Thursday 13 November 2008

Laying The Boggart

On the corner of a lane in a tiny place called Dilworth in Lancashire lies a huge slab of stone in the bank.

On the stone are carved the words: Ravffe:Radcliffe:laid:this:stone:to:lye:for:ever:A:D:1633: By legend Ravffe, or Ralph, used the stone to imprison a boggart, an evil spirit that haunted the lane after dark.

It is said that at some time in the following centuries the farmer at the nearby farm thought the stone could be better used in his buttery and took it from the hedge. He was plagued though by such ferocious poltergeist activity, that he changed his mind and replaced the stone in the bank where it had come from. The poltergeist activity stopped. The strange thing is... six horses were required to drag the stone downhill to the farm. Yet only one was needed to take the stone back uphill to its resting place...

The first two photographs were taken in 1990. The last time I went to look at the Written Stone, as it is known, was in 2000 Millenium year and the stone had been made into a seat - the bank of earth must have been moving and now requires a wall to keep it up, so the stone has been incorporated into it as a bench. Fancy your chances sitting on it?

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