NGR: SE 22127 41831. At the side of the roundabout on the very edge of the Leeds-Bradford Airport at Yeadon, west Yorkshire, stands a rather curious gritstone pillar that looks rather out-of-place being located where it is, but it has, in fact, been moved in order to facilitate its predicament of being in the way of an airport runway extension; the most recent move being in the early 1980s.  This tall, roughly-hewn stoop stone is actually a boundary stone or guide stone whose base is all that remains of the original stoop from the early part of the 19th Century, which had, at that time, stood at Coney Lodge Farm about a ¼ of a mile to the northeast, but was apparently destroyed by lightning. The ‘Long Stoop’ Stone stands beside what looks to be a mounting block! on the verge of the A658 roundabout at the junction of Victoria Avenue (Harrogate Road) and Warren House Lane at the northwestern perifery of the Leeds & Bradford Airport complex, just to the east of Yeadon.

The original ‘Long Stoop’ Stone which had stood for a few hundred years at Coney Lodge Farm, near Yeadon, was destroyed by lightning around 1836 after which a replacement stoop was erected a ¼ of a mile to the west on the Harrogate Road turnpike     at Crown Point (east side of Yeadon), but in 1983 it was moved once again a short distance to the side of the A658 roundabout when an extension to the airport’s runway was being built. It is a boundary or guide stone and is a tallish, rough-hewn gritstone pillar with a flat top, and is set into a base stone from the original old stoop; but it has been blackened by the chimney smoke from nearby Bradford and Leeds which occurred during the Industrial Revolution. Today, however, it is probably something of an oddity or curiosity to the people in their cars going round the roundabout. See the very excellent ‘Aireborough Historical Society’s’ website, below, for further historical information and old photos.

Sources / References & Related Websites:

Photo by Patrick John Leonard. Thanks mate.

https://www.aireboroughhistoricalsociety.co.uk/yeadon/long-stoop-1900.aspx

https://www.aireboroughhistoricalsociety.co.uk/yeadon/long-stoop-1979.aspx

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=20041019_84974307

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6C6DJ_yeadon-stoop?guid=228e1a7c-5db9-47c4-8ed8-0113448d5e09

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeadon,_West_Yorkshire

© Ray Spencer, The Journal of Antiquities, 2020.