Squares in a circular world

Submitted by vicky on Saturday, 29 November 2003 Page Views: 4117

**Gibbet Moor North** submitted by Vicky : Gibbet Moor North stone circle, Derbyshire, GR: SK28217085 Gibbet Moor North stone circle is located on the featureless Gibbet Moor, with no footpaths, to the east of Chatsworth House. Discovered in 1985, it is an unusual site consisting of three standing local grit stones that appear to form three corners of a square. The stones, two of which are upright and one of which is leaning, are all ... (Vote or comment on this photo)

People in the Bronze Age appear to have lived in a world obsessed by circles - round houses, stone circles, round barrows – but in one particular area of the Peak District the inhabitants decided, for reasons best known to themselves, that squares were the way forward. On Gibbet Moor near to Chatsworth House there can be found a square stone circle and a square barrow.

The stone circle – Gibbet Moor North - was discovered in 1985. It is an unusual site consisting of three standing stones forming three corners of a square. Two of them are upright and the third is leaning. This kind of setting is known as a ‘Four Poster’ and is common in Scotland but very rare in England. Although there is no evidence for the position of a surviving fourth stone John Barnatt of the Peak District National Park Archaeology Service believes that all traces have probably been removed by a covering of peat.

Not far from here is a square barrow with the interesting name of Hob Hurst’s House . This barrow is made up of a central rectangular mound, with an accompanying square ditch then finally an outer square bank. When Thomas Bateman, the famous Derbyshire barrow digger, excavated the site in 1853, he found a square stone-lined grave containing scorched human bones and two pieces of lead ore as well as an unusual semi-circle of small sandstone rocks surrounding the bones. The ‘marking off’ the dead in this way was common practice in the south of England, but again very rare in this part of the world.

Square barrows are not unknown in the prehistoric period but they are usually found much later in the Iron Age and in areas such as North Yorkshire. And so we are left to wonder why in a circular world did a small community of Bronze Age people decide to break the mold? Were they visionaries looking to the future, to a world dominated by squares?

References:

J. Barnatt “The Henges, Stone Circles and Ringcairns of the Peak District”, Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield (1990)

T. Bateman “Ten Years Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave Hills in the Counties of Derby, Stafford and York”, London (1861)

Contributor Bio for vicky: Ex Megalithic Portal Editor, Co-author of 'Rock Around the Peak - Megalithic Monuments of the Peak District' and... More

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