Pikestones is the remains of a

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

Burial

Cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

, located on

Anglezarke Anglezarke is a sparsely populated civil parish in the Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England. It is an agricultural area used for sheep farming and is also the site of reservoirs that were built to supply water to Liverpool. The area has a la ...

moor in

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The site is approximately 150 feet (45 metres) long and 60 feet (18 metres) across at its widest point. It consisted of one burial chamber constructed of large upright slabs, capped by two

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented/structural item. In the case ...

slabs, forming a chamber of 15 feet (4.5 metres) long, 3 feet (0.9 metres) wide and 3 feet (0.9 metres) high, covered by a huge mound of stones and turves. The cairn was aligned almost exactly North-South, with the burial chamber under the wider northern end. At the northern edge of the cairn, a double wall could be made out, curving inwards to form an entrance to a

forecourt Forecourt may refer to: * a courtyard at the front of a building * in racket sports, the front part of the court * the area in a filling station containing the fuel pumps * chamber tomb forecourt This article describes several characteristic arch ...

. Today the cairn has been badly robbed and the main features are the five large

gritstone Gritstone or grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for ...

slabs, the remains of the burial chamber. Surprisingly, evidence suggests 'which evidence''that the bodies were not interred directly in the tomb, but were left outside, perhaps at the entrance to the cairn, for birds and wild animals to consume the flesh and then, probably after elaborate ceremonies, the bones were placed inside the chamber. Pikestones is the earliest man-made structure in the area and only one other chambered tomb has been found in Lancashire. The

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical ...

must have taken an immense amount of labour to construct and like most long barrows was erected in a prominent position, located on a ridge at a height of just over 900 feet (276 metres). This gave the

builders excellent views, and made the structure visible from a wide area of the Lancashire plain, perhaps warning other people that the land belonged to the builders.

References

* {{Megalithic Portal, 4777

External links

Pikestones page on The Modern Antiquarian
West Pennine Moors Geography of Chorley Stone Age sites in England Archaeological sites in Lancashire Scheduled monuments in Lancashire

See also

References

External links