Fowberry Mains Park Find

Hi rock friends,

I risked life and limb going back to Fowberry Mains Park today in a 60mph gale with blustery showers- though the light was wonderful – if you could stand upright. If Turner had been alive he would have been painting the Cheviots and that enormous sky.

I spoke to Lance Strother earlier in the morning and he was most welcoming – merely asked that I didn’t take a dog into the field as he has cows about to calve; as it turns out they were almost a mile away from the motifs. So I got much better photos at mid afternoon. I also paced out the distance from the main group of rock motifs – it is 30 paces ‘uphill’ (south-west) from the end of the rock outcrop and 15 paces ‘inland’ from the line of the outcrop. It is 50 paces in a direct line to where the ‘chicken’ motif and main motifs are. The rock is detatched but earthfast.

Here below is a photo looking North East to the North Plantation. The main group of motifs is on the highest edge near the top of the picture, where the bracken ends.

In the much better light it was obvious that there is only one ringed-cup – at the right hand end (eastern end) and it is linked to a triad of cups by a cruciform groove. There are nine cups in all on the rock and there are serpentine grooves linking the two most central large cups.

Here you can see a close-up of the ringed cup with a cruciform groove linking three small cups at the Eastern end of the rock panel.

Here you can see faint but clear serpentine grooves linking the two right hand cups.

Late light shot which reveals slightly more detail.

I find this whole experience quite remarkable – the fact that this rock has been lying here with most of the cups visible for decades – only 50 metres from the main rock art panel – and nobody stumbled upon it. Gives me hope that there are other small discoveries to be made out there.

Graham