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| The Louth Stone or Bluestone/Blewstone, first mentioned in 1503 and weighing four to five tons. Now located outside Louth Museum, in all of the early references it was situated at the junction of Mercer Row and Upgate in the centre of town, although some unwarranted nineteenth-century antiquarian speculation that it was originally located in the Julian Bower maze outside of the town has found its way on to the museum's plaque describing it. |
The term 'bluestone' or 'blue stone' is used for a number of apparently notable boulders found in eastern Lincolnshire, as well as occurring in the name of the important prehistoric ridgeway across the Lincolnshire Wolds now known as the 'Bluestone Heath Road'. The latter name is absent from Kenneth Cameron's 1998 volume A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names, despite other major Lincolnshire road-names appearing there, and isn't considered in Victor Watts' Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names or other national surveys like that of Ekwall and Mills, although it appears on relatively large-scale maps like the OS 1:50,000 Landranger.(1) The road-name was noted by G. S. Streatfeild, who observed that 'no-one is able to explain the Blue Stone' in this name and suggested that it was perhaps a corruption of the medieval road-name Buskhowstrete for the same route, a position reiterated by Arthur Owen. On the other hand, Irene Bower in her 1940 doctoral thesis on The Place-Names of Lindsey offers the brief and arguably more credible opinion that the name is not a corruption of Buskhowstrete, but rather an independent name that 'refers to the blue stones in the north east of Lindsey', perhaps because a notable example of one of these was once found on the Wolds here, a conclusion also supported by C. W. Phillips.(2) Certainly, the term 'bluestone' or 'blue stone' for specific, important stones recurs repeatedly in eastern Lincolnshire from at least the first half of the seventeenth century, and there moreover seems to be evidence for the separate existence of a Blueſtone Heath or Blue Stone Heath in the Wolds north of Belchford and to the west of the Louth, which would support 'Bluestone Heath Road' being a genuine name instead of a corruption. Thus a reference to Blueſtone Heath occurs in the Journals of the House of Commons for 1770, another is found in Pride and Luckombe's The Traveller's Companion of 1789, and an area of the Wolds is labelled Blue Stone Heath on Captain Andrew Armstrong's 1779 Map of Lincolnshire, although this name for the central Wolds doesn't seem to survive in active use beyond the first half of the nineteenth century aside from in the road-name.(3) So, the question must become, what exactly was a Lincolnshire 'blue stone'?
With regard to the question of quite what a 'blue stone' was in a Lincolnshire context, the specific examples that we know of all seem to have been large boulders and glacial erratics (glacially-deposited rocks that differ in size and type from the rock native to the area in which they rest) used as boundary and meeting-stones in eastern Lincolnshire. The 'Louth Stone', for example, is also known as the 'blewstone' at least as early as 1651, and seems to have functioned as a meeting- and judicial stone for the town located in the centre of Louth at the junction of Mercer Row and Upgate since at least 1503—so, for example, the Warden of Louth was paid 6d for the examination of Jews 'at Blew stone' in 1745, and it is also claimed to have been 'a sanctuary for murders and other criminals'.(4) Likewise, there were two major boundary-stones each known as 'the blew stone' at Grimsby by the seventeenth century, one being located on the coast between Grimsby and Cleethorpes (where it is shown on the 1819 OS draft map and the subsequent First Series) and the other being the famous Havelocks Stone, which was described by Gervase Holles in 1634 as a great blue stone functioning as a 'Boundry-Stone lying at ye East-ende of Briggow-gate'.(5)
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| The Blue Stone Heath, as marked on Captain Armstrong's Map of Lincolnshire, 1779; the interesting circle to its north is probably Belchford Wood, with a close examination of the marks revealing them to be trees (image: British Library). |
Another important 'blue stone' was found in Humberston parish, located just to the south of Cleethorpes, whose name was first recorded in the eleventh century and means 'the stone by the River Humber', with Gervase Holles in 1634 identifying the 'Humberstone' as being 'a great Boundry blew Stone just at the place where Humber looseth himselfe in ye German Ocean'.(6) Ethel Rudkin similarly drew attention to another important 'blue stone' at North Thoresby, which is referred to as follows in White's 1856 Directory of Lincolnshire:
In a field near the church, called Bound croft, is a blue stone, over which the manor court was formerly held.(7)
Ethel Rudkin noted of this in 1934 that 'the Stone lies in a field immediately north of the Church, in a depression, with banks round it' and that the Sexton at North Thoresby recalled there being a Court Day when he was lad.(8) Furthermore, in 1935 she published extracts of a mid-nineteenth-century manuscript history of Lincolnshire by John Smith of Caistor that included a tale that linked this blue stone and another at the Deserted Medieval Village of Audby/Autby in North Thoresby parish with the medieval Lincolnshire story of Havelok and Grim, the supposed founder of Grimsby (interestingly, both stones in Grimsby have been associated with figures from this too). According to Smith, he was told by locals twenty years previously that these two blue stones were magical, the one at Thoresby having the ability to control the rain and the one at Audby having the ability 'to make the corn grow', and together they caused there to be 'plenty in the land'. John Smith then went on record that he was told by the 'rustics' of Audby that:
Ivery year for a long while after the folks cam' fra far an' wide to a grand feast about the stanes, an' they were whipt till iverybody went wicked wi' prosperity. Then the Devil come an' flew away wi' Grim's stane [the Audby stone].(9)
John Smith further commented that the North Thoresby stone, known as 'Boundel's stone',
is a large blue stone standing near the centre of an old enclosure at the north end of the village, I was met with the ready tradition that owing to its ancient votaries having made a practice of planting their rods of hazel and wych-elm in the soil around, after the ceremony of basting, a grove had grown up for its protection; hazel and wych-elm it appears offering very potent charms against necromancy...It is traditionally stated that in old time whenever the Manorial Court was held here the steward, jurymen and tenants of the Manor used to march in procession, each bearing a white hazel wand (peeled rods of ash, willow, or hazel) from the Manor House at Audeby through the village to Boundel's Croft, and there surrounding the stone, used to perform an ancient ceremony in connexion with all transfers of land.(10)
The stone itself is, incidentally, probably the stone referred to in the North Thoresby street Stanholme Lane, recorded as Stayneholme in 1451–53, that surrounds the relevant field to the north of the church, suggesting that the stone's local importance may stretch back to the late medieval era and likely before, whilst an unlocated twelfth- to fourteenth-century Hotie or Hortye in North Thoresby, meaning 'public meeting-place at a muddy site', may well have applied to this site too.(11) Finally, other 'blue stones' were found in the Lincolnshire Wolds village of West Ravendale, where a Blueston feild is documented in 1630 but not after, and at Immingham to the north of Grimsby, which gave its name to Bluestone Lane and the Bluestone Inn, with a large glacial erratic erected by the Inn in the early 1960s that is said to have been 'taken from a field at the top of the Lane'.(12)
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| Detail of Edward Metcalf's 1819 draft map of Grimsby for the Ordnance Survey, showing the location of the Blue Stone on the coast between Grimsby and Clee (image: British Library). |
This is all most intriguing. Of course, it is worth pointing out that the term 'bluestone'/'blue stone' for large, significant boulders is not solely restricted to eastern Lincolnshire, although it does seem to be exceptionally prevalent here. The volumes of The Survey of English Place-Names include a small handful of other examples, namely two instances from Cheshire (a 'Bluestone' glacial erratic at Acton and another called 'the Blewe Stonne at Blacon' that functioned as a boundary-stone), one from Norfolk (Cawston parish, surviving in a number of names, for example Bluestone Hall), and one in County Durham (a 'Blue Stone Carr' recorded in the nineteenth century at Bishop Middleton).(13) In addition, there was a stone known as 'The Great Blue Stone' that functioned as the market stone at Scarborough, being 'where public bargains were ratified and discharged, it being the custom in those days'; a 'blew Stone about the middle of the Bridge' at Newcastle that marked 'the bounds of Newcastle Southwards' and from which the Mayor pronounced the banishment of the Society of Friends from Newcastle in 1657–8; a 'Blew-Stone' on the boundary between the demesne of Manchester and the township of Reddish' that was first mentioned in 1322; and a handful of 'blue stones' in Scotland too, such as the Devil's Blue Stane at Crail, Fife.(14) It would be remiss not to also mention here perhaps the most famous insular 'bluestones', those non-local stones—transported ultimately from Wales—known by this name at Stonehenge, which were first recorded as 'blue stones' in 1812 according to the OED. With regard to these bluestones, it is worth noting that the name Stonehenge seems to derive from Old English stān + hengen, arguably meaning 'stone gallows', suggesting that the site may have had some (at least imagined) judicial function in the past, something potentially supported by the discovery of a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon decapitation burial there.(15) Finally, it is important to observe that the name 'Bluestone' (Blauwe Steen, Blaue Stein, Blåstein and similar) also occur for a number of important stones used as boundary-stones, judicial-stones, court-stones or even execution-stones outside of Britain too, particularly in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Flanders (northern Belgium), and parts of Germany, with examples in Flanders additionally being often associated with prehistoric burial mounds.(16)
So, what does the term 'bluestone' mean? The simplest solution would obviously be that these locally important stones all just so happened to be bluish in colour and hence were each, independently, named 'the blue stone' or similar, purely as the result of a rather notable coincidence. The problem with this, however, is that not all of the 'bluestones' actually seem to be particularly 'bluish' in colour. Richard Coates, referring to those in the Grimsby area, has noted that 'the
colour blue seems irrelevant to the instances known to me', and something similar is apparently true for many of the 'bluestones' recorded in Germany too.(17) Indeed, Grimsby's 'the blew stone in Welowgate', also known as Havelocks Stone, is reportedly actually a boulder of pinkish granite, whilst images of the Immingham, Scarborough and Crail stones, for example, don't suggest stones that might be thought of as being primarily blue in colour. Such a description might just about fit the dark-coloured Louth Stone, at least with the eye of faith, though it should be noted that the 'Blue Stone' at Louth was clearly not considered particularly blue by the folk of the town, as at one point it was actually painted blue to match its name!(18) Likewise, it was said in 1930 of the North Thoresby example that 'the stone is not blue', and English Heritage notes of the famous Stonehenge 'bluestones' that not only are they made from a variety of types of stone, but they also do 'not appear blue' under normal circumstances, although they are somewhat tenuously said to have a 'bluish tint' when freshly broken or wet.(19)
So, if these important 'bluestones' that were used as meeting-stones, judicial-stones, market-stones, and boundary-stones were not all blue, or obviously blue, then why were they all called this? The implication of the above would seem to be that 'bluestone' is here functioning not as a simple descriptive name, but rather as some sort a technical/functional term, but what might this be? Thus far, only one theory has been suggested for the English examples, which has been outlined by Richard Coates, the current President of the English Place-Name Society, as follows:
The origin of the term bluestone has not been ascertained, but the colour blue seems irrelevant to the instances known to me. There is no strong formal reason why the first element should not be Sc. *blōð ‘blood’ or even *blōt ‘sacrifice’. In either case, Sc. *stein- has presumably been replaced by its English counterpart. It is *stein- that appears in the earliest attestations of Stanholme in North Thoresby.(20)
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| Bloater Hill, North Willingham, whose name may derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound' (image © Chris/Geograph, CC-BY-SA 2.0). |
Needless to say, this alternative theory is certainly an interesting idea. In terms of the local context, it is worth noting that a small number of other names involving Scandinavian blōt, 'sacrifice, heathen activities', have been identified in Lincolnshire. One is Blod hou, recorded in the thirteenth century in Barrow-upon-Humber parish, which Kenneth Cameron and John Insley derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound'.(21) Another is Bloater Hill in North Willingham parish, Bloatoe Hill in 1606 and bloto in 1697, which Cameron leaves unexplained but Coates considers to be identical in meaning to Blod hou and to likewise derive from Old Norse blóthaugr, 'a sacrificial mound', something that may also apply to Blodhow in Thurmaston parish in neighbouring Leicestershire. A final example may be Blotryngcarre in Scartho parish, Grimsby, which could, just possibly, also involve blōt, although other explanations are possible.(22)
Of course, whilst all of this does suggest that the element blōt was indeed used in Anglo-Scandinavian Lincolnshire, it also highlights an issue with deriving the local names 'bluestone' and 'Bluestone Heath' from blōt, namely the lack of any instances with similar formed first elements amongst the various bluestones/blewstones, which should urge caution here. Similarly, the implied interpretation of these stones that the above etymology would involve is perhaps uncomfortably close to early antiquarian explanations of them—for example, the 'blew-stone' at Louth was suggested by Robert Bayley in 1834 to have been 'a Druid stone, which was used perhaps on Julian Bower for an altar'.(23) On the other hand, some of the English and the Continental examples do seem to have functioned as judicial- or even execution-stones, which is suggestive, and Coates's etymology is certainly intriguing and would help explain the use of 'bluestone' for such a limited group of important and not-always-blue stones. In this light, it may also be worth noting that it has been independently argued that the Blåstein, 'Bluestone', near the famous ninth-century Gokstad ship-burial at Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway, was originally a blotstein, 'sacrifice stone', so the shift from this name to 'bluestone' in England would not be without potential parallels elsewhere.(24)
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| The site of the ninth-century Gokstad ship-burial at Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway (left of the map, marked by an antiquity symbol) and the nearby Blåstein (right of map); click for a larger view (image: OpenStreetMap). |
A list of Lincolnshire bluestones and bluestone names
1. The Blue Stone Heath & Bluestone Heath Road
The Blue Stone Heath or Blueſtone Heath occurs from at least 1770, when it appears in the Journals of the House of Commons in reference to the new Turnpike to be constructed from Louth in that year, suggesting that it was an already well-established term for part of the central Lincolnshire Wolds by that date. The 'Blue Stone Heath' is also labelled on Captain Andrew Armstrong's Map of Lincolnshire of 1776-9, John Cary's A New Map of Lincolnshire of 1801, and George Bellas Greenlough's A Physical and Geological Map of England and Wales (1820, 2nd edn. 1839), in all cases to the north of Belchford, and C. W. Phillips in 1933 noted that 'the Blue Stone Heath was the upland tract between Belchford and Cadwell'. It appears subsequently in the name 'Bluestone Heath Road', which doesn't seem to be recorded before the nineteenth century, but occurs both on Edward Metcalf's 1819 draft map for the Ordnance Survey and in Thomas Allen's 1834 History of the County of Lincoln as an accepted name for the road north and east of Scamblesby and Belchford known in the medieval period as Buskhowstrete. Phillips suggests, reasonably, that this tract of upland 'may have carried a well-known glacial erratic' or 'blue stone', going on to say that 'many of these "blue stones" are found in the Wold country. The most famous is at Louth... The stone which presumably gave its name to the Heath is gone.'(25)
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| The Bluestone Heath, as marked on Greenlough's A Physical and Geological Map of England and Wales, 1839 (image: David Rumsey). |
2. The 'blew-stone' at Louth, aka the Louth Stone
The first reference to the 'blew-stone' at Louth occurs on 24 July 1503, when land lying in the town of Louth at Louth Stone (ad louth stone) is mentioned; subsequent references to the hous leyng agayn Louth stone or Lowth Stone occur in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and indicate that one the 'great houses' of Louth lay by it, and by the seventeenth century this house was known as the blew-stone House. In 1651, this was occupied by a Mr Walpole, who subsequently bought it in 1677 for £150, and in 1728 the Blue Stone Inn was sold by John Walpole to an innkeeper
called Robert Shaw. This inn was reputed to be the largest in Lincolnshire, occupying the whole of the westernmost medieval burgage tenement fronting on to Mercer Row where it joined Upgate and running all the way back to Kidgate, and references to Blue Stone/Louth Stone itself confirm that it too stood here in the centre of town at the junction of Upgate and Mercer Row up until 1827, when the owner of the former Blue Stone Inn, a printer named Benjamin Fotherby, moved it into his yard. It has subsequently been moved to the front of Louth Museum on Broadbank. It should be noted that, although the plaque above the stone on the museum wall claims that the stone was originally located in the medieval Julian Bower maze on the top of the southern hill above the town, there is absolutely no evidence for this. The idea began in 1834 as speculation on the part of a local antiquarian author and minister, Robert Bayley, who hypothesised that the stone was
a Druid stone, which was used perhaps on Julian Bower for an altar... (26)
but offered no support for this flight of fancy. Indeed, all the evidence we have suggests that, from its first recording, the Blue Stone/Louth Stone was located in the centre of town at the junction of the main commercial street, Mercer Row (the 'principal street' of Louth, according to John Britton in 1807), and the main north–south routeway through the town, Upgate. As to its use, it seems to have functioned at least in part as a judicial stone, as in 1745 when the Warden of Louth was paid 6d. for 'Jews Examined' there in that year, whilst other references suggest an at least occasional use as a market-stone, with items being pledged for sale there (cf. the Scarborough 'Great Blue Stone'). It is also claimed to have been 'a sanctuary for murders and other criminals'.(27)
3. Havelocks Stone, or 'the blew stone in Welowgate'
This 'blew stone' seems to be first mentioned under the name havelokeston in 1521, with its description as a blew stone/blewstone being first recorded in the seventeenth century. In 1634, Gervase Holles describes this as a 'Boundry-Stone lying at ye East-ende Of Briggow-gate' that 'retaines ye name of Havelocks Stone to this day', Havelok being the hero of the medieval Lincolnshire poem Havelok the Dane and a key personage in the foundation-story of Grimsby. George Oliver in 1825 also writes of this stone as follows:
An ancient monument, still in existence, offers a further testimony to corroborate the story of Gryme and Haveloc. A large stone, composed of imperishable materials, said to have been brought by the Danes, out of their own country, forms the landmark which separates the parish of Grimsby from the adjoining hamlet of Wellow; and is know at this day by the significant appellation of Haveloc's Stone.(28)
According to Anderson Bates in his Gossip About Old Grimsby of 1893, the stone was 'placed in the road opposite the end of the passage to the house No. 8, Wellowgate, and what remains of it may now be seen near the kerbstone, so that part of the house was in Wellow, and part in Grimsby'. Bates further records both Oliver's tale that the stone was brought over by the Danes and an alternative tale that it was once part of the church, but had been thrown down from there by Grim (the founder of the town) when he was attempting to stop a hostile fleet!(29) The stone was reportedly moved to Welholme Galleries at some point after this and is said to be a boulder of pinkish granite found there.(30)
4. Grimsby's blew stone on the coast by the old Race Ground
This boundary-stone seems to be first recorded in the seventeenth century as the blew stone or ye blewstone and was located on the coast between Grimsby and Clee. Although it has been suggested that the stone was first placed on the coast in 1824, it is shown there on Edward Metcalf's 1819 draft map of Grimsby for the Ordnance Survey. The Freemen of Grimsby and the Cleethorpes Commoners apparently contested the exact boundary on the coast here and the associated rights of grazing on 69 acres of Common, with the boundary being only definitively fixed on the blue stone after a trial at the Lincoln Assizes in 1830; it was presumably decided that the blue stone was indeed the ancient boundary marker, contrary to the claims of the Grimsby men.(31) Certainly, this was the interpretation in Cleethorpes. In C. Ernest Watson's A History of Clee and the Thorpes of Clee, published in 1901, it is noted that the 'famous "Blue Stone"' was
a relic of the time when the Mayor and Corporation of Grimsby "whipped the boundaries." Tradition, however, could not control the rapacity of the Grimbarians, who claimed that their Marsh extended as far as the Old Haven. The Meggies [a local name for the inhabitants of Cleethorpes] pinned their faith upon the Blue Stone, and the Kirton Quarter Sessions of 1828 pronounced in their favour. The town was not going to be brow-beaten by the village, verdict or no verdict; Grimsby turned its cattle to graze between the Blue Stone and the Old Haven. Cleethorpes promptly impounded them. Grimsby sent out a hundred stalwarts armed with bludgeons to assault the pound and rescue the cattle. Cleethorpes charged them with pound-breach, and nine of the enemy went to prison. Grimsby thereupon adopted the Meggy plan of campaign and impounded all Cleethorpes cattle found on the North of the Old Haven. Cleethorpes again invoked the law, and at the Lincoln Assizes of 1830 the matter was finally settled in their favour. (32)
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| The location of the coastal Blue Stone on the common land that was used for racing; the Blue stone is shown to lie approximately on the inland boundary of Grimsby as it extends along the coast to the Racing Ground, but the courts in 1828 and 1830 agreed with the men of Cleethorpes that the ancient boundary of Grimsby only went up to this stone, not beyond as depicted on this Grimsby map from the first half of the nineteenth century (photo: C. R. Green; the map is an older map included in Anderson Bates' A Gossip of Old Grimsby, 1893). |
5. The Humberstone
The name of Humberston parish, first recorded in Domesday Book, means 'the stone by the River Humber'; in 1634 Gervase Holles identified the 'Humberstone' as being 'a great Boundry blew Stone just at the place where Humber looseth himselfe in ye German Ocean', as noted above.
6 & 7. The blue stones at North Thoresby and AudbyThe North Thoresby stone, located in a field immediately to the north of the church, seems to be first recorded as a 'blue stone' in the early nineteenth century, but the field-name Stayneholme, recorded in 1451–53 and surviving as 'Stanholme Lane' running around the field to the north of the church, suggests that it was certainly in place by that date at the latest. Ethel Rudkin and others have chronicled a number of fascinating tales and superstitions surrounding the North Thoresby stone and an apparent now-lost twin at the DMV of Audby, which are given at length above. The stone seems to have functioned as a meeting-place and court-site, as well as being credited with some sort of role in ensuring rain. Further details of local traditions about the site are given by Walter Johnson, who recorded the following in 1908:
An old lady, born in 1819, told me that in her childhood the village fair of North Thoresby (Lincs.) was held near the church, in a field which had a large blue stone in the middle. Around this stone games were played. Villagers born a little later, say 1830–40, could tell nothing of the custom... the jury of the manorial courts formerly met at this stone, within 'an old enclosure'...(33)
The stone itself was described as 'not blue' in 1930, despite its name, and since then has either been removed or buried (it has been recently claimed that the stone has been rediscovered and is sunk into the field so that only the top is visible); the Audby stone is mentioned in stories, but was said in these to have been taken away by the Devil.(34) Excavations in the 1960s in the relevant field to the north of the church found a large rubbish pit with finds dated from the the late fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, and noted that the Bluestone here was also 'called the Moot Stone locally'.(35) Interestingly, twelfth- to fourteenth-century documents also record an unlocated Hotie or Hortye in North Thoresby parish, which probably means 'public meeting-place at a muddy site' and may well have applied to this site too.
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| The site of the Blue Stone at North Thoresby to the north of St Helen's Church; note the street-name Stanholme Lane, aka 'the gate [road] that comes from Stainholme' (1664), around the field in question, which preserves the fifteenth-century name Stayneholme, probably referring to the meeting-stone in this field. The third side of the field is marked by 'Bond Croft Drain', which matches the later-recorded name for this field, 'Boundel's Croft' (image: imagery © 2021 CNES/Airbus, Getmapping plc, Infoterra Ltd & Bluesky, Maxar Technologies; map data © 2021 Google. Click here for a larger, zoomable version). |
8. The West Ravendale Blueston
A Blueston feild is documented in West Ravendale parish in 1630, but isn't mentioned subsequently.
9. The Immingham Bluestone
There was presumably a Bluestone at Immingham to the north of Grimsby, which gave its name to Bluestone Lane and the Bluestone Inn. The latter road-name is first recorded in the early twentieth century, but the road at least was in existence before this, being present on the 1819 draft OS map of the area, when it seems to be uninhabited; the Bluestone Inn is said to have been erected in 1961, when a large glacial erratic was erected outside it (the current 'Bluestone') that is said to have been taken from further up Bluestone Lane. A local commentator on a Head Heritage named Lizzyp1972 contributed the following reminiscence in 2019:
My grandmother lived at 7 Bluestone Lane from the 1930s to the 1990s and my mother from when she was born in 1930s to marrying my dad in the late 1960s. I spent every summer of my childhood there. The stone is a glacial erratic and no-one knew for sure where it came from. It was originally further up Bluestone Lane, about half way up on the right hand side going towards the church. In this location it was laid on its side and kids used to play on it, sliding down it. It was a well known meeting place in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It may have been taken from a field at the top of the Lane and placed there... When the Bluestone pub was built in 1961 it was moved to the corner of Habrough Road and Bluestone Lane and set on a plinth in its current upright position. The locals did not want it to be moved and there was a belief that moving it would bring bad luck, but as far as my mum can remember nothing bad happened after it was moved. Bluestone Lane has always been called that, even before any houses were built there and it was just a lane through the fields leading to the church (the first houses, including no.7, were built in the 1920s) and the bluestone has always been there, hence the name of the Lane.(36)
10. The 'blue coggul' at Risby
According to the Lincolnshire antiquarian Edward Peacock, of Bottesford Manor, Brigg, a fifteenth-century document contains a reference to a Blue Stone in Risby parish: 'one of the boundaries of the parish of Risby—a village near here—is spoken of as marked by "an blue coggul."' It is worth noting that the 'blew coggul' is recorded as an alternative name for the Blue Stone at Louth by Gilbert John Monson-Fitzjohn in 1926.(37)
Footnotes
1. K. Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham, 1998); V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004); E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn (Oxford, 1960).
2. G. S. Streatfeild, Lincolnshire and the Danes (London, 1884), p. 168 n. 1; A. E. B. Owen, 'Roads and Romans in south-east Lindsey' in A. R. Rumble & A. D. Mills (eds), Names, Places and People (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1997), pp. 254–68 at pp. 258–9; I. M. Bowers, Place-Names of Lindsey (University of Leeds PhD thesis, 1940), pp. 16–7; C. W. Phillips, 'The present state of archaeology in Lincolnshire: part 1', Archaeological Journal, 90 (1933), 106–49 at p. 148.
3. Journals of the House of Commons, 10 May 1768–25 September 1770, reprinted 1803, p. 814, referring to the widening and repairing of a road 'from the Head of the ſaid Canal, to Blueſtone Heath' (the canal being here Louth's new canal and Riverhead); T. Pride and P. Luckombe, The Traveller's Companion (London, 1789), p. 120; and A. Armstrong, Map of Lincolnshire, published 20 January 1779, British Library Maps K.Top.19.19.5 tab.end. The 'Blue Stone Heath' is also labelled on George Bellas Greenlough's A Physical and Geological Map of England and Wales, first published in 1820, second edition 1839, available to consult online; Phillips, 'Present state of archaeology', p. 148, notes that 'the Blue Stone Heath was the upland tract between Belchford and Cadwell'.
4. C. Green, Streets of Louth (Louth, 2014), pp. 258–9; R. W. Goulding, Louth Old Corporation Records (Louth, 1891), pp. 43, 146, 185; G. J. Monson-Fitzjohn, Quaint Signs of Olde Inns (London, 1926), p. 34.
5. K. Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Five, The Wapentake of Bradley (Nottingham, 1997), pp. 20, 51, 58–9; E. B. Metcalf, Draft drawing of the Grimsby area for the Ordnance Survey (1819), British Library OSD 283.24; G. Holles, Lincolnshire Church Notes 1634–42, ed. R. E. G. Cole, Publications of the Lincoln Record Society 1 (Lincoln, 1911), p. 3.
6. Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 5, pp. 116–7; Holles, Lincolnshire Church Notes, p. 14, in a section written in 1634, tentatively supported by Bowers, Place-Names of Lindsey, p. 59.
7. W. White, History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Lincolnshire (Sheffield, 1856), p. 570.
8. E. Rudkin, 'Lincolnshire folk-lore: stories about stones', Folklore, 45 (1934), 144–57 at p. 154.
9. E. Rudkin, 'Traditions attached to large stones at Audby and North Thoresby', Folklore, 46 (1935), 375–6 at p. 376.
10. Rudkin, 'Traditions attached to large stones', p. 376, and see also K. Gracie, 'The founding legend of Grimsby', in Aspects of Northern Lincolnshire ed. J. Walton (Barnsley, 2002).
11. K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Four, The Wapentakes of Ludborough and Haverstoe (Nottingham, 1996), pp. 164–5, 170; R. Coates, 'Azure Mouse, Bloater Hill, Goose Puddings, and One
Land called the Cow: continuity and conundrums in
Lincolnshire minor names', Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 39 (2007), 73–143 at pp. 98–9; A. Pantos, Lincolnshire Assembly Places, unpublished document in the Lincolnshire HER, no. 14 (pp. 7–8).
12. Cameron, Place-Names of Lincolnshire 4, p. 154; Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', pp. 98–9; R. Coates, Grimsby and Cleethorpes Place-Names (Nottingham, 2020), p. 28. For the history of Bluestone Lane and the glacial erratic at Immingham, which are both absent from the relevant Place-Names of Lincolnshire volume, see Lizzyp1972's account of the 'Immingham blue stone', online at www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/tma/topic/65114/flat/10#826895, dated 2 June 2019.
13. J. M. Dodgson, The Place-Names of Cheshire: Part Three, The Place-Names of Nantwich Hundred and Eddisbury (Cambridge, 1971), p. 145; J. M. Dodgson, The Place-Names of Cheshire: Part Four, The Place-Names of Broxton Hundred and Wirral Hundred (Cambridge, 1972), p. 170; K. I. Sandred, The Place-Names of Norfolk: Part Two, Three, Hundreds of North and South Erpingham and Holt (Nottingham, 2002), p. 72; V. Watts, The Place-Names of County Durham (Nottingham, 2007), p. 136.
14. D. White, 'Are you going to Jabbler's Fayre', Scarborough Review, 45 (2017), p. 34; J. Fawcett, A Memorial of the Church of St. Mary's, Scarboro' (London, 1850), p. 45; W. Gray, Chorographia, or, A survey of Newcastle upon Tine (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1649), p. 12; H. T. C., 'Blue Stone', Notes and Queries, 7th series, 1 (1886), 378; J. Westwood & S. Kingshill, The Lore of Scotland: A Guide to Scottish Legends (London, 2009), p. 65.
15. Oxford English Dictionary, third edition (2013), s.v. bluestone, n., sense 2b; D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place-Names (Oxford, 2011), p. 438; J. Simpson & S. Roud, A Dictionary of Eglish Folklore (Oxford, 2000), p. 343; M. Pitts et al, 'An Anglo-Saxon decapitation and burial at Stonehenge', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 95 (2002), 131–46, especially p. 143.
16. W. Knippenberg, 'De blauwe steen', Brabants Heem, 14 (1962), 26–31; J. Coolen, 'Places of justice and awe: the topography of gibbets and gallows in medieval and early modern north-western and Central Europe', World Archaeology, 45 (2013), 762–79 at p. 766.
17. Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', p. 99; for German bluestones, see W. Fieber & R. Schmitt, 'Rechtsarchäologische Denkmale in Sachsen-Anhalt: Ein Rück- und Ausblick nach zwanzig Jahren', Signa Iuris, 12 (2013), 27–43.
18. Gracie, 'Founding legend'; W. F. Rawnsley, Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire (London, 1914), p. 242. Images of Scarborough and Crail stones can be found online here and here. The name of the 'Blue Stone' at Acton, Cheshire, has been explained rather implausibly by recourse to supposed 'blue porphyritic crystals, which are no longer visible', see further the Wikipedia entry on Acton.
19. T. F. G. Dexter, The Pagan Origin of Fairs (Perranporth, 1930), p. 24. English Heritage, 'Building Stonehenge', online at www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history-and-stories/building-stonehenge/, accessed 7 February 2020.
20. Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', p. 99.
21. K. Cameron, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire: Part Two, The Wapentake of Yarborough (Nottingham, 1991), p. 24.
22. Coates, 'Lincolnshire minor names', pp. 77, 85.
23. R. S. Bayley, Notitæ Ludæ, or Notices of Louth (Louth, 1834), p. 244.
24. V. Møller, Sandar: grend og gård 1850-1970, med tidsbilder fra næringsliv og kulturhistorie, vol. 2 (Sandefjord Kommune, 1980), p. 339; J. E. Møller, 'Jordhaugen kan bli mer populær', online article, 12 July 2011, www.sb.no/nyheter/nyheter/jordhaugen-kan-bli-mer-popular/s/2-2.428-1.6651347.
25. Phillips, 'Present state of archaeology', pp. 148–9.
26. Bayley, Notitæ Ludæ, p. 244.
27. G. J. Monson-Fitzjohn, Quaint Signs of Olde Inns (London, 1926), p. 34.
28. G. Oliver, The Monumental Antiquities of Great Grimsby (Hull, 1825), pp. 14–5.
29. A. Bates, A Gossip About Old Grimsby (Grimsby, 1893), pp. 32–3.
30. Gracie, 'Founding legend'.
31. Bates, Gossip About Old Grimsby, pp. 11–12; the case was briefly reported as Bellamy vs. Woodliffe and Anderson in the Hull Packet, 23 March 1830, p. 3, and the Stamford Mercury, 12 March 1830, p. 2.
32. C. Ernest Watson, A History of Clee and the Thorpes of Clee (Grimsby, 1901), pp. 50–1.
33. W. Johnson, Folk-Memory or The Continuity of British Archaeology (Oxford, 1908), pp. 143–4; W. Johnson, Byways in British Archaeology (Cambridge, 1912), p. 193.
34. For the suggestion that the stone has been discovered buried in the field, see Gracie, 'Founding legend'.
35. Lincolnshire HER record 41205.
36. Lizzyp1972, 'Immingham bluestone', online at www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/tma/topic/65114/flat/10#826895, dated 2 June 2019.
37. E. Peacock, 'The Blue Stone', Notes and Queries, 7th series, 1 (1886), 294–5 at p. 295; Monson-Fitzjohn, Quaint Signs, p. 34.
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