Monuments dated to the Mesolithic period
ARECENT visit to the great stone circle and burial chamber at Avebury has inspired me to tell you a bit about Stockport’s prehistoric monuments.
Early peoples were living, working and losing their tools around Stockport from about 10,000 years ago.
Stone axes, hammers, flint knives and arrowheads have been found in Cheadle, Gatley, Bramhall, Heaton Mersey, Heaton Norris and Portwood dating from the Neolithic period.
But the oldest finds are from the Mesolithic period on the hilltops at Mellor.
Burial mounds are our oldest above-ground indicators of prehistoric human activity and there are two still upstanding at Brownlow and Ludworth Intakes.
Others flattened or lost stood on Werneth Low, and Marple Ridge. Excavations of another at Shaw Cairn on Mellor Moor revealed concentric stone chambers containing bones of Bronze Age people and a fragile amber bead necklace.
The necklace and other finds can be seen at Stockport Museum, next door to Staircase House on Stockport Market Place (free entry) which tells of the development of the Mellor hilltop settlement.
Brownlow was excavated in 1809 by Rev William Marriott when a gang of ignorant locals broke into the nearby mound at Ludworth Intakes in search of ‘treasure’ only to discover rings of rubble, an acorn and a broken urn.
They were dispersed by a injunction from the manorial court which ‘scattered them like dust’.
Legend has associated the nearby stone columns known as Robin Hood’s Picking Rods on Ludworth Moor with tales of druidic sacrifice and a romantic prehistory.
But historians now identify them as two rounded shafts of a wayside Anglo Saxon Mercian cross with their cross heads missing, similar to the Bowstones above Disley.
However, this area is full of mystery. There were other burial mounds on Cown Edge and not far from a farm called Ringstones at Rowarth is – yes – a ring of stones in a field just off a farm track.
Their angular, quarried appearance, and lack of listing or even mapping, does suggest a more recent origin, perhaps as a folly rather than a genuine prehistoric stone circle. The area is crisscrossed by paths, a haven for walkers, with the charming hamlets of Chisworth and Rowarth clinging to the edges of the moor. »»Stockport Heritage Magazine has more information on this and other fascinating subjects with a full index available from St Mary’s Heritage Centre, Market Place, or on CD from stockportheritage magazine.co.uk.