#HistFicThursdays - The Standing Stone on the Moor by Allie Cresswell - Guest Post

For today's #HistFicThursdays blog, I am delighted to be welcoming Allie Cresswell to the blog with a guest post about her brand new book The Standing Stone on the Moor, as part of her Coffee Pot Book Club tour!

But first, let's meet the book...

Blurb

Yorkshire, 1845.

Folklore whispers that they used to burn witches at the standing stone on the moor. When the wind is easterly, it wails a strange lament. History declares it was placed as a marker, visible for miles—a signpost for the lost, directing them towards home.

Forced from their homeland by the potato famine, a group of itinerant Irish refugees sets up camp by the stone. They are met with suspicion by the locals, branded as ‘thieves and ne’er-do-wells.’ Only Beth Harlish takes pity on them, and finds herself instantly attracted to Ruairi, their charismatic leader.

Beth is the steward of nearby manor Tall Chimneys—a thankless task as the owners never visit. An educated young woman, Beth feels restless, like she doesn’t belong. But somehow ‘home’—the old house, the moor and the standing stone—exerts an uncanny magnetism. Thus Ruairi’s great sacrifice—deserting his beloved Irish homestead to save his family—resonates strongly with her.

Could she leave her home to be with him? Will he even ask her to?

As she struggles with her feelings, things take a sinister turn. The peaceable village is threatened by shrouded men crossing the moor at night, smuggling contraband from the coast. Worse, the exotic dancing of a sultry-eyed Irishwoman has local men in a feverish grip. Their womenfolk begin to mutter about spells and witchcraft. And burning.

The Irish refugees must move on, and quickly. Will Beth choose an itinerant life with Ruairi? Or will the power of ‘home’ be too strong?

The Standing Stone of the Moor

is available via this Universal Link

Guest Post

Historical setting of The Standing Stone on the Moor. 

My book is set in Yorkshire, 1845. To a large extent both the place and the time were predetermined by the fact that this book forms part of  series which traces the history of a house and the family who owns it.

I wrote the final book in the series (Tall Chimneys) first. It covers a century from 1910 to 2010. I intended the book as a standalone but the house so intrigued me, situated in a creepy hollow in the moor, that I felt I had to find out more about it.

The House in the Hollow followed, set in the period of the Napoleonic War, and The Lady in the Veil continued the story, set in 1835. So, I had a time gap to fill in, to link The Lady in the Veil with Tall Chimneys, and The Standing Stone on the Moor was my attempt at that—although I have failed!

1845 proved to be an interesting era to research. The industrial revolution was underway, and I had to reflect that in the movement of people away from the countryside and villages into towns, where work in mills and factories could offer better remuneration—although far worse living conditions in many cases. My imaginary village, Moorside, would likely have suffered from a lack of labour while not being wealthy or forward-thinking enough to have adopted the new mechanised advances in farming. Although parliament was active in passing laws to protect the workforce—especially children—work in the nascent industries was cruelly hard, conditions appalling, health and safety almost non-existent. I reflected this fact by including a mine and a mining engineer in my story, and a crisis that occurs when a mechanical pump is inadequate to clear the lower shafts of water.

The period also saw a large influx of Irish refugees from the potato famine. Although thousands made the voyage to America, many did come to Britian in search of work, and found it in those same mills and factories, also mines and in ‘navigating’ (digging) the canals—the advent of the Irish navvy.

I was interested in exploring the idea of displacement through the experience of the Irish refugees for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because it has pertinent parallels for us today, when so many are displaced by war, famine and persecution. I am sorry to say that the Irish in my book meet with the same suspicion and bigotry meted out upon asylum-seekers today. Secondly, because I know by now that my fictional house exerts a strange and compelling power over the women who live in it. It is ‘home’—and what an emotionally loaded concept that is; a place of shelter and refuge. But it is also a kind of prison; once there, people find it almost impossible to leave. The house wields an almost coercive control.

Beth thought about Tall Chimneys as it lay below them in the quiet hollow; its stately chimneys, its patient pride, its watchful waiting silence. ‘I think, if I had to leave here, I might die,’ she said, very low, ‘but sometimes I think I will die if I don’t.’ 

In a world and at a time of such exponential change, it seems likely to me that many people experienced a sense of dislocation; of not knowing quite who they were or where they belonged. The world was smaller, travel so much easier, with the railway reaching into every corner of the country and steam ships crossing the Atlantic. Education provided social mobility even for girls; their employment potential was much greater. Money could be made in huge amounts even by people of modest beginnings; wealth and power were no longer the sole preserve of the nobility. All these aspects of life in 1845 Britian are reflected in my story. Stephen, a young engineer with only his education, wits and ambition to sustain him, aspires to travel. Mr Somersall, an uneducated, unscrupulous bully, progresses from a position as a mine foreman to become the owner of a vast business empire, dragging his hapless wife in his wake.

‘As to the serving of tea, you can safely leave that to me,’ Beth said. ‘I shall be glad to make myself useful and I would not wish the company to think I pretend to be a real lady.’

‘You are fortunate,’ said Mrs Somersall with a sigh. ‘I must contrive to carry off that deception somehow.’

Then there is Beth, educated above her station but forced to remain at Tall Chimneys to keep house for her brother and steward the old house, although the family never visits.

All these characters experience a sense of not quite fitting in. They don’t belong in their sphere.

‘I am no kind of lady at all,’ Beth said, ‘in the same way I surmise that you are no kind of gentleman. I mean no slight, I assure you. We are both ordinary people who have been given opportunities to better ourselves. But … oh! I sometimes wonder …’

‘… whether it would not have been better to have stayed where we were? Ah yes. A fish, be it in ever so small a pond, is still happier than a fish out of water.’

And yet, amid all this change and upheaval, some things remain untouched. The moor, upon which the story is set, is the same; vast, beautiful, exposed. The ancient standing stone, site in days of yore of gathering and ceremony and—legend has it—of execution, looks on as the lives and loves of the characters play out. But not impassively. Another unfortunately true aspect of history that does not seem to alter is the tendency of people to suspect and accuse what they do not understand.

The wind blew fierce and they could already hear the distinctive groan of the standing stone as it vibrated to its own primaeval tune.

At the camp they found, loitering about, poking their noses into the vehicles and looking disdainfully at the beggarly belongings of the immigrants, a dozen or so villagers bearing smoking torches. 

A crone in the crowd shouted, ‘The curate has come to cleanse the witch of the devil.’

A few voices cried, ‘Witchcraft!’ and, ‘burn her.’

The wind howled across the moor in a sudden gust and the standing stone’s murmur intensified into an otherworldly keening sound.

‘She is doing that,’ said the first woman’s voice, pointing a pudgy finger at Aoife. ‘It is sorcery.’

‘The women are immoral,’ said another. ‘They lead our menfolk astray. That woman,’ she pointed a gnarled finger at Aoife, ‘is a witch. My husband cannot sleep at night for dreams of her.’

‘The witch shall be burned,’ said the schoolmaster’s mother, her voice high and frenzied. ‘There, against the devil’s totem. It was always done so in days of yore. It was no accident they chose this spot for their coven. The place is evil. They have been conjuring demons!’

The wind redoubled, blowing so fiercely that some of the crowd who were still the worse for drink were pushed backwards as though by unearthly hands. The standing stone began to shriek, drowning out the gasps of the crowd which, in spite of itself, shrank away from the ghostly sound.

‘It’s sorcery!’ cried one

‘It is!’ shouted another.

‘Witchcraft!’ yelled the crowd.

Now, let's meet the author:

Allie has been writing fiction since she could hold a pencil. She has a BA and an MA in English Literature, specialising in the classics of the nineteenth century.

She has been a print-buyer, a pub landlady, a bookkeeper and the owner of a group of boutique holiday cottage but nowadays she writes full time.

She has two grownup children, five grandchildren and two cockapoos but just one husband, Tim. They live in the remote northwest of the UK.

The Standing Stone on the Moor is her sixteenth novel. 

You can follow Allie on these links:

Website - Facebook - Threads - Instagram - BookBub - Amazon Author Page - Goodreads

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