Folklore

The Agglestone
Natural Rock Feature

” A musing stroll across the heath from Studland, brings you to the Aggllestone, the holy stone (Helig – Anglo-Saxon for holy) hurled by the devil on to the crest of a hillock rising above the peaty waste. Fiends often do dress like angels, and it is certainly hard to detect anything of the devil when the Madonna-blue chalices of that visionary flower, Gentiana pneumonanthe, are open on the heath. But devils did traffic with holy stones in archaic England, for devils were once gods themselves fallen from heaven upon evil days, the days when the usurping Celts looked with dread upon the works of their predecessors. For the Agglestone is a menhir”.
Taken from
Downland Man by H.J. Massingham
Pub 1927 by Jonathan Cape