Standing Stone: OS Grid Reference – SD 969 384
Follow the directions to the Water Sheddles Cross Standing Stone on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border; and when you get to the reservoir, walk straight across the road and head almost straight up onto the moor as if you’re going to the rock outcrop ahead of you on the horizon, called the Wolf Stones. After just a couple of hundred yards though, amble back and forth to find the stone. It’s in the heather, close by.
Archaeology & History
I can find no history about this small stone, just over three feet high, which was almost lost in the boggy heather when I first came here. Standing in a small pool in the peaty-ground, the stone is very worn, with one of Nature’s cup-markings on top. There is the possibility that this stone may have been one of the old boundary markers pre-dating the 1614 case which questioned the exact boundary line marking the Yorkshire-Lancashire border — but this is purely hypothetical. The Water Sheddles Cross is just a few hundred yards east of here.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
