Simon Howe Cairn, Barrows and Stone Row

Simon Howe occupies a sandstone ridge on Goathland Moor. Its low stone cairn measures approximately seventeen to nineteen metres across and contains a ring of upright kerbstones. Two nearby earthen barrows, a standing stone and a short stone row create a wider funerary and ceremonial group. Past excavation left a hollow in the cairn, now partly occupied by a modern walkers’ cairn. Those later stone piles should be distinguished from prehistoric construction. After a severe moorland fire in 1947, collecting through the following decades recovered more than two thousand five hundred flints around the ridge. They included tools and manufacturing debris ranging from the late Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. The finds demonstrate repeated use of the location over millennia, while the cairn and associated monuments represent particular later episodes within that longer history. Period: Bronze Age monuments; earlier Mesolithic and Neolithic activity nearby Grid reference: SE 83039 98157 Protection: Scheduled monument Source: Historic England, https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1021297 (Open Government Licence). © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Banner photo: "Cairn and standing stones on Simon Howe" by David Robinson, via Geograph (https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/8134590), licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.