Pikestones is the remains of a

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

Burial Cairn, 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, also site of reservoirs that were built to supply water to Liverpool. The area has a large expanse ...

moor in

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. 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 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 slabs, the remains of the burial chamber. Surprisingly, evidence suggests 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, hist ...

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 neolithic 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