office 23
The Hanging Stone
The Hanging Stone is a gritstone outcrop on Black Forest Ridge overlooking Swythamley Hall, which was the home of the Brocklehurst family who owned the Roaches estate until the death of the last in line in 1978. This rocky feature in the landscape carries in memoria two inscriptions, the first is to a "noble mastiff black and tan":
"Beneath this Rock
August 1st 1874
was buried
BURKE
a noble mastiff black and tan
faithful as woman
braver than man
a gun and a ramble
his hearts desire
with the friend of his life
the Swythamley squire"
The second, a fading weather beaten plaque, is an epitath to Leiutenant-Colonel Henry Courtney Brocklehurst, the lines beneath written by and in the handwriting of his brother Sir Philip Brocklehurst:
LT COL HENRY COURTNEY BROCKLEHURST 10TH ROYAL HUSSARS
AND PILOT IN THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS 1916-1918
GAME WARDEN OF THE SUDAN
BORN AT SWYTHAMLEY MAY 27TH 1888
KILLED ON ACTIVE SERVICE IN BURMA
ON COMMANDO JUNE 1942
"Horses he loved and laughter, the sun, with spaces and the open air.
The trust of all dumb living things he won and never knew the luck too good to share.
His were the simple heart and open hand and honest faults he never strove to hide.
Problems of life he could not understand but as a man would wish to die, he died.
Now though he will not ride with us again, his merry spirit seems our comrade yet,
Freed from the power of weariness and pain, forbidding us to mourn or to forget....
Erected by his devoted brother 1949"
-----
Sir Philip Brocklehurst was a subscribing member on Edward Shackleton's 1907 (to 1909) Nimrod expedition to Antarctica. Brocklehurst was a member of the six man 1908 party to make an attempt to climb Mount Erebus, standing at 3,790 metres (12,450') high it had never been summited. The ascent began on 5 March and following a blizzard that held them up for a day they made the summit of the lower, main crater on the 9th March. By this time Brocklehurst’s feet were too frostbitten for him to continue, so he was left in camp while the others advanced to the active crater where they conducted meteorological experiments and collected rock samples. The group then made a rapid descent by mainly sliding down successive snow-slopes. The party reached the safety of the Cape Royds hut "nearly dead", according to expedition member Eric Marshall, on 11 March.
The Brocklehurst's were also responsible for introducing wallabies to the Peak District, when five of the animals escaped from their private zoo in the 1930's. Three Yak were also released at around the same time but these died out in the 1950's. The wallabies however lived on, with up to fifty living on the moors at one time. It was feared that they had all died out by 2005, but, the reported sighting of a single wallaby in March 2009 gives some hope that the population may establish itself once again.