Tag: Stalling Busk

Cunnel Fold Well, Marsett, Bainbridge, North Yorkshire

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Healing Well:  OS Grid Reference – SD 88727 85543

Archaeology & History

Cunnel Fold Well on 1856 map

Found high on the moors several miles south of Hawes, this is a small almost insignificant water source that I sat with, drinking in both the landscape and the waters many moons ago in a daydreaming amble.  It’s history is only remembered in the name it was given, no doubt by some local to the Ordnance Survey lads in their own, albeit more focussed assessment on these hills.  Its name puzzled me for a long while and I wondered if some untold story lay behind it.  Sadly that doesn’t appear to be the case.  Although there are doubtless many tales that could be told of the people who, through the centuries, have sat and drank the waters here, we know none.

Its name very probably derives from the misapprehended dialect word ‘cannel’ which, as Mr Wright (1898) explains, is simply “a ditch…gutter, watercourse,” which seems appropriate here.  Of the place-names shown on the 1856 OS-map, it seems the most likely solution to the word.

As for a place to sit and have a drink, it’s very refreshing after the rains have fallen.  All too often nowadays, as with many of the old hilltop watercourses, their life-blood is falling back to Earth…

References:

  1. Wright, Thomas (ed.), English Dialect Dictionary – volume 1, Henry Frowde: London 1898.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Devil’s Stone, Addlebrough, Bainbridge, North Yorkshire

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Legendary Rock:  OS Grid Reference – SD 943 880

Getting Here

From the small town of Bainbridge, head south down the Carpley Green Road. Less than a mile before the end, look to the west-facing slope of Addlebrough Hill and this huge Devil’s Stone can be seen resting halfway up the slope.

Archaeology & History

Devil's Stone, Addlebrough
Devil’s Stone, Addlebrough

One of the legends of this place suggested there might be cup-and-ring markings on the stone, but the curious markings on top of the rock seem to be natural.  It’s a superb stone though, dropped here no doubt by some great glacier as it retreated north, in ages truly olde…

There’s a lot of archaeology round here that aint in the books.  We’ve come across some intriguing stuff of late, which you’ll read about soon enough.

Folklore

One legend tells that long ago Addlebrough was the home of a great unnamed giant — but a friendly giant by all acounts.  However, one day the devil turned up and wanted possession of the giant’s hill and so a fierce row broke out between them.  Perched on the top of the crag — which is the rough ridge to the west of here — the giant who lived here hurled huge boulders down at the devil, but they fell short and landed at the side of Lake Semerwater (itself an important spot in local prehistory).  In return, Old Nick himself began throwing boulders back — and one of those which the devil threw landed here, halfway up the western flank of Addlebrough Hill (a couple of the large granite boulders which the giant threw can be seen on the edge of Semerwater and are known as the Carlow and Mermaid stones).  Hence it’s name of the Devil’s Stone!

In Edmund Bogg’s Richmondshire (1908), he told how, “the curious markings on (the Devil’s Stone) are accounted due to the pressure of the devil’s fingers” which were caused when he threw this giant stone from somewhere to here.

This is a theme we find at countless other stone sites, i.e. the Devil burning holes into rock — and in some cases these devil’s “fingerprints” have turned out to be prehistoric cup-markings.  Such tales relate to the pre-christian Creation Myth of a place and would, before the “devil” was supplanted onto a site, have had wider significance in the landscape as a whole, in a manner known to the local people.  Devils usually replaced legendary giants, or hero-figures, who created the land in primordial times according to the myths of our ancient ancestors.  A greater examination of the nearby sites in association with the folklore of the region would no doubt be quite profitable…

References:

  1. Bogg, Edmund, Richmondshire, James Miles: Leeds 1908.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian