Guide-stones between Otley and Leeds
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 …
Guide-stones are known as guide-stoops in Yorkshire, from an old Norse word for post. The first official ones followed an act of Parliament of 1697/8, instructing the county justices to have direction indicators set up at crossroads. They could be stone or posts, presumably wooden.
Naturally, none of the latter survive, but many of the stones can be found. The Milestone Society’s repository on Google Earth does not distinguish between guide-stones and milestones, though they are not synonymous: the first guide-stones did not show distances.
Some are still in lonely spots on the moors, though often encroached on by later development. Sometimes they have been re-used as gate-posts and many, no doubt, will have been lost for a variety of reasons.
The items on these pages illustrate some of the interesting ones that can be found. Guide-stones of the West Riding has a more detailed history.
RWH / revised August 2021
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The ruling about the need for guide-stones in moorland areas was acted on by the North Riding County Justices in 1711 (eleven years after the …
Handstones: guide-stoops on the North York Moors Read More »
Dotted around the country, with several also in Yorkshire, are mileposts best described as obelisks. Many date from the second half of the 18th century. …
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 …
Guide-stones around Skipton: the ‘Craven stoops’ Read More »
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 …
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 …
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 …