There is something undeniably special about Hood Hill, as I tell my son Lochy while we begin our ascent. It is not merely the pleasing symmetry, the pointed summit, or the expansive views. Nor is it only the intriguing medieval earthworks and peculiar erratic boulders deposited long ago by wandering glaciers. What truly sets this hill apart is its uncanny ability to attract and generate stories, woven into the fabric of the moor-edge landscape it inhabits—including Whitestone Cliff, Lake Gormire, Roulston Scar, various caves, a gap known as the Devil’s Stride, and the more recent Kilburn White Horse.
A Folklore Trail
We have come today in pursuit of a tale recorded by the folklorist Thomas Gill in 1852. It concerns a particularly distinctive rock perched on the summit ridge of Hood Hill, known as the Altar Stone. Gill’s local informants recounted that the stone originally resided at Roulston, where druids once used it for sacred and grisly rituals. When early Christian missionaries arrived, the story goes, Satan himself appeared, so enraged that when he landed on the stone, his foot seared into it. As he leapt away, the stone was carried with him, eventually falling to its present location on Hood Hill.
This legend predates the excavation of a massive Iron Age fortification at Roulston by at least a century, leading one to wonder if it represents strands of folk memory from pre-Roman Britain, when the area was the territory of the Brigantes, who indeed would have had druids.
The Altar Stone Today
Visit the Altar Stone now, however, and you will find nothing but fragments within a deep crater. On the evening of 21 September 1954, an RAF Sabre F Mk4 plummeted vertically from a clear sky, making a direct hit that obliterated plane, pilot, and stone alike. Lochy, who is ambivalent about my prehistory obsession, suddenly becomes animated, speculating enthusiastically on the cause of the crash: “The Sabres were among the first turbojet planes, so there was plenty wrong with them. Bird strikes usually meant game over.”
Layered History
Like the Brigantes, Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and the British Empire, the Sabre jets have had their time here. Yet the strange magnetism of Hood Hill has gathered them all in, layering them into a story that is as much a part of this riddled summit as its geology. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now.
