Wolf Fell Shield Stone

Weight
107kg / 236lbs

Location
View on Google Maps
View on what3words - encroach.garages.loafer

Original Challenge

Stone to Chest

Name Origin
Stone named after Wolf Fell, the fell where the stone sits. The Fells name likely harks back to when wolves roamed the Forest of Bowland until the 17th century.

Stone Placement
Placed by @dances_with_stones at >400m elevation on Wolf Fell in the southern Fells of the Forest of Bowland.

History

Wolf Fell preserves the memory of England’s old predator. Bowland was one of the last places where wolves survived, with medieval wolf pits, hunters and bounties recorded. Wolves arrived after the last Ice Age and were gone from England by about 1760.

The Stone stands on Wolf Fell on the western edge of the Forest of Bowland. Though remote today, it once lay within one of northern England’s wildest landscapes, used since the Neolithic and Bronze Age as a seasonal route across the moors.

By the Iron Age, the fells sat on the margins of Brigantian territory, their ridgelines serving as natural boundaries and lookout points. The Romans held the lowlands but left Bowland’s high fells largely untouched, which continued as grazing and hunting ground.

In medieval times Wolf Fell formed part of a protected estate of deer, boar and, for a time, wolves. Stories of the Bowland wolf lingered into the 17th century, and later folklore spoke of a ghost wolf roaming the fell, its howls drifting far. 

Even after wolves vanished, the name kept their presence alive in this quiet, exposed and still-wild corner of Lancashire.