Marks made by man down the ages

Few place in England have as many remote crosses and ancient standing stones as the North York Moors, but they are in constant need of maintenance. Roger Ratcliffe reports.

It was described as the resurrection of a fallen giant. Wade’s Stone, standing almost seven foot high in a far corner of the North York Moors, had finally toppled after centuries of cultivation around its base. Ploughs had caused the soil to erode until it was sitting in a hole not much more than a few inches deep.

Like many of the area’s stones, there was a legend attached to it – this one involved a local giant named Wade, who was said to be buried there – but when the surrounding earth was carefully sifted before the stone was hauled back into place, there was no sign of human bones.

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Almost with a sense of disappointment the archaeologists reported that the Wade’s Stone myth had, after many centuries, been debunked. It was not, alas, the headstone on a giant’s grave.

The keeling over of Wade’s Stone, however, offered a rare opportunity to do a thorough archaeological examination of the site of one of the numerous standing stones and crosses in North York Moors.

The National Park’s senior archeologist, Graham Lee, believes many of the old monuments make our ancestors seem almost tangible.

“The sheer size of some of these stones adds to mystery of how they got here and what they were for,” he says. “It’s not surprising that local legends have sprung up around many of them.”

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To care for more than 90 stones, crosses and other historical curios the National Park has been running a Monument Management Scheme in partnership with English Heritage since 2009. From April this year it will step up a gear by employing a part-time member of staff.

The scheme is particularly important since nearly a third of all the scheduled monuments for the entire Yorkshire and Humber region can be found in the North York Moors.

One of the issues that the scheme has to deal with is erosion damage to monuments on the moors. A number of standing stones, in particular, are in danger of falling over because of their surroundings and foundations have gradually worn away.

There is also a problem with bracken roots disturbing the archaeological layers around other scheduled monuments.

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There is no instant remedy, however, because the spraying of bracken can take seven years to be successful. Some monuments have also been disturbed by badger setts.

“If a standing stone or cross falls over, you can’t just go and put it back up,” Graham says. “There’s a process to follow, because it’s a scheduled monument. Before we do anything we must obtain consent from English Heritage and the landowner.

“Like at Wade’s Stone we need to see if there are any archaeological remains around the socket that we must respect, and make sure it can be safely re-erected. It can be quite a time-consuming process.”

Work has recently been done to re-erect a stone at Simon Howe, a Bronze Age burial cairn on Goathland Moor. Another stone – part of a stone alignment near the popular Saltersgate car park – has also been identified as in need of re-erection.

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Some of the North York Moors’ famous crosses were erected during Saxon times, between the 5th century and the Norman invasion of 1066, but most are thought to be from the medieval period.

The reasons they were placed there vary. Some marked the point at which early Celtic monks preached the gospel to what was then a largely pagan population. Some had a similar role to the roadside memorials we see today for victims of road accidents, erected to commemorate local characters near the place they died. The most recent of these is a memorial to a gamekeeper, erected on moorland near Ravenscar.

Many crosses were used to mark boundaries, and some of them feature the chiselled initials of landowners. Others performed the basic function of signposts or way markers. In poor weather these would have been life-savers on the desolate expanses of moorland. Crosses situated in towns and villages usually signified that a market was held there.

The most famous cross in the North York Moors is Young Ralph’s Cross – an older but smaller stone also known as Ralph Cross stands nearby. The more recent cross’s fame is the result of its adoption as the emblem of the National Park.

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Standing on Blakey Ridge, next to one of the highest roads across the moors, it is thought to date from 1200AD and although it is constructed from stone there is evidence that it was a wooden cross before the 18th century. It is said to be a memorial to a traveller who died up there from hunger and exhaustion.

In the 1970s it was demolished by someone who had a grudge against the National Park but it was rebuilt. However, 20 years later it had become unsafe and was reconstructed yet again.

This is one of several crosses where a centuries-old tradition continues of leaving coins for a poor traveller who comes by and is in need of money to buy food. Another is Malo Cross near the head of Langdale Forest, where a little pile of weathered money has gradually accumulated over the years, suggesting that poor wayfarers are few and far between these days.

But the tradition has a downside, according to Graham Lee.

“Some passers-by have started to jam coins into cracks in the standing stones and crosses, and in the fullness of time they actually cause damage. Just by pushing them into the stone you are emphasising the crack and so helping moisture to get in. If the coin degrades that is going to increase the stress on the stone, and eventually it could split the stone open.”

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Another famous stone is White Cross, better known as Fat Betty, which is a short walk from the two Ralph Crosses. Its headstone is shaped like a wheel and believed to date back to Norman times.

One theory is that the eponymous Betty was a Cistercian nun, Sister Elizabeth, who lived down at Rosedale Priory. The nuns were known as the “White Ladies” because their gowns were undyed.

Whatever the reason for its shape and colour, Fat Betty was almost certainly used to mark the junction between the parishes of Rosedale, Westerdale and Danby.

Says Graham “The reasons for siting most stones and crosses have been lost in the mists of time. It’s now hard to get inside the heads of the people who created them.”

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