<< Our Photo Pages >> Langdale Axe Factory - Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry in England in Cumbria
Submitted by Thorgrim on Saturday, 17 July 2004 Page Views: 73722
Multi-periodSite Name: Langdale Axe Factory Alternative Name: Great LangdaleCountry: England County: Cumbria Type: Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry
Nearest Town: Windermere Nearest Village: Great Langdale
Map Ref: NY274072 Landranger Map Number: 89
Latitude: 54.454977N Longitude: 3.121304W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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I have visited· I would like to visit
Modern-Neolithic obscureed 43559959 haidij whese001 would like to visit
Anne T visited on 11th Aug 2015 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 3 Mickleden Way, finding pointers to the Pike O'Stickle Axe Factory: I was lucky enough to win a copy of Gabriel Blamires book in a Portal photographic competition. It arrived just in time for our trip over to the Lakes on 10th/11th August. We followed Chapter 4: The Mickleden Way, having parked at the National Trust pay and display car park next to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel, and headed up behind the pub onto the stoney footpath into the hills.
This is a beautiful and easy walk with Mickleden Beck in the valley to the left hand side and Langdale Fell with Pike O’Stickle to our right. We were passed by a number of small climbing parties coming back the other way.
We found boulders 4.1 to 4.7. We had intended finding more but dusk stopped us in our tracks and had us retracing our steps back to the Hiker's Bar at the hotel The Pike O’Stickle Pentagon was perhaps the most dominant and impressive stone. To be found at NY 2738 0640 it stands out proudly on the hillside and is one of the more convincing markers/pointers. There has been some recent activity around both sides of the stone, with gullies being made to channel water off the hillside around it, hence it’s a bit tricky to get up to. From the banks of one of these gullies I picked up a lump of shiny black stone (now dried it is a dull green-grey with light brown inclusions) which was incredibly sharp. We later identified it as a piece of stone used for the axes, so it now sits proudly on my window ledge.
As our walk continued there were so many stones and stony outcrops that we started to wonder how Gabriel Blamires had chosen the pointers he did, as there were others which equally stood out in the landscape. He has obviously done an immense amount of research to check everything out. I did get excited at boulder 4.4 as bending down to retrieve the lens cap for my camera, I noticed that the top profile of the boulder seemed to echo the pattern of the peaks above.
Following the book to the letter, and thankful for our GPS, we got to boulder 4.7 before spotting what looked like an area of cairns.
There are many more boulders detailed in Gabriel's book, along with some stunning walks/ways and I really look forward to finding out more.
I do agree with rich32 that you would have needed ropes and parachutes to attempt to get up to the axe factory!
Andy B: would like to visit Offcuts of stone axes in the mountains - featured in Episode Three of BBC's History of Ancient Britain
DrewParsons have visited here
The British Museum's 1978 catalogue of 368 Neolithic axes found in the Thames lists 15 from Langdale and they have also been found in places as far apart as Northern Ireland and Peterborough. In fact, most of the Langdale axe finds are in Lincolnshire and the east midlands. Why were these axes so prized and how did they travel so far?
The greenstone comes from the intrusion of a narrow vein of tuff in the volcanic rocks of Great Langdale. Debris and hundreds of "reject" axes have been found on the scree slopes of Pike o' Stickle. Even today, Great Langdale is remote and the climb to the source of the stone is arduous. How did Neolithic peoples know that this vein of very special stone was there in such a remote and insignificant geological fault? How did they mine it, shape the axes and then polish them to perfection? Perhaps the most intriguing question is that of distribution. Were there long trade routes over the sea to Northern Ireland and across the breadth of Britain to Peterborough and Lincolnshire? Were the axes distributed by means of long chains of gift exchanges between persons of high status?
Why were these axes so special? Many of those found in eastern England have been well worn, but others show no sign of wear at all. They are often found in wet places as if they had been deliberately placed there as offerings. The stone from Langdale is found elsewhere, so why was it specifically taken from such a high and dangerous place - frost shattered pinnacles high up on the side of one of England's remotest valleys? Did the place of origin itself have special religious significance? Were the polished axes seen more as high status symbols than working axes? Is there a parallel with the symbolic maces found in Wiltshire barrows (in Devizes Museum)? Could these highly prized axes be symbols of wealth and authority preceded by the antler batons of the Palaeolithic and succeeded by the ceremonial whetstone of Sutton Hoo, field marshals' batons and the sceptre of today's monarchy?
Sources:
Alfred Wainwright: The Central Lakeland Fells
Francis Pryor: Britain BC
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