The Hell Hole Rock - Crosper

 Crosper is located three miles to the south east of Harrogate.

 The Crosper place name survives today as Crosper Farm, on the road between Harrogate and the village of Spofforth. Crosper is thought to mean 'cross hill', perhaps from a cross having stood there in the past, although no cross exists today. In the fields around Crosper farm there are several large rock outcrops - part of the nearby Plumpton rocks group, which are thought to be the source of the Devil's Arrows standing stones at Boroughbridge, nine miles to the north. One of these outcrops on the east side of the farm is known as the Hell Hole rock, probably from the large cavity passing through one side of it.

 Harry Speight provides a description of the site in his Nidderdale book (Speight 1894) ...

The lost Rocking Stone of Thornthwaite

1854 OS map  (Map credit NLS)

 Thornthwaite township is a scattered community spread along the Padside Beck valley, 8 miles to the west of Harrogate.

 The first edition OS map (1854) marks a Rocking Stone at Rowantree Crags on the high ground to the south west of Thornthwaite. The Rocking Stone does not appear on later edition maps, which ominously mark a quarry at the same location. However, overlaying the old OS map onto a modern satellite image seemed to show that a large rock still existed at the location marked for the Rocking Stone. Was it possible that the Rocking Stone had survived?

 Unfortunately, a visit to the site in Sept 2021 found no sign of the Rocking Stone, and very little sign of the Rowantree Crags, which appear to have been totally quarried away. The piece of rock visible on the satellite image turned out to be an exposed section of bed rock, which for some reason had not been quarried, and curiously, is very close to where the Rocking Stone was located. It is likely that the Rocking Stone sat on a similar section of rock within a few metres of this location.