Up the road behind the Railway Station, in twenty-five minutes you
reach the gate of Banniside Moor, which we passed in descending
the Old Man. Along the quarry road to the right towards Crowberry
Haws, about a third of a mile from the gate, below you on the
right-hand side is an ancient garth of irregular rectangular
shape, with a circular dwelling in the middle of the highest side.
A small outlying building is just to the south-east. This seems
more modern in type than some of the remains we find in the moors,
but it is difficult to classify and impossible to date.
Returning to the gate, follow the Walna Scar path over Banniside
to the south-west for ten minutes; 300 yards west of the flagstaff
is a ring-mound on a levelled platform at the edge of Banniside
Mire, formerly a tarn, but now almost peated up.
Rather more than half a mile south-west of the flagstaff you
strike Torver Beck, after passing many clearing-heaps among the
bracken beds--the subject of Dr. Gibson's dialect sketch of
"Bannasyde Cairns" in _The Folk-speech of Cumberland_.
Clearings and tries for slate, old limekilns and pitsteads and
sheepfolds and so forth, are traps for the amateur antiquary.
But in many cases, as we have seen, and shall find in the course
of our day's walk, digging has proved that the cairns on these
moors were actually the graves of prehistoric people, or forgotten
sites of ancient habitation. Much remains to be explored; and the
"enclosure" we come to, a few steps down Torver Beck, is a case in
point.
It is a ruined stone wall forming an irregular quadrangle, through
which a cart-track now runs. Within it is what looks like a hut
circle on the brink of the ravine, from which water could be got
by simply letting a backet down into the stream beneath. Across
the beck, about 100 yards to the south-west, Mr. Cowper notes
another ring-mound "badly preserved, without entrance or trenches."
Going due south to the footbridge across Tranearth Beck (or the
Black Beck of Torver), and then striking up Hare Crags to the
south-east (about two-thirds of a mile from the last), we come to
a large ring-mound with double ditch, intrenching the top of the
hill. From this, descending to the south-west and crossing the
beck by another footbridge, we strike a path leading north-west in
half a mile to Ashgill Bridge and Quarry.
Along the ridge of Bleaberry Haws (1/4 mile south-west) is yet
another ring-mound on the edge of a lake basin, now peat moss; and
200 yards farther we find the northern angle of the Bleaberry Haws
dyke, a more important example of the kind seen on Hawkshead Moor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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