Gatepost surrogates

Dan spent this afternoon down at Devil's Bridge with his friends while I was recording the radio show and then having the weekly Zoom gathering with the Good Gang, so we set off for our walk much later than usual. Happily, we met Abi as she was coming up the ginnel and, in a pleasant surprise, she said she'd join us on our walk. 

We took much the same route that Chris and I did on Thursday, walking through the Underley estate from the Kearstwick end. As Chris and I were approaching the bridge just before taking the path into Kirkby Lonsdale I had noticed a stone set into the ground, its surface flush with the grass such that you couldn't trip over it. In fact, you could barely see it.

There was a square hole set into the stone. At first, I couldn't work out what it was for but then I found a similar stone a few feet away and I realised that these were the foundations for gateposts. In the past then, it looks as though the raised area on the side of the field that serves as a footpath might have had a more formal beginning. 

I'd thought I might take a photo of one of these foundations this evening but, to be honest, it would have made for a pretty dull picture so instead I asked Dan and Abi to take the roles of the gateposts. Looking at the distance between the posts, I wonder whether it was a simple five bar gate or something a little more grand.

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-10.7 kgs
Reading: 'Underland' by Robert Macfarlane