The North Yorkshire Moors has been my playground since 1973, and yet every so often I get to someplace where I’ve never trod before. I’ve seen this view before, a mere glimpse whilst travelling at 60 mph down along Three Howes Rigg road on the way to Castleton. Cycling allows a longer view, but until today I had no reason to stop.
I was on a wild goose chase. Looking for a weathered stone engraved with the date 1832 supposedly marking the spot where a young servant girl committed suicide. That’s according to Tom Scott Burns (1946-2011), a prolific writer on the Moors.
I had a grid reference pointing to close to the southernmost of the Three Howes (although there are actually five of them) but zilch, nada.
A little more research back at home revealed that opinion is the stone was removed sometime this century. There is a photo available on the Modern Antiquarian website taken in 2002.
![](https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/img_fullsize/4692.jpg)
The stone is referred to on the Historic England entry for this howe although this gives the date as 1882.
As for the history, again I drew a blank. Google failed me. Who was the mystery girl and what sorrow caused her to take her life?
But just fifty metres or so up the hill, a small pond provided a nice foreground for this view of Commondale.
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