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The Bradup stone circle has been destroyed. That we know, but there seems to be some confusion as to the culprit, the exact position of the site and the date of it’s levelling.
Research undertaken by a colleague, Briga, has revealed that the circle may have been destroyed in the early 1970’s by British Gas contractors laying a pipeline across the moors. She contacted a local historian concerning the site and was told; "I've lived here 18 years... I heard about it from a local man who had seen the circle, he told me it was there, and then, after the pipeline, it had gone".
A little on-line ferreting can lead one to an old cached webpage of the ‘Mystical World Wide Web’ site that says;-
‘SE.089439
Keighley. Bradup Stone circle, nr Bradup Bridge
This ruined but recognisable, embanked, stone circle measures 9.2 metres in diameter. Approximately 9 stones remain of this circle which is thought to originally have had 26 blocks of millstone grit, this circle is thought to date to around 2200-1400 BC. Not shown on O/S maps.’
Briga told us ‘Having visited Bradup some 17 years ago Paul Kenyon recorded on his website it is "now ruinous and virtually unrecognisable". The map reference he gave was SE 089 439. He says that later he realised the photograph of several stones in a rough circle he had put on his website was not the circle, he said "All that remains is a circular embankment with a single stone still in place".
Further research led me to an old article in a local newspaper, the Keighley News, from 1998 (31st January) which related the sad tale of the circle’s destruction;-
‘A historic moorland stone circle has vanished.
Walkers and local residents are unable to find the Bradup circle - dubbed 'Riddlesden's Stonehenge' - which used to be a few yards off Ilkley Road on Rombalds Moor.
Hilary Simpson, who lives near the bronze age site, is appealing to Keighley News readers for information about its disappearance. She believes it was disturbed by contractors digging a gas pipeline across the moor almost three decades ago.
Mrs Simpson, of Bradup Farm, says sun worshippers visited the site after she moved in 12 years ago, but couldn't find the circle. "Every so often someone knocks on my door and asks where it is," she says. "The stone circle will have been here for thousands of years. Friends and locals remember it clearly up to about the late 1960s. Somebody must be responsible for it being removed, and for the sake of heritage someone must be made to reinstate it."
Former Riddlesden resident Ken Pickles, who has walked the moors all his life, also believes the circle vanished around the time the gas pipe was laid. "I first walked this moor in 1945," he says. "In the late 1960s there were definitely 12 there. It was a perfect stone circle. It offends me that children should be denied things like this. It was Riddlesden's Stonehenge."
The stone circle has been marked on Ordnance Survey maps for many years though recent editions have described it as 'remains'. There were originally 18 stones but by 1929 just 12 remained, the others used in the construction of nearby Bradup Bridge.
A stone circle expert who visited in the early 1990s found what he believed to be the site, but just one stone remained next to a pile of rubbish and oil drums. Another possible site is a few yards west, where several large stones lay strewn in the thick heather.
Gavin Edwards, Bradford council's archaeology officer, says he tried to survey the circle 20 years ago as a student, but his team was unsure it had found the right place. He says: "It was a bit enigmatic. It's a few stones. Even reports in the 1930s described it as very damaged."
Mr Edwards says the Bradup site could not strictly be called a 'stone circle' but was more likely a prehistoric burial ground. He believes his council predecessors liaised with British Gas to ensure the pipeline avoided historic sites on Rombalds Moor.
British Gas spokesman John O'Grady says workmen laying the pipe in 1971 could not have damaged the stone circle because they worked within a strict 45-foot-wide corridor containing all their machinery. He says the original contractors' map shows the Bradup circle as 'remains', 100 feet south of the edge of their corridor.
But Mrs Simpson claims the only access from Ilkley Road to the construction site would have been from a farm gate on the other side of the stones. A direct route from the gate to the work site would have been across land occupied by the circle.’
It seems we have a couple of sites to choose from, and the blame for the destruction of the circle is far from definite.
Will the real Bradup circle please stand up?!
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road