Yates’ Cairn marks the high point of Burbage Moor and is an excellent visual aid when trying to locate the benchmark pictured below.
Alan Yates, aware of the significance of the location and knowing that it would have historically been marked by a mound and post, maintained a discrete cairn to mark the spot sometimes including a less discrete metal post!
Yates’ Cairn (background) loctaed close to an Ordnance Survey benchmark (foreground)
Benchmark (Mudge’s Station)
Colonel William Mudge became Director of the Ordnance Survey in 1791.
He instructed surveyors to mark the survey location by carving three permanent arrow benchmarks, of which this is one, to mark the position of a triangulation point. A line drawn from each benchmark would intersect at a ‘Mudges Station’. Subsequent Ordnance Survey surveyors would use these to locate their surveying equipment in exactly the same place. Mudge’s Stations covered the whole country before 1955 when the white painted concrete ‘trig points’ were constucted.
About 25 years ago a local expert placed a metal pole in a mound of stones to make the Burbage Trig Point more visible.
Writings and photograph courtesy of Mike Browell.
More information on benchmarks can be found on the Ordinance Survey website here, and an interactive map of historic benchmark locations here.
Interestingly the benchmark at Yates’ cairn and the one atop Houndkirk Hill are not shown on the interactive map. Many more are probably unaccounted for.