Folklore of Yorkshire by Kai Roberts Read Free Book Online

protection against malevolent supernatural intrusion and the fact that archaic stone heads are found exclusively in these places indicates that their purpose was primarily apotropaic. Although no study of such features was made until the mid-twentieth century, this hypothesis was confirmed by what few narrative traditions remained connected with the carvings. Where local people did hold an opinion on the function of an archaic stone head in their neighbourhood, they were most often believed to protect the structure against misfortune and malign influences.
    Archaic stone heads were also sometimes believed to commemorate an individual who died during construction work or nearby, despite the carvings having few distinguishing features. It is possible that this belief may be a corrupted remembrance of the apotropaic function of foundation sacrifices, of which the stone head has become a symbolic representation. A classic example is carved on an aqueduct constructed in 1795, which carries the Rochdale Canal over the River Calder at Hebden Bridge. Local tradition claims it is a memorial to somebody who drowned in the river below whilst trying to rescue a child. However, it is almost impossible to see the carving from any vantage point other than the river itself – hardly a fitting monument. As the folklorist John Billingsley comments, the head ‘appears to be directed at a supernatural rather than a human audience.’
    Although archaic stone heads are found throughout the South Pennines, the greatest concentration of such features in vernacular architecture is found around the Aire and Calder valleys. Indeed, their significance was first noticed by Sidney Jackson, a curator working for Bradford Museums Service. Impressed by the contemporary work of Professor Anne Ross on the religious beliefs of Celtic Britain, Jackson grew convinced that many archaic stone heads were actually Celtic in origin, or at least represented an unbroken tradition of such carvings in the region since the Iron Age. Considering that West Yorkshire was the last independent Celtic territory in England – surviving until at least the seventh century before it was subsumed by the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria – such speculation did not seem entirely improbable.
    It is true that skulls and other representations of the human head were widely used as cultic objects by the Celts, and a number of the carved heads found in West Yorkshire do have an Iron Age or Romano-British provenance. Equally, many of the later examples bear a striking stylistic resemblance to the authentically Celtic specimens. Anne Ross herself noted when she surveyed a collection put together by Jackson, ‘What strikes me as above all significant is not so much whether this head or that is genuinely Celtic or not, but the extraordinary continuity of culture shown by this collection. Presumably without knowing it, there are local craftsmen of this very century in these Yorkshire industrial valleys, carving heads with specific characteristics such as the “Celtic eye” … It is a treasure house of continuity.’

    An archaic stone head on Agden Bridge in South Yorkshire. (Kai Roberts)
    However, firm evidence of a continuing tradition is impossible to establish. The vast majority of heads seem to have been carved between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, whilst many others were not found in datable contexts. There are certainly no obvious examples from the early Middle Ages which could bolster the notion of an unbroken lineage and stylistic evidence alone is not sufficient to establish survival over a thousand years from the Dark Ages into the early modern period. As a result, the term ‘archaic stone head’ is now favoured over ‘Celtic stone head’ and most are regarded as the indigenous product of Yorkshire craftsmen during the period following the Reformation until the end of the Industrial Revolution.
    Nonetheless, isolated instances of head carving for apotropaic