One of the harbingers of spring in the north country was Spaw Sunday. John Billingsley reports on a recent revival in Cragg Vale, in W Yorkshire’s Calder Valley About 100 people turned up at Cragg Spa, in Cragg Vale, W Yorkshire, last Spaw Sunday (1st Sunday in May – in 2010 falling on Saturday […]
Spaw Sunday in the Calder Valley: Cragg Spa Read More »
A new ‘tradition’, or a new artefact? Members of the NEReaders subscribers’ e-group in 2005 discussed what appears to be an increasingly ubiquitous feature of country parks, especially along paths near rivers. The topic – ‘coin trees’, or, more accurately, ‘coin logs’ – involves what seems to be an example of evolving folklore – or
Richard Thornhill delves into Emily Bronte’s dark and secret places Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is one of the world’s most powerful and perennially popular novels. However, I think that it has been misunderstood. I am not a literary critic, and I read the book for the first time only recently, but I am familiar
Wuthering Heights and the fairy cave Read More »
North Yorkshire’s West Witton, home to the quasi-sacrificial ‘Burning Bartle’ ceremony every August 24, is certainly an atmospheric village, as Jan Reese recalls In the late 1960s, when I was in my teens, I spent most of my holidays at a hotel in Wensleydale. My aunt, Renee Stansfield, was landlady of the Fox and
Recent research on the role of caves in funerary ritual around prehistoric Britain is here summarised by Mike Haigh From the earliest times, caves have held a fascination for humans. During the Ice Ages, they were both a sheltered dwelling place and an arena for ritual. However, in spite of the art produced by our
Cave Ritual in the Peak Read More »
Mike Haigh draws our attention to a group of monuments in North Yorkshire A curious archaeological group stands half-hidden in the bracken on the edge of Great Ayton Moor in Cleveland. Unfortunately, it has been extensively damaged over the millennia, but enough has survived to allow a reasonable interpretation of the complex. At its centre
The Tailed Cairn of Great Ayton Read More »
Gabriel Blamires suggests Cumbria’s Kirk Stone is a key link in a route system to the peaks of the Langdale Pikes The Langdale Pikes, in the Lake District, were the site of a Neolithic axe factory whose products were prized all over Europe. Its remote location raises a number of questions, among which is how
King Arthur has made his mark on Britain’s landscape, and not surprisingly left his name on numerous ancient sites. Here, Dave Weldrake considers Arthur’s relationship with Round Tables and maidens… Arthurian place names A lot of time and effort has been spent on trying to site the battles of King Arthur. (See for instance Alcock
The Mystery of the Round Table Read More »
Should we take seriously legends about ‘retribution’ coming to humans who violate ritual sites? Robert W E Farrah has been wondering the same thing… It was during the campaign to stop a Christian ‘Millennium Monument’ being erected in the vicinity of Mayburgh henge (see NE 84 and 85) that I was reminded that my own
The Legend of Mayburgh Henge Read More »
Richard Thornhill on the strange shenanigans that made a man into a god in ancient Japan, and a legend that recalls Britain’s ‘screaming skulls’ and Lleu Llaw Gyffes As I cycle to work through the Otemachi banking district of central Tokyo, I pass the Masakado Kubizuka (‘Masakado Head-Mound’), a little square of garden, with a
Taira no Masakado: Rebel god of Tokyo Read More »