Current location: Countryside

Displacement history: Moved from original location

Topography: Not Recorded

Panel type:

Panel dimensions: Not Recorded

Cultural period: Prehistoric

General notes:

 
Alnmouth Rock 20 is partly covered by turf.

Overlooking the coast north of Alnmouth village is a flat-topped hill with a triangulation pillar, north of which runs a boundary wall in part obscured by high bracken, gorse and hawthorn. It is capped by a fence; where the middle section of the wall has been broken down it is replaced entirely by a fence. The base of the wall appears much older than that built of regularly-shaped, quarried ashlar blocks of maroon coloured sandstone. Approximately thirty of the wall blocks, some in situ, others fallen, are cup marked. Some of the cups appear in a rosette form. There is light packing on one fallen stone. I have recorded only thirty of the stones, as the wall would have to be cleared to reach the others satisfactorily.

The origin of the stone blocks is a most certainly outcrop. As most of the boundary walls are built largely of this stone, the surface of the outcrop must have been extensive, and as some of the blocks have cupmarks on two faces, part of the original outcrop had an edge.

It is not unusual to find cups and cup and ring marked stones in walls; what is different here is that they rarely represent such an extensive expanse of rock, and are so varied in depth and size. Neither is it unusual to find outcrops on which the predominant or exclusive motifs are cups.

The credit for these discoveries belongs to Mrs Gladys Bettess during her archaeological landscape survey of Alnmouth.
 

Motifs:  

Art description:

A minimum of 12 cups.

References

• Bettess, G. 1994. Archaeology North 11.