Jim Leary

Announcement 📣: This is very exciting! #Footmarks will be out this June! It is a book about tracks and trackways, holloways and roads. A book about feet and shoes, wheels and boats. A book about putting one foot in front of the other, about crossing seas, pilgrims and migrants.

@HouseChambers I think as they work through the data, hopefully these are exactly the questions that can be answered.

@Jim_Leary Ooh, is there a standard axle width, and also, can you tell if they were passing on the left or the right from the depth of the ruts?

The cart tracks of the North York Moors. Last year’s devastating fire on Fylingdales Moor has revealed archaeology in graphic detail. Medieval holloways and seventeenth and eighteenth-century cart tracks are visible for the first time and look as fresh as the day they were made.

@Andy_Ross1962 Yes, good point.

@Jim_Leary Also the remains of transporting heather cuttings and peat down to the valleys.

@Mantog Interesting! Thanks.

@Jim_Leary They look to be from a Cromwell tank

@msjanebond007 No - entirely unrecognised. I wonder how many were off the books and related to smuggling.

@Jim_Leary are they visible on any old maps of the area

None of these would have been revealed without the fire. But the devastation is shocking - ecosystems, whole woodlands even, gone. It looks apocalyptic and will take decades to recover.

In places, Second World War tank tracks overwrite the cart tracks. Lying in one is even the rusted remains of a tank fire extinguisher. And in places, actual tank tracks have been reused as bollards.

I was back doing some fieldwork at one of my favourite Neolithic monuments yesterday. The neck-craning, almost 8m Rudston Monolith, a great, grey Yorkshire leviathan. The warden of the Wolds. No other standing stone in the UK beats it in sheer stature. #StandingStoneSunday

@theiaincameron Absolutely - a terrible shot.

@Jim_Leary Another bit of poor marksmanship by the devil, missing the church when throwing the stone. Or so the story goes.

@pjacksonmusic I don’t know! I assumed my thumbprint on the lens. Although it looks like the moon blowing smoke.

@Jim_Leary What's the green light?

@urbanprehisto @stone_lands Took a while, but eventually got the stone on my roof rack.

@Jim_Leary @stone_lands Just pop out the stone and half-section the socket Jim

@msjanebond007 🙏

@Jim_Leary love this, great photo😍

@FireOpal88 @CarolynHailston No, it’s not open. We went inside as part of an archaeological and conservation project to prevent internal collapses.

@CarolynHailston @Jim_Leary I had no idea it was possible to go inside. Is it a passage tomb like Newgrange?

The heart-quickening sight of an old friend. #SilburyHill - the largest prehistoric mound in Europe. A Neolithic monument I once spent a year inside. It is a mass of ancient matter, and quicksilver - substantial, heavy, brilliant, yet can’t be pinned down. #Neolithic

@AnnMile71721158 That’s very kind. Thank you.

@Jim_Leary Thank you for writing such a wonderful book. I remember seeing it a long time ago and being amazed.

@AnnMile71721158 Thanks Ann - that’s wonderful!

@Jim_Leary I have your Silbury Hill book and very fascinating it is.

@katipoonyero I’ll dig some out at some point.

@Jim_Leary i do love me some Neolithicness ... any snaps of inside 🧐 [or is that a daft kwestchin 😵‍💫]