Brimham Rocks, Yorkshire: the gritstone stacks of Nidderdale, and how to visit

Brimham Rocks is a stretch of heather moor in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, covered in gritstone stacks the size of houses. Some balance on bases that look far too small for them, some look like animals, and most have names. The site is about 8 miles north-west of Harrogate and covers 454 acres. It’s been a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1958, and the National Trust has looked after it since 1970. I lived in Killinghall, near Harrogate, for three years in the mid-90s, so this is home ground for me.

What Brimham Rocks are, and how they formed

The rocks are Millstone Grit, a coarse sandstone. The National Trust says it was laid down by “an immense river 100 million years before the first dinosaurs walked the earth.” Then, over the last 100,000 years or so, during and after the last ice age, frost, rain and wind wore the softer layers away and left the harder ones standing. You can still see the old river’s sloping layers, called cross-bedding, in most of the stacks. (Look for the fine diagonal lines. Once you’ve spotted them, you’ll see them everywhere.)

The named rocks to look for

Generations of visitors have named the shapes, and some of the names go back more than 200 years. Look for these:

Rock	What to look for
Idol Rock (Druid’s Idol)	A huge boulder balanced on a small base
Dancing Bear	A stack shaped like a bear on its hind legs
Rocking Stones	Boulders that once rocked on their bases
Lovers’ Leap	A gap between two stacks
Smartie Tube (once Little Cannon)	A narrow tunnel children crawl through
The Eagle, the Turtle, the Gorilla	Shapes named on the National Trust’s trail

The names have never stood still. In 1863 the local historian William Grainge complained that the guide kept renaming them, turning the Baboon’s Head into the Gorilla’s and calling it “keeping pace with the times.” Some of today’s names, like the Meerkat, are newer still.

The Druid theories

In the late 1700s people believed Druids had carved the rocks. The antiquary Hayman Rooke gave a lecture in 1786, Some account of the Brimham rocks in Yorkshire, suggesting Druids used them, including an “oracular stone.” It fit a fashion of the time for ancient Britons, fed by James Macpherson’s Ossian poems. As late as 1848, Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary was still calling the moor “the ancient resort of the Druids.” By the early 20th century it was understood that the rocks were entirely natural. The Druid names are what’s left of that idea.

A short history: monks, a lord, and Georgian tourists

Long before the tourists, the land belonged to Fountains Abbey. By 1252 the monks owned Brimham as pasture, and when Henry VIII closed the abbey in 1539, it passed to the Crown.

Lord Grantley bought the estate in 1780 and built Rocks House in 1792, as a hunting lodge and a place for visitors to stay. That tells you how popular the rocks already were with Georgian sightseers. Its caretakers ran it as a tea room and souvenir shop for about a century; in 1838 you could get tea, coffee, ginger beer, cigars and a look through a telescope. When the railway reached Dacre in 1862, visitors from the Harrogate spa could get here more easily, and numbers went up. The house fell into disrepair in the 20th century, and the National Trust restored it in the 1970s. Today it’s the visitor center, called Brimham House.

Brimham Rocks in books, film and music

• Maria Edgeworth’s novel Belinda (1801) uses the rocks as a setting.
• The 1970 film of Wuthering Heights used the area for filming. For where the novel is actually set, see our guide to Wuthering Heights locations.
• The Bee Gees filmed part of the video for “You Win Again” here.
• The children’s TV shows Knightmare and Roger and the Rottentrolls filmed scenes among the rocks.
• In June 2023 the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, had his poem “Balancing Act” carved into a stone artwork at the rocks, made with the artist Adrian Riley.

How to visit Brimham Rocks

The site is on Brimham Moor Road near Summerbridge (postcode HG3 4DW), off the B6165 between Harrogate and Pateley Bridge. Most people drive. By bus, the Harrogate Bus Company’s service 24 stops at Summerbridge, about a 40-minute walk away. (Uphill. You’ve been warned.)

• Parking: as of November 2026, cars pay £7 for four hours or £10 for the day. Minibuses and coaches must book. National Trust members park free.
• Opening: the moor is open from 9am to dusk. The visitor center, which has a second-hand bookshop, and the refreshment kiosk keep shorter hours. Check the National Trust’s Brimham Rocks page the week you go.
• Walking: the famous rocks are about 10 minutes from the car park. A circular walk of about 1.3 miles covers the highlights. There’s a longer 8.4-mile circuit to Pateley Bridge.
• Toilets: about 550 meters from the car park, with an accessible toilet near the kiosk.
• Dogs: welcome on a short lead everywhere on the site.
• What to wear: the moor is exposed and the paths are rough in places, so bring a waterproof and shoes with grip.

My advice if you’re short on time: walk straight to Idol Rock and the Dancing Bear, look out over Nidderdale, and go. Half an hour is enough to see why people have been coming here since the 1700s.

Combining Brimham Rocks with nearby places

Brimham sits between Harrogate, Ripon and Pateley Bridge, so it pairs easily with other stops. Fountains Abbey is a short drive north-east. Knaresborough and Harrogate are to the south. On a longer day you can come from Saltaire, the Victorian mill village near Bradford, which is exactly what our trip does.

Brimham Rocks on our trip

On the Friday of our October 2027 Yorkshire trip, after Saltaire, the minibus stops at Brimham Rocks for about half an hour on the way back to Ripon: time to walk among the main stacks and look out over Nidderdale. That evening we go back to Fountains Abbey for Fountains by Floodlight.