Guide: Piles of Stones (OS Maps)

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“Pile of stones below Yoadcastle – geograph.org.uk – 5692106” by Karl and Ali is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Why so many “Pile of Stones” labels appear on the Ordnance Survey

On every late-Victorian and early-20th-century OS sheet the surveyors marked any conspicuous heap of stones they could not instantly classify as a tumulus, beacon, trig-point or boundary stone with the catch-all term “Pile of Stones.” The words tell us that something big enough to map was there, but say nothing about age or purpose. Up on the Limestone hills one label might hide a prehistoric burial Cairn; the next, only a shepherd’s guide-pile from fifty years ago.

Below are the most common reasons such heaps were made:

Prehistoric burial or ritual cairns

Usually on a skyline, often 10 m or more across.
Bronze-Age people raised stone mounds over graves or as territory markers. These cairns weather down but still sit very broad and low; their edges merge with the turf. If you see a ring of kerb-stones or a slight hollow where antiquarians dug, you are probably looking at a true barrow rather than a later pile. Examples: Penhill Beacon cairn, West Scrafton twin barrows.

Boundary-marker cairns

Often smaller (3–7 m), placed exactly on a ridge crest or parish line.
Medieval and early-modern township shepherds built neat heaps to mark summer-pasture limits. Where two or three align, as on Little Whernside / Great Hunters Stone, they form a visual gateway. These cairns seldom have kerbs or central pits and often sit right beside later drystone walls or boundary stones.

Guide cairns for travellers

Shoestring piles beside old moor lanes.
Before signposts, a tall cairn every few hundred metres kept Pack-horse trains on route in mist or snow. The Hunter’s Stone in Coverdale guide-pillar represents the formal end of such a cairn line on the high road over Bycliffe Bank. Roadside cairns rarely exceed two metres diameter and look “perched” on the edge of the track rather than bedded into the turf.

Clearance heaps and “scree-pikes”

Low, ragged, and sitting in or beside former fields.
Where the dale-bottom soils were full of limestone slabs, farmers dragged stones to the field edge and tipped them into rough cones. These mounds usually lie well below the 300-metre contour and beside medieval ridge-and-furrow or strip lynchets (for instance, on the terraces above Caldbergh). Digging into one reveals a careless mix of soil, stones and pottery sherds.

How to decide which is which when you meet a “Pile of Stones”

Check the position

• Skyline or watershed? Likely ritual or boundary.
• Field corner or lynchet lip? Probably clearance.
• Beside a straight track? Often a guide-cairn or butt.

Look for construction clues

• Kerb-ring, laid courses, or a deliberate capping platform point to prehistoric work.
• Haphazard tippings mixed with top-soil suggest clearance.
• A squared-off front or recess cut into the slope usually means a grouse-butt.

See what the map edges do

If a parish or township line runs through the cairn, the heap had boundary value when the tithe maps were drawn (early 1800s). That does not prove it is prehistoric, but hints at long-standing respect.

Look for artefacts.

Flint flakes, Bronze-Age pottery or hammer-scale on the surface push you earlier. Clay-pipe stems, glass and cartridges push you later.

A “Pile of Stones” on the OS is an invitation to look closer. On the high Coverdale ridges most prove to be either Bronze-Age ritual cairns or medieval/post-medieval boundary heaps; those near tracks and on shooting moors often resolve into Victorian grouse butts. Noting their size, setting and build will usually tell you which story you are looking at.