In November 2018, I blogged about a walk I took on Longstone Edge. There I came across a small stone platform upon which was a metal plaque that read "Ruby's Chair". You can read about it here.
It was a mystery until last weekend when the platform's maker got in touch with me and kindly provided this explanation:-
"Hi Longstone Moor Farm was run by my family from 1943 to 2020 and I have spent a lot of time up there. About 9 years ago me and my daughter who was 8 years old at the time were having a picnic on Taylor Lane. In the lane was an old broken limestone gate post and I said let's make a chair with it. So me and my daughter Ruby set to building it and she worked so hard I thought it would be nice to make a copper plaque with her name on. I fitted the plaque to the chair with two rivets with my initials stamped on N S. If you sit on the chair facing into the chair you will see an iron ring set in rock with lead on the other side of the lane. I have set 8 such rings in different parts of Longstone Moor and called them the Longstone Moor ringtones. I just wanted to leave something behind that will last a long time. I told my daughter when she holds the ring it will be like holding my hand. Hope that was interesting to you."
Well it was indeed interesting to me. The writer was a gentleman called Mr Smart - an appropriate surname for someone whose first name is also Neil. To leave something permanent in the landscape like this seemed to me such a beautiful thing to do. Of course Ruby, the daughter in question, will be seventeen years old now and on the verge of her adulthood. As the years go by it will be so nice for her to think of the rough chair she made with her father when she was a little girl. Maybe one day she will come back to the ridge with a child of her own and they will sit on Ruby's Chair together admiring the view, perhaps recollecting a departed man.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/3eiOcFt
