Weetwood-8 Fact Sheet
First version: 31 May 2005.
Last update: 12 September 2008
This Fact Sheet is part of the: British Rock Art Collection
Chronology
1974
Site not mentioned in “The Prehistoric Carved Rocks of Northumberland” by Stan Beckensall (Northern History Booklets No. 57)
1982
Site not mentioned in “The Carved Rocks near Wooler” by Maarten van Hoek (Own publication)
1983
Site not mentioned in “Northumberland’s Prehistoric Rock Carvings” by Stan Beckensall (Pendulum Publications)
Maarten van Hoek discovered a motif and inserted the next photo of it in his photo-binder nr. 5 without a caption.
The back-side is marked by the developer 'Mei 1984' (May 1984).
It is obvious that this is the first photograph ever taken of what is now called the 'Weetwood Moor 8a' panel.
1995
First mentioning of the site Weetwood-8 in the article “Recent Discovery and Recording of Prehistoric Rock Motifs in the North” by Stan Beckensall in Northern Archaeology, Volume 12, 1995, page 13.
Intro: “Listed here are newly-discovered sites, sites of which I have not given details in my previous work, and re-drawn motifs”.
The description of the site:
Weetwood Moor 8 H00516
NU 0230 2875
This site was an old walled coppice, containing some outcrop and disturbed sandstone. Among this is:
i) A marking on outcrop found by M. van Hoek (pers.comm.),
ii) A boulder, plough-scratched, dumped from field clearance.
The following drawing is placed on page 11:
- It isn't clear whether Stan Beckensall has seen the motif 'in the flesh' or that he has made a drawing from Maarten van Hoek's 1984 photo;
- The motif consists of a cup with two rings and an unusually bended out-running groove from the cup;
- The outer ring has a squarish appearance, unlike the motif photographed by Van Hoek;
- The grid reference (NU 0230 2875) lies much nearer to what we now call the Weetwood-9 panel and over 100m NE of the stones in the "coppiced wood"
In Stan Beckensall’s standard work “Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland”, Tempus 2001, page 59, a drawing of “all rock art found in this area: outcrop, earth-fast and displaced parts of a cairn that lie against the decorated outcrop”.
The 1995 drawing of Weetwood-8 is not shown in this collection, neither is Weetwood-8 mentioned in the text.
From the Northumberland Rock Art / Beckensall Archive website we learn that the motifs in the right upper box belong to the site: Weetwood Moor North a-b in grid-ref NU 0133 2833, about 1 km WSW of Weetwood-8.
This leaves the other motifs in the collection as being of Weetwood-8.
However only the motif in the left square is (rotated) displayed in the archive as Weetwood Moor 8:
Remarks rockartuk:
- This is a motif with a cup and three (partial) rings;
- The bend in the outrunning groove is comparable with the 1995 drawing by Stan Beckensall;
- On some photos the cup-and-ring in the bend looks more as a 'ring only' motif;
- Photos of the motif do reveal two rings but some photos show three (partial) rings;
- Is this drawing an enhanced version of the 1995 drawing?
2004
In May 2004 we visited and photographed the site. This is what we found:
Entrance to the site from the Wooler-Chatton road to the West.
The site lies through the gate on the left side of the plantation.
- Comparing the photos with the drawings and the 1984 photo taken by Maarten van Hoek, it is almost certain that we photographed the motif as discovered by Maarten;
- The motif has been severely eroded in the twenty years between the photos;
- This motif was not photographed by Stan Beckensall and/or Aron Mazel;
- The drawings by Stan Beckensall in 1995 and 2001 are probably from the same motif and both drawings are made after the Van Hoek photograph taken in 1984.
In May 2005 we received a photo from Ian Hobson of a cup-and-ring motif on an outcrop in GPS-checked grid-ref NU 0238 2978, with the question which motif it was.
Although the photo is not showing the whole panel -including the horse-shoe motif- there is but one panel, shown in the box below, which properly fits the image.
This motif, first
drawn by Stan Beckensall in ..... and photographed by Ian Hobson in
2005, is named on the ERA website 'Weetwood Moor 8b'. We named it 'Weetwood-9' because of the considerable distance between the panels 8 and 9 as shown in this photo.
The view is to the S, towards the former 'coppiced wood' area.
A photogrammetry 'model' of the motif on the edge of the outcrop by members of the Northumberland and Durham Rock Art Group (NADRAP).
2008
In August 2008, we visited Weetwood-8 again and tried to taken better photos of Weetwood-8a.
The numbering in BRAC is slightly different; the cup-marked stones at the Weetwood-8 site are lettered Weetwood-8b, -c and -d. Weetwood-8b in ERA is named Weetwood-9 in BRAC.
They can be seen in the following collections on BRAC: Weetwood-8 and Weetwood-9
Conclusion
Weetwood-8 seems to be an unappreciated site. More than thousand sites in Northumberland are nicely displayed in the on-line Beckensall Archive and ERA and hundreds of sites were digital photographed by Aron Mazel for the NRA/BA website.
But Weetwood-8 is only represented by two drawings!
Was it the early discovery by Maarten van Hoek and/or the faintness of the carvings that caused less interest in this site? Even an answer to this question will not bring us any further.
It would be good to visit the site again with a GPS and side-flash.
We would not be surprised to find even new ones in the area.