The Devil’s Stride – Roulston Scar

“Ye see, as our foore olders hev alous sed,
the giants yance wer maisters of all this hill country”

  A previous post peered into the Devil’s Parlour Cave near Sutton Bank, 5 miles east of Thirsk. The cave is located in the rock face below Roulston Scar – an exposed section of high cliffs on the western edge of the Hambleton Hills. A wooded valley below the cliffs separates Roulston Scar from an outlying ridge called Hood Hill, with the gap between the cliff tops and Hood Hill being known as the Devil’s Leap or the Devil’s Stride.

  Writing in the mid 1800’s, Thomas Gill noted that the Devil’s Leap name came from a local story about the Devil flying from Roulston Scar and dropping a large rock on top of Hood Hill (see the Hood Hill Altar Stone page) (Gill, 1852). An alternative explanation for the name is said to be that the Devil once leapt or strode across the gap to show off his strength and abilities. These are not uncommon folklore themes, however there are hints that the legends may not have originally been about the Devil.

The Hell Hole Rock – Crosper

  Crosper is located three miles to the south east of Harrogate.

  The Crosper place name survives today as Crosper Farm, on the road between Harrogate and the village of Spofforth. Crosper is thought to mean ‘cross hill’, perhaps from a cross having stood there in the past, although no cross exists today. In the fields around Crosper farm there are several large rock outcrops – part of the nearby Plumpton rocks group, which are thought to be the source of the Devil’s Arrows standing stones at Boroughbridge, nine miles to the north. One of these outcrops on the east side of the farm is known as the Hell Hole rock, probably from the large cavity passing through one side of it.

The lost Rocking stone of Thornthwaite

  Thornthwaite township is a scattered community spread along the Padside Beck valley, 8 miles to the west of Harrogate.

  The first edition OS map (1854) marks a Rocking Stone at Rowantree Crags on the high ground to the south west of Thornthwaite. The Rocking Stone does not appear on later edition maps, which ominously mark a quarry at the same location. However, overlaying the old OS map onto a modern satellite image seemed to show that a large rock still existed at the location marked for the Rocking Stone. Was it possible that the Rocking Stone had survived?

  Unfortunately, a visit to the site in Sept 2021 found no sign of the Rocking Stone, and very little sign of the Rowantree Crags, which appear to have been totally quarried away. The piece of rock visible on the satellite image turned out to be an exposed section of bed rock, which for some reason had not been quarried, and curiously, is very close to where the Rocking Stone was located. It is likely that the Rocking Stone sat on a similar section of rock within a few metres of this location.

The Hood Hill Altar Stone – Sutton Bank

  The ‘Altar’ was a large block of stone located on top of Hood Hill near Sutton Bank, 5 miles to the east of Thirsk.

  Hood Hill is a prominent outlying hill separated off from the main Hambleton Hills escarpment. Up until the 1950’s a large block of stone (known locally as The Altar) sat on the ridge of the hill, where it was described as being rectangular in shape, approximately 15 feet in length, 10ft wide, and 6 feet high. The Altar Stone is also said to have had a foot shaped cavity on top of the rock, and so it is perhaps no surprise that it was a local landmark, and also featured in the areas folklore.

  Unfortunately the Altar rock was destroyed in 1954 when an RAF jet aircraft crashed into the hill during a training flight. The circumstances of the crash were something of a mystery at the time, as the jet seems to have nose dived vertically into the Altar Stone, totally destroying both the aircraft and the rock. The Altar Stone appears to have exploded into hundreds of small pieces, and today there is only a crater where it once sat, with a small piece of the rock in the bottom of the hole (SE 50376 81258).

T’ Hob o’ Tarn Hole – Bilsdale

 Tarn Hole is a large wooded valley on the edge of East Bilsdale Moor, two miles to the south-east of Chop Gate on the North York Moors.

  (As pointed out in the Buckingham Stone post last year, Tarn Hole is privately owned land, and not part of the open access area just to the north.)

  At one time this valley was home to the Tarn Hole Hob, although next to nothing is known about this secretive little fella. A Hob is a supernatural dwarf-like being, recorded in folklore across the North York Moors and other parts of Northern England. (See the Hob-Thrush of Over Silton). Unfortunately, all we have is the Tarn Hole Hob name, which appeared in a list made in the early 1800’s by George Calvert of Pickering (Home, 1905). In this list he noted all the Hobs he had heard about on the North York Moors. At one time there would have been a local story to explain the Hob’s connection with Tarn Hole, but it was not written down, and so the folklore has been lost.