Mrs and Mr Bray, and Rev. Samuel Rowe - part two

"...Mr. Bray's father had a summer-house at Beardown, on the Cowsic.  Hither they frequently came to make further excursions on the moor, searching for antiquities, and for what they dearly loved; traces of the Druids. Everything, in their opinion and in Mr. Rowe's was druidical: the stones; the rock basins; the names of the hills. No place was too inaccessible, no rock too hard, for the handling of this marvelous priesthood. And, as the druidical bards had left no written traces, Mr. Bray determined to put inscriptions upon the rocks at Beardown, which he conjectured to signify The Hill Of The Bards, though a moor simple derivation might be suggested.

These inscriptions, some of which were written in bardic characters, were traced by him upon the granite, and picked out by a labourer. Time, weather, and mosses, soon effaced many of the letters and in a few years some of the lines were indecipherable by Mr. Bray himself. From some cause the granite on this side is far more friable than that in the eastern quarter, which partly accounts for the rock basins and other druidical relics discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Bray."

Cresswell 1921

Map - Beardown