In Lancashire’s verdant Ribble Valley, below the gentle ridge of Longridge Fell, an ancient lane winds through the scattered farms which comprise the hamlet known as Dilworth. The track is said to follow the route of a private Roman road, one of many such relics in the area, testifying to a heavy Roman presence almost two thousand years ago. Indeed, the remains of an extensive First Century settlement known as Bremetonacum can be seen at Ribchester nearby.

Some way along this lane, however, lies a less venerable but far more curious antiquity. A huge slab, some eight feet long, two feet wide and one foot thick, is prominently set into a low wall beside the highway. The legend “RAUFFE RADCLIFFE LAID THIS STONE TO LYE FOREVER A.D. 1655” is deeply inscribed upon it. This strange monument is known as the Written Stone of Dilworth and its origins have long been a source of great speculation, breeding all manner of folklore well into the present age.

The Stone received an early mention in Volume Three of Edward Baine’s exhaustive survey, The History of the County Palatine of Lancaster, published in 1836. Baines, however, does not dwell greatly on it’s mystery. Perhaps he saw none in it, prosaically suggesting that Rauffe Radcliffe had once been the owner of the estate and that it represented nothing more sinister than a boundary marker.

A far more picturesque tale concerning the Written Stone appears in John Harland and Thomas Wilkinson’s 1874 tome, Lancashire Legends, attributed to an older, anonymously-authored pamphlet, Curious Corners Round Preston: “Tradition declares this spot to have been the scene of a cruel and barbarous murder, and it is stated that this stone was put down in order to appease the restless spirit of the deceased, which played its nightly gambols long after the body had been hearsed in the earth.”

It goes on to say that a later occupant of the adjacent Written Stone Farm, ignorant or sceptical with regard to the Stone’s alleged purpose, thought it would make an excellent dairy stone for his kitchen and so moved it there accordingly. The farmer soon came to regret his decision, however, for released from its bondage, the spectre set about causing mischief once more.

“Whatever pots, pans, kettles or article of crockery were place on the stone, were titled over, their contents spilled and the vessels themselves kept up a clattering dance the live-long night at the beck of the unseen spirit.” With his family unable to secure a night’s rest for the commotion, the farmer was forced to return the Stone to its original position, where it has remained undisturbed ever since.

A decade or so after Harland and Wilkinson’s publication, the Written Stone was visited by a writer for the Stonyhurst Magazine, journal of the illustrious public school, Stonyhurst College. He tells several more stories about the Stone, the first of which concerns the experience of an old man who inhabited a farm further up the lane: “Wending his way homeward late one evening – close to the stone he saw a female figure which moved along in front of him; he mended his pace to see who it was, but in spite of every effort he never gained on it… Finally his pursuit ended by the disappearance of its object.”

This story has led some writers to speculate that the haunting experienced in the vicinity of the Written Stone may the same as one reported in 1878 by James Bowker in Goblin Tales of Lancashire. Although Bowker does not refer to the Written Stone, the narrative he recounts also took place in the lanes around Longridge Fell. Whilst the topography of the tale suggests it relates to a quite different point in the locality, there is no reason to suppose the spectre could not have ranged far and wide.

Bowker’s story refers to a man named Gabriel Fisher, who having spent the evening drinking at the White Bull in Longridge village, set off home to Kemple End around midnight with only his dog Trotty for company. Descending from the highest point of the road, in the region known as Tootle Height, he drew close upon a woman walking ahead of him, carrying a basket and attired in a “long light cloak and hood, and a large coalscuttle bonnet.” Fisher greeted her but whilst she reciprocated, she did not turn to look at him.

They were now walking abreast, but still the woman did not turn towards him and Fisher couldn’t make out her face beneath the bloom of her bonnet. He tried to engage her in conversation but to no avail, until finally he offered to take her basket. At this, the mysterious woman passed him her burden but as she did so, let out a peal of laughter. Shocked, Fisher lost his grip on the basket and as it tumbled to the ground, the cloth covering slipped away and a human head rolled out onto the road. As the woman turned to pick up the head, Fisher finally glimpsed beneath the bonnet, only to discover that nothing was there at all.

Seeing this macabre spectacle unfold before him, Fisher immediately fled down the hill as fast as he possible could. In an attempt to ensnare her quarry, the revenant hurled her head in pursuit, which flew past Fisher’s ear and landed in the lane before him. With another terrible laugh, the head rolled towards him and as he was forced to leap over it, the thing sprang up from the ground and gnashed at his feet. Finally, however, Fisher was able to cross a stream, providing him with safety from supernatural pursuit.

Returning to the Written Stone itself, the Stonyhurst writer goes on to relate the experience of a local doctor, said to have taken place many years previously. “Passing the Stone, his horse shied and plunged in a state of extreme terror. It then, in spite of bit and rein, galloped forward at a headlong pace, nor was the doctor able to restrain it until he was a mile or two away from the spot. As soon as he had succeeded in stopping, he got down to see if it had anything the matter with it. It was covered in blood!”

Another story records that a doctor, perhaps the very same one, boasted one night in some local public house that he was unafraid of the whatever lurked at the Written Stone and would ride to the stone that very night. He came galloping back a little while later in a state of extreme shock and was unable to recount his experience for some time. At last, he described approaching the Stone “when suddenly a shapeless mass appeared, and he was dragged from his saddle and then so tightly embraced by the monster that he nearly died.”

When the writer Jessica Lofthouse visited the site in 1954, she managed to glean further details from the locals. She was told that before the stone was laid, travellers along the lane “reported bumps and bruises from attacks by an unseen assailant, hats and cloaks whipped away, horses lamed and maddened by fear”. Finally, when Rauffe Radcliffe was moved to subdue the restless spirit, he was joined by a local priest who conducted a full exorcism.

Lofthouse also provides some additions to the story of the Stone’s subsequent removal for a dairy slab, claiming that “bowls of milk turned to blood” when put on the Stone and that a “young maid-servant was witched and died soon after”. Perhaps most significantly, she was told that moving the Stone to the dairy took “a team of six horses… and in doing so every man had a wrench, crushed fingers or bruised toes.” Conversely, it only took one horse to return the Stone to its original position. Finally, Lofthouse asserts that following its restoration, a holly tree – often credited with apotropaic powers – was planted above the Stone to bolster its efficacy.

Whether these features had always been part of the legend or had accrued through retelling since the story was first written down is not clear and now impossible to ascertain. But whilst the former possibility may be true, it is important to bear the alternative in mind. It is sadly all too common for popular writers on folkloric topics to fail to identify the stages in the development of a legend and accept that some may not always have existed in the oral tradition. This oversight has all too often led to erroneous conclusions.

For instance, in their 1976 work, The Secret Country, seminal earth mysterians, Janet and Colin Bord suggest that “the Written Stone was originally a standing stone, or… it was, intentionally or accidentally, placed on the site of a standing stone”. They base this hypothesis largely on the fact that several of the legends attached to the Written Stone bear similarities to legends associated with ancient standing stones and other prehistoric monuments, scattered throughout the British Isles.

From this, the Bords work the site into their system of “earth energies” channelled by a vast network of “leys”, whose power had been recognised and tapped by prehistoric man. They conclude that the Written Stone “took over the older stone’s energy current” and explain the various paranormal activity experienced in its vicinity as the result of unexpected discharges of this energy current, or as coded stories which had preserved this lost knowledge over thousands of years.

In the Bords’ own words, “The earth currents were manipulated by the men who raised the standing stones, the routes of the currents being guides and marked by these standing stones and other structure, and at these points the currents could also be released and controlled at certain times… Any interference with the sites on this ‘grid’ caused an imbalance, or a leaking of current… When the nodal points of the system were disturbed, the result was the general disruption of the current and so humans and cattle died, and in other stranger ways the tenor of people’s lives was adversely affected”.

It is certainly true that the various traditions concerning the Written Stone echo megalith-lore across the country. In Folklore of Prehistoric Sites In Britain, the veteran archaeologist, Leslie V. Grinsell, recorded numerous occurrences of such motifs under the titles “Immovability” and “Fear of Retribution for Disturbing an Antiquity”. Indeed, these two tropes often appear together: a local farmer decides the stone could be put to use elsewhere, finds it almost impossible to shift and even when he finally does so, suffers a plague of misfortune so great that it necessitates the stone’s return. This task proves to be much more easily accomplished.

This basic story is famously told of the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire and many other lesser-known sites around Britain. As such, it represents a “migratory legend”; an archetypal narrative which recurs in similar forms at countless different locations. The deflationary folklorist would argue, therefore, that such a legend cannot provide us with any information about those individual sites. Rather, it becomes told about such places simply because it is told about other, similar places.

This certainly may have been the case with the Written Stone. As we have observed, the report of the difficulty encountered in moving the stone does not appear until many decades after the story of the ensuing paranormal disturbances was first written down. It may be that this was never part of the Written Stone’s native tradition, but became attached to it because it features in corresponding stories elsewhere.

Nonetheless, it may be prudent to observe a distinction made by Paul Screeton, a writer of a similar vintage to the Bords: “Folklorists talk of ‘migratory anecdotes’ and see the larger the number and greater the distribution as evidence of falsity and narrative repetition, whereas forteans assume correlating data over space and time as indicative of genuine phenomena occurring”. In this respect, whilst the Bords take folklore as their evidence, they interpret it as forteans. Ultimately, this choice of perspective may be primarily a matter of inclination.

Regrettably, however, the odds that the Written Stone was originally itself, or replaced, a more ancient standing stone are not good. The evidence of folklore is hardly sufficient, as such stories have been told not only about prehistoric constructions, but of anomalous monoliths of any nature. For instance, an identical narrative is associated with the slab of Robin Hood’s grave at Kirklees in West Yorkshire. It could similarly be argued that this replaced an earlier standing stone but in the absence of supporting evidence, such an argument would be unavoidably circular.

For what reason, then, was the Written Stone originally inscribed and positioned? It is certainly possible that it was intended to lay a troublesome spirit. Whilst a sceptic may dismiss the reality of the phenomena attributed to the location, it is far from improbable that a Seventeenth Century farmer in rural Lancashire would have credited its existence himself. 1655 was, lest we forget, only twenty years after the last substantial witch trial had taken place in the county.

However, the 1650s were troubled times in their own right. Lancashire had been riven by the Civil Wars of the previous decade and following the establishment of the Commonwealth countless Royalist landowners in the area found their estates confiscated. Meanwhile, one local writer complained “In this county hath plague and pestilence been raging for three years and upwards, occasioned chiefly by the wars. There is very great scarcity and dearth of all provisions… All trade, by which they have been much supported, is utterly decayed, it would melt the heart to see the numerous swarms of begging poor”.

Discussing the Written Stone in his History of Longbridge of 1888, Tom C. Smith noted that the Ribchester Parish Registers show a succession of deaths (at least four) in the Radcliffe family in the period 1654-5. In the face of such personal tragedy and wider upheaval, it would hardly be surprising if Rauffe Radcliffe had attempted to secure a degree of immortality for himself by inscribing his name on such a monolith and situating it for eternity.

Alternatively, as Smith suggests, “A feeling of superstitious awe may have been awakened in the breasts of the survivors of the bereaved family and cause them to lay this stone in order to appease the evil spirit that has caused so much trouble”. If this is indeed the case, then we may conclude that the legend purporting to explain the origin of the Written Stone does at least come close to preserving the memory of its initial purpose. But ultimately we may never know and through its ostentatious ambiguity, the Written Stone will continue to serve as a canvas for the myths of each age for generations to come.

Bibliography