Giants’ Graves, Halton Gill, North Yorkshire

Cairns:  OS Grid Reference – SD 856 733

Also known as:

• Giant’s Grave

Getting Here

Easy enough to get to – and a lovely place to behold for an amble!  From Settle, take the B6479 road up to Horton-in-Ribblesdale (ask a local if you’re too dumb to find it!), turning right at Stainforth and up the single-track road towards Pen-y-Ghent.  Keep yer eyes peeled for Rainscar – you’ve about a mile to go.  If you end up at Pen-y-Ghent House you’ve gone past ‘em.  Turn back for 2-300 yards.  It’s on the right-hand side of the road as you’re coming up, about 100 yards up the footpath.

Archaeology & History

The Giants' Graves (after W. Bennett, YAJ 1937)

The earliest description I’ve found of this is in Terence Dunham Whitaker’s History and Antiquities of Craven, where he reckoned the remains here to be of Danish origin.  The same thing was professed by the southerner, archdeacon W. Boyd, who said as such to the local people hereabouts more than 100 years ago, but they thought him a bit stupid and laughed at his notions! (though it does seem that Boyd wasn’t liked locally, tending to think himself better than the local people, who told him very little of local lore and legend)  Describing the remains, Whitaker said there were skeletons found in the tombs:

“The bodies have been inclosed in a sort of rude Kist vaen, consisting of limestone pitched on edge, within which they appear to have been artificially bedded in peat earth.”

But Harry Speight (1892) doubted this, saying that Whitaker never even visited the site!  When he went here he told us that,

“What is left at present are a few mounds of earth, the largest, which is divided into two, and lies north and south, measures about 28 feet by 25 feet. There is another apparent grave-mound on the east side of it, and again to the north is an oblong excavation or trench, 7 feet wide and nearly 30 feet long, in which several bodies or coffins may have been deposited. Several large oblong stones lay flay upon the ground beside the graves, but these were removed a few years ago and degraded to the service of gate-posts.”

The sites were excavated in 1936 after they had been badly damaged and the stones robbed for walling and other profane building operations.  Herein were found two burial cists with fragments of human bones in each tomb.  More recent analysis has suggested these may be the remains of an old chambered cairn.  The Dawson Close prehistoric settlement is less than half-a-mile further up the ridge.

Folklore

The folklore here is simple: these are the graves of giants who lived in the valley of Littondale in ancient times.

References:

Bennett, Walter, ‘Giants’ Graves, Penyghent,’ in YAJ 33, 1937.
Boyd, W. & Shuffrey, W.A., Littondale Past and Present, Richard Jackson: Leeds 1893.
Feather, Stuart & Manby, T.G., ‘Prehistoric Chambered Tombs of the Pennines,’ in YAJ 42, 1970.
Speight, Harry, The Craven and North-West Yorkshire Highlands, Elliott Stock: London 1892.
Whitaker, Thomas Dunham, History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, Joseph Dodgson: Leeds 1878 (3rd edition).

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian