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Lost Hill Figure?

Great website you have there David, if you ever go to the Long Man of Wilmington (just along the road from me) let me know, I'll show you around.
 
5 sites within 10km:

"Cross Keys Inn Sedbergh"
"Hut Circle near The Tongue Troutbeck"
LAND AT HOWGILL
SOUTH OF LOW BORROW BRIDGE
"CROSEDALE NEAR HOWGILL"


I've got headings of ADS Record ID Title Description Location Grid ref Easting Northing Associated people/organisations Subject(s) Period(s) Intervention(s) Project dates Bibliographic & other refs Other Identifiers Record Maintainer

but not necessarily data in each instance.

Do these names look right David?

Kath
 
Yeah the names are local Kath. What's at the pub?!

We need data! :D
 
Michael Watson said:
Great website you have there David, if you ever go to the Long Man of Wilmington (just along the road from me) let me know, I'll show you around.

Cheers Michael, I fancy a trip down there soon! :yeay:
 
oooh! you've gone all masterful! (sorry) I'm typing and processing as fast as I can here, I'm not using a Trichorder you know! ;)

The pub is post med - no surprise there, I'd guess maybe droving or something?

But the interesting one might be number 3 - given that it's ijn the 10km centered on the ref:

Description
Survey of the rural landscape carried out by the Sedbergh & District History Society.


Location
SEDBERGH; SOUTH LAKELAND; CUMBRIA
Grid ref. LL - 2d 34' 9" W 54d 21' 28" N
Grid ref. LL - 2d 33' 14" W 54d 22' 1" N
Grid ref. OSGB - SD 63 96
Grid ref. OSGB - SD 64 97

Subject type and period
WALL, Post Medieval

Intervention type
Survey - project - 1999,

Responsible for Fieldwork
Sedbergh and District Historical Society

Paper/microfilm archive: location
Sedbergh and District Historical Society

Bibliographic references
Scobie J, Elphick D & Lancaster K (2001) Continuity - Change in a Rural Landscape. Virtual Catalogue Entry to support E.I. Migration

Associated identifiers
AIP Record Number E.16.4701


So it's a modern (should be okish technically if the society is up to crack) survey in the field, with what looks like good archiving.

Did they pick up the legend? are there decent APs?..... why don't you press the button that says "Send an enquiry about this record"?


Um... have I said what I'm doing here? I can't remember.

kath

PS robin of sherwood - excellent!
 
http://www.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?x=366000&y=497500&scale=10000


I think has the relevant air photo - David could you check?

the central grid ref of the photo is SD 660 975 which I'm hoping ;) will be close enough to SD 658 978... it took a bit of juggling to get there....

height can be zoomed up and down and there's a print option (as well as the chance to buy a better version)

Can you pin point hwere we are looking at?
Kath
 
yes! bullseye! er.... cryptids eye! I thought so but didn't want to skew your perceptions...

"It" seems to have an eye..... this is where we find out we are reading the shape quite differently :)


when you sat on it and could see the sea, which direction were you looking?

I'm wondering which way up "it" would be when one looked back.

Kath
 
stonedoggy said:
when you sat on it and could see the sea, which direction were you looking?

I'm wondering which way up "it" would be when one looked back.

Kath

South-west ish!:D To Morecambe Bay... Couldn't quite see Anglesey like you're 'supposed' to, but it was hazy! :p
I've only seen it from above to the west and the south. If seen from the sea I reckon it would be the 'right way up'...
 
That's fun isn't it.... I was wondering how to imagine seeing up something's behind from the sea would be considered beneficial!
sigh...


now we need photos and maps from different dates to see if we can plot how the scree moves....

when you are on the ground can you see where the scree pool is being fed from?

Kath
 
stonedoggy said:
now we need photos and maps from different dates to see if we can plot how the scree moves....

when you are on the ground can you see where the scree pool is being fed from?

Kath

It's the same as the sketch from 30 years ago! So it ain't moved much in that time...


No. There wasn't a crag or rocky outcrop above it, if that's what you mean. And like I said, it's not 'cut' into the turf.

How is scree formed? Is it a case of a patch of rock losing it's protective covering of vegetation and soil, then gradually weathering and becoming larger?
:confused:
 
I think that most scree I've run on (I know, bad thing) was connected to the base of the surface it was weathering from....

like a pool forming at the foot of an overflowing bowl.

this does seem to be just sitting there somehow, not connected to a source :(

I've got a geologist I could probably ask.... what do you think?

who is there here? we must have a geologist somewhere?

Kath

PS on the subject of seeing it the "wrong" way round from a distance: how about a sort of apotropaic function?
"i fart in your general direction" sort of thing?
 
I got an email from Joyce Scobie (the Chairman of the Sedbergh and District History Society) a few months back. She told me;-

... school children in Howgill in the 1930's and 40's were given a day off every summer to go up and trim it to maintain the shape of a horse.

... which to me lends credence to the idea that it is an artificially constructed, or at least modified hill-figure. She was given this information by an old lady (now sadly deceaced) who remembered doing this in her childhood.

I also spoke on the phone to Jack Dawson, village elder and former JP, a man of excellent reputation in the local community. He told me of a local legend he had heard, 80 years ago (!), that the horse was used by the Roman armies as a landmark on their way up the Lune valley, from Lancaster to Penrith and Carlisle.
He also recalled the pre-war practice by local farmers of having what he called an annual 'Boon Day'. A day off from work to meet at the hill-figure to tidy-up the outline of the figure.
Mr. Dawson also bemoaned the fact that no-one seems to care for the figure anymore. He was concerned about it's future.

Again, if the hard-working hill-farmers were bothered enough to have a day off to do this, surely the figure used to have a certain amount of importance to the people in the area?


I hope it doesn't slowly disappear under encroaching vegetation over time... :cry:
 
Black 'Horse' of the Howgills

This is an interesting thread .....

I relocated my business to Sedbergh a few years ago, mainly because I fell in love with the area and felt an immediate and compelling attraction to those beautiful 'drumlins' known as the Howgills.

Yes, I have heard of the 'Black Horse' and have seen other pictures of the beast over the last few years, and Yes, there does seem to be a sort of 'benign' conspiracy of silence about its existence and whereabouts.

Having said that, I feel sure that I have heard it referred to by Wainwright in one of the books, (he coined the wonderful 'Sleeping Elephants' name for the Howgills) but unfortunately can not now find it in the copies I own. Also, I know Mr Dawson, and he is not a man to be fanciful or 'airy fairy' and if he says that the 'horse' has a local importance then I know it to be so.

I agree with someone way back on this thread who likened the creature to the supposed appearance of the Loch Ness Monster - my own opinion when I first saw the pictures.

Sedbergh has a very real and pronounced 'mystical' quality about it - whatever one's feelings and ideas about landscape, atmosphere etc. I consider myself to be a hard headed realist who believes firmly that there is (or will in time be) an explaination for things we might at present describe as 'supernatural' or 'uncanny' yet I feel a very real 'presence' about the hills and water of the area - perhaps there was a 'nature spirit' of some description (and I am now being uncharacteristically poetic) that dwelled in these hills or meres. Perhaps this figure is its depiction. Perhaps not, but this place IS special ....

I urge anyone who loves solitude, magnificent open countryside, wild and untamed and unsullied by the sounds of the 21st century, to visit this area .... they won't be disappointed .
 
Some photos of the beastie, from a different angle, at http://www.hows.org.uk/personal/hillfigs/finn/bb.htm . Part of a rather nice site listing hill figures, including lost ones like the Red Horse of Tysoe and the Plymouth Giants.

It's listed as a natural figure, with next to no information, aside from the grid reference, but from the evidence uncovered by contributers to this thread, it looks as if it was revered in the past as if it was artificial. Fantastic, interesting stuff, guys! Thanks!
 
Good find, Johnnyboy!

With regards to how scree is formed... as I understand it, it's formed by a large outcrop above the scree, freezing, contracting and expanding, 'calving' off chunks of rock, which over time form the hillsides of scree for which the hills of the UK are famed.

On all the pictures of the 'horse' i've seen, there's no outcrop of rock above the 'black horse' for the scree to 'calve' from. So were they carried up there?

*disclaimer*: I don't know anything at all about geology!
 
Johnnyboy said:
Some photos of the beastie, from a different angle, at http://www.hows.org.uk/personal/hillfigs/finn/bb.htm . Part of a rather nice site listing hill figures, including lost ones like the Red Horse of Tysoe and the Plymouth Giants.

It's listed as a natural figure, with next to no information, aside from the grid reference, but from the evidence uncovered by contributers to this thread, it looks as if it was revered in the past as if it was artificial. Fantastic, interesting stuff, guys! Thanks!

Yeah, it's a good hill-figures website!

Dr. Hows saw my pics and emailed me for directions, but I forgot to reply! The last time I looked at his website he didn't have the horse listed.
Looks like he approached up the Long Rigg Beck valley (the one I looked down in the direction of Morecambe Bay).
 
After my last posting about this figure I refreshed my memory by checking the map. I then remembered that there is a large area called Wild Boar Fell, and just to the north of this there is a small drumlin known as 'The Calf'.

As the figure in question doesn't actually look very equine, perhaps these names might be a clue as to what else could have been its inspiration?
 
After my last posting about this figure I refreshed my memory by checking the map. I then remembered that there is a large area called Wild Boar Fell, and just to the north of this there is a small drumlin known as 'The Calf'.



I'm sure I've also seen it spelled "Wild Baugh Fell"?... this is the same Wild Boar Fell the Settle-Carlisle passes over? Very bleak!
 
I finally got round to attempting to find it!:rolleyes:

It doesn't look much like a horse though!
More like an amalgam of a horse/serpent/ostrich!
Or something!

You can check out me pics
HERE ...

Link is long dead. Material salvaged from the Wayback Machine. Here's the full text of the webpage as formatted with photos at archive.org ...

The first time I heard of the almost mythical 'Black Horse of Bush Howe' was at the impressionable age of fourteen, in the book 'Brigantia' by Guy Ragland Phillips. In it, he tells of an ancient hill figure, cut into the slopes of a remote valley in the Howgill Fells, near Sedburgh. This figure, reminiscent of the horses carved aeons ago in French and Spanish caves was, he said, evidence of a surviving 'Dobbie Cult'.

A 'Dobbie' doesn't seem to be a horse though - more a 'big, black horrible misshapen thing that slips about', if glimpsed at all it's more likely seen out of the corner of your eye, before it vanishes. They are usually found by bridges or fords waiting to accost the hapless traveller. Some of the old houses around the village of Sedburgh, such as Bleaze Hall and Copplethwaite Hall have their own 'dobbies'.

For me the strangest part of the tale was it's inconlusiveness. Apparently, the locals can't decide if it exists or not! Not one mention of it is made in any of the guide books describing the Howgills and surrounding region. Over the last half dozen or so years I've made several trips to wander the hills and never seen anything like it.

The comedian, writer and keen walker Mike Harding lives round that part of the world. I emailed him from his website asking him if he knew anything about it. He told me that it's called 'The Black Horse of Busha' locally. He had heard of it's existence, gave us an idea of it's whereabouts, but said he'd never seen it himself.

The only likeness of the figure we could find was a sketch in 'Brigantia';-

blackhorsesketch.JPG
Guy Ragland Phillips made five visits to photograph the black horse. All failed. His first trip was scuppered by mists that descended as he tried to take a suitable shot. The second occasion he used up a whole reel of film in hazy sunshine. Not a single picture came out. His third attempt yielded just 'three very misty' pictures, the fourth was a 'complete washout'. His fifth try was along the valley bottom, following Long Rigg Beck then climbing White Fell. The instant he tried to take a phtograph the slopes clouded over. From that point onwards the weather was against him. He walked over to the top of Bush Howe and made a descent to where he thought it might be. After a slide down the hill on his rear he found himself on the Horses 'head'.

'There was nothing whatever to see except a waste of black stones, the dark Silurian shale of which the Howgills consist. No shape at all could be distinguished. The horse had slipped from my grasp at the last second ' he wrote.

He paced out the extent of the stone, finding it to be 140 yards long and 120 yards high.

He told also of a thwarted Inspector from the Ministry of the Environment who, try as he might, couldn't get a decent photograph of the Horse.

So, with curiosity aroused a trip to find it was planned!


29th March, 2003. An unusually warm spring day. An old friend with an interest in the weird and unusual had volunteered his company for a hike around the hills.

The fog burnt off in no time making the ascent of 'Winder' a sweaty slog, not helped by the previous nights excesses of beer and take-aways! Once on the tops a chilling breeze had us putting layers back on, but made the next two summits less demanding to reach.

thecalf$26me.JPG
On reaching the 'trig' point on the top of 'The Calf' the smooth grassy slopes spread out all around us, like a huge parched wilderness! No cars, no kids, airplanes, no man-made noise at all! Just the wind through the grass.The summit of Bush Howe was clearly visible in the distance (to the left of the trig point top in the pic.) After a hasty snack we set off at a run. Rain clouds and fog had begun to appear on the horizon in the west, moving up the valleys towards us.

We knew that the conditions could change in seconds up there, leaving no chance of finding anything. We rushed along the indistinct path to the peak of Bush Howe.

And found nothing!

Wandering the hill aimlessly, it would've taken an age to cover all the ground. We needed to view the slopes from the west, like Phillips had. The ridge went north before continueing around to the west, over Breaks Head to Fell Head. We ran as well as our packs would allow, all the time watching the fog and cloud creep slowly up the valley. We couldn't see anything that even vaguely resembled the sketch in 'Brigantia'.

The mist and cloud seemed to be stuck momentarily at the bottom of the valley. We had almost reached the end of the ridge when we spotted a large indistinct grey patch on the slopes of 'The Height of Bush Howe' (the hill adjacent to Bush Howe)...

It was the Black Horse!

Unfortunately the slope was at an angle that prevented us from getting a clear photograph! We needed to get back to the other side of the valley where we had been originally. We consulted the map to plot it's location - the appropriately named 'Stranger Gill'! The clouds were now dark and ominous. We didn't think we'd make it in time...

The trek back seemed to take forever. As we neared the top of White Fell Head I could see the shape clearly and started to take shots at a frantic rate, hoping the rain would hold off. Reaching the summit we collapsed, threw off our rucksacks and took as many phtographs as we could. Some of them had to come out!

Unsure if we had long before an imminent cloudburst, I volunteered to climb down the sides of 'Stranger Gill' to the figure, so that Bill could get a few shots with me in for a sense of scale.

bill$26blackhorse.JPG
Bill fiddling with his equipment... again! The 'Black Horse' clearly visible on the south-west slope of 'The Height of Bush Howe'.

The closer I got to the figure, the harder it was to discern where it was! Before I knew it, I was standing on the Horse's 'back'! The shape didn't seem to be cut from the thin moorland turf. It just appeared to be a layer of evenly-sized rocks placed on the surface. I don't know what I had expected to find. Something more clearly defined perhaps? Less indistinct around the edges? Was it just naturally occuring scree or was it man made?

It's origins weren't the only things I found fascinating. Phillips said that the fact it was almost unrecorded was like a 'conspiracy of silence'.However local tradition tells of it's use as a landmark for navigation by smugglers on Morecambe Bay some 20 miles away. From where I sat on the Horse's back I could see the still waters of the bay shimmering in the sun.

Phillips also quoted an old poem reputedly from the Celtic kingdom of Rheged, the frontier of which lay somewhere near the hills in which the figure is found. The poem contained details of 'Du y Moroedd', or 'Black Moro' ('the black one of the sea') one of the three horses of Britain. He goes on to refer to the Welsh Triads describing an invasion of north Wales from the north, probabley Cumbria, connected with this horse. The beast carried seven men from 'the Benllech of the North' to a place on the coast of Anglesey also called Benllech! He proposed this 'Benllech of the North' to be Bush Howe. He reckoned that a line could be followed, like a 'ley' right down the Long Rigg Beck valley and across the sea to very near Benllech in Anglesey! Hmmm! I couldn't quite see that far...

So, it does seem as if it was known about in times past.

blackhorse4.JPG
The tiny vertical line below the diagonal one is me! Waving!

Enjoying the solitude of the empty valley and the warmth of the afternoon sun, I sat awhile before climbing the steep track-less hillside back to my colleague. As I passed the 'head' of the Horse I stopped, picking up three small stones as a small keepsake. Placing them in a pocket I turned to go. I took a dozen steps and stopped. It didn't feel right somehow. I threw them back.

Down on the slopes of Whin's End, three wild black Fell ponies watched as I made my way back to the summit of White Fell Head.


Back in Sedburgh, enjoying a pint in the pub beer garden, relaxing in the last of the days sunshine I recalled the sense of wonder I had felt reading of the Black Horse as a teenager. Over half my lifetime ago.


It's there. It is real. I still don't have a clue what it is, but I found it, eventually...

index.php

 
Last edited:
As a precaution, I'm uploading the 4 images from the MIA article in the order in which they appeared on the webpage.

blackhorsesketch.JPG


thecalf$26me.JPG


bill$26blackhorse.JPG


blackhorse4.JPG
 
In this google earth view its head certainly looks horsey..:)
black-horse_zpst0bstgcj.jpg~original



Zoomed out view-
black-horse2_zps5lemdogd.jpg~original



And zoomed way out..
black-horse3_zpsu5q1fpuu.jpg~original
 
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