The Devil's Arrows
Why are these stones so hard to find?!
You can see them as you speed past on the A1, reaching them is another thing altogether!
There are no signposts or indication as to where they are!
We approached from the A168 that runs parralell to the A1(M), entering the village of Boroughbridge, we avidly scanned the roadside for information on the site.
After driving round the place several times we asked directions from an elderly local couple who were pottering in their garden.
'Excuse me' said I 'can you tell us how to get to the Devil's Arrows please?'
'The what?'
'The Devil's Arrows'
The old man looked at his wife, eyed us up suspiciously and said 'Never heard of 'em'...
Great! I thought, this is turning into a 'Hammer' movie where the villagers are hiding some dark secret! We'll be stuck driving about aimlessly, never leaving!
'The standing stones?' I ventured
'Oh aye!' he grinned and went on to give us a very roundabout way of getting there...
Another circuit of the village later, we drove straight past them! Hidden behind a tall hedge, in the middle of a field of emerging corn, there they were.
Huge sentinels that rise from the flat farmland. They stand oblivious to the encroaching village, slightly incongruous between the noisy Great North Road and dormitory-village housing estate.
All the stones are crowned with a curious 'fluting',reputedley caused by weathering. In relatively recent times a summer solstice fair was held on land between the stones and the village. It has been suggested that this St. Barnabas Fair was a remnant of more ritualistic and pagan ceremonies...These imposing megaliths are well worth a visit, I'm sure they would reward the sensitive visitor with a memorable experience...Let's hope someone re-instates the festival soon!
The three stones aligned...
The Druid's Temple
When I first heard of this place it conjured up images of a megalithic site of Stonehenge-like grandeur. It is impressive, but it’s not an ancient 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 the folly to give local men an income during a time of high unemployment.
The day I visited was beautiful, right until we left Masham and started to climb into the hills. As we neared the Temple, right on cue, clouds raced in, it became eerily dark and the wind began to howl through the woods!
Parking up in the tiny carpark, we braved the cold and entered the darkness of the forest. We wandered a short way along a woodland path through the swaying spruce and larch and it wasn’t long before the menhirs loomed up ahead.
The trilithons and a ‘wall’ of boulders encircle the site. Within the perimeter are 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.
It was this hole in the hillside that was home to a hermit, according to local lore. Apparently, William Danby asked 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 other stones; dolmens and single menhirs. Around one we noticed a raging bonfire and hordes of well-wrapped-up kids careering around. Barbecues were arranged around the fire, balloons were pinned to the trees. They were having a party!
It’s popular with 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."
One of my reasons for visiting was to check out the surface of the stones in the circle. Tony Liddell of the Northern Counties Preternatural Studies group had told me of strange symbols that had been scratched in the rock. He described how he had 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 (ghosts or shamans?), symbols similar to the ones Romany people and 'tramps' used to leave to denote if houses were sympathetic to travellers and where to find places to eat etc., and symbols like 'Yantras' that are geometrical designs to illustrate the essence of a particular thing (or realm)...
The idea I go for most is that he 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 symbols, apart from general graffiti (football team allegiances, peoples initials, who-loves-who etc. and one small pentagram drawn in charcoal!).
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 an atmospheric and impressive place, just don’t go when it’s dark!
Trollers Gill and Appletreewick circle
Trollers Gill. The mere mention of it conjures up disturbing images of fearsome creatures lying in wait there. Still, we needed somewhere to wander on a bright, chilly day in December, so in true Christmas spirit we decided to go searching for these mythological monsters!
We headed up the Wharfedale valley, towards the snow-topped peaks. Deeper into the valleys and the villages petered out, the roads narrowed to allow single-file traffic and the Tractor became king of the road! We parked near Parceval Hall, a huge castle-like residence, now famous for it’s landscaped gardens and use as a ‘retreat centre’. It’s also less well-known for possessing a haunted stable. Local tales reveal that the stable is haunted by the equine ghost of a former inmate, the faithful steed of a chivalrous highwayman. The same highwayman, ‘Riding Will’ Nevison, whose exploits haunt the area still and who gave his name to the landmark ‘Nevison’s Leap’ nearby.
With a quick check for the sound of hooves we set off up the path of frozen mud that followed the Skyrethorne Beck. The valley was peaceful and the stream bubbled by lazily. Hard to believe it may be the home to such gruesome beasts of old Norse folklore.
Trolls. Not the beneath-bridge living, toll-taking, riddle-spewing dwarves of nursery rhyme. More the giant, shaggy shape-shifting inhabitant of caves and hills, occasionally partial to the flesh of man. Oh dear…
As we neared the upper reaches of the valley, the narrow gorge loomed up in front of us. A chasm of limestone, water dripping from it’s sides like a salivating maw.
Enticing, it wasn’t!
We slowly entered, picking our way over the rock-strewn ground, avoiding the pools and rivulets of icy water. The leaf-less forms of twisted trees clung to the precipitous cliffs…
The whole of this wide Dale appears to have been thick with the howls of another spectral creature. The ‘Barguest’, also called ‘Padfoot’ or in some places ‘Gyrtrash’. Usually described as a huge dark hound with glowing red eyes, they once rampaged across this land, fast as a moorland fire. Even in the days when the Industrial Revolution was chugging it’s grimy way into the heart of the hills, the feared black dogs were still reason to stay in at night. One such intelligent stay-at-home was an author; the Reverend Bailey J. Harker who, in 1890, told of a terrible hound, dragging a chain, that had eyes which ‘glistened with an unearthly fire’.
Not so wise was a Mr. John Lambert of the nearby village of Skyrethorne. He foolishly teased the Barguest and met his maker in the process.
As recently as 1881 a villager from Appletreewick went in search of said beast. The next morning his mutilated body was found by shepherds.
Sometimes I think it’s a mistake for me to read about the spooky goings on that happen at places before I visit them!
The ravine winds it’s serpentine way to the bleak moors of Skyrethorne. Here lie the forgotten remains of habitation from the days of flint and spear. We trekked all over this blasted moor, finding many signs of man and his struggle to wreak an existence from the inhospitable landscape. Long abandoned farmsteads, drystone walls that crossed the backs of the hillsides, the gaping holes of worked out mines. Spoil heaps crowned with the discarded boulders of limestone, grey rocks scattered like the picked-clean bones of the pasture’s innards. And amongst this, the ancient symbols of Neolithic man, carved onto the stone, weathered by the ages and unfathomable. There are almost thirty recorded examples of rock-art decorating the exposed surfaces of stone in the area.
A short distance beyond the decorated fields, over the Pateley Bridge road, we found an unassuming little circle of stone. Very cute it was too! I loved it, yet my companion thought it too contrived. A couple of the stones looked like natural landfast boulders. The others like they’d been planted on end. But the views across Wharfedale were fantastic!
I get the impression that there was quite a hive of activity in this part of the valley in the distant past. All the carved rocks, the little circles, traces of settlements long since vanished.
It’s gonna take plenty of return visits to uncover everything this part of the Dales has to offer. Next time I’ll make sure I’m not the one who’s driving. It was torture passing the two pubs in Appletreewick that promised open fires and cask ales!
Jenny Twig and her daughter Tib
On the broad expanse of Fountains Earth Moor can be found the towering stone stacks of Jenny Twig and her daughter Tib. They stand together, set apart from the neighbouring outcrop of Millstone Grit called Sypeland Crags. Nobody local knows the origin of the names. One writer noted the similarity to the Gaelic ‘Tuig’, ‘to be wise’.
The moorland hereabouts is trackless, remote, scattered with bogs and eerie rock features. To find the place we had to follow a track up the steep hillsides from Ramsgill, then strike out over the heather to where we hoped they lay.
In 1863, William Grainge rather romantically referred to them as ‘Giantesses in broad bonnetts’. It’s easy to believe this when you spend any time here.
There are other places named ‘Jenny’ in the north of England, often associated with supernatural or ‘fairy’ folk. The most famous is probabley Janet’s (or Jenny’s) Foss at Malham which was the home to the ‘Queen of the fairies of the whole district’.
‘Jenny-green-teeth’ is the name of a terrifying being that haunts wells and ponds. Mother’s have used the tales of her to keep their children away from playing around dangerous water for centuries. Jenny Dib was a seventeenth century witch of the nearby Washburn valley. Jenny Hurn is the local name of a river-monster that resided in the murky waters of the River Trent, in Lincolnshire.
Further up this valley on Dead-Man’s Hill, where three tracks from three Dales meet, three headless bodies were discovered from ages past. Whispers of them being the remains of a prehistoric sacrifice flew around the farms and villages…
The spot where the tracks converge is called 'Jenny's Gate'...
These curious forms high on the bleak hills of Nidderdale, reminded me of the folk-tales of stones that were once witches. Who knows?!
We hung about to take some photographs of the sun slipping below the horizon. Then made a less-than dignified dash for the valley bottom and civilisation!
...Maybe they DO come alive after dark?!
The Grey Stone
A magnificent boulder, must be 10 feet high!
We parked at the junction of the A61 and the tiny road from Wike village. A place frequented occasionally by car thieves so lock up your valuables if you leave it there!
Over the dicey A61, avoiding mental speed-freaks, takes you through the grand gateway into the Harewood estate…
A scene of rolling parkland designed by the great Capability Brown unfolds before you! Less than a mile down the well marked bridleway brought us to a sweeping meadow up a hill to our left. On the edge of the conifer plantation we spied the stone!
The rock itself is isolated, standing alone in a north facing field, bounded by woodland.
The views northwards are far-reaching, Almscliffe Crag being easily seen and in direct line with the spiral carving on the north-western face of the rock. It seems to be seven concentric rings, though they are now very indistinct… Apparently, the midwinter sun would set behind Almscliff Crag at the lunar standstill, around 1800 B.C.!
Whilst taking pics I noticed several huge birds circling above us – the Red Kites! The estate is home to several breeding pairs. Huge soaring things they were!
A solitary old oak tree stands 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 other side something higher up the trunk caught my eye. Pinned to the tree was a small painting on card, showing spiral designs, eyes and moons. On the reverse was a poem, written in ink. Above this, to the right was a stick with a teasel head fastened to one end (phallic eh?!), 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, didn’t recognise any though.
A spell or offering of some sort?
Feeling it would be an invasion of someones privacy to take them down or read the scroll, I left them to do their thing…
After taking in the panorama for a while we headed back to the car. Halfway along the bridleway I turned back to look at the stone. A monster 4x4 shot out from the wood at the bottom of the slope and burned up the hill. It came to a stop by the rock. Probabley the estate workers.
Maybe they thought we were the vandals that had written on the stone. Or the pagans that had left the spells. Or poachers, after the Red Kites? We decided not to wait and find out!
The Gypsey Race
Rudston Monolith
IT'S HUGE!
Situated in the grounds of the village church that usurped the site, it remains as a link to far older times. At over twenty-five feet tall and twenty six tons, the menhir is the largest standing stone in the country. It's in-yer-face, brooding over the surrounding graveyard.
It may have been a little taller, a metal cap being placed over the tip to reduce the effects of weathering. Sir William Strickland of Boynton found as much of the stone buried as appears above ground (and a large quantity of skulls too!). The stone is extremely reminiscent of the devil's arrows... Another failed shot by the Devil! Did he ever hit any of the churches he aimed for?
The markings etched onto it's surface have been interpreted by some to be maps of the stars. In a quiet corner of the churchyard lies another stone, this one a tiny three feet or so high. It was probabley closer to the monolith originally, along with others now long-lost, incorperated into walls and forgotten... This site forms a central part of the 'Gypsey Race'. An ancient watercourse that was trusted to bring fertility to the area. The 'river' could change from dry-as-a-bone to a raging torrent in a matter of hours. From it's birth at a spring near Wharram-Le-Percy to the North Sea near Bridlington, it winds it's busy way past neolithic mounds and henges. In spate it was often thought to be a harbinger of doom! This entire area is reckoned to be have been part of one of the most important sites in the north, having the largest concentration of cursuses in the country! Four routes lead to or from this stone across the surrounding countryside.
It seems a lot of work and effort was undertaken here. The stone itself is likely to have been quarried from Cayton Bay, some ten miles distant, around 2000 years ago. As ancient places go, this area seems to be somewhat missed by the majority of megalith-hunters. The whole landscape has a different feel. It's under-stated, subtle, self-aware almost. Maybe it's alive...
Willy Howe
Another place that we expected to find more easily!
Part of the 'Great Yorkshire Barrows' group. To say that these have been called by some; 'the ancestors' of the mighty Silbury hill in Wiltshire you'd think a little more fuss would be made of them!
If a friendly old guy cycling past hadn't given us directions we'd have carried on driving about aimlessly (my normal state!). Even he didn't know it by name, until I described it!
Eventually we found it - a hill on a hill! Though the model airplane club meeting in the adjacent field spoiled the ambience a little!
Reckoned to be as old as Duggleby Howe, and a similar size; seven and a half meters high and thirty six and a half meters in diameter.
Attempts at discovering it's secrets in 1857 and again thirty years later yielded nothing... A pit about nine feet deep was found but was bereft of objects or remains.
A local legend tells of a horseman riding past late one night. Hearing music, he went to investigate (the fool! It's as bad as venturing into the cellar in the obviously-haunted mansion!).
On the flanks of the hill was a door. Peering inside he was astonished to see a party in full swing! For a while, who knows how long, he watched in wonder until suddenly he was seen by one of the revellers, who offered him a drink. The canny horseman knew that drinking the wine would be his downfall. He threw the drink on the floor and beat a hasty retreat to his trusty steed. He legged it, but being a Yorkshireman, kept a hold of the valuable cup!
...Or so the Bridlington monk, William of Newburgh said, who heard the story and recorded it for posterity.
The fate of the Fairy Cup?
Well, it was given to King henry the first, then to King David of Scotland then to King Henry the Second... then quietly disappeared...
Unless of course, the Little Folk took it back...
We did have a little help finding the hill... from unexpected friends...
Duggleby Howe
Close to the source of the Gypsey Race lies one of the area's largest ancient monuments; Duggleby Howe.
The site was originally a shaft grave with flints and a bowl. The earth used to backfill contained two more bodies and a skull. After the soil had settled and formed a hollow, two more corpses and a few unusually valuable objects were placed within. Beside the original shaft another grave was constructed, which held one inhumation and more goods...
Above these first graves a round barrow was created which contained an adult, a teenager and six children's bodies. Fifty three traces of cremation have been discovered on the top of the barrow, under a layer of clay and chalk rubble.
Sometime during the site's history a ten and a half hectare enclosure was built, with Duggleby Howe at it's center. The massive ditch that encircled it is visible now only on aerial photographs.
I was a bit disappointed!
It seemed to lack the 'atmosphere' that Willy Howe possessed. It just sat there!
Maybe it's because I was rushing to get some pics at the end of the afternoon.
Maybe it's such a 'subtle' place I couldn't see it?
I'll have to go back...