To search for any sites in the northern counties of England (previously known as Brigantia), click on the list of relevant counties, below. Please note that not all these english counties were truly in Brigantia, but they came close to its southern edges; and as parts of them tickle the edges of the southern Pennines, I thought they should be included. Hope that’s OK with everyone!
Cross (replaced): OS Grid Reference – SD 8936 2883
Archaeology & History
“Maiden Cross” stone
Highlighted on the 1848 Ordnance Survey map, the original stone ‘cross’ has apparently been moved from its location up against the walling 30-40 yards away and placed by the roadside, just as you’re going into where the windmills are, right at the very crown of the hill, across from the car-park. I’m not so sure it’s the original one to be honest—but I may be wrong. Clifford Byrne (1974) certainly thought this is the original stone. He may be wright. Byrne told that “the Marquis of Colne had a photograph of the stump of the cross in situ,” which would be good to compare. It’s nowt special to look at, but at least the site has been remembered, so to speak.
Site shown on 1848 map
The Maiden Cross was one in a series of wayside crosses along this ancient high road—known as the Long Causeway—not only marking it out when the snows covered it in the old Winters that we used to get, but also possessing religious importance to travellers. It was first moved sometime in the 19th century and “utilised as a gatepost into Maiden Cross colliery”—itself long gone.
Folklore
The name given to the ‘cross’ comes from a story that’s found at a number of other ‘maiden’ place-names. There may be an element of truth in it. It was told to the great historian and folklorist T.T. Wilkinson by his grandfather in 1766 and, according to him, his grandfather before that! J.A. Waddington (1884) subsequently wrote down the tale that Wilkinson told him:
“During the time of the great rebellion, this was the trysting-place of a young shepherd with his lady love. Often did they meet to pledge their simple vows at this lonely place, until one day a messenger came from Towneley to collect as many young men as he could get to swell the ranks of Rupert when he passed through this part to join the Royal forces at York, a march which ended with the disastrous fight at Marston Moor, on whose bloody sod lay stretched the chivalrous Towneley, and a many of his followers, including this young man, the victims of a tyrannical and ambitious king. For many a long year after this tragical event the poor demented maiden would repair to this hallowed spot, repeating with a sorrowful voice his promise to return.”
This was curiously described by Ormerod (1906) as “a pathetic tradition”! He much preferred the simple idea of this (and the other crosses along the road) as merely serving “the capacity of guideposts to the traveller (overtaken in a mist or by the swiftly lowering shades of light) who might be traversing these lonely roads”, as Waddington put it. Ormerod cited a conversation he had with “an old road mender” which for him confirmed the idea:
“Asked if he had heard what was the object of these crosses, he said, that “Joonas Lee said as they were put up 250 yer sin, for guideposts for’t pack horses, between Halifax and Brunshaw” (Burnley), adding, as if to give more weight to the authority he had quoted: “An he wur a far larned chap wur Joonas—he wur a preycher.”’
Walter Bennett (1941) meanwhile, thought its name derived from the Virgin Mary and this cross, at least, possessed religious importance.
References:
Bennett, W., The History of Burnley – volume 1, Burnley County Council 1946.
Byrne, Clifford, A Survey of the Ancient Wayside Crosses in North-East Lancashire, privately printed 1974.
Holden, Joshua, A History of Todmorden, Manchester University Press 1912.
Waddington, J. Arthur, ‘The Crosses in and Around Burnley’, in Transactions Burnley Literary & Scientific Club, volume 1, 1884.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
From Bainbridge, take the A684 road east to Aysgarth. Just out of the town, 200 yards over the bridge, take the right turn down Blean Lane. Nearly ½-mile along, take the minor road on your left and go along here for 1½ miles where, a few hundred yards before the solitary farm of Carpley Green (lucky buggers!), you can park up. (keep plenty of room for a tractor to get in the fields) Walk down the track past the farm and 250 yards along, where the first field ends, a gate leads you into the hills on your left. Go through here and then the next gate 120 yards on, then walk straight along th elong geological ridge ahead of you, veering to the top-side until it meets the walling. You’ll see the giant Stoney Raise cairn on the other side.
Archaeology & History
Stony Raise from above
The remains we find here are nigh-on immense! If giant cairns get you going (like the Great Skirtful of Stones or the denuded Devil’s Apronful near Pendle, etc), this one will blow you away! Along its widest axis, to this day it’s nearly 40 yards across and nearly 7 feet high! But in earlier times it was even bigger—much bigger! The first known description of the site was made by one Charles Fothergill, a Yorkshire-born politician and ornithologist, who wrote a diary of his walking excursions to various places in North Yorkshire at the beginning of the 19th century. (Romney 1984) His account of it was a good one for that period and thankfully he recorded information that would otherwise have been forgotten. After his visit here in September 1805, he told about this,
“wonderful tumulus called Stone raise which is a great curiosity: it is formed entirely of large stones piled up without earth or gravel, differing in that respect from any I have seen. Notwithstanding that upwards of a thousand, nay ’tis said several thousand, loads of stones have been led away from it to build walls with, it yet remains a stupendous monument of this species of antiquity: we measured the base of it as well as we could by our strides and made it 369 feet in circumference and of such an height as to be seen for a considerable distance. It has been most completely rifled…and it now presents a number of small craters formed by the investigations of the money searchers. It is situated upon a hill about half a mile south of Addlebrough. In addition to the particulars I formerly mentioned, I may say the men who first opened it about 50 years ago worked incessantly for 33 days. It stands on Thornton moor, and tho’ the Thornton men would not assist in the labour, they intended to share in the profit if there was any; but the adventurers who had all the work resolved they should not and they carried a large sword with them every day to defend the treasure in case they found any; the wise man who read ’till the stones shook and rattled was a schoolmaster at Bainbridge: the teeth they found were deposited in a hollow place in the bottom of the tumuli formed long and narrow like a coffin by a walling of stones. Tho’ the tumulus has apparantly been compleatly rifled, I do not believe the whole base has been sufficiently searched, but if it was to commemorate one great individual, which appears to have been the case, perhaps nothing more may be found.”
Fothergill’s description of “upwards of a thousand” cartloads of stone being removed from Stony Raise has been doubted by some archaeologists, but this claim should not be dismissed so lightly without evidence. There are immense tombs from northern Scotland to the unholy South that have remained untouched by the hand of industrialists that easily enter the category of such giants and this may have had equal stature.
A few years after Fothergill’s visit, Thomas Whitaker (1823) briefly described the site in his magnum opus, but added very little, simply telling that on the hills behind Addlebrough,
“there is still on that elevated spot a cairn, called Stone Raise, about 120 yards in circumference at the base, to which the usual tradition of its containing a treasure of gold having been attached, two persons were several years ago induced to make the experiment; but having penetrated to the centre, found, to their great disappointment, what an antiquary would have prepared them to expect, namely, a kist vaen of flag stones, with the remains of a human skeleton, the teeth of which were still pretty perfect.”
To this day the site remains unexcavated, so we don’t know too much about the place. It’s likely to have been constructed in neolithic times and its ancestral nature quite obviously venerated. It may have been re-used during the Bronze Age, but without excavations we may never know. A decent dig into this site is long overdue!
Folklore
This gigantic tomb is, not surprisingly, said to be haunted. Strange sounds and visions have been encountered here in bygone times. But the most well-known tale is that it was the site of a great treasure—perhaps hinted at by Fothergill. There are variations on the theme, but this is overall story:
Structured stonework
The tomb was said to be where a local giant had fallen and with him was buried a great chest of gold which he had dropped before he died. Some say that the ‘giant’ was a Brigantian chief – others a great warrior. The great treasure chest beneath the cairn is said to looked over by a fairy who lived by the giant’s tomb. It was this tale which gave the site its local name, the ‘Golden Chest on Greenber’. Several attempts made to find the treasure have all failed to uncover it.
However, by the time Edmund Bogg came to write of the place in 1908, the giant had by all accounts been found within! He told that,
The giant’s cist cover?
“this Kist-vaen was opened, many years back, and the skeleton of a chieftain of great stature was unearthed; the treasure chest of that or some other primal savage was not, and has not yet been discovered – for, take heed ye matter-of-fact money hunters, it is said the lucky one must first see the wraith of the ancient warrior to whom it belonged, who will then shew under which part of the immense Raise it is hidden! May this help any reader who is imaginative enough to find it – having seen the wraith he must keep silence – he has then but to stretch out his hand, and draw it forth.”
There are variations on this tale that have subsequently been penned by a number of Yorkshire folklorists, but this is the general lore. There was also a short rhyme told of toney Raise, that speaks of its apparent use through history by various races:
Druid, Roman, Scandinavia,
Stone Raise in Addlebro’.
References:
Bogg, Edmund, Wensleydale and the Lower Vale of the Yore, E. Bogg: Leeds 1906.
Bogg, Edmund, Richmondshire, James Miles: Leeds 1908.
Elgee, F. & H.W., The Archaeology of Yorkshire, Methuen: London 1933.
Gutch, Mrs E., Examples of Printed Folklore Concerning the North Riding of Yorkshire, David Nutt: London 1899.
Lofthouse, Jessica, Countrygoer in the Dales, Hale: London 1964.
Parkinson, Thomas, Yorkshire Legends and Traditions – volume 2, Elliot Stock: London 1889.
Pontefract, Ella, Wensleysdale, J.M. Dent: London 1936.
Romney, Paul (ed.), The Diary of Charles Fothergill, 1805, Yorkshire Archaeological Society: Leeds 1984.
Whitaker, Thomas Dunham, An History of Richmondshire – volume 1, Longman Hurst: London 1823.
White, Robert, A Landscape through Time, Great Northern: Ilkley 2002.
Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NU 2299 2989
Archaeology & History
Tait’s 1971 sketch of the carving
When the Beadnell Caravan Park was being constructed in 1970, in cutting into the Earth the workmen destroyed a couple of prehistoric tombs—but not before one of them (the northernmost one of the two) was thankfully excavated. It was looked at by John Tait (1971), who described the covering cairn as measuring “nineteen feet in diameter and four feet high”. Beneath it, within a cist that had been modified at two very different periods in time, were a large number of human remains that had been deposited over equally extended periods, suggesting it was a place of considerable importance to either one family lineage or the tribal lineage (unless it was just a dumping spot for any old Tom, Dick and Harry!). Outside of the cist itself, but within the rocky mass of the cairn, this cup-marked stone was found (illustrated). It had already been moved by the workmen before Tait came to excavate it, so he was unable to ascertain its precise position in the tomb. Carved into a piece of sandstone were a number of odd-sized cup-marks, smaller than usual. Tait wrote:
“It measures 38cm by 36cm and bears 29 small cup-marks and one slightly sinuous duct leading into what may be part of an earlier and larger cup. It also seems probable that additional cups were added in antiquity, since some are distinctly more shallow than others and, in one instance, two cups impinge upon one another. The stone had been broken in antiquity and may have come from a larger inscribed slab, as is perhaps the case with some other “portable” stones of burials or cairns and other monuments of the second this nature.”
It is thought that the carving was laid back in the ground whence it was found.
References:
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 1, Abbey Press: Hexham 1991.
Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland, Tempus: Stroud 2001.
St. Maughold’s Well—also called Chibbyr Vaghal—is found on the northeast side of the headland on the cliff face about a hundred feet above the sea, a quarter mile from the St. Maughold’s church. It was a pilgrimage site which people visited on the dates of November 15 and July 31.
“…Beneath the head, under some moss clad rocks, is a deep spring, formerly much celebrated for its supposed medicinal virtues.” – George Jefferson, 1840
St Maughold’s on 1870 map‘Well’ on the 1836 map
Its medicinal properties are of great repute and was resorted to by many on account of its sanctity by crowds of pilgrims. The well was traditionally visited on the first Sunday in August, being the first Sunday after the Saint ‘s principal feast day, July 31 (significant in the Celtic calendar), but the devotions here have their origins in pre-christian times. The principal benefit at the well was a cure for sore eyes. After bathing the eyes or drinking the water it was/is customary to drop a coin, pin or button into it. Alternatively, a piece of cloth which had been used for bathing the eyes would be left by the well or on a nearby bush. As the cloth rotted, the ailment would be cured; while anyone who picked up the rags would himself receive the complaint associated with the offering; and to receive the full benefit of the well’s curative powers it should be visited on that first Sunday in August, and “while books were open in the church” — or in pre-reformation days, whilst Mass was being offered.
“…Where the spring gushes forth the rock has been hollowed into a small basin, and over it has been erected a simple shed of rough unhewn blocks of the rock immediately at hand. Hither the Saint is said to have resorted; nor is it altogether improbable that nearly fourteen hundred years ago at this very font he administered the baptismal rite. Certainly it was for many ages in great repute for its medicinal properties, and was resorted to on account of its sanctity by crowds of pilgrims from all parts. Nor is it yet forgotten.” – J.G. Cumming, 1848
“…A drink of its water, taken after resting in the saint’s chair close by, is supposed to be an unfailing cure for barrenness in women.” – A.W. Moore, 1890
Folklore
At Maughold churchyard above the well, ghostly whispers are said to be heard by the steps in the churchyard. This is interesting as when excavations were done here, the labourers found bones buried beneath the same steps. They were dug and exposed during the day and one worker who stayed in the church heard distant sounds, whispers and murmuring all around the church. When the bones were reinterred, the haunting stopped. (Bord & Bord 1985)
References:
Bord, Janet & Colin, Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland, Granada: London 1985.
Cumming, J.G., The Isle of Man: Its History, Physical and Ecclesiastical, J. van Voorst: London 1848.
Hall, John, “Earth Mysteries of the Isle of Man,” in Earth, no.17, 1990.
Moore, A.W., The Surnames and Place-Names of the Isle of Man, Elliot Stock: London 1890.
Jefferson, George, Jefferson’s Isle of Man, G. Jefferson: Douglas 1840.
Radcliffe, William & Constance, A History of Kirk Maughold, Manx Museum: Douglas 1979.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
If you’re coming up to Oxenhope from Keighley, up the A6033 road, when you reach the school on the right-hand side of the road, a one-way street (Cross Lane) is where you need to walk down, for 200 yards, and keep your eyes peeled in the walling just before Cross Farm Court. Alternatively, via Haworth, go along Marsh Lane for a few hundred yards until your reach Moorhouse Lane on your left. Go down here for ⅓-mile (0.5km) and then go up Cross Lane on your right. About 120 yards up, in the walling just past the entrance into Cross Farm Court is where you’ll find it.
Archaeology & History
Very little seems to be known about the remains of this cross, embedded into the old walling. When it was described by Brigg & Villy (1914), they could find no information about it, and surmised that it marked the original track or road to Oxenhope from both Haworth and Halifax, “on the line of the old road by Withens.” Ostensibly it would seem to have been a wayside cross, marking old trackways (ley hunters take note!).
Visitors looking at it today can see that it’s barely noticeable. It looked no different even in Brigg & Villy’s days. It simply consists of only part of the original head of the cross, “the shaft having been broken off flush with the horizontal limb.” Some of the other stones that make up the bottom of this very poor-looking excuse of a cross were probably not part of the original, but were assembled into the wall to at least leave of memory of what it used to look like. It’s in a sorry state to be honest. A historic plaque should be placed here.
References:
Brigg, J.J. & Villy, F., “Three Ancient Crosses near Keighley,” in Bradford Antiquary, New Series 6, 1921.
Standing Stone (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SK 5779 0644
Also Known as:
Little John’s Stone
Archaeology & History
Nichols 1804 drawing
This once impressive megalithic site was first mentioned in 1381, giving its name to the field Johnstone Close. Shown on the early Ordnance Survey maps standing on a raised portion of land in an area north of the modern town centre, not far from the Abbey, its destruction had been a slow one until it finally disappeared about a hundred years ago. One of the early descriptions of it was by John Nichols (1804) in his immense series of works on the county. He called it ‘Little John’s Stone’* and gave us the first known illustration of the monolith (right), telling it to be “7 feet 2 inches high, and 11 feet 3 inches wide”—although he obviously meant circumference and not ‘wide’, as his illustration clearly shows. Although this slight error was perhaps the reason that Historic England proclaimed the stone to have been little more than “a natural feature”—which it clearly wasn’t.
Stone shown on 1885 mapJohn Flower’s 1815 sketch
The stone stood in what Nichols called “a kind of amphitheatre”, and what James Hollings (1855) subsequently called a sloping hollow which, he thought, had “been excavated by the hand of man.” It was located “in a meadow, a little to the west of the Fosse-way,” he said, “not far from the ancient boundary wall of the Abbey of St. Mary de Pratis.” There’s little doubt it was a prehistoric standing stone. Hollings described it as standing erect and told it to be one of those “monolithic erections, or hoar stones, anciently sanctified by the rites of Druidic worship,” comparing it to “similar rude columns” in Cornwall, Scotland and just about everywhere! He also told that it was a place of summer solstice gatherings, being
“in the memory of many living, annually visited about the time of Midsummer by numerous parties from the town in pursuance of a custom of unknown antiquity.”
When James Kelly (1884) wrote about the stone, little was left of it save at ground level. He repeated much of what Hollings had previously written, but had a few notes of his own. One related to the local mayor and MP for Leicester, Mr Richard Harris, dated January 1853, who told him:
“When a boy, he had frequently played on the spot where it was customary for the children to resort to dance round the stone (which he thought was about eight feet high), to climb upon it and to roll down the hill by which the stone is in part, encircled. The children were careful to leave before dark, as it was believed that at midnight the fairies assembled and danced round the stone.”
More than fifty years later when Mrs Johnson (1906) wrote about the place she said that only a small section of the stone still remained, just “a few inches above the earth.” It had been incrementally “broken to pieces down to the surface of the ground and used to mend the road.” (Kelly 1884) Alice Dryden (1911) lamented its gradual demise in size, summarizing:
“At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was about 7 feet high, but by the year 1835 it had become reduced to about 3 feet. In 1874, according to the British Association’s Report, it was about 2 feet high, and it has now completely disappeared.”
Local tradition tells that some small pieces of St John’s Stone were moved to the nearby St. Luke’s church, where bits of it can still be seen. Has anyone found them?
More recent lore has attributed St John’s Stone to have been aligned with the Humber Stone (SK 62416 07095) nearly 3 miles to the east, in a summer solstice line—but it’s nowhere near it! A similar astronomical attempt said that the two stones lined up with the Beltane sunrise: this is a little closer, but it still doesn’t work. The equinox sunrise is closer still, but whether these two stones were even intervisible is questionable.
* this was probably the name it was known by local people who frequented the nearby Robin Hood public house (long gone); its saintly dedication being less important in the minds of Leicester’s indigenous folk.
References:
Cox, Barrie, The Place-Names of Leicestershire – volume 1, EPNS: Nottingham 1998.
Devereux, Paul, “The Forgotten Heart of Albion,” in The Ley Hunter, no.66, 1975.
Dryden, Alice, Memorials of Old Leicestershire, George Allen & Sons: London 1911.
Hollings, James Francis, Roman Leicester, LLPS: Leicester 1855.
Kelly, William, Royal Progresses and Visits to Leicester, Samuel Clarke: Leicester 1884.
Nichols, John, The History and Antiquities of Leicestershire – volume 3: part 2, J. Nichols: London 1804.
Trubshaw, Bob, Standing Stones and Markstones of Leicestershire, Heart of Albion Press 1991.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Cross (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 2546 3537
Archaeology & History
Location of the old cross
In medieval times an old stone cross was erected at the edge of Bramley where two old tracks once met, and which today is the junction where Broad Lane meets with Outgang Lane. The cross is long gone – and even the stone cross base on which it stood no longer existed when the Ordnance Survey lads came here in the 1840s. All that remained when they came here were the place-names which have forever kept a memory of its former existence: Stump Cross Stile and Stump Cottage. It was mentioned, albeit briefly, in Wardell’s (1890) survey of Kirkstall Abbey where he told simply that a
“stone cross formerly stood some distance south of the Abbey by the side of the Old Road to Bradford, at the junction of the lane leading to Bramley, called the Outgang, but no remains of it are left; the site, however, is still known by the name of ‘Stump Cross Stile.’ Whether this cross marked the extent of some boundary, or was erected by the monks or others for the purposes of devotion for wayfarers, I am unable to ascertain.”
References:
Wardell, James, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, Samuel Moxon: Leeds 1890.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Cross (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 3071 3463
Archaeology & History
In James Wardell’s (1890) work on Kirkstall Abbey he describes several of the long lost stone crosses that used to exist in the area. This one,
“formerly stood by the road side at the south end of Sheepscar Bridge, in Leeds.”
The cross had already been destroyed by the time the Ordnance Survey lads explored the area in the 1840s, as there’s no showing of it on any of their maps. Wardell further stated that it was,
“called Killingbeck Cross, from being erected by either the Abbot of Kirkstall or the Vicar of Leeds, of that name.”
References:
Wardell, James, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, S. Moxon: Leeds 1890.
Park up at the singular dusty car-park on the east-side of Askwith Moor Road. If you walk to the sloping eastern edge of the car-park and then go down and over the collapsed fence onto the moorland immediately east, walk in the direction of the Tree of Life Stone to the north-east (be aware that there’s no footpath here and it’s boggy as fuck in places) . Just over halfway towards the carving, nearly 400 yards from where you’ve parked, you’ll begin to see various ruinous piles and scatters of stone. You can’t really miss them!
Archaeology & History
Cairn, looking north
In a region teeming with prehistoric sites, the great Eric Cowling (1937) seems to have been the person who stumbled across this “barrow group”, as he called it, during one of his rock art forays in this neck o’ the woods. Little has been written of them since. Not to be confused with the Snowden Moor cairnfield more than 350 yards to the north, at this place we find at least a dozen quite distinct cairns scattered around the grid-reference cited, most of them much larger in size than the cairns to the north, ranging between five to twelve yards across and up to three feet high. They have all been opened and robbed, with considerable disturbance on the largest of the ‘barrows’. We know not who may have done this, but there’s been a history of quarrying close by and it may have been some of the workmen who did the damage, knowingly or otherwise.
Large scatter of cairn-spoilCairn covered in bilberries!
As far as I’m aware, no burial or funerary remains have been found here—but there’s been negligible archaeological attention given to any of the sites on this moorland, meaning that we can draw no real conclusions about the nature of the cairns. They seem to be far too large to be clearance cairns; and the proximity of large scale prehistoric settlements and rock art all round here would strongly suggest they possessed a funerary nature. Several impressive petroglyphs exist right at the edge of this group, literally yards away from them. Check them all out out the next time you see the Tree of Life stone…
References:
Cowling, Eric T., ‘Cup and Ring Markings to the North of Otley,’ in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 33 (part 131), 1937.
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946.
If you’re looking for this carving, you’ll have been to the impressive Tree of Life stone first. From there, you need to walk further away from the walling, 30-35 yards southwest, across the other side of the footpath. There’s a scattered mass of stones all over the ground here: you’re looking for a low-lying long curved stone—longer than most of them hereby. If the heather’s grown back over the stone, it might take some finding!
Archaeology & History
Close to a line of prehistoric walling (seemingly a section of a settlement), this typically curvaceous female stone is possessed of two pairs of faint cup-marks on the eastern side of the rock. It was included in Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003) survey where they described the carving as being, “two small cups visible and two further cups under heather.” A third possible cup exists close to one of the pairs. The carving is found in an area rich in untouched prehistoric remains.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS 2003.
