The Cloud

Also known as:
Cloud Hill
Nearest town:
Congleton (5km WSW)
OS reference:
SJ903636
OS sheet:
118
Latitude:
53° 10' 8.6 N
Longitude:
2° 8' 42.43 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of The Cloud (Sacred Hill) by Gnomon

On top of the rocky outcrop looking beyond the trig point towards Lud’s Church.

Image credit: Gnomon 10 Aug 2010
Gnomon
Gnomon Aug 13, 2010
Image of The Cloud (Sacred Hill) by moorman

Photo taken from Biddulph about 5-6 miles south of the cloud at 04.30 am in spring.

Image credit: rich from Biddulph
M
moorman Jul 28, 2003

Articles

The Cloud

texlahoma
texlahoma Nov 15, 2004

We visited the cloud on sunday the 14th 2004. This used to be a local walk for me for years, as I grew up in this area. The views from up top are incredible, whatever the time of year. This is one place where you can’t help but feel alive after the walk to the top. From a distance the cloud is always there on the horizon, huge and magnificent!

The Cloud

juamei
juamei May 3, 2004

[visited 3/4/4] I eyed this up in the car on the way south to Congleton, on the OS map and as I approached the Bridestones, the recomendation by a helpful local was just the icing on the top! Well worth a visit for the views with amazing views in 360 degrees. Access is for the vaguely fit and up a muddy path.

You can literally see for miles from up here, it was too hazy for me but the helpful arrows-pointing-at-things-in-the-distance pointed at stuff 50+ miles away.

To have been buried at the The Bridestones would have been a momentous thing indeed...

Folklore

The Cloud
Sacred Hill
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Dec 29, 2009

To come then forthwith to the subject in hand, the Natural History of the County of Stafford; the first thing I met with relating to the Heavens, and one of the first too that I heard of after I set to work in earnest, was a pretty rural observation, of late years made by some of the Inhabitants of the Town of Leek in the Moorelands, of the setting of the Sun in the Summer Solstice, near a Hill called the Cloud, about six miles distant, in the confines of Stafford-shire and Cheshire which appearing almost perpendicular on the Northern side, to such persons as are standing in Leek Church-yard, the Sun seems so nicely at that time of year to cut the Edg of it at setting, as in Tab. 1. Fig. 1. that notwithstanding what is taught by Astronomers, that the Sun whilst it occupies that Cardinal point, appears Stationary for some time without giving any sensible increase or decrease to the length of the days; they can plainly perceive by the help of this Hill, that no two days are equal, but that there is a sensible difference every day [...]

For when the Sun comes near the Solstice, the whole disk of it at first sets behind the Hill, after a while the Northern Limb first appears, and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole Diameter comes to set Northward of it, for about three nights; but the middle night of the three, very sensibly more remote, than the former or the following, when beginning its recess from the Tropic, it still continues more and more to be hidden every night, till at length it descends quite behind it again.

From Robert Plot’s ‘Natural History of Staffordshire’ of 1686 (hence all the italics.) More details of this peculiar phenomenon in the link below.

Folklore

The Cloud
Sacred Hill
texlahoma
texlahoma Jan 4, 2005

On the summit of cloud hill is a stone outcrop known as the drummer’s knob. It is said that at this place during the Jacobite rebellion an English sniper killed a young Jacobite drummer boy. He is said to haunt the area with his ghostly drumming.
It is also said that a giant dropped his shoe on the hill and was then startled by a small animal and fled leaving his shoe behind. The shoe then turned to stone over many years and now looks like a boulder with a hollowed out face.

Sites within 20km of The Cloud

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