Wharncliffe Crags

"BEWARE WHERE YEA GO when yea venture out onto yon Wantley Crags after dusk for that's when the Wantley Dragon awakes...."

THE BALLARD OF WANTLEY CRAGS, I ain't sure who wrote it, as a matter of fact I don't think anyone these days is really certain who wrote it, but nevertheless it still exists in the archives at Sheffield Central Libruary. The Ballard tells the tale of a firey evil dragon with three heads, twelve eyes and such a vile smelly breathe it can be smelt miles away. The Noble Norman Lord Wantley has paid an evil witch to conjure the dragon from Hell to guard His Lordship's burried treasure, said to be burried deep in a cave up on Wantley Crags. His Lordship orders the dragon to eat alive as many of those foul Anglo-Saxons as it wishes if they try to steal the treasure.

It's only an old ballard, an old folk-tale as we call it these days, but in the early part of the 12th. Centuary the tale was taken very real.

So is there, or was there ever, a place called Wantley Crags and was there ever a Noble Norman Lord Wantley? The answer is "YES". The crags today are called Wharncliffe Crags, as for Lord Wantley, it's believed by many that the ballard refers to the first Norman Lord of Wharncliffe, a vast Earldom that lies to the North West of Sheffield beside the River Don, facing The Bitholmes, an encampment where arteologists have found the remains of Neolithic Man and his hunting tools. No bones have ever been found of a dragon and no hidden treasure has ever been recovered, but who knows it may still be there, waiting to be found.

But watch out, you never know, that old dragon might still be there as well....