Southfield Lane Walling Cup-And-Ring Carving.
OS Grid Reference: SD 8847 3798. This is a “new” and “unrecorded carving”. The carving is to be found in the walling beside Southfield Lane above Marsden Park golf-course and the town of Nelson, in Lancashire. It is 1½ miles northeast of the town centre. The little carving is very faint, in particular the ring is very worn, and looks as if it might be unfinished, and so it is very easily missed, but it is a nice cup-and-ring carving and, a very unexpected and rare find for this area. But where did this stone come from? Did it perhaps originate on the moorland above Thursden Valley, or Boulsworth Hill (where there are tumuli) and, was it perhaps hewn from a larger block of stone? And about ¾ of a mile further south on Southfield Lane we have the hamlet of Catlow and some, now, destroyed Bronze-Age burial sites, and also the site of a former stone circle at Ring Stones Hill, near Crawshaw Lane.
Southfield Lane carving, near Nelson, (close-up)
Southfield Lane carving (very close-up and b/w).
The walling running along the side of Southfield Lane where our single carving is could be a hundred years old or so, but there does not appear to be any other similar carvings hereabouts. However, there is a “possible” cup-marked stone (which forms the wall stile) beside Southfield Lane to the north of Castercliff Hillfort (NGR SD 88673880) in the direction of Colne. These cup-and-ring carvings called petroglyphs are usually, but not always, ascribed to the late Neolithic and early Bronze-Age periods of pre-history. But we don’t know why these circular depresssions and concentric rings were carved, and neither do we know, as yet, what they are meant to signify; though they obviously meant something quite personal to those Bronze-Age stone carvers. Archaeologists nowadays refer to these ancient carvings as ‘Rock Art’.
Related web pages:-
https://thejournalofantiquities.com/2016/03/02/castercliff-hillfort-colne-and-nelson-lancashire/
https://thejournalofantiquities.com/2018/06/14/the-pre-history-of-catlow-near-nelson-lancashire/
https://thejournalofantiquities.com/2014/03/12/ring-stones-hill-catlow-nelson-lancashire/
© Ray Spencer, The Journal of Antiquities, 2019.
The Journal Of Antiquities 