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Object type: Natural boulder?
Measurements:
Stone type:
Plate numbers in printed volume:
Corpus volume reference: Vol 8 p. 288
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Appendix B item (Stones wrongly associated with pre-Conquest period)
A natural boulder (L. 61 cm, H. 40 > 34 cm, D. 20 > 7 cm) in the Harrogate Pump Room Museum has been thought by some to be an inscribed hogback. Found in 1901 by W. J. Kaye, in the removal of two tumuli reputed to be British barrows and known locally as 'Pippin Castle', during the construction of a new reservoir at Scargill, near Beckwithshaw, c. 6 miles south west of Harrogate. Kaye (1902–3) reported that one of the tumuli was long and oval, c. 90 x 50 feet and reaching c. 20 feet in height; the smaller more conical in shape, c. 15 feet in diameter and c. 15 feet in height. The stone was found lying on the north-west face of the smaller mound, with the 'inscription' upwards. Its stone type is sandstone, yellow-buff coloured, heavily soiled, fine to medium grained, quartzose. Local Millstone Grit Group (? Warley Wise Grit).[1] The supposed inscription is picked out by large incised lines, four 'letters' covering the entire surface of the side. There is no trace of carving on any other face, and Page's comment (1971, 169 [1995, 185]) that 'as a group the marks on this stone do not much resemble runes' has been accepted by subsequent scholars. Other confirmation of an intrusive Viking burial in the barrow is slight: Kaye (1902–3) reported an axe-head which Brown (1937, 267–8, pl. XIV, 3) believed to be Viking, although he noted it was in a very disintegrated condition. So with this and in the absence of any decoration, indeed even of any evidence for deliberate shaping of this stone, I join Lang (1984, 88), who rejected it as a hogback, in excluding this from the Corpus.
