The scene our ancestors would have known in and around Rowley village would have been very different a couple of hundred years ago, it changed enormously during the Industrial Revolution and has changed again, almost beyond recognition, since I grew up there in the 1950s and 60s. One sight which would have been familiar to local people in the past was ‘The Hailstone’ on Hailstone Hill and I do not mean the modern pub bearing that name!
The Hailstone was a curious natural rock formation, comprising blocks of Dolerite stone, and was probably left with large boulders tumbled around it due to Ice Age erosion when the Ice Age retreated. It was at one time thought to be a meteorite. The Hailstone was on Hailstone Hill, above Tippity and Cock Greens and could apparently be seen clearly from Clent before the contours of the hills were destroyed by quarrying. An impression of the size can be had from the sketch below which is based on an engraving by W W Baker in 1845.
Copyright Glenys Sykes.
Whites Directory of 1834 has this description:
“On the western side of the hills, and not far from the town, a compact mass of this stone, about 7 or 8 feet square, rises to the height of 8 or 9 feet above the summit, and from 50 to 60 feet from the base of the hill, which, from time immemorial, has been called the Hail Stone; the upper surface, though from its extreme hardness impenetrable to any tool, is worn perfectly smooth by time and the action of numberless feet of persons who have climbed upon it.
In removing one block near the Hail Stone, about 40 years since, an earthen vessel nearly full of Roman silver coins, some of which were of Antoninus and Faustina, was found deposited in the foundation of the wall. “
It was reported at the time that the pot had an opening at the top to allow coins to be posted in – a Roman piggy bank! Sadly the pot and the Roman coins were apparently removed for safekeeping and no trace of them can now be found.
Various stories were told locally of the Hailstone, including the legend that it could not be destroyed without the spilling of Anglo-Saxon blood, or so I was told by Reg Parsons who grew up on Turner’s Hill. And when the Hailstone was destroyed in 1879, as part of quarrying operations, two workmen were killed during the process, and local people thought that they were anglo-saxon by blood, thus fulfilling the old prophecy.
Dr. Plot, in his History of Staffordshire published in 1688, describes the rock on the Rowley Hills as being “as big and as high on one side as many church steeples are.” He relates that he visited the spot in the year 1680, accompanied by a land-surveyor, who, ten years before that time, had noticed that at this place the needle of the compass was turned six degrees from its due position. The influence which the iron in basaltic rocks has on the needle was not known at that period, and the Doctor makes two conjectures in explanation of the phenomenon observed. First, he says, ” there must be in these lands that miracle of Nature we call a lodestone;” and he adds, ” unless it come to pass by some old armour buried hereabout in the late civil war.” The sonorous property of the rock led him to conjecture “that there might be here a vault in which some great person of ancient times might be buried under this natural monument; but digging down by it as near as I could where the sound directed, I could find no such matter.”
The following description appeared in “A description of modern Birmingham” by Charles Pye , supposedly in 1908. I have included some of his less flattering comments about the church and the village itself.
“You proceed towards Kidderminster, until you arrive at the toll gate, two mile and a half distant, when the right hand road leads to this village where in all probability there are more Jews Harps manufactured than in all Europe beside.
The admirer of nature, (for no art has ever been practised here) may be gratified with various extensive and luxuriant views. There is not anything either in the church or in the village deserving of notice, but there is, not far distant, a rude rugged, misshapen mass of stone, which is situated on the summit of a hill, and projects itself several yards higher than the ground adjoining; it is by the inhabitants denominated Rowley Hail-Stone and when at a considerable distance from it, on the foot road from Dudley, it has the appearance of some considerable ruins.
From this spot the views are more extensive than can be easily imagined over a beautiful and romantic country, Birmingham being very visible.”
It seems rather odd that this description should have been published in 1908, as the Hailstone was removed in 1879. It is not often that one sees descriptions of this area as ‘beautiful and romantic’ or luxuriant by 1908, though extensive is undeniable. (The view over the valley from the top floor of the classroom building at the Grammar School below Hawes Lane was truly awe-inspiring and there were still some foundries operating at that time.) But other observers report, by 1908, the huge amount of industry, mines, quarries, furnaces, canals, railway lines and spoil heaps which despoiled most views in this area so I wonder whether this account was actually written much earlier, perhaps in 1808.
Another account appears in Stone Pillar Worship (Vol. vii., p. 383.) Date not known.
—The Rowley Hills-near Dudley, twelve in number, and each bearing a distinctive name, make up what may be called a mountain of basaltic rock, which extends for several miles in the direction of Hales Owen. From the face of a precipitous termination of the southern extremity of these hills rises a pillar of rock, known as the ” The Hail Stone.” I conjecture that the word hail may be a corruption of the archaic word holy, holy ; and that this pillar of rock may have been the object of religious worship in ancient times. The name may have been derived directly from the Anglo-Saxon Haleg stan, holy stone. It is about three quarters of a mile distant from an ancient highway called “The Portway,” which is supposed to be of British origin, and to have led to the salt springs at Droitwich. I have no knowledge of any other place bearing the name of Hail Stone, except a farm in the parish of West Fetton in Shropshire, which is called ” The Hail Stones.” No stone pillars are now to be found upon it: there is a quarry in it which shows that the sand rock lies there very near the surface.
This picture of the Hailstone gives a better impression of the size and appearance of the Hailstone within the landscape and accompanied the article above.
The artist for this drawing is unknown, Hailstone Farm is shown in the distance.
There are some other snippets about the Hailstone which I have found online, sources unfortunately not credited but included for interest.
“If you stand on the site of the Devil’s Footprints and look towards the Rowley Hills, Hailstone Hill comes into view. The Hailstone itself is long gone, demolished in 1879. The Hailstone was also associated with the Devil and was said to be cursed, there is a story that the Devil threw stones at the Rowley hills from Clent which landed on Hailstone Hill and formed the mighty Hailstone, a huge outcrop of basalt rock from which he could survey his kingdom. There are also tales of the Devils footprints being found in the vicinity of the Hailstone and the local quarries; some said it had to be destroyed because of its evil associations. When it was finally destroyed by dynamite in 1879 two men died in the process, fulfilling the curse of the Hailstone”
Here is another account of a similar phenomena.
“In the Black Country, in January 1855, cloven hoofmarks, similar to those of a deer, were found on the vertical walls and roofs of a number of pubs, starting with The Cross at Old Hill in Rowley Regis. Elizabeth Brown, landlady of The Lion pub, suggested a supernatural explanation for the mystery, telling a public meeting that ‘her house was mainly frequented by quarrymen and the tracks were nothing new to them. Similar hoofmarks were to be seen burnt into the rock at Pearl Quarry, on Timmins Hill, and trails of them led from that place to the Hailstone.’ Since the Rowley hoofmarks appeared nowhere but on the walls and roofs of pubs, however, it seems at least as likely that the Lion marks were made by local chapel ‘ranters’ who wanted to make a point about the pernicious effects of alcohol “.
So the name ‘Hailstone’ may have been a corruption of Holy Stone, it may have been used as a perch by the Devil and was regarded with awe and great superstition by local people. Anthony Page says in his book on Rowley that it had been removed by the summer of 1879 with festivities to celebrate the event. Frederick Wright of Hawes Lane, aged 30, was killed in February 1879 in the process of uprooting the rock and Benjamin Bate, of Cocks Green, aged 41, one of the last men to bore shot holes, was killed in December 1879. After the removal of the rock, a tramway incline was made in 1880, connecting the Hailstone quarry to the canal at Windmill End.
This photograph of the Hailstone Quarry, taken in the mid-1950s, gives an impression of how the Hailstone must have looked.
Copyright : Anthony Page and Irene Harrold
What an imposing sight the Hailstone must have been, how many millennia it towered over the local landscape, it is no wonder that there were so many stories about it – but at least we have drawings to help preserve the memory of it.
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 