Rudston Monolith

When writing up our post about the 3 huge standing stones called the Devil's Arrows we thought that surely they would be the largest examples in the UK, but boy were we wrong.

The tallest of the Devil's Arrows stands at 6.9m tall, but the Rudston Monolith tops it at a whopping 7.6m!

But to keep it standing upright, it must bury into the ground a canny way and archaeological surveys indicate that the monolith may extend several metres underground. too. That's nearly 10m of solid gritstone.

This behemoth is a pretty old boy too dating back to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age, around 2000-3000 BCE. You want more mega facts? It also weighs in at 26 tonnes!

The Rudston Monolith is located in churchyard of All Saints' Church in Rudston, East Yorkshire and is just a short journey down some county roads to find. We also read that the The name 'Rudston' means 'rood stone,' possibly referring to its sacred or cross-like importance.

We had a bit of a mooch around the internet, but we couldn't find the purpose of the stone, however it's possible it may have had religious or ceremonial significance. Of course there are always local legends about such things and we read that the stone was thrown by the devil to disrupt the building of the church.

When writing this we found out there are several other standing stones and prehistoric sites nearby to could have been part of a larger ritual landscape. We'll have to revist to find those.