Buck Stone

Mr. James Murton forwarded the following notice of the "Buck Stone" at Silverdale, near Lancaster:

"I send a pencil sketch and also a photograph of a curious monument of a past age, which ihas not been noticed in any archaeological work that I am aware of, and may, perhaps, be considered worth mentioning in our Journal. It is known locally as the 'Buck Stone', and the Ordnance surveyors calle it 'The Rocking Stone' in their maps. It would probably be unsafe to attempt to make it oscillate; but it may be classed among those mysterious remains of antiquity termed 'logan stones' or 'rocking stones'. It is situated in an open field, on a gentle slope which a few yards lower down becomes more steep. This ban appears to have been originally part of a scar or cliff, from which the rock has been worked away, leaving the 'Buck Stone' isolated in its present position. In a line with this slope, about twenty-five yards distant, the cliff remains, and is about on the same level as the top of the slope [..] The stone is about 10 ft. high, 33 ft. 6 ins. in girth horizontally, and probably weighs about thirty-five tons.

There are various rude legends connected with this stone, of which the following is one. About three hundred yards distant there is a small, deep lake or tarn called 'Haweswater'; and the story goes, 'that in times past an enormous eel or serpent was wont to come up from the lake, and coil itself round the 'Buck Stone', and that it devoured sheep from that field.' The name 'Buck Stone' suggests that the knoll on which it stands was a resort of the red deer, which formerly were plentiful here, as is evidenced by frequent discoveries of the antlers of these animals in the sand of the estuary and in the peat mosses of the district."