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Anne T visited I didn’t expect this site to be as atmospheric as it was. We parked on the road that runs just south of Bolam Lake, in a small layby about 100 yards to the south west of Craig Hall, approx. grid reference: NZ 07126 82266 (only a couple of kilometres from the busy A696). We walked down the gravelled footpath past which turns left from this road through Bolam West Houses; in the second field to our left hand side past the houses, the tumulus came into view on the horizon. Whilst it is marked on the map as being just a tumulus, it is actually a tumulus with standing stone on its southern side. Being on a slight hill, the tumulus stood out well against the surrounding terrain. There was no sign of the standing stone from this point, although some stones were poking up from the grass at the left hand (eastern) side of the tumulus. We found out afterwards that there was actually no public access to this tumulus and standing stone, so I felt guilty about walking up to it, although it was a short distance from the main footpath. The field was full of the most beautiful sheep, all kinds of different breeds. As we approached the tumulus, the standing stone is on its southern side appeared - much larger than I anticipated. I got the tape measure out, and husband Andrew helped me take the approximate dimensions of the standing stone: 2 metres from the current ground height, width on widest faces: 1.50 and 1.54m, and on the narrowest faces 0.6 metres each. There were stunning views across the fields to the hills in the far distance to the east, south and west. The views to the north were blocked by the trees of the North Plantation. The sun was also very strong, and I didn’t manage to take photographs of the most spectacular views across to the south west and west. There appeared to be another small circular mound slightly to the south west of the tumulus, and we wondered if this might be another tumulus. Similar to the standing stone at Newtown Mill (which we saw on 17th August), the Devil’s Causeway Roman Road, which runs within a few yards to the east of Newtown Mill standing stone, runs immediately to the west of this tumulus, although this is no sign of the road in the landscape that we could spot. There is a Northumberland County Council leaflet (Exploring Bolam, walk number 3, Bolam Lake to Shaftoe Crags) describing the tumulus: (this) “barrow or burial mound is in a prominent position and is 28m in circumference and 1.5m high. It was excavated in 1718 by Warburton, an Excise Officer with a keen interest in antiquities. Writing to a friend Warburton described that he - “found a stone coffin about 3ft in length and 2ft in breadth and 2ft deep which was black inside with smoke, and in it several lumps of glutinous matter….pieces of the dead heroes flesh” It is likely that that the main burial may be intact as Warburton did not dig deep enough. Such mounds were frequently re-used and may have many burials of different ages. The mound was important in Medieval times when Watches were set to warn of Scottish raids. In 1552 Wharton, Warden of the English East March stipulated that Watches should be set at “the two stones the Poind and his Man with two men nightly the inhibitors of Bolam”. The second stone is at Wallington Hall and was probably moved there by William Blackett. The Devil’s Causeway runs just to the west of the mound.” In the same field, about 100 yards to the east of the Poind and His Man, there was an outcrop of rock, similar to the formation at West Agra, and we wandered over. The strong sunlight brought out what might be cup marks; in particular, there was a line of deep cup marks against a ledge in a crack in the middle of the rock, and what appeared to be a grouping of heavily weathered cup marks to the eastern edge. We need to research if Stan Beckensall has listed any marks on the ERA site.

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