Legendary Rock: OS Grid Reference – SD 94355 87997
Also Known as:
- Giant’s Stone
Getting Here
From the small town of Bainbridge, head south down the Carpley Green Road. Less than a mile before the end, look to the west-facing slope of Addlebrough Hill and this huge Devil’s Stone can be seen resting halfway up the slope, just by the wall. Y’ can’t miss it!
Archaeology & History
Highlighted on the 1856 Ordnance Survey map, one of the legends of this place suggested there might be cup-and-ring markings on the stone, but the curious markings on top of the rock seem to be natural. It’s a superb stone though, dropped here no doubt by some great glacier as it retreated north, in ages truly olde…
There’s a lot of archaeology around here that’s yet to receive the attention of the archaeology textbooks. But if you’ve ventured to see this, have a gander across to the massive prehistoric tomb known as Stony Raise, less than a mile southeast of here.
Folklore
One legend tells that long ago Addlebrough was the home of a great unnamed giant — but a friendly giant by all acounts. However, one day the devil turned up and wanted possession of the giant’s hill and so a fierce row broke out between them. Perched on the top of the crag — which is the rough ridge to the west of here — the giant who lived there hurled huge boulders down at the devil, but they fell short and landed at the side of Lake Semerwater (itself an important spot in local prehistory). In return, Old Nick himself began throwing boulders back — and one of those which the devil threw landed here, halfway up the western flank of Addlebrough Hill (a couple of the large boulders which the giant threw can be seen on the edge of Semerwater and are known as the Carlow and Mermaid stones). Hence it’s name of the Devil’s Stone!
In Edmund Bogg’s Richmondshire (1908), he told how, “the curious markings on (the Devil’s Stone) are accounted due to the pressure of the devil’s fingers” which were caused when he threw this giant stone from somewhere to here.
This is a theme we find at countless other stone sites, i.e. the Devil burning holes into rock — and in some cases these devil’s “fingerprints” have turned out to be prehistoric cup-markings. Such tales relate to the pre-christian Creation Myth of a place and would, before the “devil” was supplanted onto a site, have had wider significance in the landscape as a whole, in a manner known only to local people. Devils usually replaced legendary giants, or the hero-figures who created the land in primordial times in the myths of our ancestors. A greater examination of the nearby sites in association with the folklore of the region would no doubt be quite profitable…
References:
- Bogg, Edmund, Richmondshire, James Miles: Leeds 1908.
- Romney, Paul (ed.), The Diary of Charles Fothergill, 1805, Yorkshire Archaeological Society: Leeds 1984.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
