Guide stones

As well as the turnpike milestones on the road to Otley, another set of stones on the same road is extremely interesting and unique in the county.  There is no word to accurately call them by.  They are often referred to as mileposts as they show distances, in miles and furlongs.  But they occur at road junctions rather than at one-mile intervals.  Here we call them guide-stones, as they list many nearby places.  But although places are listed in a logical sequence they do not appear to show actual directions. 

The places named are often towns and villages, but more frequently they are individual buildings, especially churches – around ten of these – and other landmarks. The picture below illustrates this: there are halls, roads, a cross, a station and a church. And also a peculiar Germanic spelling of Otley Chevin.

Some towns beyond the area are mentioned, once: Bradford, Ilkley, Skipton.  Otley is named once, and its church on four stones.  Leeds itself is not named, but Leeds Bridge, the ultimate end of the turnpike, is listed on eight stones.  Other villages named, both on the line of the road and off it, include Burley, Chapeltown, Meanwood, Old Bramhope  and Tinshill, again usually just once.

More common than the actual villages, however, are their churches, of which 15 are named, from Addingham to Yeadon.  Other landmarks include Otley Chevin (spelt as a rather Germanic Schevin), Pool Bank, Woodhouse Moor; also Bolton Bridge (near Bolton Abbey) and other bridges at Horsforth, Kirkstall and Leeds.  Some houses of local bigwigs are named, though the average traveller was probably not heading for them: Arthington Hall, Cookridge Hall and Kirskill Hall.  The last-named is now known as Creskeld Hall, and has featured as a location in Emmerdale and other TV programmes.  Adel School is listed, sometimes in preference to its notable Norman Church.

Arthington Station is named on several stones, as is Carr Bridge Station.  These stations, part of the original Leeds and Thirsk Railway, now the Harrogate Line, opened in 1849.  The name Carr Bridge Station appears to have been very short-lived: the Ordnance Survey map published in 1851 refers to it as Horsforth Station, and the bridge (over Moseley Beck) is called Horsforth Bridge.  An official accident report of 1849 refers to the station as “Carr Bridge or Horsforth Station” and the accompanying plan names the bridge as Carr Bridge.  The name survives in a couple of nearby, much more recent streets, Carr Bridge Avenue and Carr Bridge View.  [Not to be confused with Carrbridge in Perthshire, whose station did not open until 1892.]

Another transport-related destination was Carlton Bar: the old turnpike went through Carlton township, and the bar and toll-house were at the crossroads with the Dudley Hill – Killinghall road.

The stones are large, with anything up to ten places named, such as one opposite the (currently closed) Dyneley Arms – pictured.  This has the destinations listed on just the front, but others have places listed on two sides  One of these, for example, can be found near the church in Bramhope: it has four on the front, facing the road, and four more on the right-hand side facing up Church Hill.  There are also places where two stones can be found on opposite sides of the road, facing each other; an example is in Bramhope at the crossroads with Breary Lane.

Thus the second stone at the Breary lane crossroads lists, all south and west down Breary Lane:

• Bramhope Cross
• Old Bramhope + (ie Cross)
• Otley Schevin
• Carlton Bar
• Guiseley Church

and all north up Breary Lane:

• Kirkskill Hall
• Arthington Hall
• Castley Ford Lane
• Arthington Station

The peculiar thing about all these stones is that there appears to be no indication of the direction the traveller needs to take to reach the place named.  There is, however, a certain logic to it: places are listed in roughly increasing distance, first towards Otley, and then towards Leeds.  Where there is a pair of stones this is at a crossroads; one stone will list destinations on the main road, and the other destinations on the minor road.  Thus the second stone at the Breary lane crossroads lists:

Places in Adel are named on eight stones.  The school is on four; this is presumably the small building marked ‘Village School’ on the Ordnance Survey map of 1851, and actually on the turnpike road.  A brick yard is on two: White’s 1853 directory of Leeds lists a Samuel Whitaker, brick and tile maker, and the OS map shows a tile yard in an area now occupied by housing.  The beautiful Norman church is mentioned on only one, as is the bridge, about one third of as mile beyond the church over the relatively insignificant Adel Beck.

Since the stones are sited in all the townships or parishes through which the road passed (including Headingley, Adel and Bramhope) they are unlikely to have been put up by the townships, and we presume that they were the brainchild of the Turnpike Trust.  Sources (Wikipedia and others) indicate that the mileposts were erected in 1850, but without specifying which type is meant.  This is probably true for the so-called “tombstone” guide-stones since they cannot have been earlier than 1849 (the date of the stations), and the guide-stones do not appear on the first OS maps (based on surveys begun in 1847).  The turnpike milestones are shown, however, and were probably in position when the road opened in 1842. 

RWH / Jan 2022, rev Sept 2024

Earby, a small town in the north-west of the old West Riding, boasts an interesting and rare old guide-stoop.  It was probably put up early in the 18^th century following instructions from the County Justices to set up stoops at cross-highways pointing to the nearest market towns – in this case Skipton, Colne and Blackburn.  It does not give distances, as these were not required until 1737.

It is unlike most such guide-stoops in that it is carved in relief, rather than incised in the usual fashion.  It was suggested that a sign over the door of the White Lion Inn of 1681 was stylistically virtually identical, and could be by the same stonemason.

Its most unusual feature, however, is its use of mirror-writing.  It reads on one side simply “TO SKIPTON”, and underneath, back to front, “TO COLN”.  Thus Skipton is to the right, and Colne to the left.  On another side it directs, on three lines, “TO / BLAC / KBURN”.  The Ns in Skipton and Blackburn are back-to-front.

In 1938 the Craven Herald reported that it was one of only two of this type in the north of England, the other being at Boroughbridge.  But if this is refers to one at Kirby Hill, just north of Boroughbridge, anything that may have been carved on it is now illegible.  There is, however, one in Derbyshire, at Goatscliff, south of Grindleford.  This, according to Howard Smith’s definitive book on The Guide Stoops of Derbyshire (Horizon Press, 2009), is the only one with this feature in the county.

The original location of the stoop has been much discussed.  Current thinking is that it was on Long Lane, south of Earby, then a main route between Skipton and Colne, at a point where another track led west to Sough Bridge and Salterforth, and thence on an uncertain route to Blackburn.  The article referenced below discusses this in more detail.

After its removal from wherever it had originally been the stoop has had a chequered history: from the garden of the Clerk to the Earby Urban District Council sometime in the 1920s to 1936; then to the council’s yard until after the war, and from there to the War Memorial in Sough Park.  Finally, in 1997, having been deemed in the way on Remembrance Days, it was removed for safety to the Mining Museum on School Lane. 

The museum, sadly, had to close in 2015, and the exhibits were taken over by the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes, run by the National Park.  The stoop, however, remains and can still be seen outside the lovely Old Grammar School building. This was built in 1600 following a bequest by local man Robert Windle who died in 1591, and is still owned by Robert Windle’s Foundation, an educational charity.

Sources: websites of Robert Windle’s Foundation and the Earby & District Local History Society, in particular https://www.robertwindlefoundation.org/single-post/2017/09/15/the-earby-guide-stoop and an article by Trevor Tattersall in the Local History Society’s newsletter, Summer 2015, available from link at http://www.earbyhistory.co.uk/earby-chronicles/4559852678.  The photographs are reproduced with the kind permission of the Earby & District Local History Society.

RWH / August 2021

Guide-stones (or stoops as they are often called in Yorkshire, from an old Norse word for a post) are equivalent of today’s signposts.  They came before milestones which are mainly a product of the turnpike era. 

The first Act of Parliament to refer to them was in 1697 (chapter 16 of 8&9 William III: An Act for enlargeing Common Highways). This states:

“And for the better convenience of travelling in such Parts of this Kingdome which are remote from Towns and where several High-ways meet Be it further enacted … That it shall and may be lawfull to and for his Majesties Justices of the Peace … in such Cases as they shall think necessary to direct their Precept to the Surveyors of the High-ways in any Parish or Place where Two or more Crosse High-ways meet requiring them forthwith to cause to be erected or fixed in the most convenient Place where such Ways joyn a Stone or Post with an Inscription thereon in large Letters containing the Name of the next Markett Towne to which each of the said joyning High-ways leads …”

And there is a fine of ten shillings for any surveyor who shall “neglect or refuse to cause such Stone or Post to be fixed”.

Celia Fiennes, travelling the country at around this time,reports in her diary seeing, for example, at Lutterworth a “hand poynting 4 wayes to Coventry, Leicester, London, and Litchfield”.  But it was Lancashire with which she was most impressed: “They have one good thing in most parts of this principality …, that at all cross wayes there are posts with hands pointing to each road with the names of the great town or market towns that it leads to, which does make up for the length of the miles the strangers may not loose their road and have it to goe back again.”

There is an absence of dates in Fiennes’s accounts, so we cannot be sure whether these preceded or followed the legislation.

It was not until 1700, however, that the West Riding justices issued an instruction to local parish and township surveyors for “stoops to be sett up in crosse highways” inscribed with “the name of the next market town to which each of the joining highways leede”.

In 1733 this instruction (presumably having been largely ignored) was repeated, guide-stoops to be set up at cross-roads “upon large moors and commons where intelligence is difficult to be had” – a reference to the paucity of the population rather than their IQ!  Another instruction of 1738 requested that distances be stated, and in 1754 the constables were called to account for their actions.  It also became common practice for dates to be included, although there seems to have been no legal requirement for this. Many stoops have dates around 1738 and the 1750s.

The 1733 instruction perhaps recognises that market towns are few and far between on the moors, and many stones name not far-off towns, but nearby settlements.  A stone at Norland, near Sowerby Bridge, for example, directs a traveller to Elland, Ripponden, Sowerby and Halifax.  Only the last-named was a market town.  Similarly, the stoop outside the Lower Royal George on the A640 near Huddersfield names Scammonden, Deanhead (as Daynhead, presumably how it was pronounced), Marsden and Huddersfield – again the only market town, while the first two, then as now, were sparsely-populated settlements, not even villages.

A stone of 1738, at a crossroads on the B6118 above Kirkheaton, however, fulfils all the requirements: it directs to Barnsley, Dewsbury, Halifax and Huddersfield – all market towns.

Sometimes hands and fingers point towards the destination, but in their absence the custom was that the traveller was to take the road to the right while facing the destination name on the stone. 

An unusual alternative can be found on a guide-stoop at Earby in the north-west of the old West Riding.  The words TO COLN are written back-to-front, thus indicating that Colne was to the left.

Many stones name the surveyor who was responsible for the erection of the stoop.  A stone at Farnley Moor End between Farnley Tyas and Thurstonland near Holmfirth, also of 1738, has two beautifully-carved names: Joⁿ Hoyle, Constable, and Tho^s Bothomley, Surveyor. Interestingly, this stoop, like the Earby one, was once used as the base for a sun-dial.

Guide-stones are not exclusively a feature of the early 18^th century.  Dotted around the county are a number of guide-stones put up in the 19^th century by a number of different bodies: local authorities (townships or local boards), turnpike trusts and highway boards.  Perhaps they used stone because of its easy availability and greater durability. 

Examples are:

• In the Craven district, mainly north of Skipton: over 20 stones in one simple style can be found at road junctions, showing the way to nearby villages .  These are thought to have been put up by the East Staincliffe Highways District, around the 1880s.  Click here for more details.
• In the Thurstonland area: four stones were erected in 1861 by the Local Board: the surveyor’s name, John Bottomley, is carved on one of them. Click here for details of a walk visiting them all (as well as the Farnley Moor End stoop).
• On the Leeds-Otley road stand a series of thick stone blocks with the names of anything up to a dozen local villages, buildings, railway stations and more distant towns. These were put up by the Turnpike Trust.

Sources: W B Crump: Huddersfield highways down the ages (Tolson Museum, 1949); Sidney and Beatrice Webb: The story of the King’s highway (Longmans Green, 1920)

RWH / August 2021

The Kirkburton Parish Council area was established as an Urban District in 1937, combining eight (originally nine) townships to the east of Huddersfield.  Within the district are eleven villages: Farnley Tyas, Flockton, Grange Moor (officially in Whitley Upper township), Highburton (part of Kirkburton), Kirkburton itself, Kirkheaton, Lepton, Shelley, Shepley, Stocksmoor (part of Thurstonland township) and Thurstonland itself.

To celebrate the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee in 2012 the Parish Council, with various other agencies, set up a project to create a series of ten walks centred on each community, and a series of leaflets with maps was produced.  Each walk had the name of a former local personage for the title of the walk.  For example, the Lepton walk features Anne Jessop (1850?-1941), daughter of Allen Jessop who established the first fireworks business in the village.  The Kirkheaton walk remembers Elizabeth Drake, one of 17 girls who perished in a tragic fire at Atkinson’s Mill in Colne Bridge in 1818: they had been trapped upstairs.

And each walk had, at some point, a newly carved guide-stoop, modelled on the historic stoop at Farnley Moor, between Thurstonland and Farnley Tyas.  As well as fingers pointing to the neighbouring villages each stoop also featured an item relating to the particular place.  Thus the Grange Moor stoop shows the pit-head winding-gear at the local Shuttle Eye Colliery (closed in 1973).

Full details and pdfs of the walks can be found here.

Source: talks given at the Northern Spring Meeting of the Milestone Society, April 2013

RWH / revised May 2021

Around the Skipton area are over 20 small triangular stones, mostly painted white with black lettering, most with a pyramidal top, and found mostly at minor road junctions. Village names, sometimes with arrows or crude hands painted on them, direct the traveller along the lanes.

They can be found throughout the Craven District – in Bolton Abbey, Coniston Cold, Cracoe, Draughton, Eshton, Gargrave, Linton, Stirton-with-Thorlby, Thorpe and Threshfield.

A typical example, YN_XXSGCT, illustrated here, is on the B6265, about a mile north of the Skipton northern by-pass. It is at the junction of Bog Lane (an indication, perhaps, of its formerly uninviting condition) with the B6265, just before the oddly-named None-Go-Bye Farm. The narrow Bog Lane leads directly to Stirton, and thence to Gargrave – as indicated on the left-hand side of the stone. The right-hand side shows directions to Cracoe and Threshfield (though these destinations are incomplete, perhaps following an altercation with a road vehicle).

There is, however, no indication that the main road leads back to Skipton, suggesting that whoever erected it assumes this is the direction you have come from – though if this was the case and you really wanted to go to Stirton or Gargrave you wouldn’t have come this way.

The stones are stylistically quite different from those erected in response to the demands of the County Justices at the turn of the 18th century: those were aimed at travellers on featureless moorlands. And since there are so many of them in a very similar style they are unlikely to be the work of different parishes.

They were in fact erected in the second half of the 19th century: this stone (like many of the others) appears on the 1896 Ordnance Survey map, but not on the 1853 edition.  And they were put up by the East Staincliffe Highway District (ESHD). This was one of many Highway Districts created in the 1860s, taking over the functions of parishes (who thus gave up their highways responsibilities) and, later, the failing Turnpike Trusts. They were abolished following the creation of Rural District Councils in 1894.  The East Staincliffe Highway District, named from the ancient wapentake of the same name, also erected a number of boundary stones in the area; these are marked E S H D.

RWH / Feb 2019

 

In the village of Shelf, on the A6036 between Halifax and Bradford in West Yorkshire, is an area called Stone Chair.  And on an older line of the road, originally the Wibsey Bankfoot and Lidget Branch Turnpike, just north of the Stone Chair roundabout, sits the stone chair that gave its name to the area.

The present structure, a Grade II listed monument, dates from 1891.  It consists of two large upright stone slabs set at right-angles to each other, and joined at the top by an iron strap.  Between the two is a large triangular stone block which acts as a seat – hence the name.

The original stone chair, however, was erected in 1737.  This date would suggest it was put up following directions from the county Justices to local township surveyors to erect stoops to assist travellers at cross-ways – instructions most recently repeated in 1733.

The highways surveyor for the Shelf township at the time of its erection was William Clayton, a blacksmith who also seems to have been the publican of the Duke of York Inn, across the road from the site of the stone chair.  His yearly accounts survive, which record that “a gide erecting and seting up” cost 4s-6d, and “aile when stone was sett up” was 1s-6d.  Clayton died in 1766 and was buried in nearby Coley Church.

The first edition Ordnance Survey 6″ map (published 1854) shows what it calls a milestone, giving the following destinations and distances: Huddersfield 6, Keighley 8, Halifax 2 and Bradford 4.  These are not statute miles but the longer traditional miles, which are usually found on guide-stoops of the period – unlike the miles shown on actual milestones.

In the 1820s, however, the new line of the turnpike had been constructed, and the stone chair had lost its original purpose – whatever that was: possibly a resting-place for people (or, at least, one person) waiting for stage-coaches or other transport – and by the 1880s it had fallen apart, or even been destroyed.

In 1890 local antiquarian and writer Harry Speight claimed to have unearthed one of the stone slabs of the original chair from beneath a heap of rubbish on its original site; its inscription had been defaced. From Speight’s description and illustration of the original chair (and there is no other source to confirm its original appearance) a new one was erected in 1891, with new stone slabs.  The destinations differ from those on the OS map: Bradford and Halifax remain, but Keighley and Huddersfield have been replaced by the nearer Denholme Gate and Brighouse.  Speight’s defaced 1737 slab is probably the one now built into the wall of the house next to the chair: it can be seen in the lower photograph.

Source: article by Ben Stables in the Milestone Society Newsletter (no 29, July 2015, pp 35-36)

RWH/Oct 2015

W B Crump, in his Huddersfield highways down the ages (1949), describes the route of an ancient track leading from Marsden to Penistone, by way of Meltham, Holmfirth, Hepworth, Maythorn and Thurlstone. He also describes five guide-stoops found along the route. Four of these, now somewhat battered, and some no longer in their original locations, survive.

From Marsden the track took the route that later became the first Wakefield-Austerlands turnpike as far as Holthead where the present road turns off to Meltham. Just before Meltham was the first guide-stoop, described by Crump, but now lost.

The second (pictured, right) is just south-east of the centre of Meltham, where Mill Bank Road leads off the B6107 towards Honley (grid ref SE104102). It is sadly virtually illegible, but had distances to Honley, Marsden and Penistone.

The third is a couple hundred yards further on, at the crossroads at the top of the steep Netherthong Road (grid ref SE108099), where a road leads up to the Ford Inn and the A635. Crump records a now invisible hand pointing left to Penistone, with other directions (no hands: “go right” would be assumed) to Holmfirth and Marsden. These directions are a bit of an enigma, since according to Crump the route to Penistone lay through Holmfirth, and one would therefore expect the stoop to be pointing in the same direction to these two places. Also Penistone and Marsden, being in opposite directions, should be on opposite faces but aren’t. Perhaps the stoop was originally elsewhere.

The fourth stoop has had a chequered history, and is now in the middle of Netherthong (grid ref SE138096), a good mile and a half away from its presumed original position. An old Ordnance Survey 2½” map records a milestone at about SE121093, and this is presumably our stoop, being used as a gatepost, and this is how Crump describes it. But obviously it had been moved there at some time as it was some distance from any road or track junctions. Howard Smith, in his Guide stoops of the Dark Peak (1999), suggests that this was at SE119092, where Bradshaw Road crosses Wilshaw Mill Road/Wolfstones Road, but he reports it as missing. It has directions to Marsden, Penistone and Huddersfield.

Crump then describes a route through Holmfirth, Hepworth, Maythorn and Thurlstone to Penistone, though some parts of it are possibly a bit speculative. The only other guide-stoop is on Thurlstone Moor, on the un-made-up High Bank Lane (grid ref approx SE219038), directing to Holmfirth, Huddersfield and Penistone – again in a very poor condition (pictured, right).

There is a stone just inside the grounds of Holmfirth High School (Heys Road, grid ref SE151097) which looks like a guide-stoop, but whatever markings it may have had have been erased. Though not on Crump’s route it is not far from the old crossing of the River Holme at Thongsbridge and could possibly be connected.

And finally, this being about the Maythorn Way, mention should be made of the Maythorne Cross, which has been the subject of legal disputes in recent years. Thought to have originally been a Saxon boundary marker, there are now two Maythorne Crosses, neither particularly original: one in Holmfirth by the river, near the main car-park (grid ref SE144084); the other in a field near its original location near the hamlets of Victoria and Maythorn.

RWH/April 2015

One of the most unusual guide-stoops in the county can be found just off the A616 Stocksbridge bypass in South Yorkshire: it is, as far as we know, unique in having six sides.

In the absence of pointing fingers, a traveller was to take the road to the right while facing the destination name on the stone.  But here the road layout is far from clear: in fact there are only five routes leading from the stoop in evidence today.

Going anti-clockwise from the north the destinations read as follows:

a)  Peni / stone / Huthe / rsfield / & / Halli / fax.  This route is shown on the modern OS map only as a right of way heading north-north-west from the stone.

b)  Wood / head / & / Mottra[m].  The present Salter Hill Lane; as its name implies, this route is the old saltway from Cheshire via Longdendale to Yorkshire, preceding but following roughly the same route as the 1732-40 turnpike, now the A628; several old milestones survive on it.

c)  Under / bank / & / Brad / field.  Going roughly southwards: the present Underbank Lane.

d)  Shef / field / & / Rotter / eham.  The main continuation of the saltway into South Yorkshire: the present Tofts Lane.

e)  Barns / ley / & / Ponte / fract / 1734 / Don / caster.  There is no obvious route going in this direction from this point.

f)  Wake / field / & / Leeds.  The present Dyson Cote Lane, heading north-north-east. 

The easiest way to find the stone is from the Stocksbridge bypass (A616): take the turn-off south directing to the Steelworks (West Access), followed shortly by the next left turn, which is Underbank Lane, going under the bypass and uphill to the junction.

Sources: English Heritage; and B Elliott: Discovering South Yorkshire (1998)
RWH / March 2012