St. Joseph's R.C School

Asked what sort of stories they liked, the answers included Adventure, comedy, Mystery and Murder. Asked what sort of endings they liked, the majority said that Cliffhanger endings are best.

St. Joseph's School created stories around the original Bridestones Story..............

This is a story of the Bridestones, where the people of Todmorden would sometimes get married, rather than in a church. But those who live in Todmorden are individuals and they don’t like to be hemmed in. 

There was once a drover named Tom. His sweetheart, Meg, lived down in the village of Todmorden. They were deeply in love with each other, and celebrated their marriage by walking through the Bridestones together. But from that point their relationship went bad. A loving partnership turned sour. When Tom wasn’t droving he was drinking or he was arguing. They couldn’t see eye to eye on anything, and the marriage grew worse, to the point where Meg left.
Some say Tom decided to do away with Meg, and others claim he only intended to give her the scare, but either way it wasn’t Meg who received the fright…
After a drunken night, armed with cudgels and axes, Tom and a few of his friends stumbled up to the Bridestones, for they believed Meg was sleeping in a nearby hut.
Tom cursed the stones, roaring that if not for them he’d be a free man, not shackled by his wife. As he hit the groomstone with his cudgel it groaned and slowly toppled over.
Then he turned his attention to the bridestone. Before anyone could stop him his brought down the cudgel with all his power. The blow shuddered through his arms, shaking every bone in his body, and there came a moaning, screaming noise. It scared the men so much that every single one of them turned tail and ran back down to the village.
Some say that if they’d bothered to look they’d have seen Meg and her sister screaming and laughing at the joke they’d played.
 
But what Tom and Meg didn’t realise was that the stones had been there a very, very long time.........

At the beginning of time two trolls lived in the valley. They liked it there because it was cool, and when he was cool a troll thought much better. This pair of trolls were in loved. They’d often walk out to where the Bridestones now stand to talk of this and that and plan their future.
Eventually the male turned to the female and asked her to marry him.
“I’ll not marry a stupid troll,” she answered. “If you can solve this riddle, I’ll accept you. Tell me – what is it all trolls fear but embrace every day?”
Without thinking, he said, “Their wives.”
This wasn’t the best answer, and with a cuff from her great.hand she sent him flying, down, down into the valley where it was cool.

With his feet in the water he sat though the dusk, and as the moon rose, his thinking cleared. Of course, he realised, the answer was time.
Before he returned to see her, he gathered her favourite rocks. There was caramel quartz, crunchy flint and millstone surprise. He filled a tree trunk with the treats and took them to his best beloved along with his answer.
This place, they decided, was the nicest they’d seen and they held each other. As time moved on and embraced them, they turned slowly to stone, their two spirits entombed in what became known as the Bridestones.

Perhaps, according to some men, that’s why Tom and Meg’s marriage fared so badly. As they walked through the rocks they were arguing, and that offended the trolls who cursed them.

      But curses can be lifted…

In the Second World War there was a Todmorden weaver who joined the RAF. He was no pilot, but he could plot the landscape so he became a navigator on a bomber crew.

On leave he returned to the valley to propose to his girlfriend. He took her up to the Bridestones, picked up a piece of quartz from the ground and said,

“I have nothing to give you but this rock, and nothing to share with you but my love. If, God willing, I survive this war, will you be my wife.”

She took the rock, and people say there was a great sigh, or maybe it was the wind, and the curse of the Bridestones was lifted. And he survived, and came home to marry his love at the Bridestone Rocks, and it’s remained a place of peace and tranquillity ever since.