This famous carving was first described as a 'swastika' by J. Thornton Dale in 1880 - and the name seemed to catch on damn quick! The stone had become established with this title at the end of that decade, and seemed immortalised with the name when J. Horsfall Turner wrote about it in the very popular history book he co-authored with the reverend Collyer in Ilkley Ancient and Modern. (1885) By then, comparisons had already been drawn with the acknowledged swastika symbol in Tossene, Sweden, and by the time Harry Speight described it in his colossal Upper Wharfedale (1900), other near-identical European swastika carvings had been found in Valcamonica, northern Italy. (though these lacked the 'tail' found on Ilkley's carving)
The Leeds Buddhist scholar, Steve Hart, said that Ilkley's Swastika Stone "to a Buddhist should be a sonorous gatha (a sutra or verse), a plenitude of transcendental boddhisattvic vision. The swirling wheel of the four arms suggests the four realms as experienced by Jains, upanishadic sages and ancient Buddists. They ARE samsara. The samsara is resolved into the nirvana at the hub. The four realms are the human realm, god realm, hell realm and the nature realm. There are no clear delineated demarcations between these realms. All interpenetrate."
(Images of the popularised 'modern' swastika - a huge misnomer - can be found on several church bells in Yorkshire, where they were used as charms to protect against lightning, following in the mythic fashion of Thor. These swastikas date from the 15th century.)
I first saw this carving when I was 10-years old and it had one helluvan effect on me! The cups in the design align north-south and east-west. The northern line points directly at Simon's Seat on the northern skyline. The eastern axis points directly at Almscliffe Crag, above which the equinox sun seems to rise from here.
For the real alignment fanatics, check out the alignment from Twelve Apostles to here: on the date of the last major lunar standstill (occurrent every 18.6 years), the moon set over the cairn at Lanshaw Lad. It wasn't until I got home and checked the veracity of this line, that I realised if you follow this moonset line further, you hit the Swastika Stone bang on!
The single 'outlying' cup from the four spiralling arms is, to me, the point from which the four-arms originated and not the other way round. In early cosmogenic patterns the world over, the worlds emerged from the round, the single, the point, or uroborous - and this is what this Swastika Stone appears to represent. (For those of you who aint into using psychedelics at sites, a good overview of this idea is in Erich Neumann's Origins & History of Consciousness [although there's no reference to this symbol] and which should be read by anyone pretending an interest in the nature of the archaic mind. It's a good work on the psychology of the Dreamtime.)
Note:
A fella who used the pseudonym of 'Pad' suggests that the carving is only a few centuries old, and compares it to other much more recent etchings on these moors, where the erosion has been of no greater or lesser force. The suggestion has been made about other carvings on these moors and whilst I have an open mind about this, if this is the case, we would perhaps have to relate the same reasoning to just about every other carving on these hills. In which case, a great deal of cup-and-ring art would have to be redesingated as a medieval phenomenon.
NB - Check the new, updated Northern Antiquarian blog, here: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/ - Kicks shit outta this one!
Friday 7 September 2007
Thursday 6 September 2007
Twelve Apostles, Ilkley Moor
"The intervention of astronomers, ley-hunters, dowsers, neo-druids and men with scientific instruments has, as it were, thrown the stone circles open to the public, thus generating far more interest in studying them and protecting them than has been the case when they have been the exclusive preserve of archaeologists."
- John Michell
Several thousand years ago above Ilkley, trees scattered the high plains on the moors which today gaze at us in their hues of purple and red. Great woodlands of elder, birch, hazel and rowan excelled, with the attendant herbal flora such trees encourage in equally rich attendance. The old circles and stones of these times were moot spots to which our ancient people wandered, perhaps in their hundreds, along both straight and sinuous woodland paths to speak and to honour that which gave and brought life and death. Ritual would be played to honour the elemental forces which enwrapped and affected the lives of the people. We know not, of course, precisely what they played, but we can be sure it was none of the old, Neolithic barbarian idea given us by the aged archaeologists; nor of course, the lovely, rosy, crystal diatribe of the New-Agers who speak their coloured auras oozing from the Great Mother. There is a go-between we must find, utilising some of the elements from these and other schools of thought. Somewhere amidst a more anthropological approach, taking in folklore and archaeology, we may find a clear picture of what these old stone sites may once have been used for.
Archaeology & History
First highlighted on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map as a "Circle of Stones" close to "The Stone called Lanshaw Lad", the Twelve Apostles stone circle (OS-co-ordinate SE 1262 4507) is one of the highest of all ancient monuments upon Rombald’s Moor, 1264 feet above sea level. Only the defamed giant cairn at the very top of the moors, known in previous centuries as ‘Nixon’s Station’—described in 1885 as being a hundred-and-seventy-five yards in circumference, then in 1900 as a hundred-and-fifty-yards—is higher. It is by no means a spectacular stone circle. Certainly in comparison to places like Castlerigg, Avebury, Callanish or the Argyll stones, it fades into insignificance!
In earlier times the circle possessed such names as the 'Druid's Chair' and the 'Druidical Dial Circle'—the first of which implying it to have been a place of ritual inauguration, and the latter a folk remnant of it being a site where the solar and lunar year would be recorded. Indeed, as early as 1850, antiquarian and rambler James Wardell described this site as "the astronomical circle," after local folklore about the site being used as such. Today, such 'folklore' has entered into being academically acceptable in many quarters; though the significance of such alignments is still hotly debated.
What greets us today would have been, several thousand years ago, planned and prepared sometime before the stones were erected close to the crossing of the two most important trackways crossing these moors, marking "an event of some importance." These trackways face the four cardinal points, or airts, and one of them received considerable attention as a major prehistoric trade-route crossing the mid-Pennines. Around 1800 BC - the academics guess - the ring of stones took form.
The all-but-forgotten Black Beck Well (SE 1276 4494), two hundred yards south of the Twelve Apostles, was an important water-hole for our prehistoric traders and travellers and may well have had some function relative to this megalithic ring. Certainly, the well was being used by traders late into the 19th century.
According to archaeologist Arthur Raistrick, the Twelve Apostles originally consisted of at least twenty upright stones with a solitary monolith at its centre. It was this central stone which, not unsurprisingly, gave it the tradition of being a druidical dial circle. This is probably not without foundation as the centre-stone may well have acted as some sort of shadow-marker, or simply the point from where solar, lunar and perhaps stellar observations were made. When Raistrick first came here though, he reported that only three of the stones were standing. A few years later when Cowling described the site, he said that all of the stones "are now overthrown." This is, sadly, something we have to constantly deal with.1 In Raistrick’s further description of the Apostles, he wrote:
"The circles of stones is erected on a bank of earth and small stones, as nearly circular as can be measured, and fifty-two feet (15.9m) in diameter, centre to centre of bank. The bank is about four feet wide and in places about two feet above the surrounding ground level." Cowling's measurements told it to be fifty-eight feet across. Sadly, no trace of the raised embankment enclosing the circle remains.
In more recent times, the site has been ascribed as a "a circular ceremonial monument", which I think is appropriate, although no burial or ritual remains have ever been found here. As we shall see however, this description is most fitting when put into context with the wider landscape.
Visitors to the Twelve Apostles should be aware (if they weren't already) that the circle they see today bears little resemblance to the place when it was first constructed around four thousand years ago. The scattered woodland which covered most of these now-barren moorland heights have long since gone and the stones have been moved and overthrown so many times that it would be very difficult indeed to gain an accurate picture of what the circle originally looked like. But this should not deter our investigations.
We should also be very cautious in making assumptions about the nature of pre-christian events that occurred here. Although modern pagans frequent this place at set times of the year, their activities have little, if any bearing, on the rites of our ancestors (despite what some of them might tell you!). However, scattered historical accounts do tell us about the activities of more obscure events hereabouts. At the nearby Grubstones Circle (SE 1363 4473), records tell us how local people gathered on Rogation Day (a pre-christian agricultural ritual festivity, closely related to Beltane). A central stone—now moved into the giant Skirtful of Stones tomb a few hundred yards east—stood at its centre and an orator spoke to the people from here, ending with the words, "This is Rumbles Law!" Although we have no records of such actions at Twelve Apostles, the central stone which once stood here may have been a focus for such orations. The tribal leader and tribal shaman would have enacted this in ancient days. However, we do know from folklore records that the fabled Pendle witches and the lesser-known witches of Fewston (in the beautiful Washburn Valley a few miles to the north) met together on top of these hills, and the Twelve Apostles is a good contender as one of their likely assembly points.
Any real history of Twelve Apostles is, as we can see, somewhat scarce, although in recent years observations from the site itself at select times of the year (solstices, equinoxes, etc.) have brought us a greater wealth of information.
As every good geomancer knows, literal knowledge about a place in the landscape is limited: how we look at such ritual sites determines, to a very great degree, how much we receive. If we look at the site as an astronomer, we will see the place through astroarchaeological eyes; if we look at it as an architect, mathematical formulae will overlay the complex; or if we see it as a New Ager, angels and auras will appear. With this in mind it is imperative we look at such places with a non-ethnocentic perspective. No easy thing.
Intellect out—Dreamtime in!
Spirit was inherent everywhere to the people who made these old stone rings. Never forget that! And not the 'spirit' of modern-day mediums, nor ghostly forms of things long-dead coming back to haunt and scare us. Spirit as in the essence or 'feel' of a place: the thing you experience when, in certain places, a characteristic change in perspective, mood or state of consciousness emerges, seemingly from nowhere. That is this thing we call 'spirit.' Or at least that was the thing recognised by the megalith builders.
Over the years I have visited this old stone ring in both the heights of summer and winter, day and night, both alone and with friends. It is a sad, almost lonesome old place. The spirit which made it has long since gone, battered and stolen by those who saw and felt little here. A dozen or more suns have arisen to greet me on solstice, equinox and Beltane days, that I might be enwrapped by the spirit, only to be granted a sense of solace, the soul of these stones. Its atmosphere has sadly long gone. Upon rare occasions when the stones precipitate slight shifts in consciousness, the effects are short-lived and have more to do with the solar-lunar conjunctions than the attendant spirit-nature, or genius loci, of the place. Ritual magickians who have worked here tell the same words.
Curious Alignments
Although dispossessed of its original spirit, it does not distract us from perceiving some elements of what appears to be one original function of the site. Its position in the landscape was obviously of grand geomantic importance and, having watched the motion of both sun and moon from this quiet ring of stones (the lunar standstills are recorded here), one is impressed, if not by its feeling, certainly by its siting relative to other arcane monuments. Those who know the Twelve Apostles and have visited it on a fine clear day will know what I mean. The view is considerable, peering far into the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales, looking upon a great panoramic circle nearly eighty miles across. I remember seeing this for the first time as a child and was entranced by it.
So why had they placed this circle where they had...?
Looking at the Twelve Apostles on a large-scale Ordnance Survey map (6-inch to the mile, or 1:10,000)—as most linear-thinkers do nowadays—we see a remarkable geometric image unfold before our eyes. Running straight eastwards 1180 yards away (1.08km) we reach the Grubstones circle. From the Apostles again, go straight north for another 1180 yards (1.08km) and you reach the ruins of the Backstone Circle (SE 1261 4613). Between these three circles we find a perfect isosceles triangle. But this isn't the end of it: the longer axis connecting Grubstones to Backstone is some nineteen-hundred yards long (1.731km) and at the mid-point along this line, the now-recumbent Lanshaw Lass boundary stone once stood. Intriguingly, if we stand at Twelve Apostles for the Beltane sunrise (May day), we would see its golden orb rising on the far-eastern horizon right above our Lanshaw Lass.
This all may, of course, be coincidental. Our megalithic ancestors surely knew nothing of isosceles triangles and such stuff...
Other astronomical alignments are perhaps not as contentious. In 1989 when the moon rose at its maximum northern point on the horizon (which occurs every 18.6 years and is known as the Major Lunar Standstill), it was photographed setting on the north-western horizon behind the large cairn just a few hundred yards away, behind which stands the old boundary stone of Lanshaw Lad. This line, when transposed onto a map, eventually reaches a quite remarkable ancient carving known as the Swastika Stone (SE 0956 4695) more than two miles away.
This alignment may again be coincidental as there are so many prehistoric sites upon these moors. Indeed, it seems that it would be hard not to find alignments up here! And although not all stone circles have astronomical systems encoded within them, studies show that many of them do.
The Summer Solstice Alignment
One very curious and probable alignment at the Apostles is the midsummer sunrise. It is celebrated every summer here by local folk who have been visiting the place, in recent years at least, for the last thirty years, despite the contorted attempts by the Church to suppress its natural celebration. In recent years the number of people visiting Twelve Apostles at midsummer has steadily increased; so much so that people are now scattering the moors in their hundreds to other sites. For many years I ambled my way up to this old ring of stones and waited for the sun to rise at summer solstice. After a few years the question of "Where exactly does it rise?" on this longest of days intrigued my teenage mind, but I had to wait a few more years until the morning air was clear enough to see the distant skyline...
Then, on the morning of the summer solstice in the mid-1980s, whilst the people around me were drumming, cheering, chanting and silencing themselves as the giant fireball rose once more from its daily horizon, I stood gazing, not at the sun, but at the very land beneath where it rose on that longest of days. And what I saw stunned me!
More than thirty-five miles (53km) northeast from the Twelve Apostles, the faint etching of a great white horse scarred the distant landscape exactly beneath where the sun rose on this longest of days. I must admit, I was metaphorically kicked in the neurological bollocks by this! If my eyesight wasn't truly impaired by a night of no sleep, the far distant solar indicator I could see was the White Horse of Kilburn (SE 5142 8129)…
…And white horses, as is well-known, are potent symbols of the sun.
The real screwball with this sunrise indicator lies in the fact that Kilburn's white horse was etched into the hillside only in the middle of the 19th century! It was cut into the slopes by a local man called Thomas Taylor. He had visited the magnificent prehistoric white horse at Uffington in Oxfordshire, plus others in the Vale of the White Horse, and was so impressed by them that he decided to make one in his own back yard, so to speak. After considerable effort and with the help of more than thirty local men, the steep slopes northwest of Kilburn had its own Epona: 314 feet long and 278 feet high. Said by one writer to be "visible for twenty miles" and another that it "could be seen up to seventy miles away"—figures that need drastically revising!
Despite the revelation that the midsummer sunrise from Twelve Apostles aligns with the White Horse of Kilburn, it was obvious that no arcane relationship—and hence no authentic mythic virtue—was possible here. The fact that some four thousand years separate the construction of both monuments precludes any valid connection between them.
This aside, I asked a research of friend of mine, Graeme Chappell, to run through the possible astroarchaeology from Apostles to Kilburn in order to ascertain the validity, or otherwise, of this seemingly incredulous alignment. Lo and behold, in 1857 (when the Kilburn horse was completed), the "sun would have risen when it was over the white horse, but only just." So I began putting this long distance alignment down to nothing more than a wonderful visual coincidence—until Graeme pointed out a much more curious astronomical folk remnant...
Around 1700 BCE, close to the time when Twelve Apostles was built, observers standing at the circle would watch the midsummer sunrise exactly over White Mare Crag. This wouldn’t seem that curious were it not for the folklore of these distant crags, themselves deeply symbolic of the sun.
The renowned Victorian antiquarian and folklorist, Edmund Bogg, wrote extensively about the curious legends that abound in and around the Kilburn area—several of which surround the great cliffs of the White Mare (locally known as Wisson Cliff in times past). Tradition tells that a white horse was once visible in the hillside here. Bogg told that it received its name from this horse, whose shape was visible in the shape of the huge rocky crags. At the bottom of the cliffs the faerie folk were said to live. Also here is Gormire Lake—bottomless according to folklore and apparently the abode of a sunken village, though history records (and geology) make this unlikely, so we must seek elsewhere for an explanation to such a tale. The waters of this lake fall into a small crevice at its edge and, so legend tells, these then flow uphill until eventually re-emerging at a well at Cold Kirkby village a mile to the east in the direction of the setting sun. These tales in themselves are intriguing relics of shamanism whose nature lies beyond the scope of this enquiry.
One folktale tells of a local 'witch' who was chased over the local moorland (by who or what isn't remembered). She eventually reached the edge of White Mare Crag cliffs where she carried on running and jumped, landing in the waters of Gormire Lake beneath where it was thought she would drown. But, following the flow of water underground, the tale tells how she eventually re-appeared nine miles away out of an old (unnamed) well. An equally curious piece of lore tells of a goose that was dropped into the same crevice the witch went into after it had apparently dried-up, only to emerge, without any feathers, twelve miles away to the east at Kirkbymoorside.
But one tale in particular appears, to me at least, to have considerable relevance to our midsummer sunrise from the Twelve Apostles…
A long time ago an abbot from Rievaulx Abbey was in possession of a pure white horse, said to be as quick and nimble as any horse in the region. The abbot met up with a local landowner, Sir Harry Scriven, who also owned a horse of great repute - this time jet black, called Nightwind - and he challenged him to a race across Hambleton Moors (just above White Mare Crags). Sir Harry accepted, but the abbot insisted they swapped horses so that he could ride Nightwind and Harry was on the white steed. They took off, racing fast over the high moors until they reached the edge of White Mare Crags but, instead of stopping, the abbot continued galloping with Sir Harry following until they each plunged over the edge of the high cliffs. Legend tells that as Sir Harry fell to his inevitable death, the white horse which he rode dissolved into thin air and, as he looked across at his own horse Nightwind, looked at the abbot who turned into the devil. As Cooper points out, "the winged horse is the sun…as is also the white horse," and as the horse in this legend "dissolved into thin air" as it went west over the Crags, could this be an old symbolic tale of the setting sun dissolving as it sets over the far horizon to the west? The black horse which remains, Nightwind: is this not the dark night which naturally follows?
We might never know, but it certainly makes sense of the tale. Especially when seen in relation to the summer solstice alignment from the Apostles. And if there was any possible commemoration of this line from White Mare Crags, the dark horse, Nightwind, would be the triumphant one, as the alignment into the far southwest from here to Twelve Apostles records the shortest night of the year: the winter solstice. Intriguing stuff!
But this primary midsummer alignment from Twelve Apostles gets even more curious…
Although books and magazine articles detailing ‘leys’ are numerous, they are, on the whole, full of lines that exist simply in the mind of their creators. Knowing these non-existent ‘old bent tracks’, as Yorkshire folk have come to call them, are ammunition for trivialising the subject, precision is extremely important. It is obvious in this alignment however, that we are looking plain and simply at an astronomical line—not a ley. But, in good old fashioned ley-hunter style, I decided to get out the Ordnance Survey maps—2½-inch-to- the-mile scale—and check the cartographic nature of the line for myself. It took some doing! But its outcome threw up yet more bizarre finds, bending the parameters of Jungian synchronicity, never mind geodelic science!
As the illustration here shows, the line passes an old stone in the village of Askwith. A little further on we pass what Eric Cowling called ‘The Old Man of Snowden’—a squat standing stone close to the crossroads which appears to have been destroyed. Here too is the Grey Stone: an ancient boundary marker scared with intricate cup-and-ring designs. Although we pass one or two other fascinating spots where good folklore and history can be had—such as the moot points of Sword Point and Jack Hill—things don’t really start getting too interesting until we pass Nidd Church. (SE 3013 6081) "In the churchyard," wrote Arthur Mee, "is the shaft of a cross about 600 years old, but it is said that the story of the village goes back twice as far, and that a great church council met over 1000 years ago." This is more than likely, for just beyond is a place called Temple Yarmer where, as Harry Speight reminded us, once stood "an immense menhir or standing monolith." Folklore told it to have been part of a now lost stone circle.
A little further on we pass by a few old boundary stones (SE 3160 6219; SE 3568 6578), but these will have nothing to do with our midsummer alignment. Not until we pass by the gigantic Devil’s Arrows at Boroughbridge (SE 3912 6650) do things begin getting a little bizarre. Although just three huge monoliths remains today, we know that least five of them were standing in the 15th century. It is very probable that more standing stones were in the original complex and our solar line may have crossed part of it. More certain are we of the midsummer’s day horse-festival that has been held here for many centuries. Known as the Barnaby Fair, recent years have seen the event almost vanish into history. But the motif of horses and midsummer here is intriguing. Nearby, at Kirkby Hill - over which our solar line crosses - is a spot known as the Fairy Hill and where, at midsummer, the little-people were wont to play in the early hours.
Continuing further and getting ever-closer to the White Horse which stands out from the Apostles, we reach the North Yorkshire village of Sessay. Here once lived a great one-eyed giant, said by folklore to be one helluva nasty dood - but this is just the Church demonising something it refused to try understanding. (In the neighbouring towns and villages of Topcliffe, Dalton and Pilmoor are other giant legends. It would be interesting to find the archaic roots of this geographical cluster.)
Next we reach the village of Kilburn itself. And here, every midsummer as far back as records can go, we have another horse festival. The activities here have truly heathen origins, comprising in parts to a great feast over the midsummer days. During this a procession itself is made by the villagers to the White Horse. We also have the figure of an androgynous ‘Lady Mayoress’ who runs through the streets receiving kisses from other ladies.
The final point on our journey along this midsummer line is the White Horse itself, whose visibility from Twelve Apostles started this journey in the first place.
The truly curious ingredients in this line is the coincidence (?) of midsummer fairs and horses as we travel along it. One wonders if there’s some sort of Cosmic Joker sat behind it all, rubbing its hands gleefully, waiting for the crazy speculators or New-Age dreamers to proclaim a Divine Rule or something similar. Stranger things have happened…
…Like the midwinter alignment from Twelve Apostles…
From our humble stone circle we trek out, south-east this time, first passing the Black Beck Well (SE 1276 4495) and then an ancient boundary stone (SE 1357 4430), before reaching Odda’s Hill. Slightly past here and below Hawksworth Hall is the Alder’s Well (SE 1671 4168) where a ceremonial procession used to be performed starting at the Hall¾but I have been unable to establish what time of year this occurred. But, just a little further on, our midwinter line comes to the Hawk Stone (SE 1792 4099) where, "legend tells that a man on horseback leapt from the top of the Hawk Stone and landed safely at Low Hall, Yeadon, 2500 yards east."
A man on horseback, jumping over cliffs on a midwinter solstice line… Doesn’t that ring a bell somewhere…? What’s the hell’s going on here…?
Strange Lights
If our flying horses and solstice sunrises verge on the borderline of possibility, to many people the same cannot be said of the strange lights which have, from time to time, been seen around Twelve Apostles. Reports of ‘UFOs’ as they are generally known, should more accurately be described as ‘earthlights,’ or ELs. These are consciousness-sensitive light-forms which are known to interact with humans who come into close contact with them. The modern myth of them as spaceships is the latest in a long line of historic perspectives. In earlier times, people who saw these ELs transposed the thought of airships onto them. Before that, people saw the huge glowing eyes of phantom dogs and other entities emerge from them. Earlier still they were known as faerie-lights. Around the same periods they were devil-lights or witches on broomsticks. Some people saw them as gods, to which the lights accordingly responded. Religious folk have watched Jesus, the Virgin and angels emerge from these lights when they’ve got too close. But it must also be said that a great number of people who see such ELs see nothing but that: anomalous light-forms floating or darting about curiously, seemingly with a mind of their own.
One of these ELs certainly perplexed three members of the Royal Observer Corps in the summer of 1976 during exercises on the moors. Heading towards the Twelve Apostles they suddenly noticed a brilliant white sphere of light, seemingly hovering right above the stone circle at a low level. It made no manoeuvres other than, eventually, shooting straight upwards into the sky at remarkable speed and out of sight, without making a sound!
In July 1990, two witnesses who spent the night at the Backstone circle (a site with a considerable pedigree of supernatural events) watched another brilliant white ball of light about a mile away, low down on the horizon, move quickly and silently from the west until reaching Twelve Apostles, where it stood motionless for some time. It then backtracked rapidly at tremendous speed, before returning to the circle, executing a 180° turn without stopping or slowing down. It then flew back west and rapidly out of sight. Within seconds of this, the witnesses allege a military jet flew right over the moors following the trajectory of the object.
On a couple of occasions I’ve seen what geologists call ‘earthquake lights’ emerge from the ground immediately around Twelve Apostles at the dead of night, lighting the sky up for a considerable distance around the circle.
End Words
Although much of the atmosphere to the Twelve Apostles has long since gone, on a clear day the view from here is truly majestic. As a sacred site, to truly know the spirit of these places you must approach them in many ways and, most certainly, at all times of year.
"In visiting any old stone site, enter them with the respect you give your own home. There is spirit resident there and your ability to feel its nature is determined wholly by the way in which you enter the place. If this seems to lead to confusion, not knowing how to feel about such things, don't worry—many people have the same trouble! The way to approach spirit-nature is to visit these places alone (without crystals, cards or oracles), disregarding your beliefs of them as astronomical centres, UFO spots, or where Merlin lives—these are all irrelevant to the genius loci. If you carry beliefs into these sites, your experiences will simply reflect such beliefs. Do nothing. If after such approach work nothing happens, well, that's the way of things—these places are alive in very different ways to those we have been conditioned to expect. Spirit isn't something that turns on and off when we want it to; it is a cyclic, fluctuating essence stirred when and where external conditions allow. The phase of the Moon, sunspot activity, the rising of a star, motions of a local planet... all are factors affecting these places (modern science calls these influences electromagnetic perturbations). Persevere."
Nature consists of winter as well as summer; blizzards and storms and gales as well as sunshine, a gentle breeze and quietude. This stone circle, like every other such site, needs to be known in all its subjective and physical states. Once this is done - and it may be a long and arduous process - we begin to understand the nature of that which our culture has long since forgotten…
Further Reading:
Bennett, Paul, The Olde Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Chieveley 1992
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946
Devereux, Paul, Places of Power, Blandford: London 1990
— Shamanism and the Mystery Lines, Quantum: London 1992
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986
Pennick, Nigel & Devereux, Paul, Lines on the Landscape: Leys and other Linear Enigmas, Hale: London 1989
Size, Nicholas, The Haunted Moor, Ilkley 1936
NB - Check the new, updated Northern Antiquarian blog, here: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/ - Kicks shit outta this one!
- John Michell
Several thousand years ago above Ilkley, trees scattered the high plains on the moors which today gaze at us in their hues of purple and red. Great woodlands of elder, birch, hazel and rowan excelled, with the attendant herbal flora such trees encourage in equally rich attendance. The old circles and stones of these times were moot spots to which our ancient people wandered, perhaps in their hundreds, along both straight and sinuous woodland paths to speak and to honour that which gave and brought life and death. Ritual would be played to honour the elemental forces which enwrapped and affected the lives of the people. We know not, of course, precisely what they played, but we can be sure it was none of the old, Neolithic barbarian idea given us by the aged archaeologists; nor of course, the lovely, rosy, crystal diatribe of the New-Agers who speak their coloured auras oozing from the Great Mother. There is a go-between we must find, utilising some of the elements from these and other schools of thought. Somewhere amidst a more anthropological approach, taking in folklore and archaeology, we may find a clear picture of what these old stone sites may once have been used for.
Archaeology & History
First highlighted on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map as a "Circle of Stones" close to "The Stone called Lanshaw Lad", the Twelve Apostles stone circle (OS-co-ordinate SE 1262 4507) is one of the highest of all ancient monuments upon Rombald’s Moor, 1264 feet above sea level. Only the defamed giant cairn at the very top of the moors, known in previous centuries as ‘Nixon’s Station’—described in 1885 as being a hundred-and-seventy-five yards in circumference, then in 1900 as a hundred-and-fifty-yards—is higher. It is by no means a spectacular stone circle. Certainly in comparison to places like Castlerigg, Avebury, Callanish or the Argyll stones, it fades into insignificance!
In earlier times the circle possessed such names as the 'Druid's Chair' and the 'Druidical Dial Circle'—the first of which implying it to have been a place of ritual inauguration, and the latter a folk remnant of it being a site where the solar and lunar year would be recorded. Indeed, as early as 1850, antiquarian and rambler James Wardell described this site as "the astronomical circle," after local folklore about the site being used as such. Today, such 'folklore' has entered into being academically acceptable in many quarters; though the significance of such alignments is still hotly debated.
What greets us today would have been, several thousand years ago, planned and prepared sometime before the stones were erected close to the crossing of the two most important trackways crossing these moors, marking "an event of some importance." These trackways face the four cardinal points, or airts, and one of them received considerable attention as a major prehistoric trade-route crossing the mid-Pennines. Around 1800 BC - the academics guess - the ring of stones took form.
The all-but-forgotten Black Beck Well (SE 1276 4494), two hundred yards south of the Twelve Apostles, was an important water-hole for our prehistoric traders and travellers and may well have had some function relative to this megalithic ring. Certainly, the well was being used by traders late into the 19th century.
According to archaeologist Arthur Raistrick, the Twelve Apostles originally consisted of at least twenty upright stones with a solitary monolith at its centre. It was this central stone which, not unsurprisingly, gave it the tradition of being a druidical dial circle. This is probably not without foundation as the centre-stone may well have acted as some sort of shadow-marker, or simply the point from where solar, lunar and perhaps stellar observations were made. When Raistrick first came here though, he reported that only three of the stones were standing. A few years later when Cowling described the site, he said that all of the stones "are now overthrown." This is, sadly, something we have to constantly deal with.1 In Raistrick’s further description of the Apostles, he wrote:
"The circles of stones is erected on a bank of earth and small stones, as nearly circular as can be measured, and fifty-two feet (15.9m) in diameter, centre to centre of bank. The bank is about four feet wide and in places about two feet above the surrounding ground level." Cowling's measurements told it to be fifty-eight feet across. Sadly, no trace of the raised embankment enclosing the circle remains.
In more recent times, the site has been ascribed as a "a circular ceremonial monument", which I think is appropriate, although no burial or ritual remains have ever been found here. As we shall see however, this description is most fitting when put into context with the wider landscape.
Visitors to the Twelve Apostles should be aware (if they weren't already) that the circle they see today bears little resemblance to the place when it was first constructed around four thousand years ago. The scattered woodland which covered most of these now-barren moorland heights have long since gone and the stones have been moved and overthrown so many times that it would be very difficult indeed to gain an accurate picture of what the circle originally looked like. But this should not deter our investigations.
We should also be very cautious in making assumptions about the nature of pre-christian events that occurred here. Although modern pagans frequent this place at set times of the year, their activities have little, if any bearing, on the rites of our ancestors (despite what some of them might tell you!). However, scattered historical accounts do tell us about the activities of more obscure events hereabouts. At the nearby Grubstones Circle (SE 1363 4473), records tell us how local people gathered on Rogation Day (a pre-christian agricultural ritual festivity, closely related to Beltane). A central stone—now moved into the giant Skirtful of Stones tomb a few hundred yards east—stood at its centre and an orator spoke to the people from here, ending with the words, "This is Rumbles Law!" Although we have no records of such actions at Twelve Apostles, the central stone which once stood here may have been a focus for such orations. The tribal leader and tribal shaman would have enacted this in ancient days. However, we do know from folklore records that the fabled Pendle witches and the lesser-known witches of Fewston (in the beautiful Washburn Valley a few miles to the north) met together on top of these hills, and the Twelve Apostles is a good contender as one of their likely assembly points.
Any real history of Twelve Apostles is, as we can see, somewhat scarce, although in recent years observations from the site itself at select times of the year (solstices, equinoxes, etc.) have brought us a greater wealth of information.
As every good geomancer knows, literal knowledge about a place in the landscape is limited: how we look at such ritual sites determines, to a very great degree, how much we receive. If we look at the site as an astronomer, we will see the place through astroarchaeological eyes; if we look at it as an architect, mathematical formulae will overlay the complex; or if we see it as a New Ager, angels and auras will appear. With this in mind it is imperative we look at such places with a non-ethnocentic perspective. No easy thing.
Intellect out—Dreamtime in!
Spirit was inherent everywhere to the people who made these old stone rings. Never forget that! And not the 'spirit' of modern-day mediums, nor ghostly forms of things long-dead coming back to haunt and scare us. Spirit as in the essence or 'feel' of a place: the thing you experience when, in certain places, a characteristic change in perspective, mood or state of consciousness emerges, seemingly from nowhere. That is this thing we call 'spirit.' Or at least that was the thing recognised by the megalith builders.
Over the years I have visited this old stone ring in both the heights of summer and winter, day and night, both alone and with friends. It is a sad, almost lonesome old place. The spirit which made it has long since gone, battered and stolen by those who saw and felt little here. A dozen or more suns have arisen to greet me on solstice, equinox and Beltane days, that I might be enwrapped by the spirit, only to be granted a sense of solace, the soul of these stones. Its atmosphere has sadly long gone. Upon rare occasions when the stones precipitate slight shifts in consciousness, the effects are short-lived and have more to do with the solar-lunar conjunctions than the attendant spirit-nature, or genius loci, of the place. Ritual magickians who have worked here tell the same words.
Curious Alignments
Although dispossessed of its original spirit, it does not distract us from perceiving some elements of what appears to be one original function of the site. Its position in the landscape was obviously of grand geomantic importance and, having watched the motion of both sun and moon from this quiet ring of stones (the lunar standstills are recorded here), one is impressed, if not by its feeling, certainly by its siting relative to other arcane monuments. Those who know the Twelve Apostles and have visited it on a fine clear day will know what I mean. The view is considerable, peering far into the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales, looking upon a great panoramic circle nearly eighty miles across. I remember seeing this for the first time as a child and was entranced by it.
So why had they placed this circle where they had...?
Looking at the Twelve Apostles on a large-scale Ordnance Survey map (6-inch to the mile, or 1:10,000)—as most linear-thinkers do nowadays—we see a remarkable geometric image unfold before our eyes. Running straight eastwards 1180 yards away (1.08km) we reach the Grubstones circle. From the Apostles again, go straight north for another 1180 yards (1.08km) and you reach the ruins of the Backstone Circle (SE 1261 4613). Between these three circles we find a perfect isosceles triangle. But this isn't the end of it: the longer axis connecting Grubstones to Backstone is some nineteen-hundred yards long (1.731km) and at the mid-point along this line, the now-recumbent Lanshaw Lass boundary stone once stood. Intriguingly, if we stand at Twelve Apostles for the Beltane sunrise (May day), we would see its golden orb rising on the far-eastern horizon right above our Lanshaw Lass.
This all may, of course, be coincidental. Our megalithic ancestors surely knew nothing of isosceles triangles and such stuff...
Other astronomical alignments are perhaps not as contentious. In 1989 when the moon rose at its maximum northern point on the horizon (which occurs every 18.6 years and is known as the Major Lunar Standstill), it was photographed setting on the north-western horizon behind the large cairn just a few hundred yards away, behind which stands the old boundary stone of Lanshaw Lad. This line, when transposed onto a map, eventually reaches a quite remarkable ancient carving known as the Swastika Stone (SE 0956 4695) more than two miles away.
This alignment may again be coincidental as there are so many prehistoric sites upon these moors. Indeed, it seems that it would be hard not to find alignments up here! And although not all stone circles have astronomical systems encoded within them, studies show that many of them do.
The Summer Solstice Alignment
One very curious and probable alignment at the Apostles is the midsummer sunrise. It is celebrated every summer here by local folk who have been visiting the place, in recent years at least, for the last thirty years, despite the contorted attempts by the Church to suppress its natural celebration. In recent years the number of people visiting Twelve Apostles at midsummer has steadily increased; so much so that people are now scattering the moors in their hundreds to other sites. For many years I ambled my way up to this old ring of stones and waited for the sun to rise at summer solstice. After a few years the question of "Where exactly does it rise?" on this longest of days intrigued my teenage mind, but I had to wait a few more years until the morning air was clear enough to see the distant skyline...
Then, on the morning of the summer solstice in the mid-1980s, whilst the people around me were drumming, cheering, chanting and silencing themselves as the giant fireball rose once more from its daily horizon, I stood gazing, not at the sun, but at the very land beneath where it rose on that longest of days. And what I saw stunned me!
More than thirty-five miles (53km) northeast from the Twelve Apostles, the faint etching of a great white horse scarred the distant landscape exactly beneath where the sun rose on this longest of days. I must admit, I was metaphorically kicked in the neurological bollocks by this! If my eyesight wasn't truly impaired by a night of no sleep, the far distant solar indicator I could see was the White Horse of Kilburn (SE 5142 8129)…
…And white horses, as is well-known, are potent symbols of the sun.
The real screwball with this sunrise indicator lies in the fact that Kilburn's white horse was etched into the hillside only in the middle of the 19th century! It was cut into the slopes by a local man called Thomas Taylor. He had visited the magnificent prehistoric white horse at Uffington in Oxfordshire, plus others in the Vale of the White Horse, and was so impressed by them that he decided to make one in his own back yard, so to speak. After considerable effort and with the help of more than thirty local men, the steep slopes northwest of Kilburn had its own Epona: 314 feet long and 278 feet high. Said by one writer to be "visible for twenty miles" and another that it "could be seen up to seventy miles away"—figures that need drastically revising!
Despite the revelation that the midsummer sunrise from Twelve Apostles aligns with the White Horse of Kilburn, it was obvious that no arcane relationship—and hence no authentic mythic virtue—was possible here. The fact that some four thousand years separate the construction of both monuments precludes any valid connection between them.
This aside, I asked a research of friend of mine, Graeme Chappell, to run through the possible astroarchaeology from Apostles to Kilburn in order to ascertain the validity, or otherwise, of this seemingly incredulous alignment. Lo and behold, in 1857 (when the Kilburn horse was completed), the "sun would have risen when it was over the white horse, but only just." So I began putting this long distance alignment down to nothing more than a wonderful visual coincidence—until Graeme pointed out a much more curious astronomical folk remnant...
Around 1700 BCE, close to the time when Twelve Apostles was built, observers standing at the circle would watch the midsummer sunrise exactly over White Mare Crag. This wouldn’t seem that curious were it not for the folklore of these distant crags, themselves deeply symbolic of the sun.
The renowned Victorian antiquarian and folklorist, Edmund Bogg, wrote extensively about the curious legends that abound in and around the Kilburn area—several of which surround the great cliffs of the White Mare (locally known as Wisson Cliff in times past). Tradition tells that a white horse was once visible in the hillside here. Bogg told that it received its name from this horse, whose shape was visible in the shape of the huge rocky crags. At the bottom of the cliffs the faerie folk were said to live. Also here is Gormire Lake—bottomless according to folklore and apparently the abode of a sunken village, though history records (and geology) make this unlikely, so we must seek elsewhere for an explanation to such a tale. The waters of this lake fall into a small crevice at its edge and, so legend tells, these then flow uphill until eventually re-emerging at a well at Cold Kirkby village a mile to the east in the direction of the setting sun. These tales in themselves are intriguing relics of shamanism whose nature lies beyond the scope of this enquiry.
One folktale tells of a local 'witch' who was chased over the local moorland (by who or what isn't remembered). She eventually reached the edge of White Mare Crag cliffs where she carried on running and jumped, landing in the waters of Gormire Lake beneath where it was thought she would drown. But, following the flow of water underground, the tale tells how she eventually re-appeared nine miles away out of an old (unnamed) well. An equally curious piece of lore tells of a goose that was dropped into the same crevice the witch went into after it had apparently dried-up, only to emerge, without any feathers, twelve miles away to the east at Kirkbymoorside.
But one tale in particular appears, to me at least, to have considerable relevance to our midsummer sunrise from the Twelve Apostles…
A long time ago an abbot from Rievaulx Abbey was in possession of a pure white horse, said to be as quick and nimble as any horse in the region. The abbot met up with a local landowner, Sir Harry Scriven, who also owned a horse of great repute - this time jet black, called Nightwind - and he challenged him to a race across Hambleton Moors (just above White Mare Crags). Sir Harry accepted, but the abbot insisted they swapped horses so that he could ride Nightwind and Harry was on the white steed. They took off, racing fast over the high moors until they reached the edge of White Mare Crags but, instead of stopping, the abbot continued galloping with Sir Harry following until they each plunged over the edge of the high cliffs. Legend tells that as Sir Harry fell to his inevitable death, the white horse which he rode dissolved into thin air and, as he looked across at his own horse Nightwind, looked at the abbot who turned into the devil. As Cooper points out, "the winged horse is the sun…as is also the white horse," and as the horse in this legend "dissolved into thin air" as it went west over the Crags, could this be an old symbolic tale of the setting sun dissolving as it sets over the far horizon to the west? The black horse which remains, Nightwind: is this not the dark night which naturally follows?
We might never know, but it certainly makes sense of the tale. Especially when seen in relation to the summer solstice alignment from the Apostles. And if there was any possible commemoration of this line from White Mare Crags, the dark horse, Nightwind, would be the triumphant one, as the alignment into the far southwest from here to Twelve Apostles records the shortest night of the year: the winter solstice. Intriguing stuff!
But this primary midsummer alignment from Twelve Apostles gets even more curious…
Although books and magazine articles detailing ‘leys’ are numerous, they are, on the whole, full of lines that exist simply in the mind of their creators. Knowing these non-existent ‘old bent tracks’, as Yorkshire folk have come to call them, are ammunition for trivialising the subject, precision is extremely important. It is obvious in this alignment however, that we are looking plain and simply at an astronomical line—not a ley. But, in good old fashioned ley-hunter style, I decided to get out the Ordnance Survey maps—2½-inch-to- the-mile scale—and check the cartographic nature of the line for myself. It took some doing! But its outcome threw up yet more bizarre finds, bending the parameters of Jungian synchronicity, never mind geodelic science!
As the illustration here shows, the line passes an old stone in the village of Askwith. A little further on we pass what Eric Cowling called ‘The Old Man of Snowden’—a squat standing stone close to the crossroads which appears to have been destroyed. Here too is the Grey Stone: an ancient boundary marker scared with intricate cup-and-ring designs. Although we pass one or two other fascinating spots where good folklore and history can be had—such as the moot points of Sword Point and Jack Hill—things don’t really start getting too interesting until we pass Nidd Church. (SE 3013 6081) "In the churchyard," wrote Arthur Mee, "is the shaft of a cross about 600 years old, but it is said that the story of the village goes back twice as far, and that a great church council met over 1000 years ago." This is more than likely, for just beyond is a place called Temple Yarmer where, as Harry Speight reminded us, once stood "an immense menhir or standing monolith." Folklore told it to have been part of a now lost stone circle.
A little further on we pass by a few old boundary stones (SE 3160 6219; SE 3568 6578), but these will have nothing to do with our midsummer alignment. Not until we pass by the gigantic Devil’s Arrows at Boroughbridge (SE 3912 6650) do things begin getting a little bizarre. Although just three huge monoliths remains today, we know that least five of them were standing in the 15th century. It is very probable that more standing stones were in the original complex and our solar line may have crossed part of it. More certain are we of the midsummer’s day horse-festival that has been held here for many centuries. Known as the Barnaby Fair, recent years have seen the event almost vanish into history. But the motif of horses and midsummer here is intriguing. Nearby, at Kirkby Hill - over which our solar line crosses - is a spot known as the Fairy Hill and where, at midsummer, the little-people were wont to play in the early hours.
Continuing further and getting ever-closer to the White Horse which stands out from the Apostles, we reach the North Yorkshire village of Sessay. Here once lived a great one-eyed giant, said by folklore to be one helluva nasty dood - but this is just the Church demonising something it refused to try understanding. (In the neighbouring towns and villages of Topcliffe, Dalton and Pilmoor are other giant legends. It would be interesting to find the archaic roots of this geographical cluster.)
Next we reach the village of Kilburn itself. And here, every midsummer as far back as records can go, we have another horse festival. The activities here have truly heathen origins, comprising in parts to a great feast over the midsummer days. During this a procession itself is made by the villagers to the White Horse. We also have the figure of an androgynous ‘Lady Mayoress’ who runs through the streets receiving kisses from other ladies.
The final point on our journey along this midsummer line is the White Horse itself, whose visibility from Twelve Apostles started this journey in the first place.
The truly curious ingredients in this line is the coincidence (?) of midsummer fairs and horses as we travel along it. One wonders if there’s some sort of Cosmic Joker sat behind it all, rubbing its hands gleefully, waiting for the crazy speculators or New-Age dreamers to proclaim a Divine Rule or something similar. Stranger things have happened…
…Like the midwinter alignment from Twelve Apostles…
From our humble stone circle we trek out, south-east this time, first passing the Black Beck Well (SE 1276 4495) and then an ancient boundary stone (SE 1357 4430), before reaching Odda’s Hill. Slightly past here and below Hawksworth Hall is the Alder’s Well (SE 1671 4168) where a ceremonial procession used to be performed starting at the Hall¾but I have been unable to establish what time of year this occurred. But, just a little further on, our midwinter line comes to the Hawk Stone (SE 1792 4099) where, "legend tells that a man on horseback leapt from the top of the Hawk Stone and landed safely at Low Hall, Yeadon, 2500 yards east."
A man on horseback, jumping over cliffs on a midwinter solstice line… Doesn’t that ring a bell somewhere…? What’s the hell’s going on here…?
Strange Lights
If our flying horses and solstice sunrises verge on the borderline of possibility, to many people the same cannot be said of the strange lights which have, from time to time, been seen around Twelve Apostles. Reports of ‘UFOs’ as they are generally known, should more accurately be described as ‘earthlights,’ or ELs. These are consciousness-sensitive light-forms which are known to interact with humans who come into close contact with them. The modern myth of them as spaceships is the latest in a long line of historic perspectives. In earlier times, people who saw these ELs transposed the thought of airships onto them. Before that, people saw the huge glowing eyes of phantom dogs and other entities emerge from them. Earlier still they were known as faerie-lights. Around the same periods they were devil-lights or witches on broomsticks. Some people saw them as gods, to which the lights accordingly responded. Religious folk have watched Jesus, the Virgin and angels emerge from these lights when they’ve got too close. But it must also be said that a great number of people who see such ELs see nothing but that: anomalous light-forms floating or darting about curiously, seemingly with a mind of their own.
One of these ELs certainly perplexed three members of the Royal Observer Corps in the summer of 1976 during exercises on the moors. Heading towards the Twelve Apostles they suddenly noticed a brilliant white sphere of light, seemingly hovering right above the stone circle at a low level. It made no manoeuvres other than, eventually, shooting straight upwards into the sky at remarkable speed and out of sight, without making a sound!
In July 1990, two witnesses who spent the night at the Backstone circle (a site with a considerable pedigree of supernatural events) watched another brilliant white ball of light about a mile away, low down on the horizon, move quickly and silently from the west until reaching Twelve Apostles, where it stood motionless for some time. It then backtracked rapidly at tremendous speed, before returning to the circle, executing a 180° turn without stopping or slowing down. It then flew back west and rapidly out of sight. Within seconds of this, the witnesses allege a military jet flew right over the moors following the trajectory of the object.
On a couple of occasions I’ve seen what geologists call ‘earthquake lights’ emerge from the ground immediately around Twelve Apostles at the dead of night, lighting the sky up for a considerable distance around the circle.
End Words
Although much of the atmosphere to the Twelve Apostles has long since gone, on a clear day the view from here is truly majestic. As a sacred site, to truly know the spirit of these places you must approach them in many ways and, most certainly, at all times of year.
"In visiting any old stone site, enter them with the respect you give your own home. There is spirit resident there and your ability to feel its nature is determined wholly by the way in which you enter the place. If this seems to lead to confusion, not knowing how to feel about such things, don't worry—many people have the same trouble! The way to approach spirit-nature is to visit these places alone (without crystals, cards or oracles), disregarding your beliefs of them as astronomical centres, UFO spots, or where Merlin lives—these are all irrelevant to the genius loci. If you carry beliefs into these sites, your experiences will simply reflect such beliefs. Do nothing. If after such approach work nothing happens, well, that's the way of things—these places are alive in very different ways to those we have been conditioned to expect. Spirit isn't something that turns on and off when we want it to; it is a cyclic, fluctuating essence stirred when and where external conditions allow. The phase of the Moon, sunspot activity, the rising of a star, motions of a local planet... all are factors affecting these places (modern science calls these influences electromagnetic perturbations). Persevere."
Nature consists of winter as well as summer; blizzards and storms and gales as well as sunshine, a gentle breeze and quietude. This stone circle, like every other such site, needs to be known in all its subjective and physical states. Once this is done - and it may be a long and arduous process - we begin to understand the nature of that which our culture has long since forgotten…
Further Reading:
Bennett, Paul, The Olde Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Chieveley 1992
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000
Cowling, Eric T., Rombald’s Way: A Prehistory of Mid-Wharfedale, William Walker: Otley 1946
Devereux, Paul, Places of Power, Blandford: London 1990
— Shamanism and the Mystery Lines, Quantum: London 1992
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986
Pennick, Nigel & Devereux, Paul, Lines on the Landscape: Leys and other Linear Enigmas, Hale: London 1989
Size, Nicholas, The Haunted Moor, Ilkley 1936
NB - Check the new, updated Northern Antiquarian blog, here: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/ - Kicks shit outta this one!
Monday 3 September 2007
Cunt Stone, Steeton
This is a standing stone to be found on the western edge of Keighley in West Yorkshire. It acquired its curious sexual title as a result of possessing one very distinct element: namely, the carving of female gentilia on the west-facing side of the standing stone. And it's blatant!
As the stone is in an area which the land-owner wants kept quiet, I couldn't do the usual and give it the name of the local farm, or meadows, as it'd give the game away as to its exact position - summat the farmer told me he didn't want. And so I have to abide by this. And so the carving on the stone was an obvious contention when it came to giving it a title. A few of us went thru various thoughts, including Yoni, Twat, Muff, Minge, Pussy, and more besides - but the Cunt Stone seemed preferable by most. So 'cunt' it is! Hope y' like it!
The stone is less than four-feet tall and, were it not for the nearby walling, has excellent views to the west thru to northeast. Its western view is the most dramatic. The genital-carving is about 5 inches from top to bottom, but I have to stress that this carving doesn't seem to be of great age. I'd actually hazard a guess that it was only a few centuries old - possibly even Victorian. A great pity, as otherwise we could be looking at Britain's earliest minge carving!
There is what may be an Iron Age hut circle less than 100 yards to the northwest, and one, perhaps two cairns, in the trees below. One of the adjacent boulders possess one of those distinct 'druid bowls' (natural) which some Irish folk enjoy - without foundation - calling 'bullauns.' Curiously, on her first visit to this spot, our little 11-year old 'Dizzy' stopped and perused the deep cup-marking and told, without prompting (and with no knowledge at all of anything megalithic) how it seemed to be a place where children were baptized when it was filled with rainwater.
...Strange ey...? (to those who don't know - some rock-basins are known in folklore to have been used for just such purposes)
Anyway - if any of you healthy heathen folk wanna wander to see this curiously carved standing stone, lemme know and we can take a wander to see it.
As the stone is in an area which the land-owner wants kept quiet, I couldn't do the usual and give it the name of the local farm, or meadows, as it'd give the game away as to its exact position - summat the farmer told me he didn't want. And so I have to abide by this. And so the carving on the stone was an obvious contention when it came to giving it a title. A few of us went thru various thoughts, including Yoni, Twat, Muff, Minge, Pussy, and more besides - but the Cunt Stone seemed preferable by most. So 'cunt' it is! Hope y' like it!
The stone is less than four-feet tall and, were it not for the nearby walling, has excellent views to the west thru to northeast. Its western view is the most dramatic. The genital-carving is about 5 inches from top to bottom, but I have to stress that this carving doesn't seem to be of great age. I'd actually hazard a guess that it was only a few centuries old - possibly even Victorian. A great pity, as otherwise we could be looking at Britain's earliest minge carving!
There is what may be an Iron Age hut circle less than 100 yards to the northwest, and one, perhaps two cairns, in the trees below. One of the adjacent boulders possess one of those distinct 'druid bowls' (natural) which some Irish folk enjoy - without foundation - calling 'bullauns.' Curiously, on her first visit to this spot, our little 11-year old 'Dizzy' stopped and perused the deep cup-marking and told, without prompting (and with no knowledge at all of anything megalithic) how it seemed to be a place where children were baptized when it was filled with rainwater.
...Strange ey...? (to those who don't know - some rock-basins are known in folklore to have been used for just such purposes)
Anyway - if any of you healthy heathen folk wanna wander to see this curiously carved standing stone, lemme know and we can take a wander to see it.
NB - Check the new, updated Northern Antiquarian blog, here: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/ - Kicks shit outta this one!
Why a Northern Antiquarian?
There are several impressive internet data-bases that deal with the matters which I'm interested in (old standing stones, circles, neolithic remains, holy wells, prehistoric rock art, etc), but with the exception of one called BRAC, the others have a shallow irritating tendency towards what historians and politicians call 'class values'. It's sad but true. The data-bases themselves aren't obviously of that sorta nature, but the people on the forums tend to be. This extends outwardly to affect the nature and function of sites - so much so, that several websites actively ban people from posting and making comments unless they tow the party-line, so to speak. This, quite frankly, does nothing more than highlight (and exacerbate) control freaks at the helm. And control freaks aint welcome in my world. I've had my share of them in the past and have neither time nor respect for such shallow entities. Egomaniacs (strongly related to control freaks) also have a tendency to people the forums of such megalithic websites, subverting threads and ridiculing things they have no understanding of. Hence, with such ingredients being seemingly endemic to some of the larger websites, 'A Northern Antiquarian' seemed necessary.
Why 'Northern'?
Simple! (the answer, not me!) There is an excellent tendency of folk north of Watford to speak their mind and not - as Southerners tend to do - try being 'nice', or wearing false smiles to folk they don't like. Up North (as they say) we call a spade a spade! And that's what this blogsite is all about: straight talking - about all things megalithic and their animistic archaeological compatriots.
The blogsite emerged after I'd rediscovered a standing stone near a scruffy little town called Keighley, West Yorkshire. It hadn't been catalogued before so I was about to add it to one of the two main websites (The Megalithic Portal [MegPort] or The Modern Antiquarian [TMA]) but had a dilemma with the name I had to give it. Ordinarily I'd name a newly discovered site after the field it was in, or the old farmhouse it was next to, or the woodland it was in, etc (y' get the drift) - but this one had a problem: the land-owner didn't want everyone to know its exact whereabouts and said, if I was gonna describe it, he'd like its exact whereabouts kept quiet. No probs - or so you'd think. But there was another additional ingredient: this 'ere standing stone had a minge carved on one side of it! Yeahhh...a minge! A pussy, twat, muff, fanny, vagina - call it what you will - but a woman's genitals were indelibly carved on its west-facing edge.
So fucking what? - you might ask. Well, as a result of this 'ere carving (and it's blatant - no mistaking it for summat else, or the imaginative ruminations of a goddess-freak gone mad) I thought, 'Givvit a name which expresses the carving.' And so I called it the Minge Stone. Friends threw a few other names at it: the Fukkit Stone, Muff Stone, Yoni Stone, and more. But then came the issue of sticking it on the web. No one liked the name it seemed. Any of the names! It just wasn't 'PC'. Grown men and women (or so they think) couldn't handle a simple issue like this. So what was I gonna do....?
The Northern Antiquarian! A site for Northern folk with down-to-earth attitudes. None of this poncey southern 'let's be nice' bollox, when in fact the people who say things like that are actually repressed fuctup gits. Let's get back to basics and say things as they are; and with this blogsite, talk about archaeological sites in a straightforward manner, ignoring the superficialities of y' suit-and-ties and arse-licking pedantry. This is The Northern Antiquarian for northern folk: none of those southern puffs on here who don't know their cup-and-rings (CR) from a coupla rock nodules. Like others in its wake, the site is ostensibly a data-base of sites. And so, to gerrit started, I present the newly discovered Minge Stone. Enjoy!
NB - Check the new, updated Northern Antiquarian blog, here: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/ - Kicks shit outta this one!
Why 'Northern'?
Simple! (the answer, not me!) There is an excellent tendency of folk north of Watford to speak their mind and not - as Southerners tend to do - try being 'nice', or wearing false smiles to folk they don't like. Up North (as they say) we call a spade a spade! And that's what this blogsite is all about: straight talking - about all things megalithic and their animistic archaeological compatriots.
The blogsite emerged after I'd rediscovered a standing stone near a scruffy little town called Keighley, West Yorkshire. It hadn't been catalogued before so I was about to add it to one of the two main websites (The Megalithic Portal [MegPort] or The Modern Antiquarian [TMA]) but had a dilemma with the name I had to give it. Ordinarily I'd name a newly discovered site after the field it was in, or the old farmhouse it was next to, or the woodland it was in, etc (y' get the drift) - but this one had a problem: the land-owner didn't want everyone to know its exact whereabouts and said, if I was gonna describe it, he'd like its exact whereabouts kept quiet. No probs - or so you'd think. But there was another additional ingredient: this 'ere standing stone had a minge carved on one side of it! Yeahhh...a minge! A pussy, twat, muff, fanny, vagina - call it what you will - but a woman's genitals were indelibly carved on its west-facing edge.
So fucking what? - you might ask. Well, as a result of this 'ere carving (and it's blatant - no mistaking it for summat else, or the imaginative ruminations of a goddess-freak gone mad) I thought, 'Givvit a name which expresses the carving.' And so I called it the Minge Stone. Friends threw a few other names at it: the Fukkit Stone, Muff Stone, Yoni Stone, and more. But then came the issue of sticking it on the web. No one liked the name it seemed. Any of the names! It just wasn't 'PC'. Grown men and women (or so they think) couldn't handle a simple issue like this. So what was I gonna do....?
The Northern Antiquarian! A site for Northern folk with down-to-earth attitudes. None of this poncey southern 'let's be nice' bollox, when in fact the people who say things like that are actually repressed fuctup gits. Let's get back to basics and say things as they are; and with this blogsite, talk about archaeological sites in a straightforward manner, ignoring the superficialities of y' suit-and-ties and arse-licking pedantry. This is The Northern Antiquarian for northern folk: none of those southern puffs on here who don't know their cup-and-rings (CR) from a coupla rock nodules. Like others in its wake, the site is ostensibly a data-base of sites. And so, to gerrit started, I present the newly discovered Minge Stone. Enjoy!
NB - Check the new, updated Northern Antiquarian blog, here: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/ - Kicks shit outta this one!
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