Old Hartley Blue Stone
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Description
"The Old Hartley Blue Stone is situated outside the Delaval Arms at Old Hartley, between Whitley Bay and Seaton Sluice, overlooking a roundabout. The stone is supposed to have originally marked the centre of Old Hartley and may have been a Saxon boundary marker. It became a symbol of good fortune and by tradition you had to kiss the Blue Stone to become a citizen of Hartley. William Carr, 'The Hercules Of The North', was born in Old Hartley on 3rd April 1756. He regularly demonstrated his strength by lifting the stone. When the old village was demolished in 1940, the stone was buried in the path leading from the Blacksmith's shop to the chapel and when the new road was planned, a Mr Wesley Dickinson removed the stone for safe keeping. When the roadworks were completed in 1973, the Whitley Bay Borough Council replaced the stone as near as possible to its original position. Seaton Valley online: http://www.seatonvalley.org.uk/seatonsluice/your_community/hartley_blue_stone/default.asp Megalithic Portal: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=5609 Spirit of Place: https://spiritofplace.weebly.com/blue-stone-old-hartley.html A 'blue stone' of uncertain provenance, said to be of granite, used to stand on the old Tyne Bridge marking the boundary between Newcastle and Gateshead. It was considered to be post-medieval in date. The Border Minstrelsy of 1847 (page 395) has part of the Ballad of Bewkley Blue Stane, about the feat of lifting a heavy stone to win the hand of a local maid, said to relate to a small hamlet near Elsdon. "They grin as they strive, and they roar and they rive, And the bones and the sinews stretch out with a crack." https://archive.org/details/minstrelsyengli00shelgoog In 2013, a suitable sized whin-stone from Teesdale was replaced at Beukley Farm [[258576]], which has a similar place-name although located much further south of Elsdon, by contemporary stone-lifters. Extreme stone lifting is a tradition still extant in the Scottish Highlands. http://www.teesdalemercury.co.uk/Articles/legendary-stone-is-replaced-with-rock-hauled-from-tees" Photo by Andrew Curtis, 2017. -
Owner
Andrew Curtis -
Source
Geograph (Geograph) -
License
What does this mean? Creative Commons License
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Further information
Link: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5622412
Resource type: Image
Added by: Pat Thomson
Last modified: 1 year, 8 months ago
Viewed: 245 times
Picture Taken: 2017-12-10 -
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