In the dark, dark wood, there’s a dark, dark path and by the dark, dark path there’s a
mysterious stone that has guarded a deep grove in Norfolk for centuries.
The great stone of Lyng is quite literally off the beaten track – a large erratic boulder left by
the glaciers of the last ice age – resting like a crouching toad, cold and moss-covered, amidst
the quiet whispers of the woodland. Locals believe the stone is more than just a relic of time: it’s an echo of forgotten battles, secrets, and spectral legends that linger in the grove’s shadowed depths.
As with many glacial remains which sit incongruously in the landscape, like chess pieces in a
game played by giants, the stone has attracted its fair share of folklore. Curious and inexplicable to our pagan ancestors, who knew little of ice ages or geology, such stones were important markers on the landscape which were often venerated and put to use as boundary points, meeting places, preaching stones, way-markers or even as the place where courts were held.
An article in a newspaper on March 13 1939 recounted how the boulder was the focal point
of ‘The dark legend of The Grove’. On certain nights – it doesn’t say which - the stone is said
to bleed if pricked with a pin. The blood in the stone was perhaps absorbed after its use as a sacrificial altar by Druids, or a relic of the bloody battle between King Edmund and the Danes fought quite literally within a stone’s throw.
Many years ago, the Reverend E. C. Weddall, the Rector of Lyng, told of a regular custom at
the village school which saw the children allowed home 20 minutes early.
“This was to allow them time before darkness fell to get past a certain mysterious spot on
the road,” the 1939 article revealed, continuing: “an unused highway, a curious boulder,
and a shapeless ruin were responsible for the mystery and the fears of Eastaugh school
children.
“Half a mile out of Lyng, the road to Eastaugh and Weston intersects an ancient and green
drove. The track plunged into a small wood or coppice on the other side.
“It was soon hidden in the darkness of the trees, many of which were hollies. After passing
this wood and the crossing of the track you hurried up a sudden, short hill, Hogsback Hill,
and from its summit could see, of a dark afternoon or evening, the safe lights of the hamlet
of Eastaugh, a mile from Lyng, and could continue your journey at a quieter pace.
“It was the wood that gave people, even in Queen Victoria’s reign, an unexplainable feeling
of dread. Even in these days there is something curious about the Grove. A housewife living
not far off tells you that ‘on a Sunday afternoon’ you get a queer feeling walking there.”
Locally, the wood was known as The King’s Grove due to a battle which is said to have been
fought there in which King Edmund, the martyred Saint and King of the Angles, battled the
Danes with one side trying to scale the escarpment fortified by the other, the dead strewn
along the Grove and the spirits of the slain left to haunt the woods.
Another legend has it that there is treasure under the stone – a landowner once tried to
move it with a dozen horses in order to test this theory, but only succeeded in further
securing it to its secluded spot.
A further tale links the stone to a former convent which was nearby. Road excavations on
Hogsback Hill several generations ago unearthed skeletons – perhaps the nun’s cemetery,
perhaps those of King Edmund’s soldiers.
When the nuns abandoned their convent, the bells that had once called them to prayer
were thrown into the nearby Wensum and it is said, can sometimes be heard to ring at night
from under the water. Little wonder the children of Lyng hurried past this most haunted of places as darkness fell in wintertime.
You can listen to our podcast about the Great Stone of Lyng below:
Comments