8i 



THE RUDSTONE. 



Rev. E. MAULE COLE, M.A., 

 Vicar of IVetivaug ; President of the Geological Section of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union ; 

 Author of ' Scandinavian Place Names,' etc. 



The great monolith at Rudston near Bridlington, in the East Riding, 

 is one of the most remarkable boulders in Yorkshire. Its dimensions 

 are — length, from 45 ft. to 50 ft. ; breadth, 5 ft. 10 in. ; thickness, 

 2 ft. 3 in. ; whilst the estimated weight is said to be 46 tons. It is 

 a species of grit, finer grained than the Millstone Grit of the West 

 Riding, and similar to the Grits of the Lower Oolite found on the 

 watershed of the North Eastern moorlands. For many hundreds of 

 years it has been standing erect on the brow of a low hill, beneath 

 which meet, at a right angle, two dales, one extending southwards 

 from the great Wold Valley, the other passing eastwards to Bridlington 

 Bay. Half of it is buried in tlie ground, and it is self-evident that 

 it was erected artificially. Rumour says that it formed one of three 

 similar erect stones or menhirs, but there is not the slightest evidence 

 of this, beyond the fact that a few small stones of similar grit may 

 be detected in the walls of some buildings adjacent. The probability 

 is, that when this large stone was stranded, smaller ones of a similar 

 character, and from the same source, were stranded with it. The 

 larger one was seized upon and erected by the primitive inhabitants 

 as a memorial or monument of some departed hero; the lesser ones 

 were left, to meet eventually with a less noble but perhaps more 

 useful fate. If this be true, the stone is a bloc percht\ in other words, 

 an erratic, carried by ice, and stranded on an eminence similar to 

 those found in the Jura. 



The great glacier which crept along the East coast of Yorkshire, 

 may not have extended so far inland as Rudston, but floating ice 

 might easily have borne the boulder up the dale from Bridlington, 

 and the projecting nab at the sharp turn of the valley would be just 

 the place where we should expect it to get stranded. Its original 

 home must be looked for at the Peak, or other portions of the Oolitic 

 Cliffs, whence it was torn away, and gently carried to its present 

 position. When once erected by human hands, it might have been 

 a seat of worship, long before the i)resent church was built close to 

 it, and it seems to have given the name to the village, which 

 subsequently clustered round the foot of the hill. The terminal 

 ' Stan ' (Rodestan, as it occurs in Domesday) is clearly to be 

 distinguished from the ordinary ' ton,' and the village should be 

 Rudstone, not Rudston. (The spelling in Domesday, A.D. :o8o- 



MarcU 1888. 



