A Life of Ley Hunting

1986

January 1986
THE NEW STRAIGHT TRACK IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
Some time ago Michael de Styrcea mentioned at one of our monthly meetings that the main street of thu new town of Milton Keynes is aligned purposely to the midsummer sunrise. I therefore made a point of visiting this when attending a graduates' conference at the nearby Open University campus at Walton Hall.

The street, called Midsummer Boulevard, is Milton Keynes' main shopping street and extends from the main door of the railway station for about a mile of tree-lined dual carriageway, finally ending at a mound called the Belvedere (a name meaning prospect tower)

Midsummer Boulevard itself ends at a T-junction, but the path continues over a bridge and across a park to the Belvedere viewpoint. It is this end of the street which is the most interesting. The mound itself has a circular path round the top linking it to the straight path, and travelling down this towards Milton Keynes we come first to a round pond and then to a round hedge cut to show the points of the compass.

To a ley hunter, the parallel between the mounds, ponds, tracks and clumps of the Old Straight Track are striking, so I looked on the map to see if there is a coincident ley. There seemed to be very little except a few road and track junctions, one named as Wood End and being a fairly striking joining of three tracks with a house adjoining, which could be worth visiting.

The roads running parallel with Midsummer Boulevard are called Silbury Boulevard and Avebury Boulevard, making the ancient association obvious. Silbury Boulevard, however, is not quite parallel and its extension meets the other line at Wood End. It also goes through North Crawley church in the other direction. A better ley through North Crawley goes through the nearly-parallel A509 for about a mile, as well as Willen church, a cross-roads, a spotmarked height and a milestone.

An even better ley goes through the Open University campus, which has an oak clump at its centre and an old church, St. Michael's, on its perimeter. The campus consists of modern buildings in the grounds of an old house, Walton Hall (which still remains). Many attractive features of the grounds have not been altered, including the clump (The Copse), a mulberry lawn and a walled garden. Several huge old cedars remain too, and a pond just opposite the church.

The line joining clump and church is quite a good ley, coming south through Castle Farm, Lavendon (earthworks evident on map), Lavendon church, cross-roads/tracks and sharp bend near Clifton Keynes, the Ml motorway intersection (earlier crossroads or subconscious siting?), Walton Hall clump, Walton Hall forecourt, St. Michael's church and a church half a mile to the south.

I am trying to find out more about the origin of the design of Milton Keynes.

THE OLD STONES OF THE SURREY/HANTS BORDERS
by Chris Hall 3 - Farnborough.
The old parish church (SU57275556) stands on top of the "fern-covered hill", which gave the settlement its name. The church stands in a small, circular churchyard, the limits of which are exactly those of the tumulus which forms the whole. A wooden Saxon church is believed to have stood here in the 7th century and Roman pottery has been found close by (7). The claim of the site as a ley marker is therefore in little doubt, being a natural hilltop, tumulus and ancient Christian site.

Its inclusion in an article about ancient stones is, on the face of it, a little dubious, but a dowser I once knew claimed there is a buried stone circle on the circumference of the churchyard. This would remain yet another unproved dowser's theory were it not for one fact that just outside the churchyard gate are two stone blocks lying prostrate, one on top of the other. Both are about 16-17" in width, while the upper stone would be about 55" high if upright. The lower block is shorter. They have no notable markings, but would look quite in order as part of any typical moorland stone circle in Britain. Personally, I doubt that a stone circle ever stood in Farnborough, but perhaps a dowser in the group might like to investigate the site? A standing stone or two in a sacred place seems far more likely. The problem is that no-one knows how long the stones have lain outside the church or what purpose they served. As is normal in such cases, local lore has come up with a number of explanations:

1) They were mounting stones for people who rode to church.
2) They were used to rest the coffin before it was carried into the churchyard.
3) They once formed part of a flight of steps.
4) Local historians suggest they were glacial deposits.
5) They were a sacrificial altar for the tumulus (Anglo-Saxon) This theory seems connected with the finding 0+ stones near Cockadobby Hill (SU86835344), a Bronze Age tumulus(8).

An annual fair was formerly held in Farnborough during the first week of August. It began in the morning with a great procession around the village led by Robin Hood, Friar Tuck and Little John, all dressed in Lincoln green. They first climbed the hill to the parish church where a service was held, then paraded around the village. In the afternoon sports and a fair were held (9). It seems that here some far earlier ritual is being symbolically enacted, with three village leaders dressed in green leading the tribe up the local sacred hill to worship a deity. Perhaps the two mystery stones played a part in this. The symbolic green became the real thing in the old Farnborough May Day festivities. The maypole was set up on the green and a tree nearby was decorated and the children danced around it, one being chosen as Queen of the May.

Another important character was Jack-in-the-Green, who was actually the village sweep in a framework of green boughs (10). The ceremony seems to have ceased somewhere before 1B50 (11). A large bonfire was held on the green on November 5th. That it had little to do with Guy Fawkes and a lot to do with an earlier pagan ritual is suggested by the burning of an effigy of a well-known village personality. Elderly people living in 1920 could recall seeing this (12).

Somewhere among all this may lie the clue to the mystery of the stones. The original Farnborough village was at Farnborough Green, with a few more houses at Farnborough Street and another village 1-1/2 miles to the west called Cove. The modern sprawling town of 50,000 people did not begin to grow until the army moved to Aldershot in 1856. Perhaps 3,000 years before, a people who had no written word lit sacrificial fires and spoke in a language of stone cast in a living landscape, stone which rests there still, in a language we have forgotten how to read. Other fragments of their story rest in scattered corners of Surrey, or shaped in hills half as old as time.

References:
7) Official church guide.
8) Jottings from a Farnborough Notebook, Jessie Challacombe (Gale and Polden, 1922)
9) ibid; p.66.
10) ibid; p.68.
11) The Morris in Hampshire -- George Frampton, "Hampshire" May 1980. 12) Challacombe, op. cit,- p.70.

Dodman?
On visiting the Nine Ladies stone circle in Derbyshire some years ago I was surprised to turn and find my son Peter standing in the middle of the circle holding two sticks like a dodman. He could give no explanation. Recently I saw him chipping at some roofing slate with a stone and found he had produced a perfect Neolithic-type leaf shaped arrowhead!

July 1986
STONEHENGE LOOKALIKE

As up the hill with labouring steps we tread
Where the twin clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit gain'd, at ease reclining stay
And all around the widespread scene survey
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befell.
See on the skyline there, yon shapely mound
That ancient earthwork formed old Mercia's bound
In misty distance see the furrow heave
There lies forgotten lonely Gwichelm's grave.
And in the vale where stands the stately tower
In days gone by, up rose the Roman power.
Around the hill the ruthless Danes entrench'd
And these fair plains with gory slaughter drench'd.
And yonder there, where Thames' smooth waters glide
In later years appeared monastic pride.
And in the field where stands the grazing herd
High walls were crumbled, stone coffins disinterr'd.
Such in the course of time is the wreck which fate
And awful doom await the earthly great.

This poem, thought to have been written by a nineteenth century blacksmith, is unusual in that its author did not choose the printed page, but the bark of a living tree on Castle Hill, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire. On visiting the clumps last May I found the poem almost certainly on the alignment of the three clumps (Wittenham Clump, Castle Hill (Iron Age on Neolithic) and Brightwell Barrow), which also aligns with Long Wittenham church, and a small church near Sandleigh. The three clumps are in visual alignment.

Visiting St. Mary's, Long Wittenham, this was found to be of great interest. Fragments of cinerary urns had shown it to be a place of pre-Christian sanctity, and also there was a carving of a dragon and a face on the chancel arch. The face had been defaced, possibly in Cromwell's time, but, strangely, the dragon had been left alone. If the ley goes through the centre of the church it goes at an angle to pass through the 12th century font and also an unusual piscina in the vestry (formerly a chapel) which contains the smallest monumental carving in England, of a knight.

Travelling from here to the nearby town of Dorchester-on-Thames, an even more exciting find was made. Exhibits in the museum indicated that it must have been an important centre in Neolithic times, for it had a henge-and-cursus system very similar to the one at Stonehenge. It even had a wood henge in a similar position to the one in Wiltshire, in the cursus alignment. (Unfortunately the monuments are now gone; in 1938 they were seen only as cropmarks, and now gravel excavation has destroyed even this. But the important thing is that the site is known).

There seem to be some interesting alignments going through the Big Rings henge site. One has too few sites to be called a ley but the churches of Long Wittenharn and Drayton St. Leonard align with the henge, and are about equidistant. A more spectacular line is the one which passes through Dorchester Abbey, the Big Rings, a causewayed ring ditch on the cursus, Windmill Hill, a church by a holy well in Oxford, and two cross-tracks further north. A further line passes through the multi-junction at Berrick Salome, the wood henge on the cursus, the Big Rings, a church in Abingdon and one in Tubney, and Harrowdown Hill, which looks from the map to be a spectacular clump. The name also implies prehistoric associations. These alignments would be an interesting subject for a future field trip if anyone is interested.

Two Local Lines
When walking with my son Peter on St. Anne's Hill hillfort, Chertsey, over the late May Bank Holiday, I found a very pleasant, compact little clump overlooking Thorpe Park. I have since found two interesting lines going through it.

One of these showed a previously-found pine clump at the Chertsey end of Green Lane, Addlestone, the St. Anne's Hill clump and Thorpe Church to align. The other was found when I noticed some 'feeling' in a roadway inside the Plessey factory where I work, and which is aligned on Woburn Hill. On plotting its line, it is found to align on the St. Anne's Hill clump, passing over a large clump on Woburn Hill, the roundabout, a cross-roads, the St. A's clump and a multijunction in Windsor Great Park. These lines do not have sufficient points found yet to be called leys. Will any member of the group interested in investigating with me in the field please contact me.

Dodman strikes again
My son Peter was mentioned in a previous issue as having made something resembling a leaf-shaped arrowhead without realising it. More recently he has come up with something else - a perfectly carved phallic symbol, tied neatly around the centre with a piece of grass! When asked what it was, he simply said 'a carving".

October 1986 AVEBURY REVISITED
On July 15th, 1962, the Ley Hunter's Club and the Pendragon Society made a visit to the stone circle village of Avebury in Wiltshire. Tony Wedd, Philip Heselton and I were there, and a memorable day was had, made more so by the fact that I had the opportunity of speaking about it on television shortly afterwards. Almost exactly twenty-four years later, my wife Doris and I visited the village, on August 11th, and we found a number of interesting things.

We began our visit by walking the circle, starting by the Marlborough road and walking anticlockwise round the high outer bank. The first thing we came to was a large beech clump, one of three clumps on the bank. It is unlikely that they were here originally, but I felt they could have been naturally or subconsciously sited to replace with their wind noise sounds deliberately made here in prehistoric times. There is also an intervisibility factor, for this clump is visible from the Sanctuary on Overton Hill, while the circle itself is hidden. The three Avebury clumps seem to form an isosceles triangle, the mid-point of the base of which is the centre of the monument.

The south-east quadrant where we started does not have many stones of the Great Circle left, though one it does have, the Devil's Chair, has a Devil legend attached to it. More prominent are the stones and markers of the Southern Inner Circle. Also, scanning the horizon, a profusion of clumps is visible - we are looking towards the Ridgeway with its barrows. There seemed to be more than those barrows marked on the 1:50000 map.

At the end of this bank section we came to the second deciduous clump and, the small road leading to the Downs. Crossing this we find another fairly stoneless section of the Great Circle, but the remains of the Cove in the centre of the Northern Inner Circle are visible.

Reaching the Swindon road, the massive diamond-shaped Swindon Stone comes into view; one of the few stones neither fallen nor moved. Most of the stones in this and the following section were replaced by Alexander Keiller from their fourteenth-century burial places. We then come to a section where the bank was levelled to build the Great Barn, now a museum, and we have to go by road to the continuation beyond the High Street (once the site of the Beckhampton Avenue). In this final section Silbury Hill comes into view, although its top becomes eventually eclipsed by an intervening hill. The stones here include the infamous Barber Stone, which fell crushing the man attempting to bury it. Looking back towards the church, the third clump, one of pines, can be seen.

Returning to the village we visited the church; St. James's is a Saxon foundation but with many later additions. The nave is almost square and there is a fifteenth-century rood loft; at the west end is the twelfth-century font carved with the figure of Christ trampling on two winged serpents. I wondered if these could represent the serpentine Avebury avenues. The church is built so that the circles are just out of sight, for clearly nothing short of a cathedral could dominate the circles. Despite this, however, it seems to be subconsciously sited on an interesting ley passing through five churches, Avebury centre and some other points. There was also head-hum felt even in the porch (quite rare).

After lunch we went south to briefly visit Silbury Hill, then went to the Sanctuary site. Many clumps were visible as well as Silbury of course; perhaps the most spectacular was the visible alignment of the Sanctuary, East Kennett church and East Kennet Long Barrow with its clump. The Sanctuary was originally a stone and wood circle but was dismantled in Stukeley's time, except for one recumbent stone. The rest are marked with concrete markers. One would think such a site would be bleak, but in fact both this and the similar Woodhenge have welcoming atmospheres. We noted an alignment of barrows across the road with one near the Sanctuary and East Kennett. We finished our trip with a visit to the West Kennett barrow, now open to the public with glass roof panels to admit light. Despite brash Americans visiting, it awed me as it had twenty-four years earlier when I was here with Tony Wedd - there was a feeling that it was more a place of worship than a mausoleum. A number of clumps are visible from its top, and the Stonehenge-Avebury ley grazes its west end.

Return to List of Years
Return to Homepage