Archaeological curiosities, Sandyway Heads

Image: © Andrew Curtis Taken: 18 Aug 2016

Sitting beside the garden gate outside the farmhouse of Sandyway Heads Image are the upper and lower stones of a rotary-type beehive quern (of possible Iron Age or Romano-British date) and a nice cup and ring marked stone (late Neolithic or Bronze Age). The marked triangular-shaped stone has a deep cup surrounded by three rings and a groove leading to a smaller cup on the upper side, and a single cup and short groove on the underside, and is considered likely to have been part of a burial cairn or cist. The farmer at Sandyway Heads told us it had originally been found in the rubble of the track leading from Ingoe to the farm, so its original location is unknown. A cup-marked standing stone, The Warrior Stone, stands in a field about 200m south of the farm Image and a Bronze Age round cairn stands on the edge of a scarp in another field just to its east. During the 19th century several Bronze Age objects were discovered in this area including fragments of two bronze shields and a small axe. The quern stone, of a later date, may be associated with the three hut circles of the Romano-British type located 180m north-east of the farm. There is another hut circle above Moralees Crag just south of the round cairn.

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