button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 275:-
hurder. We were told there were two others by the side of the turnpike-road, in a field called the Slights; one about a mile, and the other a mile and a half east of the Chapel-in-the-Dale. They seem evidently placed there by human hands: and what was most extraordinary, they were all small, round, sandy, and gritty stones, and all the stones on the surface of the ground near them are limestone. No doubt they were tumuli of some deceased chieftans in the neighbourhood, or who died on their travels.
Before we left Horton we visited some natural curiosities of the cavern kind on the base of Pennegant.[1] Dowgill-scar, a little above Horton, is a grotesque amphitheatre of limestone rocks, composing a high precipice, which must appear awful and grand in a flood, when a large torrent of water falls from the top full in view: a small subterranean passage was able to take all the water when we were there. A romantic gallery, on the north side of the rocks, had a good effect in the scene.- About a mile or two above Horton, upon the base of Pennegant, we visited Hulpit and Huntpit-holes. The one, if we could have descended into it, would have appeared like the inside of an enormous old Gothic castle, the high ruinous walls of which were left standing after the roof was fallen in: the other was like a deep funnel, and it was dangerous to come near its edges. Horton-beck, or brook, runs through the one, and Bransil-beck through the other of these pits, but through which I cannot remember: they each run under ground near a mile: Horton-beck appearing again at Dowgill-scar, and Bransil-beck at a place called Bransil-head. But what is most extraordinary, these subterranean brooks cross each other under ground, without mixing waters, the bed of one being on a stratum above the other: this was dis-
[1] The word Pen is of Phoenician extraction, and signifies head or eminence. It was first introduced into Cornwall, where the Phoenicians had a colony, who wrought the tin mines. Hence we have many names in Cornwall which begin with Pen. Most mountains in Wales begin with Pen. In Scotland, the labial letter P is changed to B and Pen into Ben; as Benlomond, Benevish, &c.
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gazetteer links
button -- "Bransil Beck" -- Brantsgill Beck (?)
button -- (Dowgill)
button -- "Horton Beck" -- Horton Beck
button -- "Horton" -- (Horton in Ribblesdale)
button -- "Hulpit Hole" -- Hull Pot
button -- "Huntpit Hole" -- Hunt Pot
button -- Pen-y-ghent

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