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The Devils Footprints and Other Folklore:
Local Legend and Archaeological Evidence in Pendleton, Lancashire


Introduction
Folklore has it that footprints found cut in stone near to the Lancashire
village of Pendleton were created by the Devil, a giant who strode
across the Lancashire moors, on his way to destroy Clitheroe Castle. The
legend of The Devils Footprints on Pendle and the Stones dropped by
him on Apronful Hill is retold here in the context of both the folklore of
Lancashire and its near neighbours, and also the archaeological
evidence for rock cut footprints from the region. We also compare
British footprints with those of Scandinavian origin, where stone cut
marks are more frequent, and of the legends associated with them. A
possible ancient connection between the two is proposed based upon a
close reading of the evidence.

The Legend
The legend, which may have medieval or earlier origin, was passed
down orally until it was first published by John T. Fielding in 1905,
following a visit to Pendleton by the Darwen Rambling Club. It runs as
follows:

It would be impolitic to pass this village without reference to
one of its legends. Near the church, until recently, stood some
huge stones, like the one we noticed spanning the brook.
These were said to have been thrown by the Devil; one
especially was said to still bear the impress of his fingers.
The story runs, and they say that the Devil was
coming with an apronful of stones for the purpose of
knocking down Clitheroe Castle. He was coming from
Accrington way. He stepped from Hambledon to a large
block of sandstone lying on Craggs Farm, above Sabden.
From here he stepped to the Apronful Hill, above
Wellsprings, leaving foot-prints on the stones at Craggs
Farm. Being now in sight of Clitheroe Castle, he took one of
the stones he was carrying, and threw it towards the Castle,
but just then his brat string broke and all the remaining
stones fell to the ground, where they still lie just as they fell.
The stones he threw fell short of the Castle and landed near
the church in Pendleton (Fielding 1905, 14).

A second version was published by Self Weeks in 1917:

On Craggs Farm, near Sabden, on the sloping side of Pendle,
is a mass of sandstone rocks that have fallen down from the
scar above. On one of these big stones are two marks, side by
side, about 2ft 6ins long and about 6ins wide.
They certainly resemble gigantic footmarks, and are said to
be the Devils. Old Scrat, however, when he alighted upon this
stone, he must have crossed his legs, as the left footprint is on
the right side. The outline of one foot is perfect, but the other is
ill-formed, which is, however, easily explained, as it is well
known the Devil has a club foot.
The legend is that the Devil was one day coming with an
apronful of stones for the purpose of knocking down Clitheroe
Castle. He stepped from Hambeldon Hill to Craggs, where he
left the footprints before referred to. His next step was to The
Apronful. Here, being in view of the castle, he took one of the
stones and threw it at the castle, but as he was in the act of
throwing his brat string broke, and all the stones he was
carrying were tumbled on the ground. The stone which he
threw fell short of the mark, and may still be seen lying on the
ground just above Pendleton, with some marks upon it, which
are said to be the print of his fingers (Self Weeks 1916, 86).

The legend, may have medieval or earlier origins (Hallam 1995,
141). One interpretation is that it possibly hints at local animosity
toward outside authority as represented by the castle. Alternatively,
following Jacqueline Simpson (1983) who discusses the many parallel
legends in which the Devil or a giant tries to destroy a prominent
building by throwing a stone at it, or a town by dropping a mass of
earth on it, a better explanation is that this is an instance of the
malevolence of supernatural beings towards humanity. In this context it
is likely that Clitheroe Castle is mentioned as the target because it is a
prominent landmark, far enough from the place where the Devil is said
to have stood to make his throw a spectacular feat. The legend was
offered as a popular explanation for a series of archaeological features
in the area: a panel of rock art depicting carved feet, a
ringwork/platform cairn (Barrowclough 2006 Appendix 1, 86) and a
possible cup-marked stone. Mention of giants and association with the
Devil in the context of prehistoric archaeological features in Lancashire
are not uncommon. For example, Giants Grave, Hell Clough and
Hades Hill (Barrowclough 2006 Appendix 1, 201; 57, 63, 64; 11)
although we no longer have the folklore to explain how these
earthworks came to achieve their names.
Clitheroe Castle, the object of the Devils attack, occupies the
summit of a limestone knoll in the centre of Clitheroe, Lancashire. Built
in the eleventh century it was deliberately damaged after its capture by
Parliamentary forces during the civil war in 1644. The part of the legend
telling of the Devil throwing stones at the Castle could be regarded as
the interpretation of this event. That the legend had earlier antecedents
dating at least to the construction of the castle is possible (Hallam 1995,
141). It could be imagined that the legend expressed the hatred of local
people towards the original building of the Castle in 1186 and those
who had ordered it, or conversely, that the Castle had divine protection
from evil aggressors.
Apronful Hill, Pendle, is a slight prominence on Pendleton
Moor lying to the east of the Nick of Pendle. To the north and east it
commands a splendid view of the Ribble Valley; to the south, across
east Lancashire, and on a clear day the coast and the estuary of the
Ribble to the south-west. Just off the summit, overlooking the village of
Pendleton, a circular spread of stones represents the traditional spot
where the Devil dropped his bratful of stones. Whilst this site has yet to
be proved, it is typical of early Bronze Age burial cairns found
elsewhere in Lancashire. The location of Apronful Hill is recorded by
the first edition of the Ordnance survey 1848 six inch map with, in
smaller type, Apronful denoting the cairn.
In Northern Britain, Wales, Ireland and Scandinavia the terms
apronfuls of stones and broken apron strings recall traditions of
giants carrying apronfuls of stones for building or throwing as missiles
in battle (Self Weeks 1916, 87). Supernatural beings who could build a
cairn in such a way would no doubt gain the respect of the local
population. Brat is a common Lancashire dialect word meaning
apron; in Old Irish it means cloth, plaid or cloak. The nearest
example of the name Apronful to Pendle Hill is a round cairn in
Thornton in Lonsdale (NGR SD 709788) named Apronful of Stones.
Self Weeks quotes:

The Devil (giant) was building a bridge at Kirkby Lonsdale. He
was leaping over the hills from the Yorkshire side to the
Lancashire side, carrying an apronful of stones, when his apron
string broke, letting his burden fall, and the rocks still lie in the
valley where they fell (1916, 86-7)

A letter to George Godwin on the subject of Remains ascribed
to the era of the Druids in Furness, north of Lancashire by Charles
Jopling includes the following account reported to him by an eighty-six
year old man:

The Devil had contracted with a certain king of the north
country, to build a bridge over one of the Lakes. For the
purpose he put on a leather apron, and went to the adjoining
Duddon Valley to procure the necessary material, which as
he gathered he put into his apron. Having got one good load
he essayed to return, and had crossed the highest part of the
hill and descended partly into the valley, when the apron
strings broke and the stones fell into a heap at his feet(for
some reason or other) he then threw up the contract (Jopling
1846, 451-2)

Other examples are: a long barrow in Cumberland known as
Sampsons Bratful and a mound in Radnorshire that carries the name:
Devils Apronful of Stones. The above-mentioned chambered tomb
on Anglesey bears the name Barclodiad-y-Gawres which means
Apronful of the Giantess and in Flintshire the name Arffedogiad-y-
Wrach, meaning Apronful of the Hag. In northern England,
associated with ritual sites are the names Old Wifes Howes in North
Yorkshire; Skirtfull of Stones in the West Riding and Auld Wifes
Apronful of Stones in Northumberland.
Place-names and legends referring to stone-carrying women
or Giantesses have evolved around outcrops of stones and cairns. The
best known of these is the Irish legend associated with the cemetery of
cairns at Loughcrew, County Meath. In the eighteenth century Jonathan
Swift visited the place and hearing the legend from a local gardener put
it to verse:

Determined now her tomb to build
Her ample skirts with stones she filled
And dropped a heap on Carnmore
Then stepped one thousand yards, to toar(?)
And dropped another goodly heap;
And then with one prodigious leap
Gained Carnbeg; and on its height
Displayed the wonders of her might
And when approached deaths awful doom
Her chair was placed within the womb
Of hills whose tops with heather bloom (attrib. Jonathan Swift in
McMann 1993)

The Hags Chair stands by the side of the largest of the Loughcrew
cairns, hewn out of a solid block of stone three metres long and two
metres high (Shee Twohig 1996, 78).
The village of Pendleton to which the legend dealt with in this
paper refers, lies at the foot of Pendle Hill. In 1968 a burial urn was
discovered behind a cottage at the western end of the village. In 1975
archaeological excavation (Hallam 1994) led to the discovery of two
more urn burials containing cremated bone and ceremonial offerings in
a stone circle or cairn dating to the early Bronze Age (Barrowclough
2006 Appendix 1: 28; Barrowclough 2007, 107).
What is most interesting is the reference to footprints left by the
Devil in the rock. Engraved footprints, or natural marks resembling
footprints, although rare, have a wide geographic distribution across
the British Isles, and Scandinavia, and are generally described in
folklore to represent visitations of gods or symbols made to invoke their
presence conferring magical fertility upon the earth. In north-western
Europe, particularly Scandinavia, representations of human feet are
found amongst other symbols of prehistoric art such as axes, swords
and ships, or alongside circles or figures denoting gods, dating to the
Bronze Age. These symbols carved or engraved on boulders, rock
outcrops and slabs forming megalithic graves are obviously of some
significance, and were perhaps involved in ritual ceremonies and
worship.
The Craggs Farm footprints are nearly half a mile north-east of
the ruins of Craggs Farm at the Deerstones rocks, which lie below a
steep-sided ridge to the north. The two depressions are easily visible
amongst the tumbled mass of landslip rocks. They occur on the flat
upper surface of an angular-shaped block of stone and face towards
Hambledon Hill ten and a half miles to the south. The two impressions,
side-by-side, are roughly about 75 cm long and 15 cm wide at their
widest part and seem to have changed little since they were described
by Weeks. Viewed from the south, the left-hand footprint has the shape
of a large right foot. The other is more irregular in shape perhaps a
result of differential weathering or of subsequent vandalism.

Discussion of Footprints
Carvings of human feet on rock art dated to the late Neolithic/early
Bronze Age are extremely rare in England (Forde-Johnston 1957, 34).
Beside the Craggs Farm prints there are only three other examples of
this motif on stones from burial chambers in England, one from the
covering slab of a stone cist at Poole Farm Barrow, West Harptree,
Somerset (Grinsell 1957), another from Harbottle Peels, Coquetdale,
Northumberland, and a series from the Calderstones, Liverpool. The
Poole Farm example is covered with impressions of six single feet
(Figure 1) whilst Harbottle Peels has a single one on a panel forming the
side of a stone cist in which was an inhumation and urn (Forde-
Johnston 1957, 35). Of most interest to the present discussion is the site
of Calderstones because of its geographic proximity.


Figure 1: Rock-cut carvings of human feet referred to in the text.

Overlooking the bank of the river Mersey was the late
Neolithic/early Bronze Age Calderstones burial monument
(Barrowclough 2006 Appendix 1, 48; Barrowclough 2007, 121-24). First
mention of the site is in legal documents dated 1568 where it is referred
to in a boundary dispute. The site is described as a tumulus (Stewart-
Brown 1911, 106-40). In 1765 the mound was disturbed and pottery and
cremated bone was found (Baines 1968 [1825], 698). The subsequent
destruction of the mound was recorded in a series of letters to the
Liverpool Daily Post between mid November and December 1896 (in
particular those dated 17, 20, 21 and 23 November). The monument was
notable because the large stones that formed the tumulus were
decorated with rock art (Forde-Johnston 1957). As a consequence they
attracted the attention of local people and were preserved. The
remaining stones now reside in a glasshouse in the Calderstones Park,
Liverpool. It is the rock art that is significant to the present discussion.
Along with numerous cup marks, three cup and ring marks, and a
dozen or more spirals of various configurations, are ten carvings of
unshod human feet. Some of these display evidence of genetic
abnormalities, in particular missing/fused toes (Figure 1).
Elsewhere nine other sites with bare footmarks are known, six
in Scotland and three in Ireland (Barrowclough 2007, 123). The
markings at all these sites consist of either a single footmark (seven
sites) or two markings arranged as a pair (three sites). The total number
of markings at the nine sites is twelve, compared to ten for the
Calderstones. The concentration of foot carvings at the Calderstones is
all the more significant for the fact that as a general rule rock art does
not figure in the archaeological record of Lancashire. Only two panels
are known in addition to Calderstones. They are a cup and ring and cup
marked stone found on the Anglezarke uplands and the Craggs Farm
shod footmarks (Figure 1) (Hallam 1995). Shod footmarks are also rare.
A single mark is known from the site of Alwinton, Northumberland
(Figure 1). It was found on the inside of a slab forming a cist containing
an inhumation accompanied by food vessels (Kinnes and Longworth
1985, No. 202) and, therefore, also dated to the late Neolithic/ early
Bronze Age. It would appear that the largest concentration of feet
depicted in rock art in the British Isles appears in a region otherwise
almost devoid of a tradition of rock art.
Footprint or foot sole images, although rare in the British Isles,
occur in larger numbers on decorated panels in western Sweden. They
generally appear in pairs and are, like the Craggs Farm example, often,
but not always, shod. Examples are panels in Kville hundred Bohusln,
western Sweden, Scania, Ostergotland and Fossum (Figure 2). The
prints are carved life-size, unlike the other depictions found alongside
them, and Bradley (2000, 142) argues that they represent the dead. The
depictions in seventy-seven per cent of the examples follow a path
leading up, and then down, the surface of the rock (Nordbladh 1980),
that is, they represent movement in two directions, which has been
interpreted by Bradley as linking the world of the living with that of the
dead (Bradley 2000, 142). This interpretation may explain why the
Craggs Farm prints point in opposite directions. Rather than having
crossed his feet as Self Weeks describes, the prints represent two
different directions of travel. One foot heading up the hill and one
down.


Figure 2. Examples of foot carvings from Scandinavia. (Sources
Kville-Fredsj [in Bradley 2000, 140]; all others Hallam 1995, 140).

In the mythology of northern Scandinavia the dead occupy an
underworld that is the mirror image of the world occupied by the
living: the lower layer [of the cosmos] is the inverted world of the
dead, whose feet, since they walk upside down, are sometimes thought
to touch the soles of the living who walk upright (Ingold 1986, 246;
see also Davidson and Gelling 1969, 153). There is evidence that
inversion was also important to the early Bronze Age community of
Lancashire in the context of funerary urns, which we frequently
inverted when they were buried in barrows (Barrowclough 2007, Chap.
7). I proposed that the inversion of funerary urns was associated with
the need to contain the dead, separating the deceased from the living.
The footprints may further extend our understanding of their belief
system.
It is relevant that some of the carvings depict shod feet. In
Icelandic folklore the recently dead must be helped on their journey to
the underworld by the provision of footwear known as hel-shoes (Ellis
1943, 39, 62 and 75). Bradley (2000, 142) wonders whether this could be
an echo of the beliefs enshrined in Bronze Age art, a point echoing that
of Davidson (1969):
The sagas refer to a custom of binding death-shoes on
the feet of the dead which if genuinely based on funeral
practices in the heathen period, suggests a symbol of a
journey to another world, and the hope that the dead might
not remain in the vicinity of the grave to trouble the living
(Gelling and Davidson 1969, 153).

If so, the liminal area in between the living and the dead might
be an appropriate place for rituals, including rights of passage (van
Gannep 1908), to be undertaken.
In the Swedish examples the footprints record the passage of
the deceased from cairns located on higher ground, through a liminal
area marked by ship motifs, down to the sea. For example, at Jarrestad
4, Scania, which overlooks a valley leading to the sea, there are
drawings of foot soles and prints linking the summit of a rock to a small
bog below (Coles 1999; Althin 1945). Foot-sole images follow a path
leading toward the lower ground; some are in pairs. Following Klaus
Randsborgs reading of the imagery at Kivik and Sagaholm (Randsborg
1993) this may be interpreted as representing, two distinct domains, the
higher ground, the heavens where Bronze Age barrows celebrated the
ancestors and the sea of the dead to which they had to travel.
Symbolically, the journey from the grave, cutting across the landscape
of the living, to the sea links the two. If the foot soles represent the hel-
shoes of the recently deceased, they may record the path from the grave
to the world beyond. This may offer an explanation of the Craggs Farm
shod-footprints, which are on a hill overlooking the river at Pendleton.
They could represent the hel-shoes of the dead making the final journey
from funeral cairn to sea. In an analysis of funerary cairns in Lancashire
(Barrowclough 2007), Salmonidae bones were found as ritual grave
offerings, it was proposed that this was significant because the lifecycle
of the salmon involves the cyclical movement from freshwater rivers to
saltwater sea and back to freshwater river and death. That there was a
cosmological connection between funerary monuments, the dead and
the sea, is consistent with this interpretation. Evidence for connections
between Lancashire and Scandinavia during the late Neolithic and early
Bronze Age periods exist in the form of Scandinavian flint axes found in
both Bury and the environs of Manchester (Barrowclough 2006
Appendix 3, 30) and so it is not so large a leap of faith to propose
Scandinavian influence on their religious beliefs.

Conclusion
Taking folklore as its starting point this study points to the value of
legend for our understanding of ancient sites. Archaeologists often
neglect this source in preference to objective scientific techniques. In so
doing they fail to recognise the richness of this source of data.
Conversely, archaeological study of sites has the potential to add to the
biography of ancient places. What is proposed here is more research
that adopts an integrated approach combining both archaeology and
folklore.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following for their assistance in the
preparation of this paper. Letitia Caparelli of Darwen Library (for access
to the records of the Darwen Rambling Club) and Mary Chester-
Kadwell.



Abbreviation
NGR: National Grid Reference

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Acknowledgements



Pendleton Past and Present would like to thank all the members of the
community of Pendleton and the surrounding area for all their help,
hospitality and support. Without the local community this project
would not have been possible.



Pendleton Past and Present would particularly like to thank the
Heritage Lottery Fund and The National Lottery for their financial
support.