Giants' Graves (Halton Gill)
The Giants' Graves (also called Pen-y-ghent ) by Halton Gill, in Littondale in the Pennines in the Craven district in west North Yorkshire in England , were first described in 1878 by Dunham Whitaker in "History and Antiquities of Craven". He and W. Boyd believed the remains were Norman .
According to Whitaker, skeletons covered with earth and peat were found lying in rough stone boxes made of limestone . Harry Speight, however, spoke of a few mounds of earth in 1892, the largest, divided into two parts, measuring around nine by eight meters. There is another burial mound on the east side and a 7 meter wide and almost 30 meter long moat in the north. Several large elongated stones were removed years ago and used as goal posts.
The badly damaged area was excavated by Arthur Raistrick in 1936 and by W. Bennett in 1937. Two stone boxes with fragments of human bones were found. Bennett's report states: The site consists of a nearly round rampart about eight meters wide, some two meters high and enclosing a disturbed area in which lie the remains of two stone boxes and a series of depressions that are sure to have come from similar structures . One farmer reports that more than 20 large stones were removed from the hollows. The wall encloses an area of about 18 by 17 m. On the western side there is a small stone wall in the form of an apse , which extends for another 3.3 meters outside the ring area.
Near the east end is a box with three stones in situ . It was searched to a depth of 45 cm. Bone fragments and teeth were found that Arthur Keith could assign to several adults and one child. Most of the limb bones are from a man of medium build. The condition of the bones, according to Keith, points to a person from the Iron Age . While this is possible for secondary burials, it is unlikely for the boxes from which the bones came.
At the western end there are two large side stones of several boxes or a chamber. The ground in front of them was dug up and backfilled years ago. In the gray sand there were two small flints - one with a well-crafted blade - that are probably older than the hill.
The square is either a burial mound for stone boxes or, as more recent analyzes suggest, a megalithic complex of the Passage tomb type with surrounding younger boxes. The hollows, from which many of the large stones that were removed come from, lie in a parallel row and are aligned with the two remaining large stones on the west side. They should be part of chamber walls and not boxes.
See also
literature
- Walter Bennett: Giants' Graves, Penyghent. In: Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. Vol. 33, No. 3 = No. 131, 1937, ISSN 0084-4276 , pp. 318-319, ( digitized version ).
- William Boyd, William A. Shuffre: Littondale. Past and Present. Richard Jackson, Leeds 1893.
- Stuart W. Feder, Terry G. Manby: Prehistoric Chambered Tombs of the Pennines. In: Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. Vol. 42, No. 4 = No. 168, 1970, pp. 396-397, ( digitized version ).
- Harry Speight: The Craven and North-West Yorkshire Highlands. Being an Account of the History, Scenery and Antiquities of that Romantic District. Elliott Stock, London 1892, ( digitized version ).
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 9 '21.2 " N , 2 ° 13' 14.6" W.