This article transcribes the informative leaflet by W. W. Gatenby, which I acquired some years ago during a visit to the monolith and the Church of All Saints at Rudston in the East Riding of Yorkshire. I’ll transcribe the leaflet exactly as is, which means that some of the phrasing and language reads quite dated, but I will look to re-paragraph some of it for ease of reading. jon rosling
Photo Credit: Chris Collyer at stone-circles.org.uk. Used with permission.
The Rudston Monolith, reputedly the tallest standing stone in Britain, is sited a few yards from the north eastern corner or Rudston church, standing some 26 feet above the ground, with an unknown depth below the ground surface, possible equal to three quarters of the above ground height. This, a hewn stone of a rough conglomerate moor grit, set in a precisley vertical position, and obviously placed there by the hand of man.
Its presence there raises several questions: Why was it put there, where did it come from, and how was it transported there?
If we turn back to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, we read that when Joshua destroyed the city of Jericho, rather more than 2 000BC he found two tall standing stones outside the temple of the pagan god Baal. he was so apparently intrigued by this practice that it was soon copied by having similar standing stones erected in front of Jewish temples at that time. In the later Christian era, a similar development was the provision of a tall stone steeple which has continued to this day, either mounted on top of the church structure, or in some cases outside the entrance to the church. jon rosling
The second query, the nearest stone source of rock of the nature of the monolith is in the Cleveland Hills in the North Riding. Finally, the question of transport. As there is no knowledge of the depth of the monolith below ground, the wegith could vary between 30 – 45 tonne, and the stone was probably erected in the neolithic period, long beofre the invention of the wheel.
New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-122921)
Many people are familiar with the exploits of the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, which include crossing the 3 000 miles of the Pacific Ocean on the balsa wood raft, and across the Atlantic on the papyrus grass boat. His long soujourn on the small Easter Island, which followed, sheds some light on this question of cutting out, transporting and erection of a large stone figure.
After spending some months at Easter Island, he gained the confidence of the indigenous inhabitants, who stated that they still knew how to cut out trall stone figures from the parent rock, how to move them some distance overland, and how to stand them up to their full height without requiring a pit in the ground in which to place and secure the base of the tall stone obelisk.
He stated that he would pay them for undertaking these tasks, which they then did, and he was able to take photographs of them cutting out a figure from a vertical rock face, using only dishes of water and stone axes, and then pulling at already fabricated stone figure a considerable distance by a large body of people and a number of rounded tree bracnhes, using them as rollers beneath the stone. This figure was then placed in a vertical position on its own basal feet, by ten men, using only tree branches and blocks of stone to obtain the required leverage. jon rosling
The title of this book describing his work on Easter Island is Aku Aku.
Many people will have seen the tall granite monolith erected on the Thames Embankment, known as Cleopatra’s needle. This was taken from its site near the banks of the Nile before the turn of the century, encased in a steel tube, thoroughly waterproofed, lowered into the Nile and towed by steam boat to England and then up the Thames where it now stands. Although completely submerged, the steel enclosed monolith had sufficient bouyancy not to sink, and eventually it arrived safely at its present destination.
Part II of this article on the Rudston Monolith follows…
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