Harnessing
elemental
powers
with rush and splash.
A pressure change
brings new perspectives.
Rock washed, rain cleansed,
offerings of eras,
found to remind us.
Clink and clack.
Clack and clink.
Stone scarred millennial,
pillar standing sentinel.
Slow, clink and clack, flow the rocks,
industrial residues pooling
downwards.
Sharp
smooth
shards of light.
Clack and clink.
Stone whack crack
cold traces.
Pillars mark special places,
fling, the stones sing.
Rush and crash,
sharp echoes below.
Damp sun streams,
slowly warmed
banded sedimentary secrets.
Silent sanctuary
from rivulets of stone,
from richochets of time.
Stone and earth,
slide,
scree flow.
Clack and clink.
Crush and rush.
Elemental source
fades
with twilight’s shades.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Many thanks to Peter Style who kindly led me through the Langdale Axescape: please visit his blog Mountains of Meaning.
In the Central Lakes, high up on the mountain sides, there is a marked band of geology, a fine grained tuff, which was sought in the Neolithic period for producing stone axes. The lumps and flakes of stone which can be found prolifically on the mountain side (and should be left where there), are the working debris from quarrying and from roughing out stone axes from this tuff approximately 5500 years ago. The rough outs would be worked further and typically polished to create a smooth lustrous finish to the axe.
Descent from Pike of Stickle beyond the edge of the scree slope is possible only with great care: indeed as a sensitive archaeological site it really should be avoided. This is demonstrated by example of the cave found down the stone shoot. It has clearly been quarried into the rock face and there is a photo from the 1940s (in the Clare Fell 1950 article ‘The Great Langdale stone-axe factory’ in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society) which apparently shows that only the top of the cave was visible. The remainder was sealed by several meters of axe working debris. In the intervening sixty years, tons of material has moved down the hill, despite probably having remained largely untouched for several millennia. Why the cave was quarried and what this cave was used for within a wider axescape is unclear. Whether as a location for polishing stone axes, or perhaps a place where one or two people could shelter as stone showered down from quarrying taking place above, the sounds echoing on the sides of the shoot.
Further background information on prehistoric axe working sites in the Lake District can be found in the Oxford Archaeology survey report On Axe Working Sites On Path Renewal Schemes.
For further thoughts on the circulation of polished stone axes in the Neolithic can be found in the classic text by Richard Bradley and Mark Edmonds ‘Interpreting the Axe Trade: production and exchange in Neolithic Britain.’
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