Tag: Harden

Druid’s Altar, Bingley, West Yorkshire

megalithix

Legendary Rocks: OS Grid Reference – SE 0924 3994

Getting There

Druid’s Altar, sitting with mist

Pretty easy to get to. Best thing to do really, is ask a local and they’ll send you in the right direction. From Bingley, take the Harden road (B6429) across the river. As it bends sharply left, note there’s a track going up into the woods to the right. Walk up it! Keep going and, unless you take a detour, you’ll end up at the rock outcrop eventually (where the woods come to an end, Druid’s Altar appears before you with the track running along its top-side).

Archaeology & History

Mentioned in the Tithe Awards of 1849, this lovely outcrop of rocks looking down the Aire Valley on the southern edge of Bingley has “an immemorial tradition” of druidic worship, said Harry Speight in 1898 – though quite when it first acquired such repute is outside of any literary record.  In Sidney Greenbank’s (1929) rare book on this place, he could find little by way of archaeological data to affirm the old tradition, save the odd prehistoric find of flints here and there; though it is said that Beltane fires were burned upon the crags here in bygone centuries.

1894 photo of Druid's Altar (courtesy Clive Hardy)
1894 photo of Druid’s Altar (courtesy Clive Hardy)

There was a 19th century account from the Ilkley Scientific Club where a member described there being a cup-and-ring carving “near the so-called Druid’s Altar, at Bingley,” but I’m unaware of the whereabouts of this carving and Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003) said nothing about it in their survey; though a possible cup-marking can be seen on one rock less than 100 yards west, which might account for the report. (a bit dodgy though!)

Folklore

Harry Speight (1898) makes what sounds like a rare flight of fancy when he described faerie being seen atop of the many oaks beneath the Druid’s Altar.  In Clive Hardy’s (2002) work (from whence the old photo of the Altar is taken), he tells how “local antiquarians say that the cobbled way running from the Brown Cow Inn towards the site, is an old processional route walked by the druids.”

One, possibly two wells, each beneath the Altar rocks, are also reputed to have been associated with the old pagan priests, as their names tell: the Altar Well and the Druid’s Well – though the Altar Well has seemingly fallen back to Earth in recent years.

References:

  1. Greenbank, Sidney, The Druid’s Altar, Bingley, R.G. Preston: Bingley 1929.
  2. Hardy, Clive, Around Bradford, Frith Book Ltd: Salisbury 2002.
  3. Moores, Les, Ancient Monuments and Stone Circles, Francis Frith Collection: Salisbury 2005.
  4. Speight, Harry, Chronicles and Stories of Bingley and District, Elliott Stock: London 1898.
  5. Turner, J. Horsfall, Ancient Bingley, Thomas Harrison: Bingley 1897.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Druid’s Well, Bingley, West Yorkshire

megalithix

Sacred Well:  OS Grid Reference – SE 09394 39894

Getting Here

If you’re a bittova unhealthy dood, give this site a miss, as it takes a bitta getting to!  Otherwise, get to the rocks at the very bottom of the Druid’s Altar and walk to the right (east) until you hit the walling a few hundred yards along.  Near the bottom of the slope, where the land levels out, there are several lovely moss-strewn boulders in their music of graceful hues.  One of them, you’ll see, has water emerging from it base.  You’re here!

Archaeology & History

The Druid's Well, Bingley
The Druid’s Well

I first visited this old site with the holy wells writer Edna Whelan sometime in the early 1980s, when we went in search of the sacred spring of water known as the ‘Altar Well,’ shown on early maps to be just a short distance beneath the small cliffs called the Druid’s Altar.  We didn’t find it!  Another visit with Graeme Chappell and Edna (again) sometime later also proved fruitless – but something else was found which we didn’t know about on our first sojourn: the Druid’s Well, or more accurately the Druid’s Spring. (no stone trough y’ see)  Not far from the spot that the Altar Well could once be seen, this beautiful spring of sweet water emerges beneath the rich lichen-encrusted boulder, painted with dappled mosses and an overhang of vivid ferns.  Tis a fine oracular site, if ever there was one!

The waters run slowly from beneath the great old rock, upon which grows a fine specimen of a birch tree – a truly old thing!  And if there was ever any truth about this regions association with the druids, one of their most important sacraments grows profusely here when the season is right: no, not mistletoe (though it can be found sparingly upon the old oaks), but a wealth of the sacred Amanita muscaria, to whose spirit visionary journeys were bestowed.

Close-up of the waters beneath the boulder

The name of the woodlands in which our Druid’s Spring emerges — the Hollin Wood — might also have had some associative relationship with this well, or the Altar above (modern maps call it the Hollin Plantation, as much of the old woods have been felled and copsed by modern man).  Place-name texts ascribe this to be the ‘woodland of holly trees’, but during our wander through the woods a few weeks ago (when we got the photos of the Druid’s Well) holly trees were not common.  It may be that the Hollin Wood originally derived from ‘holy wood’, as this old well and the Druid’s Altar above would have surely made the site sacred to the druids.  Just a thought.  We will probably never know (if someone finds out for sure, one way or t’other, lemme know and I’ll amend where necessary!).

References:

  1. Greenbank, Sydney, The Druid’s Altar, Bingley, R.G. Preston: Bingley 1929.
  2. Speight, Harry, Chronicles and Stories of Old Bingley, Elliott Stock: London 1898.
  3. Whelan, Edna & Taylor, Ian, Yorkshire’s Holy Wells and Sacred Springs, Northern Lights: Dunnington 1989.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian