Indeed it was really,really worth a look .loads of parking and a beautiful part of the Staffordshire moorlands.Surely it can't be just good fortune that this massive stone rests on smaller stones it looks a bit like the Maen Cetti on Gower, I'm not convinced it's entirely natural
Although it's more than likely natural...a bloke named Sainter noted the stone as a Dolmen in the 1800's..
The Bawd Stone is in a great location between the gritstone outcrops of Hen Cloud and the Roaches....Ramishaw Rocks are visible in the distance too....
The Bawdstone is mentioned in 'Twilight of the Celtic Gods' by David Clarke and Andy Roberts (1996).
In the past, the stone was the focus of an extraordinary procession on the morning of 1 May, the festival of Beltane, which marked the beginning of summer. Dozens of people, some helping sick and infirm relatives, would follow a well-worn path from the market town of Leek and villages round about, travelling by foot many miles to the rock escarpment. Here they would crawl beneath the Bawdstone 'to knock the Devil off their backs'.
The authors' contact knew a man in his 80s who'd visited the stone in secret when he was sick. The big gatherings ceased at the turn of the century.
They also say: "In 1879 a writer.. described how the boulder was always whitewashed 'with some ceremony' on the morning of 1 May." The farmer who owned the land continued the tradition until the 1920s.
From J D Sainter's "Scientific Rambles Round Macclesfield" 1878:
'At a short distance south of Rock Hall, there may be observed on the opposite slope of Hen Cloud a block of gritstone, which upon approaching it, is found to be resting or balanced, in the first place, upon a short edge of rock and then upon two upright and pointed stone pillars about eighteen inches in height, which will constitute a dolmen. At a few yards south of this stone there appears to be the remains of a stone circle, 20 feet in diameter.'
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