Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Monday 15th March 1999
STICKLEBACKS FAVOUR one particular stretch of shallows of Westgate Beck, alongside the main western road into Wakefield. This beck has periodic bouts of pollution, it acts as a magnet for supermarket trolleys and even old settees. In medieval times if you came into Wakefield this way you would cross the beck by a small footbridge, while animals waded through a ford. To the right stood the Magdalene Chantry Chapel. This was used for worship in times of plague by victims and their carers.
I watch the catfish in the large aquarium in the Burger King restaurant, before enjoying a taste of Elizabethen London, Shakespeare in Love. Between burger bar and Cineworld I re-cross the beck, known as the Chald or Ings Beck after its south turn under Westgate. In Elizabethan times there were water meadows here, with the town's archery butts to the north of the beck.
In the afternoon I sketch an axe head from the City Museum collection, found nearby on Avondale Street, a few feet down in what was once the edge of marsh close to the River Calder.
It is about 9 or 10 cm long carved from light neutral grey flint and polished so that it has the lustre of worn piano keys. I wonder if the rings and streaking are fossil traces, but a geologist tells me that, as there are no definite plates or tubes, they are probably inorganic in origin.
It has no signs of wear. I think such pieces were probably status symbols rather than practical objects. Although it was apparently not found in any archaeological context, it is likely to be Neolithic and over 4,000 years old.
STICKLEBACKS FAVOUR one particular stretch of shallows of Westgate Beck, alongside the main western road into Wakefield. This beck has periodic bouts of pollution, it acts as a magnet for supermarket trolleys and even old settees. In medieval times if you came into Wakefield this way you would cross the beck by a small footbridge, while animals waded through a ford. To the right stood the Magdalene Chantry Chapel. This was used for worship in times of plague by victims and their carers.
I watch the catfish in the large aquarium in the Burger King restaurant, before enjoying a taste of Elizabethen London, Shakespeare in Love. Between burger bar and Cineworld I re-cross the beck, known as the Chald or Ings Beck after its south turn under Westgate. In Elizabethan times there were water meadows here, with the town's archery butts to the north of the beck.
In the afternoon I sketch an axe head from the City Museum collection, found nearby on Avondale Street, a few feet down in what was once the edge of marsh close to the River Calder.
It is about 9 or 10 cm long carved from light neutral grey flint and polished so that it has the lustre of worn piano keys. I wonder if the rings and streaking are fossil traces, but a geologist tells me that, as there are no definite plates or tubes, they are probably inorganic in origin.
It has no signs of wear. I think such pieces were probably status symbols rather than practical objects. Although it was apparently not found in any archaeological context, it is likely to be Neolithic and over 4,000 years old.