Stone cult
- WORDSWORTH WORDSMITHY
- Aug 5, 2024
- 7 min read
What if standing stones were not erected in the Neolithic period as a focal point for ceremony and ritual, but rather the stones themselves were the object of worship?
This startling thought (not an original one I’m sure) came to me during a Neolithic Studies Group field visit to Yorkshire in May 2024. In particular the massive megaliths at the Devil’s Arrow and Rudston imposed themselves on my thinking with their extravagance. All of these stones were – so the story goes – at one point or another thrown by the Devil, medieval rationalisation for inexplicable pagan profanities. They certainly threw me.
Climbing from my hire car into an already warm sun on that May morning, the Devil’s Arrows were part of an assault on the senses. Two of the stones stood to attention in a scrubby field decorated with shell middens and chicken shit left there recently by the farmer, unctuous organic mounds that teemed with bird life, offerings for the fertility of the field in an acknowledgement that the stones don’t work like that anymore.
The following day we went to Rudston via Duggleby Howe barrow. The view upon entering the church yard within which this might megalith is contained is dominated by the giant standing stone, reputedly and measurably the tallest standing stone in Britain. It protrudes grotesquely from amongst gravestones which look tiny by comparison, clustered around its base like hungry children crowding a giant waiting for crumbs from his table.
The stone is a deep grey brown sedimentary with various markings on its surface that can’t quite be resolved into any shapes or forms no matter how long one stares. And one does stare, as it is difficult to take one’s eyes off this giant. Perhaps most startling of all of the protective metal cap sitting on top of the stone, like a helmet jammed onto the head of a petrified orc.
Taking stock, the NSG great and good sat around eating lunch, and then congregated at the foot of the stone, hopelessly dominated. Archaeologists have always been driven to visit this stone, drawn to this place, to try to make sense of it while not being overwhelmed or overly emotional. (It is just a standing stone after all.) This is not however a standing stone that can be theorised or measured into making sense, being pretty much impossible to excavate. Sometimes one had to admit defeat and be struck by awe.
The church is overshadowed by the monolith literally and in all other respects. Literature produced and sold in the Church tells us more about the stone than the church, reinforcing the sense that the real focus of rites in this place is the monolith and not the messiah.
For instance, a whole pamphlet is dedicated to The Monolith and contains an eccentric and even feverish narrative about the pagan origins of the stone and this place, written by a W W Gatenby (who died in 2001). “If we turn to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, we read that when Joshua destroyed the city of Jericho [itself a Neolithic site], rather more than 2,000 BC, he found two tall standing stones outside the temple of the pagan god Baal”. In this, WWG saw symbolically at least the upright nature of the church steeple, pointing to the heavens, but then so does the monolith.
However, unlike the church spire, the standing stone also points down to the underworld. A pamphlet called “All Saints” Church, Rudston. A short guide (date and author unknown) notes than, “An excavation conducted by Sir William Strickland in the late 18th century suggested that its depth below ground is as great as its height”. Hmm, unlikely, but then what is this standing stone standing on? A giant tooth set into the gums of the land.
A postcard sold in the church bear the legend on the back: “PARISH CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS AND RUDSTON MONOLITH” without a comma, suggesting that this church even bears the name of the stone. “Over 25 feet high, this Bronze Age stone is the largest monolith in Britain, and was probably a pagan worship monument” it continues.
There must surely have been – and perhaps still is – a cult of Rudston, with the standing stone being the ultimate relic, maintained in conspiracy by whispering locals. Some kind of relict survivor of the ‘indigenous pagan religion’ as discussed in the church pamphlet that the construction of the church was supposed to put a stop to. Inside the church is a painting of the standing stone (and the church and graveyard), prints available for £30. Here the stone looks even bigger than its 8m height. The stark grey depiction of the stone has decolourised it: prehistory seems to be black and white, a simpler time.
This is heightened by the sense that the standing stone and church-mound sit in the apex of a much larger sacred landscape, with five cursus monuments radiating outwards (or inwards) from the monolith. This is depicted in a strange 3D model display in the church, and also the reality for local people that some of them probably have a cursus ditch under their gardens and houses.
All of this is held together by the glue of the Gypsey Race, a river that bisects four of the cursus monuments and would have had to be crossed were these routes to be followed. There is an entanglement here of water and stone, place and people.
Because these are stones with communities – houses sit nearby, bedroom windows overlook them, and they are at the very least peri-urban. I can’t help but think that simply looking out of a window at massive standing stones day after day must have some kind of psychological impact on even the most unimaginative of individuals.
They even have streets named in their honour, a further input into the everyday psychology of living with megaliths.
Julian Cope has written about the Arrows bemoaning this urban setting: “the vile and claustrophobic situation in which the Devil’s Arrows have now found themselves” is down to the Romans building a road through this sacred landscape and subsequent developments of that road (now a motorway which hums pleasingly in the background).
For what it is worth, I prefer to think that there is a healthy children of the stones vibe at the Devil’s Arrows.
While at Rudston, legendary archaeologist Richard Bradley told us a remarkable story. During a journey to examine a thesis (in 1979?) he stopped in at the churchyard, suit and tie, the whole business. It was raining and preparations were underway for a funeral. He peered down into a freshly cut grave and spotted the profile of a ditch in section in the graveside. Unable to carry out any further investigation, this nonetheless suggested to Bradley that this might have been the remnants not of a cursus but rather some kind of enclosure around the eminence upon which the monolith and church sit.
This brought to mind a prehistoric horror set at a very similar church in rural England, the one investigate during the 2014 film The Borderlands (aka Final Prayer). This spectacular found footage film (spoiler alert) ended with the revelation that a huge ancient creature lived beneath the church, in the hill, periodically digesting (or being fed) humans. Those who had worshipped this beast had carved tunnels into the hill and adorned them with arcane rock art symbols, and set up altars for rites. Perhaps without precedent in the history of horror films, evidence was also produced during the film of an archaeological aerial photograph showing several concentric rings of earthwork enclosing the hilltop and church.
When Bradley’s told us about his graveside discovery, a shiver went down my spine. What was enclosed here? What was being kept within? Or lurking beneath our feet?
The most obvious answer is not a beast, but the stone. No matter how hard Christianity tries to push back!
Standing stones have been revered for millennia and continue to be repurposed for reverence. Crosses have been stuck atop then (as may have been the case at Rudston (source)), murals painted, symbols carved. Some have been placed in cages or glass houses. Standing stones have a uncontainable power that we seem unable to control, and they can shape-change to be anything we want them to be. The late Chris Tilley has written (The Materiality of Stone, 2004) about the kinetic energy of standing stones, many of which look as if they are about to move, or have moved when our eyes were elsewhere. I think that this is because deep down we see them as much more than inorganic matter. They are literally smeared with our DNA and entangled with our bodies and minds, living stone. Worthy of our attention and respect.
On the day after my first visit to see the Arrows, I went back again the following morning, to break bread and drink coffee in the shadow of the stones (with window closed due to the smell).
In the flat morning light they seemed much smaller, the nervous energy of the day before having dissipated. And then I realised that is because (a) I was further away, and (b) these are stones that need an audience, a groups of willing supplicants to crowd around and marvel, to bend the knee, take photographs, recite our litanies of dates, measurements, facts and anecdotes. Our archaeological knowledge is in fact nothing more than a series of incantations, rites of worship and, even if we might not admit it, adoration. Neolithic hobbyists are the perfect congregation for these giant monoliths, academic acolytes celebrating the cult of stones. Archaeologists are the cultists.
What will we one day awake through our endless meddling?
Sources and acknowledgements – I would like to thank all those who came on the NSG trip to Yorkshire. I picked a lot of brains but none of them could have anticipated where my thoughts would lead me. Especial thanks to Emma Watson and Seren Griffiths. Sources for images and words used in the blog post can be found in the text and captions.
