Copt Howe artefacts feature in major exhibition at Wordsworth House, Cockermouth

Entitled This Land is Our Land, the National Trust have staged an exhibition which seeks to reveal and explores the hopes, fears and contradictions embodied by the Lake District landscape, both historically and in the present day. Alongside a display of images and artefacts, it presents a tapestry of written and filmed contributions from a diverse group of people who have been inspired by the Lake District landscape.

Featured in the exhibition are four unique prehistoric tools from the the excavations I co-directed last year with Richard Bradley at Copt Howe in Great Langdale. The four stone chisels, were very likely used to carve Neolithic rock art into the Copt Howe boulders, are displayed alongside a diverse and eclectic range of artworks and artefacts, ranging from antique farming implements to William Wordsworth’s ice skates! One of the voices in the exhibition is Jamie Lund, the National Trust archaeologist with whom we worked closely on the fieldwork.

Above: Displays within the exhibition - including the Copt Howe artefacts (Photos: the National Trust, 2018)

The caption for the artefacts reads:

“It was only twenty years ago that prehistoric pecked designs were identified at Copt Howe in Langdale. In June 2018, archaeologists excavated four small trenches and discovered a cache of four stone tools which could have been used to create these images. The rock art has Irish parallels, and additional motifs were unearthed at the base of the rock”

Three Neolithic stone tools and one retouched point, c.3000 BC

Many thanks to Zoe Gilbert at Wordsworth House for kindly supplying photographs of the exhibition.

This Land is Our Land will be on display at Wordsworth House and Garden, Cockermouth, until 8th September 2019 (Photo: National Trust)