The Rudston Monolith at over is the tallest
megalith (
standing stone
A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright rock (geology), stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. T ...
) in the
United Kingdom. It is situated in the churchyard in the village of
Rudston () in the
East Riding of Yorkshire.
Description
The stone is slender, with two large flat faces. It is approximately wide and just under thick.
The top appears to have broken off the stone. If pointed, the stone would originally have stood about . In 1773 the stone was capped in lead; this was later removed, though the stone is currently capped.
The weight is estimated at 40 tonnes.
The monolith is made of
gritstone
Gritstone or grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for pa ...
.
The nearest source for the stone (Cayton or Cornelian Bay) is north of the site, although it may have been brought naturally to the site as a
glacial erratic.
The monument dates to the
Late Neolithic or
Early Bronze Age.
A possible
fossilised dinosaur footprint is said to be on one side of the stone, though a study by English Heritage in 2015 concluded that the claim was unsubstantiated.
There is one other smaller stone, of the same type, in the churchyard, which was once situated near the large stone. The
Norman church was almost certainly intentionally built on a site already considered sacred, a practice common through the country – indeed the name of Rudston comes from the Old English "
Rood-stane", meaning "cross-stone", implying that a stone already venerated was adapted for Christian purposes.
The many other prehistoric monuments in the area include four
cursuses, three of which appear to converge on the site of the monolith.
Antiquarian accounts
Sir
William Stukeley
William Stukeley (7 November 1687 – 3 March 1765) was an English antiquarian, physician and Anglican clergyman. A significant influence on the later development of archaeology, he pioneered the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric ...
found "the dimensions of the monolith within ground as large as those without".
Stukeley found many skulls during his dig and suggested they might have been sacrificial.
Thomas Waller states that in 1861 during levelling of the churchyard the surface of the ground near the monolith was raised .
See also
*
Menhir de Champ-Dolent
The Menhir de Champ-Dolent (; ) is a menhir, or upright standing stone, located in a field outside the town of Dol-de-Bretagne. It is the second largest standing stone in Brittany and is over 9 metres high.
Location
The Menhir du Champ-Dolent is 2 ...
in Brittany
References
External links
*
Photos and history of the stone compiled by Mike Thornton
{{European Standing Stones
Prehistory of the East Riding of Yorkshire
Megalithic monuments in England
Stone Age sites in England
Archaeological sites in the East Riding of Yorkshire
Grade I listed buildings in the East Riding of Yorkshire
Bronze Age sites in the East Riding of Yorkshire