Although this upland loch is today renowned as little more than a decent fishing spot, the waters here were long known to be haunted and the abode of a legendary water spirit. In local tradition, the loch is said to be named after “an ancient Chief of Pictish origin” — whose burial mound is nearby — and in James Kennedy’s (1928) fascinating folklore work he also told that,
“Loch Dereculich was the habitation of a ‘Tarbh Uisge’ (water bull), the dangerous water demon… This dreaded monster, as the Norwegian peasant will gravely assure a traveller, demands every year a human victim, and carries off children who stray too near its abode… Less than one hundred and twenty years ago, the Loch Derculich Water Bull was seen sauntering along its shores. At peat-making times it was observed very frequently.”
References:
Kennedy, James, Folklore and Reminiscences of Strathtay and Grandtully, Munro Press: Perth 1928.
From the village of Midgley, high above the A646 Halifax-to-Todmorden road, travel west along the moorland road until you reach the sharp-ish bend in the road, with steep wooded waterfall to your left and the track up to the disused quarry of Foster Clough. Go up the Foster Clough track for 100 yards and, when you reach the gate in front of you, go over it but follow the line of the straight walling uphill by the stream-side (instead of following the path up the quarries) all the way to the top. Here you’ll see the boundary stone of Churn Milk Joan.
Archaeology & History
The present large standing stone you see before you isn’t prehistoric. However, the small broken piece on the ground by its side may have been its prehistoric predecessor; and there is certainly something of an archaic nature here — albeit a contentious one — as we find old cup-markings cut into its eastern face.
Two ‘cup-marks’ on eastern face
The upright is roughly squared and faces the cardinal points. It was described in Mr Heginbottom’s (1977) unpublished survey on Calderdale rock art, where he described there being a few cup-markings inscribed on its east- and south-facing edges, some of which may be prehistoric — though they would obviously have had to have been carved upon the upright stone when it still lay earth-fast. However, we must posit the the notion (unless some of you have better ideas) that the tradition of etching cup-marks onto rocks was still occurring in this part of Yorkshire until the late Middle Ages, as this stone was, as we know from boundary records, only placed upright to mark the meeting of the three boundaries of Wadsworth, Hebden Royd and Sowerby.
Churn Milk Joan’s other name, Saville’s Low, originates from the great Saville family who owned great tracts of land across the region in the fourteenth century, possibly when the Churn Milk Joan we see today was created. The word “lowe” may derive from the old word meaning, “moot or gathering place,” which this great stone probably served as due to its siting at the junction of the three townships.*
Folklore
In modern times the stone has become a focus for a number of local pagans and New Agers who visit and ‘use’ the site in their respective ways at certain times of the day, albeit estranged (ego-bound) from the original mythic nature of the site.
The name of the stone comes from an old legend about a milk-maid named Joan who, whilst carrying milk across the moors between Luddenden and Pecket Well, got caught in a blizzard and froze to death. When her body was found many days later, the stone we see here today was erected to commemorate the spot where she died. Although such a scenario is quite likely on these hills, as Andy Roberts (1992) said,
“Considering the sheer amount of sites with similar legends this explanation is unlikely to be true and we should looker deeper for the meaning behind Churn Milk Joan, to be found in its positioning in the landscape and ourindividual feelings about it.” [see profiles for the Two Lads and the Lad o’ Crow Hill sites)
The monolith’s other title, Churnmilk Peg, is the name given to an old hag who is said to be the guardian of nut thickets. How this female sprite came to find her abode upon these high hills is somewhat of an enigma, but it was first stated as such in an article by Andy Roberts (1989) in “Northern Earth Mysteries” magazine. E.M. Wright (1913) noted this supernatural creature in her work on folk dialect, describing it as a West Yorkshire elemental who, along with another one known as Melsh Dick:
“are wood-demons supposed to protect soft, unripe nuts from being gathered by naughty children, the former being wont to beguile her leisure by smoking a pipe.”
Another legend of the stone tells how it is said to spin round three times on New Year’s Eve when it hears the sound of the midnight bells at St. Michael’s church (St. Michael was a dragon-slayer) at Mytholmroyd in the valley below. Another piece of folklore tells that coins used to be left in a small hollow at the very top of the stone which, according to Haslem (1981), was “a gift to the spirit world, to bring luck” – a common folk motif. It may equally originate from the custom of it as a plague stone. This tradition of leaving coins atop of the stone is still perpetuated by some local folk.
Mr Haslem also made some interesting remarks about the nature of Churn Milk Joan standing as a boundary stone, representing something which stands not just as a physical boundary, but as a boundary point between this and the Other- or spirit world. In folklore, streams and rivers commonly carry this theme. But here on Midgley Moor, as a standing stone at the junction of three boundaries, we may be looking at the place as an omphalos: a centre point from which the manifold worlds unfold. (see Almscliffe Crags, the Ashlar Chair and the Hitching Stone)
The other motif here, of milk and snow [both white], have been speculated to represent power of the sun at midwinter, and geomantically we find the position of the stone in the landscape exemplifying this: it stands midway in the moorland scenery facing south, the direction of solar power, yet is bounded as an equinox marker from east and west. The winter tales it has nestled around it are merely complementary occult augurs of its more wholesome elements at this point in the hills.
There is however, another much more potent element that has not been conveyed about the site and its folklore—and one which has more authenticity and primary animistic quality. Regardless of ‘Joan’ or ‘Peg’ being the elemental preserved in the landscape title, the ‘churning’ in its name and the ‘spinning’ of the stone in myth at the end of one year and the start of the next at New Year, are folk memories of traditional creation myths that speak of the cyclical seasons endlessly perpetuated year after year after year, in what Mircea Eliade (1954) called the ‘myth of the eternal return.’ As season follows season in the folk myths of our ancestors, everything related to the natural world: a world inhabited (as it still is) by feelings and intuitions learned from an endless daily encounter, outdoors, with the streams, hills, gales, snow and fires. Their entire cosmology, as with aboriginal people the world over, saw the cycles of the year as integral parts of their daily lives. Here, at Churn Milk Joan with its central landscape position along an ancient boundary, the churning and turning of the year was commemorated and mythologized year after year after year; with maybe even the Milky Way being part of the ‘milk’ in its title, from which, in the shamanistic worlds that were integral to earlier society, the gods themselves emerged and came down to Earth.
References:
Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Bollingen 1954.
Haslem, Michael, “Churn Milk Joan: A Boundary Stone on Midgley Moor,” in Wood and Water, 1:8, 1980.
Heginbottom, J.A., “The Prehistoric Rock Art of Upper Calderdale and the Surrounding Area,” Yorkshire Archaeology Society 1977.
Ogden, J.H., “A Moorland Township: Wadsworth in Ancient Times,” Proceedings of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, 1904.
Robert, Andy, “Our Last Meeting,” in NEM 37, 1989.
Robert, Andy, Ghosts and Legends of Yorkshire, Jarrold: Sheffield 1992.
Wright, Elizabeth Mary, Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore, Oxford University Press 1913.
* The great stone at the cente of the Great Skirtful of Stones, Burley Moor, which previously stood at the centre of the Grubstones Circle, was just such a moot stone. Upon it is carved the words “This is Rumble’s Lawe”.
In the superb work of the legendary J.R. Mortimer (1905) he tells what was found when him and his team excavated this “remarkable barrow,” as he called it. Although Mortimer’s contemporary researcher, Canon Greenwell (1877), also looked at the site, the “mound was covered with a clump of old fir trees” which prevented further examination at the time. Mortimer and his team seemed to have worked here when the trees had been felled and following “a three-week free use of the pick and shovel during July and August, 1878,” they opened up this prehistoric mound to see what lay within.
Their discoveries here were intriguing: for this wasn’t merely a burial site in its early phase but, moreso, a house of the dead no less, where the people whose bodies, or those who cremated ashes were deposited herein, lived in their spirit-life. It was an abode for the spirits of the dead. Mortimer’s lengthy notes tell the story:
“At the time of opening, it measured 4½ feet from base to summit, and the natural surface of the ground beneath it stood fully 1 foot higher than the present surface of the land for some distance round its margin. It was formed entirely of chalk rubble and soil, mainly obtained from an encircling trench, which on the northwest side was very deep and wide.
“We turned over the whole of this mound except its outskirts. Near the northwest margin there was an excavation (D on the plan) extending 8 to 10 inches below the base of the mound, and measuring 8½ feet by 6½ feet, the floor of which was covered with a film of dark matter, in which were small bits of burnt wood. No relic, nor the slightest trace of an interment was observed. A little west of the centre (at B) there was s still larger excavation, 18 inches deep. It contained rough chalk, but no traces of an interment. East of this was a third excavation (E), oval in form and 3 feet deep. Like the previous one it was filled with chalk and contained no relic or trace of a skeleton. The digging of these had preceded the erection of the mound, as there were no indications of it having been cut through. These excavations were doubtless graves, the bodies having entirely decayed.
“This was not, however, the case with the secondary and comparatively recent interments of six adult skeletons, found at the south-east side of the mound, 1 foot to 2 feet below its base. Though unaccompanied by any relic, the very narrow form of the graves and the extended and slightly flexed position of the interments alone showed them to be Anglo-Saxons.
“Below these secondary graves was an older and far more interesting excavation. Its form and position is shown on the plan at A. At first it was thought to be a huge grave, but as the work proceeded appearances indicating it to have served some other purpose were visible. Its filling-in was peculiar. It consisted of broken chalk, surface soil, and burnt wood, presenting altogether a very unusual arrangement. Along its centre for a distance of about 15 feet were six carbonized uprights of wood, 6 to 9 inches in diameter, at about equal distances and in a row. Wood ashes were also found on the sides and bottom, and scattered in the material filling the excavation.
“Also along the centre many of the large flat pieces of chalk stood on their edges, and at various depths were portions of animal and probably human bone, burnt as well as unburnt, and many fragments of a reddish urn. It was observed that the east end of this excavation became narrower and shallower. It now seemed evident that it was a habitation. Its form, as shown on the (above) plan, was oblong, with a ground floor 25 feet by 4½ feet; and its greatest depth was 6 feet. To its east end was a passage 11 feet long, gradually sloping to the surface.
“”On the south side, commencing at the inner end of the passage and extending inwards for about 12 feet, was a ledge or rock-seat, about 13 inches above the opposite side of the floor, as shown by the dotted lines in the plan and section. The whole width of the floor at the south-west end, for a distance of about 6 feet, was 10 to 12 inches above the centre and lowest part of the floor. The roof of the cave had most probably been formed of horizontal timber, supported by strong uprights of the same material, and then covered with a mound of earth and stones. The roof eventually gave way and the superincumbent earth and stones slid into the dwelling, several of the large flat stones…remaining on their edges.
“The abundance of wood ashes affords unquestionable evidence of the dwelling having been burnt. The preservation of the remains of the six uprights was due entirely to their having been completely charred. The fragments of red pottery are quite plain and belong to three or more vessels, which were probably used for domestic purposes.
“The roof of the cave must have fallen in long previous to the Anglo-Saxon interments, as where the skeletons were found, partly over the cave and partly upon the undisturbed rock, not the slightest distortion was visible, which would have been the case had not the filled-in portion under the bodies become firm. Near the south-side of the dwelling, at about the base of the mound, were several broken human bones and pieces of a dark-coloured urn. Probably these belonged to a disturbed Anglo-Saxon burial.
“We also found in the mound, between the graves E, B, D, a considerable quantity of detached animal and human bones; the latter indicated three or more individuals; a few of the bones showed traces of fire. There were also several small pieces of a dark plain urn.”
Mr Mortimer then commented on the unusual ‘habitation’ section within the mound, not thinking that the dead themselves “lived” here! But we can forgive him this small detail as his work in general was superb. The site was of course a decent East Yorkshire chambered tomb, wherein the dead were laid and, if entrance was ever possible by our tribal ancestors when it was erected, would have paid homage the ancestral figures buried here. Traditional death ceremonies were pretty inevitable I’d say.
References:
Mortimer, J.R., Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, Brown & Sons: Hull 1905.
In this region so full of old tombs and prehistoric remains, we find this little-known sacred well, long since known as a place of curious sprites and strange lore. Elizabeth Wright (1913) said of the place,
“It is said that the fairies were wont of old to wash their clothes in Claymore Well, and mangle them with the bittle and pin. The bittle is a heavy wooden battledore; the pin is the roller; the linen is wound round the latter, and then reolled backwards and forwards on the table by pressure on the battledore. The strokes of the bittles on fairy washing-nights could be heard a mile away.”
A most curious tale…
References:
Wright, Elizabeth Mary, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore, Oxford University Press 1913.
From Askwith village, at the T-junction, go up Moor Lane, taking the left turn up Moorside Lane about half-a-mile up and on the track to Moorside Farm and then onto Top Moorside Farm. Take the path past the farm up onto the moor, then bear right up the small track that heads up onto the small Hollin Tree Hill. As you go up the track, watch out for the small grassy depression to the right; and hereby head into the grasses on your right. You’re close!
Graeme Chappell was the first to rediscover this carving in the early 1990s when we were up pottering about on these and the adjacent moors, looking for any previously undiscovered prehistoric relics. We found quite a lot! The carving here is nowt special to look at really, but the cups can be seen quite clearly. It’s a rather large stone on the western edge of the hill with at least seven or eight cup-marks carved across its upper surface. Boughey & Vickerman (2003) later described it as “large, fine quartz sandstone rock with surface sloping slightly down into (the) hillside. Seven or eight cups, two particularly sharp.” There’s a possible line running between two of the cups, visible when lighting conditions are right — though we aint sure whether it’s artificial or not.
References:
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS 2003.
