Rock climbers know it for routes with names like Megadoom and Wall of Horrors. Locals in August 1939 knew it for something rather more thrilling: espionage.
Three men with foreign accents were spotted near the Crag. Naturally, panic set in. That evening, a flashing light was seen from the summit, and every good Yorkshireman drew the obvious conclusion. Secrets were being beamed straight to Berlin.
A small task force assembled the following night. A policeman, a plain clothes officer and one public spirited citizen scaled the rock to confront the enemy. What they found was not a spy, nor a wireless set, nor anything remotely German. It was a piece of surveying equipment, left with a handwritten note: “Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. Do not touch.”
The war had not even started, and already the nation was seeing saboteurs behind every sheep and boulder. The Yorkshire Post reported the episode with a perfectly straight face, right down to wondering aloud whether the suspicious foreigners might simply have been Southerners.1Storming of Almscliff Crag. This World of Ours. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. Monday 28 August 1939. Page 6.
Eighty odd years on, the Crag still draws its watchers, though these days they carry chalk bags rather than pitchforks. The gritstone has seen empires rise and heliographs mistaken for treason. It has outlasted every crisis going, real or imagined, and shows no sign of stopping now.
Some views earn their reputation through beauty alone. This one earned a footnote in wartime folklore too.
- 1Storming of Almscliff Crag. This World of Ours. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. Monday 28 August 1939. Page 6. ↩︎
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