Cairns

There are piles of stones and then there are piles of stones. Anyone can place one rock upon another, but it takes a special endeavour to get the Ordnance Survey to take notice. Once a clutch of cartographers formally recognise a cairn, it will stay mapped for centuries, if not millennia. Wander around Britain’s fells, moors and coastline and you’ll find all manner of rock piles punctuating the landscape. Often some 5,000 years old, these are our island’s most ancient standing constructions.

Although they might look similar, cairns are not all the same. Summit cairns, for instance, indicate the precise pinnacles of hills. Many originate from the tradition, still known in Scotland and the West Country, of carrying a stone from foot to brow and depositing it as a pious relic. An anonymous workforce has produced some remarkable engineering: the cairn on Thornthwaite Crag in Cumbria, for instance, is 14 feet high.