Devil's Stone (Birtley)

{The elder Celtic race responsible for the carvings at Pitland Hills} perhaps worshipped around the "Devil's Stone," by the Birtley Holy Well, on which great isolated rock appear several "cups," three of them being in a straight line, which can scarcely all have been formed by natural sub-aerial forces as geological 'pot-holes'.

A very curious legend associates the worn cups and hollows upon the weathered and channelled summit of this great detached rock with the footprints of a Satanic personage, who is said to have leapt towards the further bank of the North Tyne river, about a mile distant, above Lee Hall. Miscalculating the distance, it is averred that in his descent he touched the projecting rocks in the river-bed, which bear much larger hollows upon them in the form of indubitable water-worn 'pot-holes', about 2 feet in depth by 1 foot in diameter, and then fell into the deepest abyss, according to popular belief, in the whole course of the North Tyne, where he was drowned! Hence the name by which it is still called - "The Leap-Crag Pool."