Moor Divock
Moor Divock is situated just east of the northern end of Ullswater (around grid ref NY: 496216). It is one of the most accessible ‘prehistoric landscapes’ in Cumbria – comprising ‘Stone circles’, tumuli, standing stones, putative stone rows and cairnfields many of which are attributed to the Bronze Age. It is also crossed by the Roman Road of High Street. The most obvious prehistoric monuments were first described by M.W. Taylor in the 19th century, with more monuments added to the list by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments in the 1930’s. We have recently published the first extensive survey of the area since the 1930’s – adding 44 un-described landscape features of potential archaeological significance and investigating the past environment of the area based on the analysis of a series of sediment cores (Clare and Wilkinson, 2006; Clare, 2007). The photograph (above) shows the Cop Stone, a glacial erratic which appears to form part of the prehistoric landscape - and formed ‘site 1’ in Taylor’s original list.
The most well known of the archaeological monuments on Moor Divock is the ‘stone circle’ known as the Cockpit. This is situated on the edge of boggy ground called ‘Tarn Moor’ on some maps. Many of the monuments mapped by Taylor, the RCHM and ourselves surround this boggy area. We took a series of seven sediment cores across this area and were able to show that it was underlain by lake sediments with Sphagnum peat on top of it. The name Tarn Moor suggests that a lake survived at this site into the historic period, if so then many of the prehistoric monuments were arranged around open water. Assessment of the pollen from organic rich lake sediments in the core nearest the Cockpit produced a list of plants consistent with a Neolithic or later date. This suggests that open water was indeed present when the prehistoric ‘ritual’ landscape was laid out. The photograph below shows the view to the Cockpit (on the horizon, approximately 30m away) from one of our coring sites in the old lake sediments.
Reference
Clare, T. (2007) Prehistoric monuments of the Lake District. Tempus, Stroud.
Clare, T. and Wilkinson, D.M. (2006) Moor Divock revisited: some new sites, survey and interpretations. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. Series 3. VI, 1-16.
