The Matfen Stone

Also known as:
Stob Stone
Nearest town:
Prudhoe (9km ESE)
OS reference:
NZ033705
OS sheet:
87
Latitude:
55° 1' 43.79 N
Longitude:
1° 56' 54.13 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of The Matfen Stone (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Hob

Glow from Tyneside in the sky to the east.

Image credit: IH
Hob
Hob Feb 24, 2006
Image of The Matfen Stone (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Hob

The cups on the north edge of the stone.

Image credit: IH
Hob
Hob Feb 24, 2006
Image of The Matfen Stone (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Hob

Do standing stones often get beer named after them?

Image credit: IH
Hob
Hob Aug 24, 2005
Image of The Matfen Stone (Standing Stone / Menhir) by Hob

There are more cups on the east facing side than there are on the other sides. Beckinsall implies this may be connected with the meaning of the cups marks.

Image credit: IH
Hob
Hob Jul 3, 2004

Articles

The Matfen Stone

C
CARL Oct 5, 2010

Visited 22.9.10
Directions: Take the road north towards the village of Matfen near the junction of the B6318 / B6321. Before you get to Matfen itself you come to a nice looking ‘fortified’ house. Park near the house (didn’t seem to be anyone home) and you will see the stone easy enough. The grass was standing waist high around the stone so it was difficult to see the cupmarks.
The weathering on the stone reminded me of the Devils Arrows – obviously a mini version!
This is a very easy site to access (look from the car window if you prefer – as Karen did!) and is well worth a look when in the area / visiting the nearby Warrior Stone.

The Matfen Stone

Hob
Hob Jul 3, 2004

It’s another hypergroovey bit of stone.
The channels down this, and others like the Poind’s man, The Warrior Stone, Duddo, proudly display their centuries of braving the elements.

It’s also got a goodly number of cup marks, on all four sides according to Stan The Man.

There’s something about the grooves though, that taunts my imagination. They are so similar to similar grooves found running horizontally on natural rock features such as Dove Crag on Simonside, or even the vertical ones on Robin Hood’s stride further afield.

Part of me wonders if stones suh as the Matfen stone were deliberately quarried from already weathered rock.

One bad point about this stone, it has a chip recently taken off it near the bottom of the SW corner. Fresh new yellow stone is like a raw wound. Whether as the result of accident or deliberate idiotic behaviour, it’s shocking bad hat.

The Matfen Stone

pebblesfromheaven
pebblesfromheaven Jun 30, 2003

29-6-03.
Coming in from the south, you can’t miss the house – and I spotted the top of the stone peeping over the hedge.
Easy access, right on the road.
.o0O0o.

The Matfen Stone

C
C33 Aug 13, 2000

Situated down a side road on the left about 1 mile south of Matfen village on the edge of an impeccably manicured grass verge lies the Matfen stone. A strange fortified house/farm is across the road and whoever owns it obviously likes to keep the stone from becoming overgrown which is cool (although their reuse of the old pump down the road as a flower basket hanger is a tad twee).

The stone is about six foot high and has the same deep harsh vertical grooves caused by weathering as the Devil’s Arrows. What’s different about the Matfen Stone is the many cupmarks carved around the base (well over thirty).

Not really a place to stop and linger (you have the uncomfortable feeling someone is tut-tutting at you from behind a curtain across the road), but a good antidote if you’ve had too much of Hadrian’s Wall.

Miscellaneous

The Matfen Stone
Standing Stone / Menhir
Hob
Hob Oct 26, 2007

From Camden’s Brittannia, 2nd Ed.

“W. Matfen is the seat of sir William Blacket, bart. and in an adjoining field is a circular mount with a cavity at top, and by it a stone nine feet high, three feet by one and a half thick, called the Stob stone.
In opening of other tumuli of stones have been found two kistvaens, or coffins of four stones set on edge with a bottom and cover, containing the ashes of the dead appearing in a white dust. It has since all been removed”

There’s certainly no large mound next to the Matfen stone nowadays.

Topics

A bloody big wooohooo for Hob! 4
goffik
goffik
Feb 2006

Sites within 20km of The Matfen Stone

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