The fencing is somewhat ironic, as this old dew pond was put here in the first place to provide water for farm animals. But why go to the bother, (and it must have taken some real hard graft) of constructing a pond at all? We are in a dale so you would expect to find a stream at least, but there’s no evidence of it here.
The answer is down to the underlying rock. The limestone plateau all around us is extremely porous; any rain that falls quickly disappears underground to emerge, as we shall see, much later in our journey.
Monyash’s five natural meres, sitting in thick pockets of impervious clay, would have been an extremely rare and valuable resource to ancient peoples in a dry landscape; a good, and no doubt sacred place to site a village.