Description and History of Site:-
Fox Stones is a low gritstone edge with exposed rock in the edge and along the rim. There are tooling marks evident and spots where stone has clearly been removed. Below the edge two millstone roughouts lie abandoned: one at SD99858 77055 (diameter 1.8m, thickness 140mm) propped at a shallow angle and still in it early stages of tooling. The other lies at SD99823 77079 (1.5m diameter, thickness 200mm) which was levered from the horizontal plane to a low angle of repose. It too is an early-stage roughout. Both are lying more or less in situ so were worked from small outcrops rather than on the edge itself. No original sources have been located though Fox Stones is a low-level outlier of Great Whernside so querns, at least, were worked here and the name is recorded from 1214. Whether Fox Stones and Great Whernside itself were synonymous is not known. No evidence was found by this contributor on the main hill.

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Key Words :- millstone production site

Viewing the Site :- Open Access land

Address :- Horsehouse, Middleham, North Yorkshire
Grid Ref :- SD 998 770
Co-ordinates :- Lat 54.188769 , Long -2.004562
Local Authority :- Richmondshire District Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - North Riding
Site Status :- Site extant - Protected status unknown
Site Condition :- Earthworks only
Site Dates :- unknown - unknown
Record Date :- 17 December 2022

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © David Johnson