Is this the area where the circle once stood?
This
stone
circle is a mystery. At the
time I first visited it a few years ago the area where I thought the stones were located was covered
with a thick carpet of heather. Rooting around in this heather I uncovered several
large boulders (shown in the photograph to the right), were these some of the
twelve stones that my guide book told me remained of an original eighteen?After some research I realized that these stone were probably not part of the circle and in fact only one stone still remained within an earth embankment, and not in the location I had been looking in.
I returned to Bradup after a space of three or four years. The boulders I had seen before were still there but this time the heather had been burned back, I knew these stone were not the circle, but the area where the stone should have been had been recently ploughed – there was no stone left (photograph above). All I could find was a patch of roughly circular soil that was a slightly lighter colour than the surrounding land, and a pile of boulders at the field edge (photograph below). These all showed deep gouge marks from the bucket of some kind of earth mover. Whether one of these stones is from the circle or not, I don’t know, but it sadly seems that this circle has now been completely destroyed.
See also Ilkley Moor & Rombald's Moor Introduction
Date: Bronze Age
For a more thorough investigation into the fate of Bradup Circle see this page by local expert Paul Bennett.
Cleared rocks at the site of Bradup Circle.
