The Hood Hill Altar Stone - Sutton Bank

Hood Hill (centre) and Roulston Scar (left)

 The 'Altar' was a large block of stone located on top of Hood Hill near Sutton Bank, 5 miles to the east of Thirsk.

 Hood Hill is a prominent outlying hill separated off from the main Hambleton Hills escarpment. Up until the 1950's a large block of stone (known locally as The Altar) sat on the ridge of the hill, where it was described as being rectangular in shape, approximately 15 feet in length, 10ft wide, and 6 feet high. The Altar Stone is also said to have had a foot shaped cavity on top of the rock, and so it is perhaps no surprise that it was a local landmark, and also featured in the areas folklore.

  Unfortunately the Altar rock was destroyed in 1954 when an RAF jet aircraft crashed into the hill during a training flight. The circumstances of the crash were something of a mystery at the time, as the jet seems to have nose dived vertically into the Altar Stone, totally destroying both the aircraft and the rock. The Altar Stone appears to have exploded into hundreds of small pieces, and today there is only a crater where it once sat, with a small piece of the rock in the bottom of the hole (SE 50376 81258).

T' Hob o' Tarn Hole

 Erdmänneken - (Schmidt, 1873)

  (As pointed out in the Buckingham Stone post last year, Tarn Hole is privately owned land, and not part of the open access area just to the north.)

Tarn Hole is a large wooded valley on the edge of East Bilsdale Moor, two miles to the south-east of Chop Gate on the North York Moors.

 At one time this valley was home to the Tarn Hole Hob, although next to nothing is known about this secretive little fella. A Hob is a supernatural dwarf-like being, recorded in folklore across the North York Moors and other parts of Northern England. (See the Hob-Thrush of Over Silton). Unfortunately, all we have is the Tarn Hole Hob name, which appeared in a list made in the early 1800's by George Calvert of Pickering (Home, 1905). In this list he noted all the Hobs he had heard about on the North York Moors. At one time there would have been a local story to explain the Hob's connection with Tarn Hole, but it was not written down, and so the folklore has been lost.