The Old Wife of Lund Ridge

Lund Ridge is located 4 miles to the north of Helmsley, on the North York Moors.

The first edition OS map (1857) shows a stone called the “Old Wife” located alongside a footpath running across the moorland on Lund Ridge. The stone does not appear on later maps, but overlaying the old and new maps provided a grid reference SE61062 91175. A visit to the site in 2016 found no stone at the map location, however a short standing stone was noted by the road side 30m further west. It was also noted that a track cut through the heather had exposed the land surface where the Old Wife Stone originally stood, and this had revealed a spread of stones – possibly the remains of a cairn. Some confirmation of this came from the Historic Environment Record map which shows a large cairnfield across the southern end of Lund Ridge.