other driving forces which are as, or indeed even more significant.
We might therefore justifiably wonder whether just occasionally, it is possible
to discern the hand of straightforward, functional pragmatism, born of agrarian
necessity, as a contributing factor in the general siting and landscape context of
some Neolithic/Early Bronze Age lithic monuments. As I hope at least to suggest
in the specific case of the Yarborough Stone, in addition to the two attributes,
textural and aesthetic, to which Lewis and others attach special significance for
our understanding of the choices about materials made by Neolithic
communities erecting their stone monuments, it may be possible to infer littleexplored practical considerations underpinning not only the choice of rock type,
but also decisions relating to the site and orientation of some orthostats. In the
following sections I will, therefore, lay out the various strands of evidence that
we might admit in this respect, and I will then attempt to reconcile these
different perspectives into an overarching, synthetic narrative which tries to
make sense of the Yarborough Stone in its landscape context.
Historical and landscape background13
The Yarborough standing stone is located at the south-west corner of the parish
of Banwell in north Somerset, and is generally assumed to be Neolithic in date,
although there is as yet no independent archaeological evidence for this. It is a
Scheduled Ancient Monument (No. 22810), and is item number 110 in the North
Somerset Historic Environment Record. The stone lies just under 220m southsouth-east of Yarberry Farmhouse, and takes the form of a single, isolated
orthostat of local Dolomitic Conglomerate, almost certainly from a source of
this same material which outcrops on the slopes of Winthill and Banwell Hill,
immediately north of the farm (Appendix 1)14 (Figs 1 and 2)15. It stands 2.38m in
height, is 1.38m wide, 0.40m in depth16, and is oriented so as to present its
widest faces to the south-south-west, and north-north-east respectively (Plates 1
and 2). It occupies a site which slopes gently to the south, just below the 10m
13

I would like formally to record here my immense gratitude to Mrs Susan Griffin, the
landowner at Yarberry Farm, who extended every hospitality and kindness during my numerous
visits to the site for the purposes of fieldwork, and who followed the work itself with great
interest.
14
I am greatly indebted to Dr Peter Hardy for his advice regarding the lithological affinities
of the stone, and for his preparation of Appendix 1 and Fig 5. The EH ancient monument
schedule describes Yarborough as 'sandstone', which is strictly incorrect.
15
I am very grateful to Professor Stephen Rippon, of the Dept of Archaeology, University
of Exeter, for his permission to create Fig. 1 by adapting one of his own published maps.
16
These dimensions represent the writer's own field measurements, which differ
somewhat from those given in the EH ancient monument schedule.

14

FIGURE 1
40

Land over 10m aOD

Gloucester

Forest of
Dean

Oldbury
Level

Chepstow
Newport

CALDICOT
Cotswolds
Avonmouth
Level

Cardiff

Bristol
Tickenham Ridge

North Somerset Levels

Puxton

60

Weston-s-Mare

Bath

Crook
Peak

60

Lox Yeo Valley

Yarborough
Stone

Berrow
Burnham-on-Sea

Congresbury

Brent Knoll

Nyland Hill

Central Somerset Levels

Glastonbury

Bridgwater

0
Taunton

10

20km

Ilchester
40
Adapted with the permission of Prof Stephen Rippon

ST 390

ST 577

FIGURE 2

PLATE 1

The Yarborough Stone, view looking north. Scale: 1m

PLATE 2

The Yarborough Stone. View approximately to east. Scale: 1m.

contour, very close to what would originally have been the northern edge of
the flood plain of the River Lox Yeo; in its present course, this lies 260m to the
south17. This stream flows north-east/south-west, draining into the River Axe at
Crab Hole, about a km south-east of Loxton. The site of both Yarborough, and
another stone close by to the east (see further below), lie just within the northwestern part of the Mendip Hills AONB18.
Historically, the Yarborough stone has not always been known only by this
name, but has also been called Wooks Quoit.19 The ultimate source of this
designation is unknown, but it was certainly current in the early 18th century: in
the manuscript notes for his proposed history of Somerset written c.1730, the
antiquarian John Strachey, of Sutton Court in Stowey parish, notes in his
description of Banwell and Banwell Hill that
In the vally on the so. of the hill a large monumental stone set up calld
Wooks Cait relating to the fabled gyant inhabiting Wokey hole so Hautvills
Cait in Chew & Belluton & the Devills casts (SRO DD/SH 107 c/202, Part
2 of 2, Winterstoke Hundred).20

The origin of the word quoit as applied to megalithic monuments of this type,
seems to lie in the widespread folkloric tradition that they are the result of
superhuman or devilish feats of strength in which massive stones are thrown long
distances, and to which, indeed, Strachey in this account makes specific reference.
We need, however, to raise a note of caution here. Strictly speaking, there is
insufficient detail in Stracheys account to be absolutely certain that it describes
what is now called the Yarborough Stone, rather than the unnamed stone close
by to its east. This is merely an assumption. But both orthostats were,
presumably, standing in his day, and both could be reasonably described as lying
in the valley on the south of (Banwell) hill. There will probably never be
sufficient evidence to resolve this question definitively, and while acknowledging
that lacuna, for now there is no real alternative but to follow the general
assumption that Strachey is indeed describing the Yarborough Stone.
17

The monument's OS national grid reference is ST 39036 57828, and LIDAR indicates
that the stone itself lies at just over 8m OD. I am very grateful to Simon Crutchley, of English
Heritage's Swindon office, for supplying me with the raw LIDAR data which forms such a crucial
element of this discussion, and converting it into the easily-readable QT format on my behalf.
LIDAR tile sets ST 3856 and 3858.
18
I owe much thanks to Helen Winton, of English Heritage, for supplying me with a great
deal of useful material relating to EH's recent major survey and updating of the archaeological
resource within the Mendip AONB.
19
I am grateful to Mike Murray for drawing this fact to my attention.
20
The Banwell section of Stracheys manuscript has been transcribed and published, in
full, by Stan and Joan Rendell. See Rendell and Rendell 1979, 1980 and 1983.

15

Despite a lack of known documentary references before the early 18th century, a
prehistoric attribution for Yarborough remains both reasonable and likely;
however, an observation by Williams perhaps gives pause that where standing
stones are concerned, and in the absence of conclusive archaeological evidence,
we need at least to keep an open mind, and to exercise some care in making
unwarranted assumptions about both date and original function. Williams notes
the possibility that relatively modern cattle rubbing stones may be misidentified
as prehistoric orthostats:
The stone may.....have been dressed in recent times, it may have a drill-hole in
one end where it has been dragged with a rope or show some other sign of
recent erection. Rubbing stones also tend to be located towards the centres of
fields. It may be, also, that rubbing stones are generally less massive than bona
fide standing stones. But the height of the typical rubbing stone (1.5m) is well
within the range of genuine standing stones......(and it has been) suggested that
neighbouring farmers may have erected large rubbing stones in competition
with one another (Williams 1988, 14).

The Yarborough stone cannot be said to display any of the obvious physical
characteristics, as described by Williams, that would make an identification as a
cattle rubbing stone a very likely proposition. However, the writer felt it a wise
precaution at least to attempt an independent check on the possible length of
time that both faces of the stone had been exposed; a specialist survey of the
lichens growing on the stone's surfaces offered one potential solution to this
question, and this is a technique which has been employed elsewhere, to
considerable effect, to gain an understanding of approximately when the
individual stones in a prehistoric megalithic monument may have been last
moved21. The results of the Yarborough Stone lichen survey are presented here
as Appendix 2, which includes a tabulated list of the individual varieties
colonising the exposed surfaces, and a brief analysis by Dr David Hill. The key
21

This possibility was first suggested to me by Dr Nigel Chaffey, Course Leader in

Environmental Science, in the School of Science, Society and Management, University of Bath
Spa, to whom I am very grateful. The origins of this kind of analysis lie in the use of dated
headstones in cemeteries and churchyards to track lichen colonisation rates for a recent
review, see Leger and Forister 2009, although the idea was first mooted, and tested in practice,
by Mason Hale (1967). In the UK, the pioneering study of lichens, in specific relation to the
dating of post-erection interference with and movement at ancient monuments, was carried out
at the Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire, and Castlerigg, Cumbria, and published as Winchester
1988. For a more general, recent overview, see also Aptroot and James, 2000. The paper by
Winchester involves the use of sophisticated methods of sampling and statistical analysis,
which simply could not be attempted here. However, within the constraints of a far more
straightforward listing survey of the Yarborough lichens, the results are telling. I am greatly
indebted to Dr David Hill, formerly of the University of Bristol, for carrying out the lichen survey
on my behalf.

16

point here is Dr Hill's observation of the likelihood that the Yarborough Stone
has been exposed to the weather for a considerable length of time, probably
hundreds.rather than tens of years. The authoritative view that the stone
has been exposed for centuries seems strongly to add to the cumulative evidence
that it is indeed prehistoric in origin, and not merely an especially large cattlerubbing stone.
Initial Geophysical survey I: The Yarborough Stone22
A short interim note on both this work, and that at the site of the Knoll Farm
stone 400m to the east (see further below), was published as Corcos and Smisson
2009. Although well-known, Yarborough itself has never been subject to
modern archaeological investigation, but in fact it was the possible significance
of the nearby place-name, in terms of its archaeological implications, which first
attracted the writer's attention (see further below)23. A site visit confirmed the
presence of a low and clearly badly truncated, but nonetheless distinct mound,
and what appeared to be a partial ditch, immediately east of the stone. A
resistivity survey subsequently conducted here on the writer's behalf by Bob
Smisson, outside the scheduled area, suggested the existence of a low resistance
curvilinear, interpreted as a possible ditch, enclosing an area of high resistance.
Subsequent, more detailed geophysical work by the Dept. of Archaeology,
University of Worcester, confirmed the presence of a sub-circular anomaly which
might account for the mound seen in the field, although the evidence for a
surrounding ditch from this work, was more ambiguous. Excavation in the
vicinity of the standing stone, in July 2011, demonstrated not only the lack of a
circular ditch, but that the curvilinear feature was not a barrow, but a natural
mound of clay (Lewis, forthcoming). The discovery, during excavation, of a
highly weathered block of dolomitised Carboniferous Limestone, at a position
very close to the standing stone, was unexpected, although its exact significance
is problematic; it is not absolutely clear, for example, that it was deliberately
buried, in antiquity, and it may just have rolled or been transported to the site
under periglacial conditions, from the ridge to the north (pers. comm. Dr Peter
22

I owe a very large debt of thanks to Bob Smisson for this work, which he alone planned
and supervised. My gratitude also goes to the several volunteer helpers who turned out to
assist on two separate occasions, both times in progressively deteriorating weather, and
without whom the surveys could not have been conducted. I would also like to acknowledge
the kindness of Mr Simon de Shapland, the landowner at Knoll Hill Farm, in giving permission
for the work on the second site to be carried out.
23
A training exercise in geophysical survey for students at Bristol University had
previously been carried out in the vicinity of the stone, under the supervision of John Gater, of
Geophysical Surveys of Bradford, but it was not considered at that time that the results were of
any archaeological significance, and no results from the work were published; pers comm Prof
Mick Aston.

17

Hardy). Even if this was the case, however, the people who erected the
Yarborough Stone were presumably well aware of its presence, and could easily
have removed it had they felt it desirable to do so; and it is not unreasonable to
suggest at least the possibility that, if indeed a natural feature, the presence of
this stone may have exercised its own influence on the precise positioning of
Yarborough. This question is examined in greater detail by Lewis and Mullin
later in this volume, but from its general shape and surface morphology, the
stone does not seem to represent part of another, now lost orthostat, and its
lithological composition is different from that of the Yarborough Stone itself, so
that it cannot be seen as a piece either deliberately broken, or weathered, from
the surviving monolith24. It is possible that it may be a secondary referent to the
Yarborough Stone itself, in the form of a structured, ritual deposit.
Geophysical Survey II: The Knoll Farm Stone
About 400m to the east of the Yarborough Stone, was the site of a further, nowlost orthostat, which although marked on early editions of the OS, had
disappeared by 1954, and its exact nature is therefore problematic (Corcos and
Smisson 2009; North Somerset HER 108). As with the anomaly originally
identified at the site of the Yarborough Stone, this feature was also subject to
partial excavation, in July 2011, by a team from the Dept of Archaeology at the
University of Worcester. Again however, no sign of any barrow was discovered,
and as at Yarborough, the minor topographic high in this area was identified as
a natural spread of clay. The work also located what is thought to have been
the original socket hole for the orthostat which originally stood on the site (for
the geophysical work and excavation conducted by the University of Worcester
at both Yarborough and Knoll Farm, see Lewis forthcoming).
The proven lack of barrows at both Yarborough itself, and Knoll Farm, does not
of course preclude the possibility of the existence of barrow sites elsewhere in
the immediate area. Geophysical survey, and review of aerial photographic
evidence, has led the ALERT voluntary archaeology group to propose that the
sites of at least five now ploughed-out barrows may be recoverable25; although
the experience of both Yarborough and Knoll Hill Farm should give pause that
excavation alone must stand as the final arbiter of both function and date.
Nonetheless, the North Somerset HER identifies the site of a further possible
barrow, on the top of Knoll Hill about 520m north-east of the Yarborough
Stone, and 270m north of the site of the Knoll Hill farm stone. The reported
24

As with the Yarborough Stone itself I am very grateful to Dr Peter Hardy for examining
this stone on my behalf, and for providing an expert analysis of its likely geological affinities.
The results of Dr Hardys assessment appear in this volume as Appendix 1.
25
http://www.winscombearchaeology.co.uk/monuments1.html

18

grid reference of this feature is ST 3942 5816, at which location the HER refers
to a circular and ditchless artificial mound, 1.2m high. The field to the west is
called Barrow Batch on the Tithe Map. This suggests it is a barrow and not an
ornamental feature associated with (the) tree and seat now on its top (NSHER
107)26. While there is as yet no firm archaeological or field-survey evidence for
the existence of this barrow, examination of LIDAR data (Tile ST3858, QT
format) does indeed suggest the presence of a barrow-like feature on the top of
the knoll.
Significance of the Place-Name
The farm on whose land the stone lies is currently known as 'Yarberry', and the
house there is subject to Grade II statutory listing. It is thought to be at least early
17th century in date (EH listing no. Banwell 4/45). The site itself, however, is
almost certainly medieval. A late 18th century memorial plaque on the south-east
nave wall of Banwell church, shows that the spelling Yarbury was current at that
time, and indeed probably from at least the late 1730s27. However, the earliest
spellings that have been identified so far come from a series of mid-14th century
account rolls for the manor of Winscombe, which identify a Robert of
Yord(e)bury as having dealings with that manor over the tenancy of various
small parcels of land within it. At the very least, this evidence confirms that
Yarborough was occupied as a farmstead by that date, since this is a time when
locative surnames were, generally, still directly related to a persons actual
dwelling site28.
Dr Michael Costen suggests to me (pers comm), that
whatever this yorde element is, it is almost certainly not a personal name. It
has no hint of a genitive in the spelling (and) it would not have begun with a y
in Old English. I think this began with an e. I wonder if this is OE eard which
means a dwelling place or habitation. The existence of the a in modern spellings
might help reinforce the idea. Ardleigh in Essex and Arden in Cheshire, Kent etc,
also contain the element. The second element is byrig, the normal dative form

26

The Banwell tithe map is dated 1843; SRO D/D/Rt/M/12.

I am very grateful to Mrs Susan Griffin, of Yarberry Farm, for alerting me to the
existence of this inscription.
28
The dates are 1336-37 (SRO DD/CC/B/131909/8) and 1342-43 (SRO
DD/CC/B/131909/12). From these documents, it is also apparent that Robert of Yord(e)bury
had at least two sons, William and Walter. I am extremely grateful to Martin Ecclestone, who
originally identified and transcribed these records on behalf of Prof Mick Aston for the purposes
of the ongoing Winscombe Project, and to Maria Forbes of Max Mills Farm, Winscombe, for
bringing his important work, and the specific Yarborough material within it, to my attention in
the first instance.
27

19

of burh, a fort, strong place or fortified house. Arden means eard + earn, a
dwelling-place and shed or house. Earn also occurs, for example, in Crewkerne.

In the context of a barrow-like feature at Yarborough, even though its natural

origin is now archaeologically attested, it is the second element of this name
which is of most interest here (see further below). Unfortunately however, in
the form in which it has survived (ie bury) it presents problems of interpretation.
This is because confusion in Middle English has meant that modern forms in bury
could have come from either of two possible Old English words: byrig (the
dative singular form of the word burh), meaning a fortified and/or high status
occupation site; or beorg, meaning a hill, mound or tumulus. The latter passed
into common use, especially in Wessex, to give the dialect word 'barrow',
meaning specifically a burial mound, and now widely used by archaeologists as
a technical term for this particular class of monument. If, as in this case, only the
form bury is available, it is virtually impossible to determine which of these two
derivations is the correct one, and the context of the word, especially the
landscape setting of the site to which it is applied, therefore becomes crucial
(Gelling 1997, 132-134; Griffith 1986; an extremely useful, recent survey of the
archaeological implications of burh/byrig, is now also provided by Draper
2009). Indeed, this is a case where archaeology can cast light on toponymy,
since the exact nature of a bury name (is it a Bronze Age barrow or an Iron Age
hillfort?), will give a clue about whether it is likely to originate in beorg or byrig.
In the specific case of Yarborough/Yarberry, matters are complicated by the fact
that there may now be two possible sources for the bury name, one, the natural
mound near the standing stone which may have been mistakenly identified by
early English speakers as a barrow, and presumably originating in beorg, and the
other from byrig.
Virtually due south of Yarberry Farm, in a field known as Thornbridge, North
Somerset HER 111 refers to a straight-sided, round-cornered enclosure on the
south bank of the River Lox Yeo, and known locally as Yarborough Camp. First
identified as a cropmark from aerial photographs, it has not yet been
investigated archaeologically (ie by excavation), and its nature is therefore
somewhat enigmatic. The HER entry notes that it appears to be double-ditched,
and that its northern side is eroded by the river, the inference being that it is
indeed of some antiquity. The HER does not attempt to assign a date to this
feature, but in a series of articles in the mid 1960s, H J Hawkings suggested very
strongly that it was a small Roman fort (Hawkings 1965 and 1966). In the
context of this view, this site might be thought to provide a strong candidate for
the origin of an OE byrig place-name nearby, except for two possible drawbacks.

20

First, although it is of course well known that toponyms are by no means fixed
in the landscape, and can be subject to a degree of shift, nonetheless the site is
nearly half a km from Yarberry Farm. This is nearly two and a half times the
distance between the farm and the putative barrow site. The second point relates
to how the site might have been affected by the historic flooding regime of the
Lox Yeo river. Hawkings view was that the camp does not stand on the alluvial
marsh-land, but on the somewhat more elevated triassic (sic) marl country to
the south, and would have been above water level if the lower part of the valley
were flooded.. He then goes on to suggest reasons why he considers that
the camp must pre-date the rivers present course (Hawkings 1966, 15-16).
While we may safely take it as read that the river course represents, throughout
its history, a highly dynamic environment, constantly shifting in its bed, neither
lidar nor aerial photographs give any hint of where putative palaeochannels
might have lain, and the North Somerset HER, noting that the site lies at only
7m OD, considers that it occupies soils of the Midelney Association, formally
defined as a shallow clay cap.of river alluvium, overlying a peat substrate
(DEFRA 1996, 12)29. Soils of this series are found in both the Fens of East Anglia
(at Flag Fen for example), and much closer to home in the Somerset Levels, and
they can only develop under conditions of sustained, even if not necessarily
continuous, waterlogging (Hartnup 1975). This being so, it is difficult to see this
enclosure as a Roman military site, although aerial photographs do appear
clearly to vindicate Hawkingss suggestion, noted by the HER, that the northern
side has been severely damaged through erosion by the Lox Yeo (for example,
NMR OS/89071, Frame 313, Library No. 13438; April 1989); although it is also
notable that Hawkingss own sketch plan of the enclosure suggests a degree of
uncertainty on his part about the exact position of the enclosures northern
boundary, depicting it as he does with a dashed line (Hawkings 1966, 16). In any
event, the exact nature of this feature will remain an unknown until it is properly
investigated archaeologically. Full geophysical survey alone might go a long way
towards explaining its origins, although questions of dating may ultimately be
answered only by trial excavation30.
29

Although the lack of surface expression of palaeochannels is hardly surprising in view

of the blanket of alluvium covering the valley floor, clearly depicted on the geological map, of
unknown depth, and masking ancient land surfaces underneath it.
30
In fact, recent geophysical survey of this feature by a team led by John Matthews does
indeed suggest that its northern side has suffered damage from the shifting course of the LoxYeo, and has confirmed the impression of a straight-sided, slightly trapezoidal enclosure with
rounded corners. A Roman attribution may therefore seem inevitable but at present remains
unproven. Geophysical investigation has also revealed what is proposed to be a section along
the line of a Roman road running north-east/south-west down the valley, but this again awaits
definitive archaeological proof. This work is reported in South-West Archaeology (the
newsletter of CBA south-west), Issue 2, Jan. 2010, 7. See also

21

It may be instructive in this respect to look for parallels to the place-name across
a rather wider geographical backdrop, and it indeed transpires that the Banwell
Yarborough has a exact namesake in Lincolnshire, where it is recorded as a minor
name on the north-eastern boundary of the parish of Melton Ross, in Lindsey.
Names of this type in Lincolnshire, of which there are several examples, have
recently been reviewed by Richard Coates as part of a wider survey of
Lincolnshire toponyms, and the generally-accepted view is that they derive from
two Old English words (although perhaps, in this region, with some
Scandinavian modification), eor-bur(h), meaning earth fort (Coates 2009,
94). In the case of Yarborough in Melton Ross, the name can be shown quite
clearly to have been applied specifically to a sub-square, earthwork enclosure
with rounded corners. Although not dated, this site, like its Somerset counterpart
known as Yarborough Camp, has in the past been assigned a Romano-British
military origin; and it is striking how, although in origin only a minor toponym,
Yarborough gave its name to the wapentake in which it was situated, perhaps
because, as Kevin Leahy has suggested, it was the centre of the wapentake and
acted as the moot or meeting place (Leahy 2002, 150-151. The quote is on the
latter page, with an informative hachured plan of the earthwork on 150)31. The
sizes of the respective enclosures are somewhat different, the Lincolnshire
Yarborough Camp measuring some 90m by 75m, while its north Somerset
namesake is about 61m by 46m. But in other respects they at least appear to be
strikingly similar, and at present it must remain an open question whether the
name Yarborough is indeed an explicit reference to this earthwork, an eorhttp://www.bacas.org.uk/ArticlePdfs/2000-22-24.pdf for a report by the same group on the
discovery, again by geophysical survey, of what is interpreted as a possible occupation site of
Romano-British date in the Lox-Yeo Valley, and presumed to have some association with
associated with the putative road. I am very grateful to John Matthews for information relating
to his geophysical work at the Thornbridge enclosure. In 2007, an archaeological watching brief
at the western end of a new water pipeline being installed between Banwell and Rowberrow,
just over 2km NE of the Lox Yeo Roman enclosure, uncovered a highly truncated linear feature
composed of a spread of stones. It was oriented in roughly the same direction as the supposed
road noted above, and it is certainly possible that it represents a continuation of it, and the
remnant core of a Roman road. Unfortunately however, the feature could not be confidently
dated, as during the course of the work, the site was raided by nighthawking metal detectorists,
and material that might have been crucial for dating (probably of copper alloy) was removed;
BaRAS 2007.
31
Following Barry Cox, Leahy has also, however, speculated that Yarborough Camp may
represent a seventh-century burh site, and is of the view that an early medieval, rather than
Roman date may be preferred on the grounds that while late Roman fortifications employed
bastionsthose at Yarborough differ in that they fail to extend beyond the defensive line and
would not have allowed flanking fire (ibid, 151). However, this argument fails to take into
account the distinct likelihood that the above-ground fortifications were built of timber, and there
may well have been projecting bastions marking the corners of a timber palisade enceinte,
which have left no surface traces on the ground today.

22

burh, which has migrated a few hundred metres northwards to become attached
to an occupation site at Yarberry Farm that is likely to be at least of medieval
date32.
Detailed metrical survey at the north Somerset Yarborough Camp, although
desirable, may not be possible due to the extremely degraded nature of the
surviving earthworks. Until, therefore, this feature can be securely dated by
excavation, its nature and function will remain completely problematic.
However, we may also note that, although smaller in size, the enclosure might
well bear comparison with morphologically similar features not very far away
on the Mendip plateau, which are generally regarded as medieval or postmedieval stock corrals or shieling sites (see for example Somerset HER PRNs
23030 and 21367). Indeed, the siting of an animal enclosure in this position
would have the benefit of providing stock with a ready supply of drinking water
from the river very close to or perhaps even partially forming its northern side.
These features are common and not invariably of great antiquity33. At our
present state of knowledge, therefore, the possible presence of a barrow
adjacent to the Yarborough Stone, although awaiting definitive archaeological
proof, would certainly represent an equally likely candidate as the Lox Yeo
enclosure, for being the source of the second element of the place-name
Yarborough.
The physical context: geology, topography, and landscape
Appendix 1 describes the geological affinities of the Yarborough Stone itself, but
this is only one aspect of a much wider set of physical factors which we need to
consider in piecing together a plausible and informed narrative of the
monument's landscape context. The 1:50,000 geological map (Fig 3) shows that
the drift geology in what clearly represents the flood plain of the Lox-Yeo river
consists, not surprisingly, of alluvium; and although its depth, and the nature of
any underlying, associated deposits, are not always clear, the presence of peat is
certain, and has been proven by borehole testing of alluvial deposits elsewhere
32

But see also Gelling 1997, 147-148, for a number of caveats relating to interpretation
of what may appear to be toponyms of eor-burh type.
33
In 1975, aerial reconnaissance over Somerset resulted in the identification, by Roger
Leech, of another rectangular enclosure only 300m to the south of the Lox-Yeo example, and
of a similar sub-playing card shape, although smaller in size (Leech 1978, 58; I am very grateful
to Chris Richards for this reference). This feature survived with upstanding earthwork banks as
late as 1946 (NMR RAF CPE/UK 1869, Frame 4283), but it had been ploughed out by 1950
(NMR RAF/541/527, Frame 3278). Leechs transcription of the mid 1970s AP evidence shows
an entrance in the south-east corner, and it is almost certainly a stock pen of medieval or later
date.

23

59
FIGURE 3

58

Knoll Farm Stone

Yarborough Stone
MMG outlier

Alluvium
Mercia Mudstone
(MMG)

57

56
Crook Peak

55

39

0.5

40

1km

41

Adapted from the British Geological Survey 1:25000 Sheet

in the immediate area (Green and Welch 1965, 119-123). The hard geology
beneath the Pleistocene drift deposits is relatively well-known: the valley is
floored with a layer of Triassic mudstones and breccias, the former consisting
particularly of lithologies of the Mercia Mudstone group, which in turn lie on
top of heavily eroded strata of Old Red Sandstone, representing the denuded
core of the Mendip pericline at this, its western extremity (Simms 2004, 483484, and Fig. 4).
The literature bearing on the palaeoenvironment of the Severn estuary, and its
northern and southern littorals, is both voluminous and constantly expanding,
but what it reveals above all else is that the estuary, together with its associated
low-lying hinterlands and backfens, represents an archaeological resource of
international significance; and a very useful, if sometimes highly technical
overview of the kind of approaches which have characterised recent
palaeoenvironmental research here, can be found in the collection of essays
published as Rippon 200134. The palaeoenvironmental affinities of the Lox-Yeo
valley would seem to tie it very firmly into this background it drains into the
lower Axe valley, which itself flows north-westwards to join the estuary at
Uphill; and the Axe flood plain has for some time been the focus of a range of
palaeoenvironmental research, encompassing a variety of perspectives (eg
Macklin 1985; Davies et al, 1998; Haslett et al 2001).
For a site of such potential importance in terms of the crucial
palaeoenvironmental evidence which is undoubtedly locked up in its drift
deposits, the Lox-Yeo valley has seen surprisingly little systematic fieldwork by
Quaternary scientists. Most recently however, a potentially very important
survey was conducted by Huw Williams, who took two transects of
environmental cores across the flood plain, one of them near the valley mouth
not far from Haslett's earlier site at North Yeo Farm (see further below), but the
other very close to the location of the Yarborough Stone. This work may well,
eventually, provide a closely dated sequence of environmental change,
particularly in terms of water levels and depositional regimes within the flood
plain area adjacent to the stone. It is, therefore, doubly to be regretted that the
results of Williamss crucial survey are unlikely to be presented in print into the
foreseeable future35.
34

Much of this research is scattered in a wide variety of specialist earth science and
palaeoenvironmental journals, but a great deal is also conveniently brought together in the
published annual reports of the Severn Estuary Levels Research Committee, beginning in
1990.
35
Pers comm. Professor Simon Haslett, of the University of Wales at Newport, to whom
I am very grateful for providing me with further details of Huw Williams's work. The study is

24

The closest published study has been carried out by Haslett and others in the
western part of the Lower Axe Valley, in the form of two borehole transects
(Haslett et al, 2001a). The longer of the two ran roughly east to west from the
western end of the Isle of Wedmore to the coast just south of Brean Down. As
well as gathering palaeoenvironmental data, the study also involved, crucially,
a series of radiocarbon determinations on a selected range of the recovered
material. The sample site nearest to the mouth of the Lox-Yeo Valley was at
North Yeo Farm (ST360544), which lies just over 2km WSW of Crab Hole,
where the Lox-Yeo joins the westwards-flowing Axe. However, with some
important variation in both the chronology, and the nature of the depositional
regimes that were revealed, the fundamental picture arising from the majority
of the borehole data was clear. Over much of the western part of the Axe Valley,
the Quaternary phase consisted essentially of a layer of peat (0.5-2m thick)
'sandwiched' between two much thicker (5-6m) deposits of marine alluvium,
attesting to two episodes of marine transgression interrupted, if only briefly, by
a phase of chiefly freshwater, terrestrial reed bed. Haslett et al directly correlate
these deposits with the Lower, Middle and Upper Wentlooge Formation in the
Gwent Levels, on the northern shore of the Severn Estuary. The radiocarbon
dates, not surprisingly, show that the impact of the transgressions was generally
felt last by those areas furthest away from the coast. At North Yeo Farm, the
data from which is probably most relevant in the present context, the first phase
of marine alluvium was giving way to a freshwater, peat-forming environment
at 5575-5145 BP, while the second phase transgression was beginning around
4090-3700 BP (dates calibrated to 2) (Haslett et al 2001a, 81, Table 2). If we
allow that these environmental fluctuations had a direct impact in at least the
lower part of the Lox-Yeo Valley, the inference is clear: that both before and
after a brief respite around the beginning of the Bronze Age, the valley would
otherwise probably have been subject to at least seasonal, and possibly longterm flooding, with intermittent overtopping of the river's banks due to
restricted outflow into the Axe Valley. In the Neolithic, the Lox-Yeo valley flood
plain would have been, even in the summer, a waterlogged marsh, and in the
winter months probably completely flooded, even if only to relatively shallow
depths.
In the absence, therefore, of palaeoenvironmental data collected according to
modern methodologies and tolerances, including, crucially, dating by C14 assay,
reported as a brief note in Hunt and Haslett 2006, 49, where it is described as being 'in
preparation'. I would like to thank Chris Richards for initially drawing this important reference to
my attention.

25

the present writer adopted a slightly more ad hoc approach to gain at least a
basic understanding of the nature of the drift deposits in the immediate vicinity
of the Yarborough Stone. A series of bores, carried out by Dr Peter Hardy on
my behalf, were taken close to the stone, beginning to its north, with sampling
at 5m intervals, and working progressively southwards, at 10m intervals (with
the exception of sample 9) onto the lower-lying ground of the Lox-Yeo valley,
in the direction of the river itself. The instrument used was a basic, manual auger,
with a straight shaft of 1m length, the lower 20cm of which consisted of a
coarsely-pitched threaded screw in which sampled material was collected and
could be examined. Fig 4 shows the position and heights above OD of the auger
samples, Fig 5 is a diagrammatic section, prepared by Dr Hardy, of what the
samples reveal about the nature of the underlying drift deposits, and Appendix
3 is a qualitative description of the deposits, and interpretative discussion, also
prepared by Dr Hardy36.
The essence of Dr Hardy's analysis, even from this relatively basic exercise, is
quite clear: it is that probably from the end of the last glaciation, the Lox-Yeo
valley sustained a highly dynamic depositional regime, with intermittent
episodes of flooding broken by the development of marshland vegetation. This
immediately ties the valley into the series of studies carried out in the Axe Valley
to the south. Dr Hardy also makes two further points: firstly, that the stone does
indeed occupy a position which can be characterised as an ecotone, that is, a
resource interface or zone of ecological transition (Naiman and Dcamps,
1990)37; and secondly, that the site of the stone itself has probably remained dry
ground since it was first erected.
From the drift deposits occupying the valley flood-plain, we move now to
consider aspects of the underlying solid geology, and one in particular. The
geological map shows quite clearly that on the southern side of the valley, the
main deposit of Mercia Mudstone curves in a band around the lower slopes of
Crook Peak and Wavering Down (Fig 3). But northwards from it, a large body
of mudstone extends like a small, curvilinear peninsula into the alluvium of the
36

I am extremely grateful to Dr Hardy for agreeing to supervise this work in the field, for
his preparation of Fig 5, and for writing the deposit descriptions contained in Appendix 3. The
survey could not have been carried through without his invaluable guidance. The heights OD
shown on Fig 4 are derived from LIDAR data supplied by English Heritage, Swindon, and used
by the author in Applied Imagery's QT format. The elevation figures derived from this data are
accurate to between 10-20cm, and in most cases will be no worse than 15cm I am grateful
to Simon Crutchley, of EH's LIDAR unit at Swindon, for his guidance on this point.
37
The tendency for such places to attract standing stones and other megalithic
monument types, is also noted by Williams from his evidence for Wales and South-West
England; Williams 1988, 7, and 10-12.

26

ST 390
FIGURE 4

Track

Location of augur survey boreholes

Track
5
4
3
2 8.37 OD
1 8.46 OD
Yarborough Stone
6 8.09 OD

9.24 OD
9.12 OD
8.89 OD

Drain

7.94 OD

Drain

8 7.73 OD

n
Drai

Drain

Drain
9

ST 577

50

100m

7.39 OD

FIGURE 5

SOUTH

NORTH

Positions of auger holes

8

Yarborough
Stone
9m OD
8m OD

?
Peat
Peat

Horizontal scale
Vertical scale

Peat

Pink clay

Grey clay
(reduced)

Grey clay
(reduced)

5m

0
1m
0

Schematic section by Dr Peter Hardy

7m OD

valley floor, almost exactly opposite the Yarborough Stone. Representing

resistant strata, its northernmost extent coincides closely with the 10m contour,
and we would expect that historically it would have lain above the general level
of flooding which, we can now presume, would have regularly affected lowerlying parts of the valley, to the north. The geological map also shows that,
detached from the north-western spur of this Mercia Mudstone peninsula, there
is a much smaller body of this material which lies in effect like an island in the
middle of the Lox Yeo flood plain and is surrounded on all sides by the river's
alluvial drift deposits. Similar detachments lie to the east of the main body of
mudstone, but the role of the 'Yarborough island' in this narrative is crucial, and
it is no coincidence that the modern footpath crossing the valley, from Barton
on the south-eastern side to Yarberry Farm on the north-western, goes right over
the top of it38. Modern map contours at 5m intervals do not give a sufficient
degree of resolution to show that, as might be expected being a more resistant
lithology, this little island of MM stands slightly higher than the surrounding drift
alluvium and it provides in effect a 'stepping stone' in the bottom of the valley,
allowing dry passage across wet, floodable ground via a routeway that, I would
argue, is considerably older than the modern footpath39.
But while map contours cannot provide this evidence, LIDAR can, and it shows
that while the alluvial surface surrounding the 'Yarborough island' is generally in
the order of 7.50m aOD, the centre of the island lies about a metre higher. And
this is not only the location of choice for the line of the modern footpath; for
the putative 'Roman' enclosure on the southern edge of the valley, the existence
of which we have already noted (NSHER 111, and see above, fn.30), straddles
the southern side of the island. If the date of this feature is ever confirmed by
excavation, it will indicate that the 'Yarborough island' was regarded as
sufficiently dry, even if only seasonally, for human occupation and/or stock
control in the Roman period, although much will depend on establishing the
exact function of the enclosure while it was in use. Fig 6 represents an attempt
to synthesise these various strands into a single diagram, using a LIDAR image as
the base.
An accident of geology has, then, given rise to what appears to be a natural
routeway across the low lying, floodable part of the Lox Yeo valley in this
38

Geologically, these detached islands are known as 'inliers', and they represent areas
of older, underlying lithologies exposed by the differential erosion of younger, overlying ones;
ex inf Dr Peter Hardy.
39
The lowest height shown on the map in this area, in the bottom of the river valley, is a
spot height of 7m aOD at OS NGR ST 38793 57473. As might be expected, the valley-bottom
levels drop progressively south-westwards, towards the Lox Yeos confluence with the Axe.

27

ST 390
20m

15m

ST
580

Mercia Mudstone

Knoll Farm Stone

(approx)

10m

Modern
footpath

Mercia Mudstone inlier

Alluvium

10

Yarborough Stone

Roman
enclosure

Mercia Mudstone

10

FIGURE 6
LIDAR data supplied by courtesy of
English Heritage and the Environment
Agency

Shortest route between

Yarborough Stone and
higher ground on south
side of valley, via MM inlier
15m

150

300m

PLATE 3
The
Yarborough
Stone,
looking south towards the
distinctive saddle in the
higher ground of west
Mendip, between Compton
Hill to the west (right), and
Wavering Down to the east
(left). A modern footpath still
runs through the hamlet of
Barton, southwards up the
slope, and uses this feature
as a miniature pass to gain
access to the Mendip plateau
proper.

position. We need now, though, to turn our attention to what happens at either
end of this alignment, because this may have implications for our view of
whether we are dealing with a route that was used only for very short-distance,
and highly localised movement, or something rather longer.
On the south-eastern side of the Lox Yeo valley, the ground rises gently out of
the low lying river floodplain, towards Barton, a hamlet at the base of Mendip's
northern flank, strung out along a minor road and following roughly the line of
the 35m contour. Immediately south of Barton, the southern flank of Mendip
proper rises very steeply, attaining 157m on Barton Hill, and there is only a
single natural routeway presenting a reasonably easy passage up onto the
plateau at this location. From the Yarborough Stone on the north-western side
of the Lox Yeo Valley, looking south-eastwards towards Mendip, this appears as
a distinct 'saddle' in the profile of the plateau between Barton Hill to the west,
and the northern flank of Wavering Down to the east (Plate 3). The nearest
equivalent route is 2km to the east, where the A38 main road, and the line of
the old Cheddar Valley railway, pass through a major gap in the west Mendip
ridge just south of Winscombe, between Compton Bishop to the west, and
Axbridge to the east (at NGR ST 422562). And to the west of Barton Hill, all
the way to the mouth of the Lox Yeo where it discharges into the River Axe,
there is no other convenient access up onto Mendip's southern flank, the massive
bulk of Crook Peak intervening.
The Barton routeway climbs southwards up a narrow combe, and to the right
as one climbs towards the head of the combe (ie on its western side), the
traveller passes a most striking craggy overhang, which is an outcrop of the local
Carboniferous Limestone at the northern extremity of Barton Hill. It is almost
certainly a natural feature, not the result of modern or historic quarrying, and
provides a distinct landmark (Plate 4). At the head of the combe, the prospect
opens up quite suddenly, and one finds oneself on the plateau proper, with
Wavering Down, at 211m aOD, to the east, and Crook Peak to the west. This
route, then, gives access from the Lox-Yeo valley to the high plateau of west
Mendip, and the suggestion that it may have been established by the Neolithic
period, should be seen in the context of Jodie Lewiss identification of a series
of such access routes, characterised by particularly high densities of artefact
scatters, all along the southern edge of the plateau, at the tops of other natural
routeways (Lewis 2011, 112). But what of travel in the other direction, that is,
north and north-westwards, down from the northern flank of Mendip, to the
Yarborough Stone, and then beyond it, over the high ground around Banwell

28

PLATE 4
The craggy overhang
marking the eastern end
of Barton Hill, which is a
highly
distinctive
landmark along the upper
part of the little pass
through which one travels
southwards
up
the
northern flank of Mendip
above Barton, heading
towards the plateau
proper. View to southwest.

FIGURE 7
ST 400600

ST 350600

Locking Moor

Banwell Moor

Banwell
Church
Banwell Hill

Yarborough
Stone

ey

Loxton Hill

eo
Y
x

Lo

ll
Va

Barton Hill

Crook Peak
(208m)
0

ST 350550

1km

ST 400550

Digital elevation model showing the Yarborough Stone, Crook Peak, Banwell Hill,
and the Lox Yeo Valley. Dot dash line indicates suggested drove route from Banwell
and Locking Moors, to the Mendip plateau at Barton Hill and thence to Wavering Down.
Vertical elevation exaggerated by a factor of ten.

Hill, and down onto the low-lying, floodable moor land north of Banwell and
Locking?
Map contours and digital terrain data of the area, both show that the
Yarborough Stone stands very close to the southern entrance of the pass at the
western end of Banwell Hill, which provides a north-south route through the
ridge of high ground, running otherwise in a pretty much unbroken line from
Banwell hillfort, westwards to its terminus just west of Oldmixon, a distance of
some 8.5km (Fig 7). This is the same route now also taken by the M5 motorway,
and indeed it is the only practical one that the modern road could have followed
without a massive, looping detour to the west, through the gap in the ridge
between Oldmixon and Uphill, just south of Weston-super-Mare40.
Synthesis
If, then, we combine these two elements of putative routeway, north and south
of the Yarborough Stone, the result is a single rather longer route, which in the
Neolithic period would have taken a traveller through this landscape from the
wetlands of Banwell Moor, safely across the Lox-Yeo flood plain, and up onto
the higher, ground of the Mendip plateau, still at that time of course
intermittently quite heavily wooded. The thesis presented here is that apart from
any ritual or religious function that may be presumed to have been attached to
the Yarborough Stone by those who erected it, as or perhaps even more
importantly, it also acted as a 'guide post' or waymarker for those travelling
within a highly dynamic and intermittently dangerous wetland environment.
We have already noted how elsewhere, at other sites containing orthostats, it
has been suggested that the material composition of the stone itself, and
traditions of veneration prior to incorporation in complex monuments, may
have been major considerations for communities making choices about the
appropriateness or otherwise of individual stones for monument use. In the case
of the Yarborough Stone, the rounded, elongated groove at its south-eastern
bottom corner, first noted, and described by Dr Hardy, may well represent the
same kind of pre-erection ritual activity adduced by Gillings and Pollard (19992000) for one of the massive sarsens at Avebury (Plate 5). One has only to stand
on the northern side of the Yarborough Stone, and look south and south-southwest, to recognise instantly that a crucial element of its rationale was to use
40

The highest point along this ridge east of the motorway is on Banwell Hill, at 118m
aOD, while to the west of the modern road, the OS trig point on Loxton Hill stands at an
elevation of 175m aOD. By contrast, the 'saddle' or topographical low through which the
motorway passes, is as low as 15m aOD in places.

29

PLATE 5

Detail of the linear, concave indentation at the lower south-eastern corner of the Yarborough Stone,
which may be the result of tool-sharpening or other, similar activity prior to the stones erection on
this site. Scale: 1m in 20cm divisions.

Crook Peak as its major landscape referent; perhaps even to the extent that the
natural cleft at the top of the stone, and the sloping 'shoulders' leading down
from it on its western side, were intended deliberately to mimic the highly
distinctive 'notch' and the gently convex slope dropping away from its crest to
the west and south-west. In addition, it is surely not coincidental that
Yarborough can also be seen to look south-westwards, and indeed the eye is
naturally drawn in that direction, straight down the Lox-Yeo Valley; here, the
point of topographical constriction between the lower slope of Crook Peak on
the left (ie eastern side of the valley), and the high ground above Loxton on the
right (ie western side of the valley), represents a natural visual focus, in which
Brent Knoll, some 8.5km away, appears dramatically framed. Were one looking
for a second major landscape referent for Yarborough, then the Knoll is the
obvious candidate (Plate 6).
These, then, are what current orthodoxy might characterise as the 'landscape
phenomenological' aspects of Yarborough's wider context. But in the light of Dr
Hardy's observations (Appendix 1), we need also to remind ourselves about the
nature of the orthostat itself, and what those considerations might tell us about
its possible raison d'tre beyond the purely 'ritual'. The roughest, most heavily
pitted side of the stone faces almost due south, and it is likely that it is this side
which originally showed the highest concentration of mineral crystals, mainly,
of course, quartz. As Dr Hardy notes, much of the pitting on this face probably
represents places where quartz, in one form or another, has either weathered
out, or been deliberately removed, perhaps by chipping away at the deposits;
at Stanton Drew, Jodie Lewis has remarked on an apparently similar
phenomenon, and has suggested that at least some of this activity may represent,
in effect, prehistoric or later 'souvenir hunting', involving the removal of small
pieces from a sacred site which, by direct association with the monument, would
have acted as talismen or amulets to confer a degree of protection on the people
possessing them (pers comm Dr Jodie Lewis). Be this as it may, it was this most
mineralised, southern side of the Yarborough Stone which presented its face
towards the putative routeway down from the southern flank of Mendip, and
across the waterlogged ground of the Lox-Yeo floodplain, via the inlier of Mercia
Mudstone on the southern side of the valley which offered a potentially drier
path, and to which Yarborough lay directly opposite on the other side of the
valley. And on bright days, the quartz and calcite crystals on Yarborough's
southern side, facing the sun, would have provided an additional, sparkling
signpost clearly indicating that, for the north-bound traveller coming down the
northern flank of Mendip, here was the safe path across the potentially
treacherous marsh that lay ahead.

30

PLATE 6
The
Yarborough
Stone,
photographed against the highly
distinctive, notched summit of
Crook Peak, and, on the extreme
right hand side of the frame,
looking straight down the Lox Yeo
Valley to the south-west, the
island of Brent Knoll. One cannot
but help wonder whether the
sharp point in the top of the
orthostat, which seems so closely
to reference the shape of Crook
Peak, is entirely natural. View to
south-south-west.

Once safely across the valley, on its northern side at the location of Yarborough,
the traveller has, as we have already noted, the option of a relatively easy route
down onto the lower-lying terrain of the moors around Banwell, Locking and
Puxton, via a low topographical 'saddle' in the otherwise continuous east-west
ridge of high ground with which he is now confronted; and in attempting to
explain why, in the Neolithic and/or Bronze Age, it might be reasonable to
suggest that this was indeed a well-known and well-used route between the
moors south and east of Weston-super-Mare, and the high plateau of Mendip
to the south, one is inevitably drawn to the possibility of a seasonal or even
daily movement of livestock to exploit two very different, but mutually
dependent, ecological zones. At present, Neolithic activity in the area around
the Yarborough Stone, but especially on the northern and southern flanks of the
ridge to its north, is attested only by casual finds of worked flint of that date,
whether as scatters or individual pieces41. No Neolithic occupation site is yet
known. However, the lower parts of the Banwell and Bleadon ridges, both
northern and southern flanks, would represent extremely attractive occupation
sites for Neolithic communities, with their ecotone characteristics providing a
mesh of ecological environments ripe for exploitation: woodland, arable, and
to the north, extensive wetland grazing in the summer as well as peat, reeds, fish
and wildfowl. But with the onset of autumn and the progressive flooding of the
North Somerset marshes, the requirement for alternative, or indeed additional
grazing, albeit initially on a limited scale, may have prompted these same
communities to look southward to Mendip, as an obvious, and close, potential
source of livestock pasture during the autumn and winter months while the
marshlands were unavailable42. Early Neolithic agrarian practice certainly seems
to have been a highly dynamic mode of subsistence in which nascent sedantism
may well have been only the junior partner in a complex regime of exploitation
which inherited and continued many traits from the preceding Mesolithic. Jodie
Lewis, citing Alisdair Whittle, remarks that in the early Neolithic
Shifting settlement, swidden-type agriculture, and piecemeal clearance may have
been practised. Economies may have depended on pastoralism, and it is possible
to envisage relatively mobile populations, with people moving through
woodland, exploiting and making clearings and abandoning them, moving with
animals and tending (but perhaps not permanently watching over) stands of

41

See for example North Somerset HER 79, 109, 116, 7942 and 42098. Not all of these
assemblages or items are closely dated, however.
42
Professor Rippon's map of the North Somerset Levels in the early Romano-British
period, gives an indication of the range of resources available and the notional area that might
have supported seasonal settlement at that time; Rippon 2006, 66, fig. 5.2.

31

cereals. Thus, instead of returning to a seasonal round of favoured places, as

has been suggested for the Mesolithic, Early Neolithic settlements may have
broken into new areas. Settlements may have moved every few years, when the
land became exhausted..(Lewis 2011, 111).

Historians of the medieval and early medieval periods are well acquainted with
the wide range of clear evidence from those times that livestock farmers regularly
moved animals over varying distances. The practice itself was intensely
regionalised, as were the reasons underpinning it, but they can be crystallised
out to two fundamental considerations: it was a way of rectifying and mitigating
localised imbalances in ecological resources, and of establishing an efficient and
effective integrated economy which made the best use of available resources at
different times of the year; and as crucially, it was a way of taking animals away
from sown crops during the growing season which might otherwise have been
subject to considerable livestock damage (see for example the important
collection of essays, taking a variety of approaches, gathered in Fox 1996). For
the prehistoric periods, it cannot be doubted that this practice arose, ultimately,
as an almost inevitable consequence of domestication, but the direct evidence
for it is by definition more intractable, and prehistorians have, by and large,
been understandably reluctant to allow medieval evidence to inform their own,
overwhelmingly ahistorical perspectives43. Indeed, explicitly of Mendip itself,
Jodie Lewis has recently observed that
The lithic evidence suggests that Mendip was settled during the Mesolithic and
Neolithic periods, and whilst there may be elements of seasonality involved,
particularly during the Mesolithic, it would be simplistic and dangerous to simply
import historical transhumance farming models onto the prehistoric periods. The
populations who used Mendip may have lived within this landscape all year or
they may have occupied different landscapes at different times of year or at
different times of their lives (Lewis 2011, 113).

In general terms, we must of course regard this point as extremely well made,
and on current evidence the presumption must be, as Lewis implies and as I have
already intimated, that early Neolithic agrarian practice must almost by
definition have consisted of a highly dynamic system in which elements of
pastoralism, arable husbandry, and woodland management and exploitation,
interwove around each other in an almost kaleidoscopic pattern of mutual
43

See, for example, Walker's systematic deconstruction of the idea of long-distance

transhumance routes in Neolithic and Bronze Age Spain, with megalithic dolmens and
chambered tombs supposedly acting as markers along the putative droveways; Walker 1983.
One of Walker's explicit criticisms of the earlier work which he cites is that medieval evidence
cannot, under any circumstances, be admitted to inform views on what was happening in
prehistoric periods.

32

dependency, but the precise nature and character of which varied both spatially,
according to what resources were available and where they lay, and through
time. Population levels, and straightforward knowledge and growing experience
of how to farm in a given environment, would also be crucial parts of this
equation.
However, one of the few areas in Britain where archaeological evidence has
been strongly invoked to support a case for systematic and regular livestock
movement, is the Fens of eastern England; here, Francis Pryor in particular has
argued for the establishment of what he characterises as a large-scale system of
Neolithic and Bronze Age droveways, connecting occupation sites on higher
ground, with the very different resource-base offered by fen-edge ecologies. In
this highly integrated, mixed economy, the livestock element was
overwhelmingly dominant, closely choreographed, and tied directly to the
seasonal availability of the massive additional grazing resource offered by the
fenland environment. Animals were driven to the fen from occupation areas on
higher ground in the summer, when water levels were low, fattened on the
temporarily drier marshland, and then driven back to the higher ground with
the arrival of autumn and the progressive reassertion of water levels in the fen.
In this model, the livestock was accompanied and tended by a part of the
community, probably mainly younger people under some adult supervision.
Implicit in this suggestion must be the corollary that that section of the
community which accompanied the livestock to the summer grazing grounds,
would by definition have required shelter while away from the main settlement
sites, and would have constructed temporary housing of some kind for this
purpose, usually known as 'shielings' in later contexts (see for example
Winchester 2000).
It must be said that this view of the prehistoric fenland economy has not met
with universal approval. For example, a review of then-recent environmental
evidence led Christopher Evans to a robust rebuttal of the Pryor hypothesis:
Given areas of the fen margin may have been drier in prehistory than has
been previously thought. It is, therefore, gradually becoming apparent that
the potential for flood-free grazing in the pre-1st millennium B.C. Fens was
greater than has been postulated........(and that) prehistoric Fenland
pastoralism may have been over-emphasised at the expense of its arable
component (Evans 1987, 27).

The underlying thrust of this objection is that, since transhumance was a way of
mitigating, balancing and exploiting difference in the seasonal availability of

33

ecological resources, if the difference is removed, the need for the practice also
evaporates. It can, in this respect, be likened to a form of economic 'osmosis' on
a macro scale. Nonetheless, the results of large-scale fieldwork in the Fens by
Pryor two years after the publication of Evans's paper, do seem forcefully to
support the case for large-scale prehistoric droving practices before the advent
of a significant climatic shift in the Iron Age, and Pryor subsequently restated his
case with renewed vigour. Interestingly, it was an important and explicitly-stated
element of Pryor's argument that his vision drew a great deal of its inspiration
from models of transhumant practices put forward by medieval economic
historians (Pryor 1998 passim, but esp. at 89-108).
Implicit support for the general thrust of Pryors thesis comes from Peter Herring;
who, crucially for the purposes of the present discussion, adds into the equation
a suggestion about the way in which stone monuments, in this case specifically
the Early Bronze Age stone rows of the south-western moors, may have played
a central role as landscape mnemonics, marking out traditional pathways and
routes for communities engaged in the seasonal droving of stock, chiefly sheep,
from the surrounding lowlands, up onto the moorland fringes and, indeed, into
the heartland areas of the high moors themselves. His reasoning on this point is
worth quoting at length here for the perspective which it opens up on the
landscape implications of similar practices underpinning other, highly symbiotic,
lowland-highland agrarian regimes (including, I would argue, Mendip),
involving the movement of domesticated stock:
Maintenance of cleared areas on the central downs of Dartmoor, Exmoor and
Bodmin Moor could only have been achieved through fairly intensive grazing
with large herds and flocks, animal numbers in the tens of thousandsAs well
as digesting the obvious implications for our understanding of early farming
economies.we have to appreciate that the moors had been subjected to
startling transformations; woodlands which limited long views, except from
summit tors, had been replaced by undivided grasslands in which one could move
and see in all directions. We are accustomed to such freedom, but it seems
reasonable to imagine that for those who created this newly open world, the
ability to see downland rolling into downland, with distant tors poking over the
backs of closer ones, would have been a source of wonder and pleasure. It is not
surprising that they worked with this quality when designing their landscapes.

Herring also proposes that once cleared, it is difficult to envisage that the new
upland grazing grounds became the focus of an uncontrolled free for all. On the
contrary:

34

It seems unlikely that the extensive but intensively used pastures, effectively
commons, were either created or managed haphazardly. They were probably
subjects to controls on livestock numbers and against trespassers, familiar to those
with rights on modern commons. If two functions of community gatherings at
early Neolithic tor enclosures and quoits, and later stone circles, were formal coordination of the establishment and use of commons, and the settling of disputes
between people..then these ancestral monuments would retain significance
for later commoners (Herring 2008, 86).

Taking our cue from this last observation, we might perhaps be tempted to
speculate that as well as their undoubted ritual and religious affinities, the Priddy
Circles may also have served just such a function as Herring describes, as a
meeting place for early farming communities where matters relating to the
regulation and control of access to, and stocking regimes on, the Mendip protocommons, were thrashed out. The probability that the Circles may sit astride,
and indeed in part define, a major prehistoric routeway, later adopted by a
Roman road, simply heighten the suspicion that at least part of the monuments
raison detre was underpinned by the need for access to it from a wide
hinterland (Lewis 2011, 102-104).
Be this as it may, Mendip's use as a massive sheep walk at least from the preConquest period, is well-known, and attested by the evidence of Domesday
Book. And in the high medieval period, the common pastureland of the plateau
supported huge flocks belonging to the manors encircling the lower, more
habitable terrain at the foot of the northern and southern scarps (Neale 1976,
94-95)44. It is of course the case that in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, the far
greater level of tree cover on the plateau is an environmental given; we have,
nonetheless, already noted that the very high concentration of ritual monuments
there, and especially in western Mendip, must lead us to the likelihood that
woodland clearance was already well-advanced, and that at least parts of the
western upland were being used for the managed grazing of livestock. But we
must also recognise that, while features such as the Priddy Circles were clearly
themselves established on ground that had already been cleared, or which was
especially cleared for the purpose, what, in terms of the natural environment,
was going on immediately around them, is quite another matter. Of course, we
have long known that the idea of wall to wall post-glacial wildwood is a myth,
and have already noted part of the evidence attesting to that fact; but it is

44

A very useful, visual impression of the highly intimate economic relationship between
the scarp-foot settlements and the high plateau of Mendip, is provided by Williams's map of the
so-called 'waste' areas affected by parliamentary enclosures in the 18th and 19th centuries;
Williams 1976, Fig. 14, 106.

35

imperative that we do not, in pursuing this line of reasoning, make the mistake
of invariably equating grazing with grassland so that the agrarian dynamics
of the model are deemed valid only when wildwood cover had been massively
reduced by the axe, and replaced with open grassland. On the contrary: it has
also long been known that, by the early medieval period at latest, woodland
was being used both intensively and extensively to provide a wide range of
grazing resources suitable for domesticates of virtually all types, with beechmast
and acorns contributing the most important element of the woodland-floor
grazing (Hooke 2011, 145-154)45; leaf fodder may well also have played a role
(see further below).
It seems perfectly possible, therefore, that the very earliest systematic, nonhunting human incursions into the Mendip wildwood involved their use as,
initially, small-scale wood-pasture by the proto-farming communities of the
Mesolithic-Neolithic transition period; and a crucial consequence of this process
was the direct impact which it had on the spatial perceptions of the Mesolithic
mind, as the cognitive framework against which it measured its own place in,
and view of the world, changed as the landscape around it became inexorably
more open. Christopher Tilley has recently strikingly reminded us of how,
although the conscious and deliberate manipulation of woodland cover through
clearance had already begun on a small scale in the Mesolithic,
In the early Neolithic [it] irrevocably altered the environment and with this
event, new conditions for sensory perception were created............[in the
Mesolithic] even if this was a landscape in which open areas existed, it was still
one in which people were primarily forest dwellers..............for the most part,
living in such a forest world meant that vision would be subdued and limited
to tens of metres or so, varying somewhat with the seasons.............in a forested
landscape, the forms and shapes of hills, ridges, spurs, escarpment edges, valleys
and coombes can hardly be perceived...........Neolithic forest clearance on a
large scale..........permitted vision to become, for the first time, the dominant
sense in terms of spatial orientation. The Neolithic ushered in a culture in which
the visual became more and more important in relation to the perception of
the environment and, in particular, the contours and forms of the
land..........forest clearance, whatever the intention, had the unintended effect
of creating a new perceptual experience of the world. It permitted for the first
time the spatial fixity of the distanciated [sic] gaze over greater and greater
areas (Tilley 2007, 330-335).

45

Indeed, there is a strong and growing view among place-name specialists that early
occurrences of the extremely common Old English toponym leah represent, first and foremost,
explicit references to wood pasture; Hooke ibid, and see also Lennon 2009.

36

It was surely the case that transmutative agrarian subsistence regimes, gradually
crystallising out at the Mesolithic/Neolithic interface, played a central role in
driving a large proportion of the woodland clearance which took place at this
time, and, ergo, in laying the cognitive foundations in the Neolithic mind which
ultimately could allow it to conceive of the notion of sweeping, open vistas and
prospects which would give powerful meaning to monument building on a large
scale.
It is almost inevitable that an increased level of initially uncontrolled grazing is
likely to have had a direct impact on the ability of the woodland to regenerate
at a self-sustaining level, since stock will happily eat young saplings springing from
the woodland floor, and their parallel consumption of acorns and beechmast
would have reduced the overall reproductive capacity of the wood. At present,
our resolution of the environmental evidence is not yet nuanced enough (and
may never be) to enable us to distinguish deliberate clearance with the axe, from
that arising from the uncontrolled grazing of early domesticates; but it is at least
likely that some of Mendips Neolithic monuments were established in clearings
which owed their existence as much to the use of the plateau as a wood-pasture
resource, as to natural causes or deliberate felling46.
Identifying lowland-upland transhumant practices in the Neolithic, let alone
quantifying their extent, longevity, and environmental impacts both direct and
otherwise, presents methodological problems which, understandably, few
researchers to date have felt inclined to confront, and it is extremely important
to stress yet again that even if its existence could be proven on Mendip beyond
all doubt, it would have been only one of several threads in what was certainly
a complex, highly dynamic, interlocking web of mutually dependent economic
strategies operating at the Mesolithic-Neolithic interface and beyond, into the
Neolithic proper.47 As a result, in north-west Europe as a whole, many aspects
of this activity are seen only in very hazy focus, if indeed at all.
46

The nature of the various environmental and anthropogenic processes acting on the
post-glacial wildwood on the eve of the Neolithic, and the extent of their impact, remains the
subject of debate, although the possible role of human agency, even if opportunistic at first, is
coming increasingly to the fore; the specific part played by the use of the forests as a woodlandpasture resource for early domesticates remains problematic, but it is looking increasingly likely
that it was at the least a contributing factor in environmentally-measurable woodland
regression. The evidence for Britain up to the date of publication is surveyed in Brown 1997;
and for a continental perspective relating to the European LBK culture, see Kreuz 2008. The
problem of what element of this process, if any, should be attributed to wild fauna needs also
to be considered, although at present the evidence simply does not allow any meaningful
assessment to be made.
47
Although where exceptional conditions of preservation of organic material have
allowed, palaeoenvironmental specialists are among those who have taken up this challenge;
see for example Akeret and Jacomet, 1997; and Valamoti 2007.

37

However, a study conducted in the low mountain region of the Black Forest
Mountains, in south-west Germany, may provide at least a theoretical context
against which the situation on Mendip can be compared48. The research was
based on an intensive and systematic campaign of fieldwalking, and subsequent
analysis of both the artefacts recovered (mainly stone axes and worked flints),
the topographical affinities of the artefact findspots, and the spatial patterning
of the finds. Among the conclusions of the study, the lead authors remark that
Forest areas in the immediate vicinity of settlements supplied leaf fodder for
winter but herds would have been driven to more distant areas in the
summer, even to nearby uplands. Neolithic artefacts recovered from the
upland parallel the simplified material culture of modern transhumant groups.
Spatial patterning of artifacts indicates camping at preferred spots, close to
water, as well as ranging further afield. These findings are supported by
palynological data indicating forest clearing without evidence of agriculture.
This clearance is most likely related to the seasonal cutting of branches and
leaves for fodder (Kienlin and Valde-Nowak 2002-2004, 41).

It is, then, surely right to suggest that the mutually-dependent economy, almost
symbiotic in its intimacy, which existed between upland and lowland, so much
a defining characteristic of a later relationship between the plateau and
surrounding settlements, was established in its essential framework in the
Neolithic and Bronze Age49. We might, therefore, further wonder whether the
'opening up' of western Mendip for use in both monumental ritual, and for
communal gazing of livestock, were not also intimately linked, for both required
a similar end-product: a degree of woodland clearance, producing 'windows' of
open grassland that would both feed livestock and provide the controlled vistas
to and from the ritual sites which were a sine qua non for the monumentbuilders. Indeed as Jodie Lewis has very effectively demonstrated, Mesolithic
people had already started to make inroads into the Mendip woodland, so that
48

It is true that the elevation of the Black Forest Mountains study area, in the order of
400-600m, is somewhat higher than even the highest point on Mendip (at Black Down, 325m
aOD), and it is likely that the droving distances from the surrounding settlements at lower
elevations were longer; however, what is important, are not the absolute elevations of the
lowland settlements and the upland shielings (for want of a better word), but the relative
difference thereof, and in principle at least, there seems no good reason why the Black Forest
Mountain research should not be admitted to help inform our perspectives of Neolithic
transhumant practices as they affected Mendip.
49
It is now considered almost as a given that this relationship was in place by the Roman
period at the latest. Todd, for example, has stated explicitly that wider considerations are now
open and must be addressed. One of the most important of these is the social and economic
relationship between (Mendip) and the adjacent lowland, most notably the Somerset Levels
and Sedgemoor. That upland and lowland formed separate ecosystems is inherently
unlikely........ Todd 1995, 78.

38

in some respects, Neolithic practice may well have merely built upon a process
which was already in train.50 These antecedents come sharply into focus
especially in the later Mesolithic, when the growing size and intensity of
diagnostic lithic material from this period
May suggest a more intensive use of the plateau.possibly by a greater
number of groups and/or a change in the type of activities undertaken, resulting
in the accumulation of more extensive scatters (Lewis 2011, 110-111).

To take this argument rather further, and perhaps to its logical conclusion, we
should at least consider the possibility that it was in fact the pursuit of grazing
lands, and not the potential for monument-building, which first led early farming
communities onto the high plateau of Mendip. Natural clearings in the holocene
wildwood (Whitehouse and Smith 2010) would have perhaps been
progressively exploited and expanded for livestock grazing, but, crucially, only
after an initial phase of limited clearance for this use had, almost as an
unintended consequence, opened up some of the spectacular vistas with which
we are so familiar today, would Mendip's consummate potential for monumentbuilding have become completely clear, and was, thereafter, fully realised. One
cannot, after all, wholly appreciate, understand or negotiate the spiritual and
other-worldly qualities of a landscape if one cannot see the landscape itself, to
it from a distance, or from it to distant prospects.
The farmers, as livestock keepers, were of course themselves members of the
monument-building communities but in opening up a wooded Mendip
plateau, it was perhaps the economic imperatives imposed by livestock
domestication and control, and not the drive for monument-building in and of
itself, as an entirely discrete activity, which above all set the colonising agenda.
This perspective brings the narrative effectively full circle, for it ties the
Yarborough Stone, both functionally and ritually, into a dynamic symbiosis with
the defining landscape developments which, even as it was being heaved
upright, were making their impact on the high ground upon which its southern
face was made to gaze; and where Neolithic shieling-dwellers were kick-starting
the process of turning their west Mendip space into 'place' (cf Lewis 2007, 3).

50

Lewis 2011. See esp. 108-113 for a detailed review of the possible implications of
changing spatial patterns, densities and compositions of lithic scatters from both the Mesolithic
and Neolithic on Mendip.

39

APPENDIX 1
The Geological Background, by Dr Peter Hardy
The Yarborough Stone is from the Dolomitic Conglomerate unit of the Triassic
Mercian Mudstone (locally the basal level) and probably derives from the
nearby ridge just a few hundred metres to the north. This identification is based
upon three main lines of evidence: firstly, there are many large (c. 5-10 cm)
inclusions of both angular and rounded pebbles and rock fragments in the
matrix, and these appear to include at least one small fossil, unidentified at the
time of my site visit (13.11.08), but indicative of an origin from a fossil-bearing
source, as well as many rounded pebbles of what appears to be quartzite, or
similar siliceous material. The source for the siliceous pebbles would almost
certainly have been the Devonian sediments, which make up the core of the
Blackdown Pericline, whilst any fossil-bearing or lime-rich pebbles would
probably derive from the Lower Carboniferous limestones. Both of these rocks
are very nearby and were heavily eroded in Permian times, yielding abundant
material for the Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate. Secondly, the rock is heavily
iron-stained (this can be seen clearly on the north-western corner at around eyelevel), which is a characteristic of the Dolomitic Conglomerate, although far from
being restricted to it. Thirdly, the rock includes some conspicuous calcite-bearing
mineral cavities which appear closely to resemble the ubiquitous 'potato-stones'
which occur widely throughout the Dolomitic Conglomerate outcrop.
It could well have been brought to its present position through human agency,
but stones of that material, and possibly even of that size, might also be expected
to occur naturally in the 'head' deposit which occurs just a few metres to the
north around the farm buildings. The clear evidence of naturally occurring
fractures in the stone (there are three prominent ones easily discernible, all
running parallel and almost vertically as it is now seen) suggest that the narrower
sides of the stone could well be formed naturally by breakage along similar
weaknesses in the original rock. The rather conspicuously hollow weathering on
the southern face is possibly due to the selective removal of originally crystalfilled cavities in the rock, which would be largely occupied by calcite and
possibly quartz, although only the former is now evident. Similar crystalline
inclusions in the stone can still be seen on its north-western corner, and there is
clear evidence of their partial and/or complete removal elsewhere. If such a
stone were to be freshly dug from the solid rock, or exposed in the 'head', these
crystal-filled cavities could be almost white, and highly reflective, making them
very conspicuous. There is one curious feature amongst these weathering
phenomena, namely a vertically orientated groove around five centimetres wide

40

and maybe three or four centimetres deep, and perhaps as much as twenty
centimetres or even a little longer, which can be seen on the south eastern corner
low down close to the ground (Plate 5). This seems to me to be rather too
smooth and regular a feature to be likely to be natural and I suspect that it may
have been man-made, possibly by rubbing some hard object repeatedly up and
down it. I believe that similar grooves are seen on other megalithic monuments
and are believed to have possibly been caused by sharpening of tools or
weapons.

41

APPENDIX 2
Examination of Lichen Colonisation of the Yarborough Stone, by Dr David Hill
The Yarborough Stone was visited by David J Hill BSc DPhil MIEEM on 8 June
2009 with Nick Corcos to find out what lichens occurred on it, and what, if
anything, they could tell us about the stone, such as its age. The 29 lichens
recorded were typical of the Dolomitic Conglomerate limestone, and are listed
below with notes.
Species

Aspicilia calcarea
Aspicilia contorta
Caloplaca aurantia
Caloplaca citrina s.lat.
Caloplaca dichroa
Caloplaca flavescens
Caloplaca flavocitrina
Caloplaca saxicola
Candelariella aurella
Candelariella medians
Dermatocarpon miniatum
Diploicia canescens
Dirina massiliensis f. sorediata
Lecanora albescens
Lecanora campestris
Lecanora dispersa
Lecidella stigmatea
Opegrapha calcarea
Opegrapha rupestris
Phaeophyscia orbicularis
Physcia adscendens
Solenopsora candicans
Verrucaria baldensis
Verrucaria caerulea
Verrucaria fuscella
Verrucaria macrostoma
Verrucaria nigrescens
Xanthoria parietina
Xanthoria polycarpa

Notes
Can form large white patches but not here
Prefers horizontal aspect
Often circular egg-yellow patches

Often circular orangish yellow patches

Likes drier and more sheltered niches
Tiny
Not often found on gravestones*
Likes drier niches
Not often found on gravestones*

Tiny
Tiny
Tiny
Lichen parasite of Aspicilia calcarea. Not often found on
gravestones*
Likes high levels of nitrogen
Likes high levels of nitrogen
Likes wetter niches
Can form large white patches but not here
Not often found on gravestones*
Not often found on gravestones*
Small blackish patches
Yellow wall lichen eg on farm roofs - likes high
levels of nitrogen
Unusual on stone

*based on data in Hill DJ (1994), The succession of lichens on gravestones: a preliminary

investigation, Cryptogamic Botany 4, 179-186, which included gravestones mainly in the west

42

of England (former county of Avon, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset and

Wiltshire).

There were no large thalli of any lichens such as Verrucaria baldensis or Aspcilia
calcarea which sometime occur giving evidence of a more than a century of
growth. However the presence of several lichens which are not usually found
on gravestones especially those less than a century old, indicates that the
Yarborough Stone has been exposed to the weather for a considerable length of
time, probably hundreds of years rather than tens of years. The gravestone study
included stones only up to 300 years old. Of particular note was the unusual
specimen of Verrucaria fuscella (now Placidium fuscellum) which had threeseptate spores rather than simple spores normal for Verrucaria (and Placidium).
As the Verrucariaceae is undergoing revision by research lichen taxonomists at
present, Alan Orange has retained the specimen in order to extract DNA from it
to compare the sequence with other material of this species.

43

APPENDIX 3
Summary of the Auger Survey at Yarberry Farm, by Dr Peter Hardy
Method
(Figs 4 and 5 refer). The starting points on both the northern and southern sides
of the stone were carefully measured to ensure that no auger holes were made
within the 5m radius around the stone which marks the formal curtilege of the
Scheduled Ancient Monument. The transect surveyed started from a position
5.5.metres to the NNE of the northern face of the stone, from which five holes
(1-5 in sequence) were drilled at 5 metre intervals in a straight line finishing
around 2 metres from the field boundary. A second series of four holes started
at just outside 5 metres from the southern side of the stone and these were
placed at 5, 15, 25 and around 70 metres in a straight line parallel to the field
boundary to the west and about fifteen metres from that boundary.
All of the holes were drilled by hand down to one metre, the maximum depth
that the auger could reach, with the sole exception of hole number 2, which hit
an immovable stone at 85 cm depth.
The auger had a plain shaft with a screw of around 30 mm. diameter at the
bottom, which extended up to around 20cm from the end. This allowed a
sample to be removed in its original sequence from each 20cm. of hole sampled.
Each sample thus obtained was visually examined in the field, using a hand lens,
to ascertain the approximate composition of sand, mud and other constituents,
their colour, and also the organic content (mainly by smell!).
All of the results were recorded, on paper and by hand-held machine, and
transcribed into a digital written format. These results have been plotted on a
series of sections, and their relationships interpreted as a section through the lines
of transect.
Outline of findings
Soil The immediate surface samples from all holes were regarded as soil, some
very heavy and clay-rich (7, 8 and 9) others (1, 3, 4, 5 and 6) were lighter, more
friable and usually rich in wind-blown sand. Only the top sample from hole 2
seemed significantly different in that it had substantial evidence of hydrated iron
oxide specks throughout, not only at depth, but right up to the surface. This
hole happens to fall within a distinct depression immediately to the north of the
stone and may perhaps be from a water-logged area, possible a pond in the
past?

44

Wind-blown sand Most holes display some variation in the amount of windblown sand, but by far the greatest amount of this (estimated in some samples
at more than 50%) came from the topographically higher holes 1-5. This sand
is widespread around the western coast of Somerset and was deposited well
inland by the fierce storms which blew after the retreat of the ice sheets from
southern Britain at the close of the Ice-Age. It forms a substantial proportion of
most of the samples from the holes to the north of the stone, in their upper parts
especially, but reaches down to the base of some holes (1-5) indicating that these
are on ground which was deposited or being disturbed as late as the last postglacial period, i.e. within the last 10 millennia.

Clay Most of the holes north of the stone are formed in what can be described
as silt or clay (the distinction being very subtle, but silt has a proportion of grains
which are coarser than true clay, whereas clay grains are invisible to the naked
eye or hand lens.) In the higher level holes (1-6) this clay is evidently derived
from weathering of the underlying bedrock and is usually pink at depths greater
than 80 cm. Nearer to the surface the clay is brown or yellow and evidently
iron-rich. These yellow to brown colours are due to a mineral known as
limonite but are also collectively called ochres. They are hydrated iron oxides
and form in conditions where oxygen is available together with water. In the
absence of the oxygen, conditions described as reducing occur, and here the iron
minerals formed are less rich in oxygen and usually appear very dark, more or
less black in fact. These colour changes are very sensitive indicators of oxygen
supply and can commonly be seen in muddy and wet environments where the
mud is often brown on the surface due to the presence of oxygen forming the
iron ochres and black just underneath, due to the lack of oxygen. The overall
colour of the clay content of the samples throughout much of the survey could
therefore be used to suggest the relative amount of oxygen supply in the
sediments, and therefore to imply whether they were water-logged or well
drained. The clays found in the holes to the south of the stone, from the lowest
lying parts of the transect and close to the present course of the river which flows
through the valley, are generally grey in colour, and indicate far less oxygen in
them than the ochreous clay soils from the northern series of holes, which are
sited on slightly higher ground.

Peat This soft organic sediment is found in several holes, especially those furthest
to the south. It features as a sudden transition from clay to soft (and almost
impossible to sample) dark slurry in hole 6, where the auger almost fell into the
ground after it had pierced the surface 40 cm. In hole 8 the peat was very

45

evident after around 50 cm and in hole 9 a similar section was seen. The only
other feature worthy of note in these topographically lowest holes is the
apparent diminution in the amounts of wind-blown sand. Since this should have
been swept across the region more or less evenly (allowing that some
irregularities are inevitable, as with snow drifting) one might expect to find
similar amounts of sand throughout all of the sections. However, this
component seems to be most evident in the higher-level holes (1-6) and less so
in 7 and 8 with hardly any at all in 9.
Interpretation
The sections are too few and the horizons seen in them too vague to permit any
precise correlation, but even these rather crude samples show a number of
features which may be generally applied to the landscape in this location, and it
seems probable that a more detailed series of holes could reveal some interesting
sub-surface variations in ground make-up, which may have some relationship to
the position of the stone itself.
It is plain that the transect shows a situation where two topographic zones meet.
The northern zone (incorporating the stone itself and hole 6) is one of dry
land, with aerated soil and firm ground, comprising a stiff mix of wind-blown
sand and clay. This has been oxygenated and probably exposed to the air over
millennia, possibly throughout the glacial periods. At some stage/s in the past
the lower parts of the valley adjacent to the stone have been very wet, marshy
and possibly flooded, and peat has formed. The ground is very soft and until
drainage could be achieved it would have been very difficult to cross due to its
lack of substantial silicate content. Some clays have been deposited both above
and below the peat, suggesting periods of flooding, or possibly the influx of
wind-blown dusts, but the apparent absence of wind-blown sand grains from
the lowest of these deposits in hole 9 argues for a separate source, probably
water-borne.
From this brief interpretation it seems fair to suggest that the region was firstly
affected by relatively dry winds which carried quartz sand grains over
considerable distances in a cold desert environment. These became very
distinctively rounded and polished due to the high energy of the environment
and the grains became well-sorted by size, due to the limited ability of wind to
carry larger particles. This resulted in the characteristics of wind-blown sand;
grains which are well-rounded, polished, well-sorted and predominantly of
quartz composition, all mica being winnowed out. These early sand deposits
mixed with the then exposed surface of the underlying Triassic bedrock, (mostly

46

red clay around the stone) resulting in the mix of sand grains and clay deep
down in the holes 1-5.
Subsequently the valley was flooded, allowing fine muds to be transported into
the lowest parts at least, and forming the lowest part of the valley floor. The
slightly higher valley side close to the stone was probably dry at this and maybe
subsequent stages. The flooding would eventually have raised the valley floor
to the point where marshy vegetation took over and muddy sediment would
then be unable to spread over much of the valley. This caused a swamp or
marsh to form over time (?millennia). The upper, thin coating of clay in hole 9
suggests that the valley was flooded by water once more and that this brought
in more mud. The restriction by the marsh of the waters lateral spread over the
valley floor may have caused the sediment borne by the river to be deposited
close to its banks, resulting in raised levees which would have formed a barrier
to further spread of the sediments, except occasionally in conditions of extreme
flooding.
Throughout the time between sand deposition and flooding, the site of the stone
may have been on permanently exposed, dry ground.

47

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