Local landowner, Sir Philip Brocklehurst, wrote in 1874:
The peasants of the neighbourhood have a curious legend respecting the origin of ‘The Bridestones’. “When the Danes invaded England,” they say, “a Danish youth became enamoured of a Saxon lady, and in the end the two were married at Biddulph church (about a mile and a half distant) but on returning from the wedding, they were here met and murdered, and after their interment had taken place on the spot where they fell, these stones were laid around their grave, and the name Bridestones given to it from that circumstance.” So much for public opinion.
You can see him rolling his eyes.
Quoted in Westwood and Simpson’s 2005 ‘Lore of the Land’.