Cup and Ring

“Stop the car,” I said, folding the map.

“I thought we were going into Wooler,” said my wife.

“I know, but stop here.”

So we pulled in on a gravelled layby beside a narrow road. Other cars rushed by. But on the map I’d seen a chance that we could climb the hill rising to our right and see the arcana that had brought us from our straight route down the A1(S).

From the first, our plan to drive to Berwick, Lindisfarne and North Yorkshire had included a diversion west to see the prehistoric features marked on the OS map of the Northumberland National Park. First among these were the cup and ring stones.

I didn’t have really know what they are. A literal-minded description would call them ancient rock markings consisting of an egg-cup-size central bowl, and five or six concentric rings, together with other marks incised into the rock, all done with a deer antler. Their meaning is obscure, but it’s clear they held much significance for those who lived in Britain – when?

Many think that they are early Neolithic, 4000ish BC. Others argue from contexts where they’ve been found, saying Bronze or Iron Age, 2000 to 0 BC. All that’s sure is that they’re old, and that someone spent many hours marking up each limestone slab.

According to the map the nearest path was some way away, but a sign and a ladder stile were visible just next to where we’d parked (a DEFRA project, oddly – perhaps the scheme of some subversive on the inside). We put our walking boots on.

The path led up between cows, which moved reluctantly aside. The hill rose with the bright green that grass has when it’s been well wetted. It was a little while before we saw the limestone bones jagging out and discoloured by the previous night’s rain. The first had only weathering and an overlay of lichen spots. We trawled among the nettle clumps of “improved” grassland and dried out cow-pat discs.

Cars and trucks moved silently along the valley road. As we climbed the light across the hill’s bulk opposite modulated, brightening and dulling as the clouds moved in the sky. We went from rock to rock, and found almost nothing – only exaggerated indentations where rainwater would collect. These holes’ rounded sides were yellowed by the iron oxides, but it wasn’t clear whether they were man-made or naturally occurring.

I don’t think my wife would have appreciated me commenting on the irony of our inability to find man-made marks in a man-made landscape: a heavily fertilised, wire-fenced field that ran along beside a commercial pine plantation. She has been on too many wild goose chases for hard-to-find prehistoric monuments. As we squinted at our fifteenth shelf of rock and saw only lichen it felt like this might be just another fruitless scramble in a field. (I say “only” lichen, but I wish I had the patience to know more about these symbiotic communities, environmental indicators.)

The stone that had the marks at first seemed no different from the others. But a broad gouge in the rock ran from one deep depression in the surface, and once our eyes were caught by that, they suddenly attuned to the rings, like ripples round a pebble dropped in calm water. Two parallel lines of cup indentations ran beside the carved-out watercourse. Each angle that we looked from revealed another set of rings. They were settled into the colours of the rock, so that at times my eye seemed to feel, not see the carvings.

It was one of those encounters that turns a day. The landscape had been interesting but not astonishing. The weather was all right, but nothing special. But with the cup and rings our emotions became thoroughly engaged. All that work in the carving – why choose this rock, why this unbreathtaking location?

After some time poring over the ones we’d found, we went on the hunt for more. But further up the hill there were only more of the rainwater scoops whose origins were questionable, and a couple of deep egg-cup marks in the shoulder of a rock.

I was sure there must be more to the site, so I thought we also ought to look at the “Settlement” marked on the map beyond the white pillar of the trig point. It didn’t quite resolve our questions, but it gave them all a richer feel.

As we passed over the ridge of the hill, the earth ring of the “settlement” appeared. This is a classic approach to a British prehistoric site, in which the builders used the landscape to make a theatre of their constructions, only revealing them in full at the most impressive moment (see also Mount Edgcumb Barrow). It was an impressive “reveal” – not so much the grassed earth banks, although their continued survival over thousands of years is amazing enough – but the fact that they sit on the brink of an all-consuming view.

Ahead of us the Cheviots rose, dark bulks streaked with tree lines and pathways. Away to the right the land was less severe, but drew away into a blur of distance. Only on the left were we cut off by the solid block of timber pines. Late morning sun had been filtering through for a while, and now spread from where we stood and far across the valley. Surely this was a location picked as much for the power of the view as for any strategic advantage.

I wondered if the label “settlement” really described where we were standing. Many prehistoric sites, of many eras, seem to have been used only at certain times of year, perhaps as refuges, or meeting places, or for religious acts. In the centre of the earthwork was another exposed rock, and in the middle of that was another of those rainwater-gathering hollows. Water always held significance for pre-Christian British civilisations. Perhaps there was some power manifested in the sky’s reflection in that shallow pool.

It took us a while to drag ourselves away from the view. But there was walking still to do that day, from Wooler, so we headed back towards the car.

As we went, we talked of trig points, how they formed fixed points in the Ordnance Survey world. For me they once had – I hesitate to say – almost mystical significance: they defined the highest point, and so the achievement of something. To adopt (tongue in cheek) the language used in pop archaeology they marked points of transition for me, the walker between the earning done while climbing and the recompense of views, and sandwiches, and heading down towards the warm.

It seems to me, perhaps biased by these feelings, that the cup and ring stones marked a boundary, that in climbing to the “settlement” the visitors entered a place where the destination began to dominate their thoughts – the carvings were a sign to start preparing for arrival.

My wife had another thought – that they were maps, showing relations between earth-bank sites, if not in literal projection then in some order clear to the person who sat there with a deer antler and cut the marks. The gouged stream between two hollows might have represented an original stream in the landscape, while the rings around a central hollow echoed the structure of the earthwork just over the brow of the hill – perhaps the biggest set of rings, just next to the watercourse, represented the one here, while others were smaller due to distance or relative importance. Perhaps the carvings represented the distribution of “settlements” as visible from the top of this hill, that in looking at the stone we were seeing a version of the peopled landscape the deer-antler artist saw.

A read-round of pieces on the internet revealed that opinions are divided and uncertain when it comes to cup and rings. Maps and gateways are mentioned, and also an argument that they are complete lost languages, set to be deciphered by a computer programme. Whatever explanation comes to be accepted, for my wife and me their ability to communicate is not in specifics, but in the unlocking of a landscape. I like the idea that trig points do the same.