A Life of Ley Hunting

1966

Kenneth Rogers and Jimmy Goddard investigated the leys in the area of Warminster, Wiltshire over the Easter weekend (April 8-l0). Here is the report of the various sites visited.

i) "The Minster". This church, of which we were unable to find the exact age, is situated in an area of Warminster with the very significant name of "Cold Harbour". It is on a leyy to the 12-ley centre in Boreham (southern Warminster) where a very spectacular UFO sighting occurred. It has a 1000 year old yew tree in front of it where Saxon chiefs arc reputed to have sat when the Danes invaded.
ii) St. Lawrence's Church. This is on the same ley, and dates back probably to 1290, which coincidentally was the same year a "large round silver thing like a disc" was seen over Byland Abbey in Yorkshire.
iii) Collegiate Ch. of Sts. Peter and Paul, Heytesbury. Two miles out of Warminster and on another ley to the Centre, this church dates back at least to the 16th century. It was very near this ley, not far out of Heytesbury, that "little men in balaclava helmets and glistening trousers" were reputed to have run across the road in front of a car.
iv) Bishopstrow Mill. This is an old mill on a ley from the Centre, where a frightening UFO incident took place.
v) Bishopstrow Church. This is on the same ley as the mill, but its age is a bit of a mystery. In the booklet we found in the church, it was stated to be only 19th century, but on the wall there was a stone plaque to someone in the 18th century, so the original church here could have been older.
vi) The Warminster Centre. Although a very important centre, where many of the Warminster "Things" have been seen, it is not very inspiring to see. It is a muddy backwater of the small River Wylye with no prehistoric site of any kind.
vii) Cley Hill. The most important ley site of the trip. This is a really remarkable structure. The hill itself is 784 feet high1 and one side of it seems to be hollowed out into a kind of huge crater. All around the top of the hill are lots of weirdly shaped earthworks which look so unearthly one cannot wonder at the hill being a centre of Thing activity. There are four leys skirting it, all of them being of great significanoc. One of them is one of Philip Heselton's "Great Isosceles Triangle" leys - the base-line. This runs right across the country, and thus is evidence against Alfred Watkins' theory that these lines were built by a primitive race for foot travel. Another ley is from the Charlton Crater ley centre. - national news in 1963 - and the other two are from the Warminster centre.

The Visible Ley
In Men among Mankind by Brinsley Le Poer Trench, there is a striking aerial photograph showing a line of round barrows and a long barrow. These mounds are joined by a piece of straight track which leads unerringly to a cross-roads which is visible on the picture.

The cross-roads is Longbarrow Crossroads, to the south-west of Stonehenge. On placing my straight-edge along this alignment on the Salisbury map I found this line to be a ley passing through several initial points, crossroads and tumuli. It also passes through Berwick St. John Church - an impressive example of a rare phenomenon, a ley which is readily visible from the air.

Orthoteny News
(Orthoteny is the discovery by French researcher Aime Michel that UFO sightings from each particular day during a flap in France in 1954 would form alignments that formed radiating patterns as leys do. The two were connected by Tony Wedd in his booklet Skyways and Landmarks in 1960, and, whatever the truth of the theory, certainly this was the cause that leys and the idea of energies connected with them came back into the public consciousness).

On the evening of June 3rd Mr. Richard Taylor saw two white lights moving rapidly northwards. This was at 10.15, and at 10.50 Mr. Peter Coleman of Birmingham saw twin yellow lights heading north. Two minutes later a friend of his a few miles north of Birmingham also saw the lights moving north - this time white again. The three points align, constituting an orthoteny. If my plotting is correct the line also goes through five churches, a moat and a cross-roads on the Birmingham O.S. map (only one of the churches is in Birmingham itself).

The Finchley-Wandsworth orthoteny and the recently-discovered South Coast orthoteny (discovered by Ken Rogers) meet at Portslade-by-Sea, near Brighton. Several other leys converge on the cross-point, thus making this a ley-orthotenic centre. Could this be a reason this has always been a good area for UFO sightings?

On July 15th at 2.40 a.m. a Mr. Lovell saw a large pear-shaped object with smaller lights beneath it heading rapidly in a roughly northerly direction. He was heading towards Bristol, and both he and the UFO were apparently situated on the primary ley which forms the west side of the Great Isosceles Triangle (discovered by Philip Heselton). This line goes about 30 degrees off north, so the UFO could well have been travelling along it.

A very spectacular sighting, investigated by Ken Rogers, occurred at Wood Green, North London on August 15th. The UFO came very low and afterwards a bush in the vicinity was found to have some of its branches withered and brown, whereas all other branches were green and fresh. The incident happened just a quarter of a mile from the base-line of the Great Isosceles Triangle, a primary ley along which there has been a great deal of UFO activity in recent years.

The Porlock Ley
On looking at a calendar that happened to be hanging in our home, I noticed that it showed a good photograph of a hill-notch. Alfred Watkins mentions such notches as potential ley points, so, as I had a map of that particular area - Porlock, in Somerset - I decided to see if there was a ley aligning on the notch.

It was not difficult to find the direction the camera had been pointing, for there was a signpost in the picture pointing to Minehead, so all I had to do was find the road leading to that town on the map. Once I had done this, I found the hill with the notch to be Bossington Hill. And the line from the notch to the point in Porlock where the photographer had been standing was certainly a ley - it passed through two initial points, a tumulus, a standing stone, a church in Porlock and one in Bossington. All this in a space of no more than ten miles! Quite by accident, the photograph was oriented on a particularly good ley!

Sunday May 21st, 1966. Jimmy Goddard, Kay Richards, John Edmunds, Robin Ford, Elizabeth Davies-Eales, Tom Taylor.
Isle of Wight
This ley hunt was on the Isle of Wight, after a lecture I had given the day before to the Isle of Wight UFO Investigation Society on leys and orthoteny.

The first place we visited was St. Thomas's Church in Newport, which dates back at least to 1180, and is on one of the primary leys which make up the Island primary system. The apex (north corner) of this system (not far from St. Thomas's) was however a modern Victorian structure (St. Paul's). However, it was on a cross-roads which had the very significant name of Cross Lane (the name was even marked on the O.S map) so it is possible that this cross-roads is the real primary centre.

The centre of the Isle of Wight primary system is an initial point just off the Newport-Godshill road. It is much more impressive than it appears from the map, but on the day we visited it was too misty to see anything from it.

On the way to Newchurch, our next visit, we passed Godshill church, which I later discovered to be a ley centre. There is a very interesting legend attached to this church. When it was being built (at the bottom of the hill), the angels reputedly kept taking the stones to the summit. Eventually the people relented, built the church there, and called it "Godshill" for that reason. Watkins mentions many similar legends attached to ley points; e.g., the Imp Stone at Silchester, and the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire.

Newchurch church, the west corner of the primary system, dates back only to 1087, (the Saxon chapel was not on this site). But it can be regarded as an initial point, for it is on a very high and steep hill.

We could not get to the most important primary centre (a hilltop tumulus) because of inclement weather (thick mist) so instead we went to see three tumuli in line on Westover Down. Unfortunately, although they were only a few yards apart, visibility was so low that we could not even photograph these.

The southern primary centre (initial point) did not seem so impressive as it appeared on the map. However, we stopped at a cross-roads on one of its leys and observed it.

The ley from Stonehenge to Coniston
by D. R.Chaundy
In February of 1954, a young man called Stephen Darbishire took two photographs of a flying saucer over Dove Crags, on the slopes of Coniston Old Man in the Lake District. This is only one of the many sightings that have been reported in Great Britain, but it is a very important one, because when a line is drawn from Stonehenge to Avebury and continued northward, it will go through Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and on to the Lake District, where it runs straight through Coniston.

Gloucestershire, Sunday, 3rd October, 1966 Jimmy Goddard, Millicent Rosslova and Mrs. Geraldine Mortimer: We first visited Bishop's Cleeve Church, which is on a rise in the ground, and is also on a ley from "The Ring", a ley centre on Cleeve Hill, the highest point of the Cotswolds. Bishop's Cleeve Church is dedicated to St Michael (striking ley churches are usually dedicated either to St. Michael or St. Andrew for some reason). Unfortunately there was a service in progress at the time so we could not go in to see if there were any histories of the church.

After photographing the church, we climbed to the top of Cleeve Hill and found "The Ring", near a triangulation station. I took some photographs of this and one of Bishop's Cleeve Church along the ley. It was visible from the hilltop, and before the buildings were erected the mound it stands on must have been equally visible from the peak. (Many UFO's have been seen over Cleeve Hill, incidentally).

0n climbing down from the hill, we were met in the same way as Allen Watkins (see Vol. 1 No 3 of The Ley Hunter), by a man who told us there was an old mark-stone crossing a stream nearby. As with Mr. Watkins he told us this without us telling him we were interested in leys, or even in archaeology.

After this we went on to see and photograph the Tibble Stone, a mark-stone near Teddington, and Teddington church, which is on a ley from Cleeve Hill. The present church dates back to the 11th century.

On the way home from Cheltenham I saw three clumps of trees apparentlhy in alignment on a ridge, and photographed them (though I am not sure how the picture will come out, as the train was travelling quite fast.) The clumps appeared to be all on he same ridge, not on separate peaks, therefore I think it likely that they were in fact in alignment.

The Pendragon Party (12th November 1966)
This most enjoyable party was held by the Pendragon Society of Bristol to raise funds for their forthcoming dig at Cadbury Castle, Somerset. Many members of the Society went in fancy dress of Arthurian style, of which the most striking were a very ecclesiastical looking St. Patrick, a splendid black-robed Merlin and a jovial Guinevere.

I was interested to see two members of the Ley Hunter's Club at the party, Gerald Lovell and Peter Furnesss. We discussed the Club at some length and decided to have a meeting, possibly in the West Midlands, as many members live in that area. This was to be to talk about what the Club should be doing in the way of research, but this never happened, and the magazine ceased publication, and was not restored until 1970 when Paul Screeton began his excellent editorship, which however dispensed with the idea of a club.

On the Sunday after the party Mrs. Foster showed me some interesting photographs of Cadbury Castsle and the Pendragon dig there last summer. These show the Castle to be indeed massive. Mrs. Foster also told me that from the air a number of straight tracks can be seen criss-crossing the area in all directions; also a legendary extension of Arthur's causeway from Cadbury. It is thought at the moment in archaeological circles that the causeway only goes as far as the Foss Way, but local legend has it that it extends all the wayto Glastonbury, and Mrs. Foster wondered if the Ley Hunter's Club could find out if it is in fact so.

Since the party I found four leys skirting Cadbury Castle, and for some reason a great number of churches appear on them.

The first travels north-east from a moat and church near Marston Magna, skirts the south of Cadbury,continues through Compton Pauncefoot church, a cross-roads in Kilmington, and a tumulus on Brinsdown Hill, west of Maiden Bradley. It then goes to the very important unmarked centre in Warminster and continues to skirt Scratchbury Hill.UFO enthusiasts will be interested to know that this makes a grand total of fourteen leys for this centre.

Another ley comes eastward through Weston Bampfylde church, skirts the north of Cadbury Castle, then passes through South Cadbury, Blackford, Holton, Silton and Huntingford churches.

One which goes almost due east goes through Podimore, Queen Camel and Weston Bampfylde churches before skirting the south of Cadbury. It then goes through Pen Hill initial point (592 feet above sea level) a cross-tracks at Cole Street Farm (south of Gillingham), then skirts Castle Rings (north-east of Shaftesbury).

The last of the four leys comes north-west through a tumulus north of Corton Denham, skirts the west of Cadbury, then goes through South Barrow, East Lydford and Baltonsborough churches.

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