The Stones of Stone Lane in, er, Stone (near Todmorden)

These standing stones are almost unheard of, but one of them must be amongst the tallest of menhirs yet to be discovered by the masses.
We began our search on a fresh and bright Sunday in September. Heading for Todmorden with our trusty battered old O.S. map and Paul Bennett’s inspirational guide to the stoney goodies of West Yorkshire - 'The Old Stones of Elmet', we had little idea of the beauties that awaited us!

The map doesn’t actually show the position of the stones, but the settlement of ‘Stones’ has a ‘Stones Lane’, so we reckoned that they couldn't be too hard to locate!

Thinking we’d worked out a short-cut through Gauxholme, we soon found ourselves heading up the precipitous valley-side at an alarming angle, on an unfeasibly narrow lane! The tiny road petered out and became a rough, rubble track. With my car’s exhaust scraping the uneven surface and my suspension taking a severe pounding, we finally reached a dead-end. About to attempt to turn round and begin our descent we caught sight of something on the near horizon.

‘Is that a standing stone?’

We couldn’t tell what it was from where we were. It looked like it could’ve just been a dead tree-trunk in the hedgerow, so we decided to re-read the directions given in the guidebook. We barely noticed the tiny flock of sheep that approached, hastily followed by an old farmer, who eyed us up suspiciously. I asked him if he knew of any standing stones nearby and he said that the thing we'd seen was one. He graciously gave us permission to cross his field to photograph the monolith.

It was a curious thing! Standing maybe twelve feet high, rather slim, with what looked like holes bored into it for attaching gate hinges. Maybe it was just an old gatepost that had been moved there? It sat on a large circular stone too, like a mill-stone. Not very 'natural looking' at all...
According to the 1912 geological survey map of the area, there was no stone here, it’s reckoned to have ‘appeared’ there sometime between 1912 and 1921. Perhaps it was moved there to replace a missing stone? The mound on which it stands is called Centre Hill, but is also known as Beacon Hill, showing it’s use in times past.

After taking a few photographs we returned to the car to get a grid reference for the other stones. We didn’t have to bother though, as a friendly resident of the neighbouring house came out and told us where the others lay.

Just to the west of Centre Hill, in the adjacent field, stood the tallest and most impressive of the group. Again, a good twelve feet high.

This one had a ‘prescence’ that it's spindly colleague lacked. A much more ‘self-assured’ stone! I noticed faint markings at head height and wondered if they could be old, weathered letters. They were far too indistinct to make out for sure though.

Walking north-west up Stones Lane we found the next monolith. Sitting in a field to the left, only four-and-a-half-feet tall, it would have been easy to miss it, camaflouged as it squats near the dry-stone wall.

Bennett wrote that this stone once had a brother, which was still standing during the early 1950s, but isn’t today. However, at the point where the older maps show where it used to be, there now lies a spring. A trough of stones had been arranged around the opening and there lays a stone, about five feet long, said to be the lost brother-menhir. Today it forms part of the ‘basin’ that holds the spring water for the livestock.

Livestock that needs to be extra alert these days! According to reports in the Northern Earth journal, a 'large, black feline' was spotted wandering around the West Yorks/Lancashire border shortly before our visit...
Reported to be 'about half the size of a sheep, with a thick rounded tail', it was sighted 'near the standing stone, at Stones'.

The story prompted another sighting from 3 weeks before at Walsden, another 'long-tailed' black feline, '3 or 4 times bigger than a domestic cat'. Following this were 2 sightings near an animal sanctuary at Blackstone Edge (both by the same woman). Luckily for us, the beast didn’t make an appearance during our visit…



Update!

Alien Big Cats notwithstanding, we made a return visit, mob-handed, and found a rather cool 'celtic' carved stone head adorning a nearby house:-

And one of our party pointed out an 'anti-witch' device on the top of an old farmhouse. According to local lore, these embellishments are useful for preventing 'witches' from landing on your roof!

I think it's likely this area holds many more secrets and oddities and is worthy of additional exploration... watch this space!

The great Grey Stone of Harewood

A magnificent boulder, must be 10 feet high!

We parked in the layby at the junction of the A61 and the tiny road from Wike village. A place occasionally frequented by car thieves so lock up your valuables if you leave your vehicle there!
A dash across the dicey A61 (it's a game of 'Chicken' crossing the road here, trying to find a gap in the speeding traffic), and we entered through an ornate gateway into the Harewood estate…

A grand tranquil vista of rolling parkland, designed by the great Capability Brown, spread out before us! We followed the well-trod bridleway through rolling meadows and eventually found ourselves in a wider expanse of pasture that stretched southwards. Evergreen woodland surrounded the fields and in the distance, near the edge of the conifer plantations, we spied the stone.

The rock itself is unmissable, standing alone in a north facing field, bounded by woodland.

The views northwards from here were far-reaching; the unmistakable gritstone lump of Almscliffe Crag could easily be seen in the distance. On the north-western face of the rock is an ancient carving. It seems to be seven concentric rings, though they're now very indistinct…
The rock art expert Graeme Chappell tells us that if you stood here sometime around 1800 BC, you could watch the midwinter full moon set behind Almscliffe Crag at the major lunar standstill!

Whilst taking photographs I noticed several huge birds circling above us – the Red Kites! The Harewood estate is home to several breeding pairs. Massive things they were, soaring across the sky like pterodactyls!

A solitary old oak tree stood above the stone. Out of curiosity I walked over to check it out. It was gnarled and partly rotten, hollow with age. Walking around to the opposite side I glanced up into the crown above and something caught my eye. Pinned to the tree trunk, just within reach, was a small colourfully-decorated piece of card, showing spiral designs, eyes and moons. On the reverse was a poem, written in ink. Above this, and to the right was a wooden stick with a teasel head fastened to one end (phallic eh?!). This had coloured cord, a feather and turquoise coloured stones tied around it. To the left, partly concealed under the bark, was a rolled up scroll of paper, again tied with coloured cord. Through the thin paper I could make out symbols on it's other side, didn’t recognise any of them though.

A spell or an offering of some sort?
Feeling that it would be an invasion of someones privacy to take them down or read the scroll, I left the objects alone to do their thing…

After taking in the peaceful panorama for a while we headed back to the car. Halfway along the bridleway I turned back for a last look at the stone. A monster 4x4 shot out from the wood at the bottom of the slope and burned it's way up the hill. It came to a stop by the rock. Probably the estate security staff?

Maybe they thought we were the vandals that had scrawled the mindless graffiti that we'd seen on parts of the stone. Or the people that had left the 'spells' in the tree? Or poachers, after the Red Kites? We decided not to hang around to find out...

The Druid's Temple

The name of this place conjures up images of a vast megalithic site, perhaps equalling Stonehenge in grandeur and mystery. The site is impressive, but it’s not some ancient prehistoric construction. It was built in the 1820’s by a wealthy landowner, Mr William Danby, a squire of nearby Swinton. An enlightened industrialist, he created this folly to give local men an income during a time of high unemployment.

The day I visited the weather was beautiful, right up until we left Masham and started to climb the twisting narrow roads into the hills. As we neared the Temple grim clouds raced in (right on cue!), it became eerily dark and the wind began to howl through the pine woods!

Parking up in the tiny carpark, we grabbed our waterproofs and entered the gloomy interior of the forest. Following a woodland path through the swaying spruce and larch it wasn’t long before the menhirs loomed up ahead.

The trilithons and a solid ‘wall’ of boulders encircled the site. Within the perimeter were guard stones and uprights, an altar and a tomb.

There were the recent remains of several fires within the Temple itself, and candle wax on the rock 'altar' by the cave-like tomb at the end.
This dank hole in the hillside was once home to a hermit, according to local lore. Apparently, William Danby made the offer that any man who could live there for seven years would receive an annuity. One man managed almost five years, but went insane in the process…

Dotted throughout the plantation are more single menhirs, dolmens and other curious arrangements of stone. Around one such dolmen nearby was a raging bonfire and hordes of well-wrapped-up kids careering around. Barbecues were arranged around the fire and balloons were pinned to the trees. They were having a party!

The site is a popular destination for neo-pagans and there are many stories of it’s ritual use in recent times.
It also has a reputation for inducing fear in visitors! Baroness Masham of Ilton (quoted in Hansard) said:-

"A few miles from Masham, on the estate, is a realistic copy of a druid temple, with all the stones, including the sacrificial stone, in the correct positions. One Sunday afternoon, my secretary was going for a walk with a friend when she found a pig's head sitting on the altar, which gave her a terrific shock. It is thought that there has been devil worship there. "On another occasion, I had to leave home early one morning. Just outside Masham, I found a small group of Leeds University students who had spent the night at the druids temple. They were cold and frightened. With the night shadows and the country noises, such as owls hooting, they had fled. As I was going towards Leeds, I gave them a lift. They told me that they had had a terrible experience. "Another incident at the druid temple was a large gathering of people from Manchester who took over the place for the whole night in order to have a rave. They tore gates off their hinges and broke down trees to make a huge bonfire. The police were called and with the gamekeepers, could only watch at a distance. It was only after a fight had taken place within the group and one of the people had been taken to hospital with severe injuries that the rave subsided. When my nephew visited the site the next day to inspect the damage, he found half-burnt probation orders and such discarded documents."

The main reason for my visit was to check out the surfaces of the stones in the circle. Tony Liddell of the Otherworld North East Research Society had told me that he'd previously noticed strange esoteric symbols that had been scratched on the rocks. He described how he'd taken some photographs several years ago and had the symbols looked at by an occultist, who identified some as being reminiscent of ‘Travelling Magic’, or of ‘Summoning’.

I’ve yet to discover the exact nature of ‘Travelling Magic’. Discussions with friends have come up with; symbols that you concentrate on and 'enter' to reach another plane/place, symbols that act as 'beacons' or place-markers for spirit travel (either 'ghostly' or shamanic?), symbols similar to the ones Romany people and 'tramps' used to leave to show if households were sympathetic to travellers and might provide a meal etc., and symbols like 'Yantras' that are geometrical designs to illustrate the essence of a particular thing (or realm)...

The idea that I tend to think most likely is that the occultist was referring to something like ‘trance’ work, which some people call Journeying, or Travelling. The ‘Summoning’ could be for invoking a guide for that sort of travel?

Unfortunately, on this occasion I could find no trace of any carved occult symbols (apart from a small pentagram drawn in charcoal), just the usual graffiti - football team allegiances, peoples' initials, who-loves-who and who-was-'ere.
I’m planning on returning in the near future however, hopefully with better luck and a companion who can point out the curious carvings…


It’s definately an atmospheric and impressive place, just don’t go on your own when it’s dark!