High Bridestones

Nearest town:
Whitby (8km NE)
OS reference:
NZ850046
OS sheet:
94
Latitude:
54° 25' 46.06 N
Longitude:
0° 41' 22.5 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by postman

Gnarled and cash stuffed western stone and fallen comrades.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
postman
postman Feb 18, 2018
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by postman

The eastern stone is closest with the middle pair and the western most stone beyond.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
postman
postman Feb 18, 2018
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by fitzcoraldo

Cheap fools think that they touch the spirit of the Bridestones by bashing pennies into the cracks of this beautiful monolith.

fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Mar 1, 2010
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by thesweetcheat

The western “circle” looking towards the eastern circle (with the tallest stone)

Image credit: A.Brookes (26.6.1999)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Jan 20, 2009
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by stubob

09/04. Several of the other stones can be seen in the distance to the right.

stubob
stubob Sep 29, 2004
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by jobbo

Is this the cairn? Found along the row of grouse butts

Image credit: Barry Jobson
jobbo
jobbo Jul 31, 2004
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by Chris Collyer

The three fallen slabs – dark and heavily pitted. The second set of stones is in the distance.

Chris Collyer
Chris Collyer Sep 16, 2003
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by Chris Collyer

Looking west. The standing stone with the three fallen stones to the left. The stones of the second setting are in the near distance to the right of the standing stone.

Chris Collyer
Chris Collyer Sep 16, 2003
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by fitzcoraldo

One of the three fallen stones adjacent to the tallest stone that could have made up the four poster. The weathering on the end of this stone proves it was once and upright

fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Apr 29, 2002
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by fitzcoraldo

The largest of the Bridestones with the possible other three uprights in the background.

fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Apr 29, 2002
Image of High Bridestones (Stone Circle) by jobbo

the main stone from an angle – remind you of something...?? ;o)

jobbo
jobbo Jan 6, 2002

Articles

High Bridestones

postman
postman Mar 4, 2018

This has been a long time coming, that’s for sure. Right at the very beginning of my stone hunting odyssey I was aware of another Bridestones, far away in North Yorkshire. My Bridestones is the burial chamber near Congleton by the way.
North Yorkshire, five miles south west of Whitby, Aubrey Burl calls it a grim windblown region, I’d go a bit further and call it a hopelessly dead environment, mind numblingly devoid of any character, stupid grouse gurgling go back at me all the time. There are good places, I know for sure, it’s just these featureless moors, I cant stand them.
But I do like stones, so here I am.
My car has been in the car menders three times to have the over heating problem sorted out, so far we’re doing OK, the car is parked at the side of the road with daughter staying wrapped in her blankets whilst I go off into the cold to see the stones and wow it is cold, windy, bone freezing cold. Aubrey, after telling how it is, goes on to say that the stones here are possibly the ruins of two stone circles. One of which could be a four poster. The tall stone with rusting coins crammed into it’s crevices is the sole standing survivor of said four poster. so I can agree with that. But the other stones, I can not fathom them at all. A stone row perhaps, who knows.
But the Low Bridestones a couple hundred yards slightly north of west steal the conundrum crown right off the head of the High Bridstones.
Both the High and low Bridestones are not very far from the road at all, much closer than I’d have thought going off the pictures alone.
In all, I prefer my Bridestones, but you’ve got to see them all to know that.

High Bridestones

stubob
stubob Sep 30, 2004

What’s happened here then? Stones all over the shop. Big stones, little stones, upside down in the heather stones…..Looks like the setting could be any one or more of the suggestions given in the fieldnotes below.
It’s a pity about the erosion of the moor around the stones, but it takes little away from what is an interesting place.

High Bridestones

jobbo
jobbo Jul 31, 2004

I took another visit up here a few days ago, had another wander past the site around the grouse butts, loose rocks, ricky outcrops and sheep, and noticed a rectangular shap that didn’t match the rest of the grouse butts, infact looked nothing like them.

I notice one of the previous posts mentions a cairn – could this be it? Fours walls with slabs over the top, small fern or bracken growing under the slabs. Still a wonderful place no matter how damaged it is (why it hasn’t been fenced off from vehicles I don’t understand)

High Bridestones

Chris Collyer
Chris Collyer Sep 16, 2003

A megalithic mess indeed, it really does look like somebody let a bomb off in the middle of this one. Burl says it could have been a pair of four-posters, but three of the stones on the eastern arrangement are not so much fallen as strewn and look to me as if they’ve been moved making an interpretation difficult – they gave me the impression of having been dumped here during field clearance. They also seem to have a different appearance to the standing stone next to them, it is sandy coloured, smoothish but fractured while the more solid looking prostrate slabs seem a darker colour and are heavily pitted. Perhaps the eroded surface is evidence that they fell a very long time ago though, rather than being toppled recently. A smaller stone stands just to the east.
To the west are the stones of the second setting, for some reason I didn’t go over to look at them, sadly the site doesn’t really inspire you to spend a lot of time here – I’ll investigate the other stones another day.

High Bridestones

juamei
juamei Apr 15, 2003

[visited 11/4/03 & 14/4/03] So after a very nice visit to ramsdale, we meandered our way down and up some very steep little roads to this site. Lovely views but a sore site.

The standing stones and the Grouse Butts are just about the only things recognisable as man-made. I think I found the Cairn that Dyer mentions and maybe 1 or 2 outliers but otherwise a sad sad site.

--

Despite its trashed state (and possibly because of it) the site lies just off the main Whitby to Pickering road, so as we headed back to London after yet another Whitby goff fest, I stopped for a quick second look. I noticed the huge number of 2ps seemingly welded to one of the stones this time and then we made a run for it as about 100 sheep converged on us expecting food...

High Bridestones

jobbo
jobbo Jan 7, 2002

Love your brum-brum engine! It won’t love you that’s for sure when you make it climb the hill to this place! “Upwards at 45 degrees” gained new meaning there!

After roaming around, freezing are fingers and toes off, Commondale and Freebrough Hill we finally reached these lovelies. I was a stone-circle virgin and lost my circle virginity at the High Bridestones – how appropriate we thought!

The main stone looks just like a big willy with it’s bell-end and it’s lovely grassy forest – but it’s a good one! I’m currently painting it, and everyone who sees it thinks the same thing...

A few fallen stones beside it, and some smaller ones scattered about – we had some gorgeous views on that FREEZING autumn evening.

The area can be very boggy when wet, so best not take your good shoes. Lots of lumpy moss all around helps give it an other-worldly atmosphere, but I have to aggree that the area has been badly disturbed by ignorant pheasant shooters, local teens and sheep farmers!

The Low Bridestones just down the hill towards Grosmont are quite hard to find amongst the heather and peat bogs, but just follow the stone wall from the road and you’ll soon see them.

We could easily see circles here, but you’d need an aeriel view to get a better idea of what’s there – but we’re convinced!

Take lots of thick, warm clothes and hot drinks if you go at anytime other than a heatwave – that wind is a nighmare!

High Bridestones

fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Dec 30, 2001

The site has lovely views over the moors and me and tim (dodman apprentice) had a nice post-christmas picnic between the high and low stones on a nice flat outcrop
The whole complex is a bit of a bombsite really.
Trying to inturpret this site is nigh on impossible. Possible stone rows, possible four poster and circle. I don’t think we’ll ever know. The tallest remaining stone is constantly under attack from arseholes jamming coins into the weathered cracks with the result of accelerating the erosion. The whole site is becoming terribly eroded by vehicles accessing the moor and ?the robbing of stone

High Bridestones

P
Porkbeast Aug 30, 2000

Situated high upon a lonely Yorkshire moor upon a bleak limestone pavement surrounded by heather this place presents an experience of devastationƒ a virtual moonscape surrounded by the remnants of military activity. Here 6 enigmatic stones stand forlorn, 5 fallen, besmirched and contaminated by modern activity, not least the attentions of modern seekers who have rammed and hammered coins into the cracks of the stones where they rust and stain with the corruption of a modern spiritual emptiness that sees money (of all things) as an offering to be foisted upon this place. Stones have been placed to reinvent the ñcircleî (which is possibly a pair of ruined fourposters). Never have I seen such a sad site. As I look towards the Esk Valley – as magnificent a view as I have ever beheld – my spirits are still low. To the right stands Flat Howe like a brooding boil upon the horizon and behind me the peaky prominence of Brekon Howe. So desolate do we feel, so distracted by modern intrusion in such a monumental setting we miss the fact that the Low Bridestones are a matter of yards away and thus do not walk the extra plods to visit them. Let this place be a warning to those of us who popularise these liminal spaces, the narratives we bring with us will close down as well as open the doors of our perceptions. We have a duty towards these places that is beyond us and with us.

Miscellaneous

High Bridestones
Stone Circle
fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Sep 22, 2003

“I met a man from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.....Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
tell that it’s sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

P.B. Shelley

Topics

Calling fitzcoraldo 59
FourWinds
FourWinds
Mar 2006

Sites within 20km of High Bridestones

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