Nishijin Textile Centre - Kyoto -3

Looms set up for the traditional sashes worn with kimonos called obi


The large Jacquard loom on the left


Obi pattern



Another view of the jaquard press

Nishijin Textile Centre - Kyoto

Up till recently I owned a beautiful four shaft table top loom, it looked complicated and was, and I realised I needed another lifetime to get to grips with it, so as a change was happening in my life, I put it on Freecycle, and surprisingly it was snapped up pretty quick and it left in the back of someone's station-wagon, and I kept my simple rigid heddle loom to play around with. But I am still fascinated by these complicated creatures that require a great deal of patience and understanding. The following are patterns that are created by shaft looms, though one looks as if the warp has been handpainted........

Nishijin Textile Centre - Kyoto

In Japan craftwork is respected and craftspeople are paid for keeping their skills alive. The following people work in the textile centre above....

He is cutting the fine threads of silver, for presumably embroidery work to silk, the silver has a paper backing. When gold leaf is used, it is applied to red lacquer (which is the glue) and then paper. What happens of course is that the gold flakes away and exposes the lacquer which gives an attractive finish. On silk the gold thread is woven on a loose weft/warp into the required embroidered pattern, so as the silk fabric is woven by the weaver, two other people sit on either side of the loom and weave the gold pattern into it, the gold stitch is then reinforced from the back by extra stitches such brocade can cost a thousand pounds a metre..

Cutting stencils, these stencils are used in on indigo, the stencil area filled with a resistant rice paste when the cloth is dyed.

Colouring in the pattern

Indigo Dyeing

Aizenkobo Indigo Dyer's Workshop

Spinning, dyeing and weaving are things I occasionally do, though indigo dyeing not, its a summer occupation as the wool or silk has to be dipped back and forward so its better done in a garden. Above is a Japanese traditional dyer, his kimonos for sale though are very expensive; the fermentation process is similar to our Woad dyeing something I have done, though again fermentation is required, this time the process if not in lye is in urine for best results, is not particularly pleasant; I used washing soda, though you can use caustic soda very carefully.

The Japanese Natural Fermenting Pure Indigo Dyeing

Indigo(ai) is an organic pigment in every continent of the earth. Derived from leaves of a variety of different plants, indigo has been a prized dye substance throughout the world for thousands of years. Available only to the aristocracy in the 8th century Ai-zome (indigo dyeing) later became the most popular method of dyeing cotton clothing for common people, and indigo-dyed pants and jackets are still worn in farm villages throughout Japan by crafts men and women.
The indigo plant contains indikan, a water soluble substance which, when acted upon by fermentation forms indigo. Reduced in an alkaline solution from indigo white, it is fixed to the fiber by oxygenation. Indigo is an extremely fast dye, particularly in light and water, with repeated oxygenating, deep shades of blue are possible.
The indigo dye vat is a combination of ground, fermented indigo leaves; lye; lime to control fermentation; and wheat bran to nourish the bacteria needed so the oxygen from the indigo solution will dissolve and be absorbed into fibers. The vat is kept heated to maintain a state of fermentation. A natural fermenting indigo dye vat requires a delicate balance of the above ingredients and condition to produce a deep permanent colour. Hence most indigo dyers use synthetic indigo and chemical additives.
The Utsuki family at Aizenkobo continues to use the natural fermenting pure indigo dyeing techniques only, in the belief that only in this can true ‘eggplant’ indigo blue be obtained. The following are a few of the traditional Japanese weaving and dyeing techniques used to decorate fiber.

Shibori i (tie dyeing)
Is a method of resist dyeing in which the required design is securely tied or stitched onto the fibre before it is dyed. This tie-dyeing technique has been used in Japan since the 8th century(and possibly earlier) for the decoration of silk and cotton fabrics for Kimono, as well as for cushion and quilt covers. Kanoko-shibori, tiny dye resist circles on fine silk, is a speciality of Kyoto, and the Arimatsu-shibori of Nagoya is also famous as a center for the production of fine shibori-dyed fabrics.
Kata-zome (Stencil Dyeing)
Is done by placing a cut stencil over a piece of cloth and applying glutinous rice paste over it. When the past is, the uncovered areas of the cloth are hand-dyed, by dipping the fabric a number of times to achieve the lasting deep eggplant blue. An even more difficult type katazome requires that the fabric be resist-treated on back and front, and then vat dyed, to achieve a reversible design. The stencils themselves are works or art, cut by hand from special paper treated with persimmon juice for extra strength. Katazome has been used in Japan since the 16th century.

Kasur i (Ikat)
Kasur i (literally to blur) is a technique more commonly known in the West as ikat, a Malay-Indonesian word that describes a very old binding process used to colour threads in sections before weaving. This technique produces blurred patterns of alternating colours woven into the fabric, rather than dyed after the cloth has been completed. The pattern is created by binding a section of the warp or weft tightly with thread and vat dyeing the skeins before attaching them to the loom. To create a pattern, careful calculations must be made to determine the exact distance between the bound sections, producing the finished design.

An earlier blog Apparently the difference between chemical dyes of indigo and the organic plant material is highlighted when you photo them, the narrow range of digital colours focuses on the chemical dye and renders the photo purple whereas the real indigo will produce its proper colour in the photo...

Note;`Jill Goodwin in a Dyers Manual says this, she calls the plants of indigo the Indigoferas;The reader will note the similarity of method between dying with fresh indigofera or polygonum leaves and fresh woad leaves with the following difference. Indigofera and polygonum leaves contain an enzyme, liberated at a temperature of 122 f, which removes a glucose which is combined with the indoxl. Fresh indigo and polygonum* leaves are therefore always put into cold soft water and heated slowly up to 120 F with a lid on the saucepan, whereas woad leaves are scalded with nearly boiling water and cooled to 120 F before use. In both cases the leaves are strained and discarded from the solution, which is then used for direct dyeing with whichever reduction agent and solvent the dyer may use.

*The polygonum leaves belong to the Japanese Knotweed, a weed of distinction in this country especially in West Wales.

Imperial Palace Gardens - Kyoto

Last week my partner went on a business trip to Japan, though his 'business trips' are about the crafts of silk, papermaking, dyes, etc... so the next blogs will be a compendium of some of the things he photographed....
The photographs below are the Imperial Palace and its gardens, and the palace itself, opposite the hotel he stayed in. Japanese gardens are fascinating, cool, calm, serene are the words that come to mind, the moss gardens are probably the most beautiful. Completely different from an English garden, formalised or cottage, what you do notice is the lack of flowers, the elements being rock, trees and shrubs, water and moss,* and of course the famous symbolic raked gravel surfaces that can be found at the Imperial Palace or the temple garden of Ryoan-ji.
Autumn colours of the maple making striking combinations against the evergreens, and the twisted branches remind you of bonsai....., the only similar thing that I can think of in England at the moment is the Westonbirt Arboreteum which also has the vivid hues of orange and red maples in Autumn.

*Moss of course is one of my favourite words, its the name of my dog, its soft sound invokes images of pillow-soft green mounds, its has a symbiotic relationship with water and stones, mounding softly it embraces the stone, it revels in the moist air, turning emerald green, squiges in bogs with that strange sucking noise; its minute flowers a reminder of a time long ago when the earth was frozen - its as old as the stones themselves sometimes and like lichen, which takes such a long time to form on gravestones reminds me of the first beginnings of life on Earth.

Click once on photo, then once more on small photo, which will then become full screen.

The Palace , no longer in use, with mannequins

A raked surface

Waldo William 'fields'

Waldo Williams's memorial stone

For the last few days I have trying to find time to write about Iola Morganwg, the 18th century 'archdruid' for the revival of Welsh druidry, unfortunately he created a myth with his translations and poems, a vivid reconstruction of a 'truth'.
But all the time another person nagged at my mind 'Waldo' who's stone monument I had seen on the moors below Carn Meyn in the Preseli mountains, so putting Iola aside for the time being, a quick note on Waldo Williams.
Williams when young lived in the village of Mynacholog-ddu and details of his biography can be found here.
The Preseli mountains has a very strong pull on my mind, its landscape and stones, the fields nestling below the mountains, the hundreds of sheep scattered on its slopes in summer, the beautiful loneliness of it all would lead to a life of contemplative ease. The great stone cairns of Foel Drygarn that sit above the village of Mynacholog-ddu are a stark reminder of the high office bronze age leaders were afforded in death, and the great crested stone ridge of Carn Meyn reminds us that such manifestations of our earth had enormous symbolism to the prehistoric people who lived here, and maybe transported some of the stones to Stonehenge.
So to his rather beautiful and famous poem, written in Welsh I believe, here it is translated from another website.


Those fields – I’ve walked across them - they are
Extraordinary fields, though inaccessible to the seeker
After transcendence this is no loss for the page
Holds them in view and they extend into the margins
Between field hedges and the nets of the Hunter

In many places and times where time
Is arrested and held captive by a tether
Of stillness long enough to feel chastened by silence.
Sunlight touches a wall on a summer afternoon,
Shadows enclose a moment which passes from forever

To forever: Such blessings are felt to be precious.
But hearing beyond them voices calling in a common
Tongue of work and worship echoing through centuries,
And knowing that they witness this moment
When all is still, so that being alone

Is to be with them, resonates beyond solitude.
Voices heard in the echoes of whistling lapwings
Tremble to life over empty meadows; each hand,
Each tongue unique in the passing of time yet fused
In a moment making one of many things.

Foel Drygarn with Carn Meyn in the distance

Gors Fawr stone circle

Foel or Moel Drygarn stone cairns

A marvellous, and dearly loved companion

Peak Oil

George Monbiot on Peak Oil, or maybe the end of oil, its not happy reading, though I have been reading about it for several years now, but one of the books on the subject is Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over (Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies) .


http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/16/if-nothing-else-save-farming/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Autumn storms and the last of the leaves

A photo of the 'quiet' before the next storm

As the rain and wind beat against the windows this morning, with the storms that are making their way from Wales to the east coast. ....

A group of trees across the green, with the last silvered leaves in its topmost branches, become illuminated against a western dark louring sky from the sun who was making a brave but futile gesture in the east this morning.... with a touch of photoshopping to make it more dramatic...

The last Wolf at Leinster

Taken from the Creative Commons, this wolf probably comes from Canada!

Going through the archaeology news as I do every day, the following article in a Canadian paper tells the fate of the last wolves in Ireland who were exterminated during the time of Oliver Cromwell. Its a sad indictment of our human effect on other creatures in the environment.

Curse of Cromwell Extended to Irish Wolf Population

The other piece of news that caught my eye was Egypt's museum directors asking for the Rosseta Stone back, again the high handed way colonialism took valuable artefacts from subject countries must give pause for thought.

The Quest to Regain Egypt's Antiquities

And perhaps the fate of Bath and how near it came to losing its World Heritage Site status, and of course since the Western Side development is yet to be built, might lose it in the future;

Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian

The Southgate project which is mentioned as finished replaced a 1960's single storey concrete block, in this photo the pastiche neoclassical features are shown, again there height is a problem, and it very true that you could see greenery from any part of Bath (the seven hills of Bath) when you looked up to the skyline, these new buildings obscure the view from this side of the city....

Winter arriving

Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,
a web of waters streaming over rocks,
air misty but not raining,
seeing this land from a boat on a lake
or a broad slow river,
coasting by.

Taken from Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers without End, it reminds me that the mind should be peaceful as we contemplate the happenings around us. Darkness greets us in the morning and the land turning so quickly towards winter, is becoming grey and monochrome after the sharp colours of autumn.

The birds rise late, the host of sparrows that live in the hedge just across from the house are not so noisy, but the starlings are still here. The young can still be distinguished by their bright colours. I had never come across so many starlings massed together before, and this summer watched them come down in the garden to feed. The young formed a creche, so sometimes there was as many as 20 to be seen, they learnt to bath in the clay pot, perching on the edges, watching each other, they would take courage and jump in splashing their wings clean.

The same comedy was enacted by a young blackbird, a rather nervous youngster who was always getting chased off by his father, at least I think it was father, for he followed him around in a rather forlorn manner. When he got chased off, he would hide under the shed, and though the older bird would not let him bathe with him, the little one would come out when the father had gone and very bravely practise washing in the pot - though he was obviously frightened.

The poem at the top reminds me of all the rivers, brooks and streams I have gazed down into this summer; seeing the great water lily leaves floating just below the surface, pondweed a green haze on dark waters. The rushes and tall spikes of irises, intermingling with meadowsweet and mallows. The fish swimming lazily in the mill pond, bright gleams of sun on water and the small dabchicks 'walking on water'

Coggeshall Abbey, the mill is situated behind the large farmhouse here....

Photos

Walking along the river yesterday, it was only a few days ago that I caught the soft orange glow of the autumn landscape, yesterday the steely grey tones of winter are starting to creep in. A storm of rain and wind brought many of the leaves down, the river is full, and is starting to lap over the top of the old lock gates. Ducks are appearing in the river and the mill pond, and a weir was revealed from the mill to the river which we had'nt noticed before. The handsome black horse is a bad tempered creature, ears back when we approached, I soft talked him and stroked his nose but he is probably a miserable creature to ride! The gypsy horses, were at their gate again watching the world go by, or waiting for tea I don't know, but as I have to dive into a hedge to photograph them, the black gelding always looks solemn as he peers at me curiously - far more trustworthy than the elegant one in the field.

Mushrooms

As I was making a stuffing for two very large mushrooms this mornings, my mind strayed back to Shirley Conran's words 'life's too short to stuff a mushroom' and thought well I'm glad that occasionally we find the time to stuff one! Philosphical thinking when we prepare food is probably a good excuse, but the end results are always rather delicious.... this morning, a bread mix I found at Sainsbury, containing parmesan cheese and dried tomatoes makes tasty rolls, whilst homemade fish cakes of salmon and spring onions will go nicely with the mushrooms...
But after finding mushrooms on sunday and not being allowed to pick them I turned to Susan Harley's Food in England for some advice on English mushrooms.
Well she loved her mushrooms too and has written a whole chapter on the subject.., names to conjure with.....

Common field mushroom (Psalliota campestris) is dainty pick and white when young turning brown, then almost black, as it grows old.. You will find them in pastures, normally where cattle graze. They may be anything from 4 to 24 inches across!

Horse mushroom (Psalliota Arvenis) is a clumsy version of the field mushroom. The top is thicker and the stem lumpy, and the colour of the gills less pink. The smell is that of field mushroom. Note if a horse mushroom stains yellow when cut or bruised(not a faint tinge but a definite bright yellow -as if dabbed with mustard or egg yolk -discard it as it may be be Psalliota xanthoderma which, though not deadly, has been known to cause illness
It is the solitary dead white fungus that should be disregarded with suspicion. It is the death Cap (Amanita phalloides) which is most dangerous.

Fairy Ring (Marasmius oreades), are best for drying, they are not always true to their habit of growing in rings, especially where lea has been broken. But the delicate 'fairy ring mushroom' is unmistakable. They are seldom more than 2 inches across, and carried comparitvely high on slender stems. The gills are deep and very regular, one long one short, like the minute marks around a clock. The top is buff, and the gills are very much paler, the slender stems are stringy and tough so cut them off.

The puff-balls (Lycoperdon); The really giant one (lycoperdon giganteum) can be as big as a football, both large and small puffballs taste exactly the same. Their texture - solid white, like smooth, white cream cheese, and the outer covering is fine as white kid. .....

Cooking; Smallest puff balls, walnut size, are best dipped in batter and fried like rissoles. Drain and serve as a pebble beach around a pool of green spinach. Medium sized, are rolled in flour, pepper and salt, then drop into an earthen ware pan with barely enough milk to cover, and simmer to cook. Thicken sauce after cooking, pour back over the puff-balls and garnish with scarlet barberries and green parsley.
Giant puff-balls are sliced, and dipped in egg and milk and then fine dry breadcrumbs. Fried in hot bacon-fat, drain on kitchen paper, pepper and salt and serve piping hot, sprinkled with cider or vinegar..

Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius); One of the prettiest of fungi. You find them, suddenly, in the autumn woods, sometimes clustered so close that they look like a torn golden shawl, dropped down amongst the dead leaves and sticks. They are all the same clear, egg-yolk yellow, the stem coming up straight, and springing and spreading stiff as a tiny fountain spurting gold. The top surface is damp and glossy yellow; the underside crinkly matt yellow; and they smell faintly of apricots.

She goes on to list more edible fungi and her writing is a marvellous description of the rich harvest of mushrooms in general before the advent of modern farming techniques. Though I am nervous about picking and cooking mushrooms and perhaps a course is called for, it is wonderful to think how the countryside furnished such a rich culinary diet, and though the warning nowadays is all about the deadly fungi, (and if I have time will give her description of the Death Cap,) the funny little tree drying mushrooms before a fire is evocative of a self-sufficiency that has become extinct in this country.

A Walk

Today the wind and rain is beating against the window, but yesterday we had another fine warm Autumn day, a few fireworks on the green but no 'trick or treating'. So we went for a walk in the afternoon, though we stopped off down a lane to buy some vegetables. A smallholding, we get our logs from here, plants and vegetables. Yesterday a large homegrown cauliflower and a 'hispi' cabbage, plus those classic flowers of autumn - chrysantheums, a lovely red brown bronze colour. Pansy plants for the garden, I'm sure she makes no money from selling her stuff, but its nice to see and buy something local.
The walk was around a field which we occasionally stop at. Here once I watched a pheasant and his mate solemnly drink from a puddle and then off into the field they wandered. Today I saw another (same?) but he ran across the road and did'nt stop running till he was a little speck in the ploughed field. There was a lot of young pheasants in the field, so perhaps they are his offspring.



We wandered around our field, past holly in the hedge with bright red berries, along the ridge the tractor makes, fresh mallow leaves of the little meadow plant, mushrooms and toadstools grace the trackway, I would have picked them but was'nt allowed to - a mushroom course is called for. My mobile beeped, a text message from a friend who had read my blog and as I texted back, I remembered Sandy Tostvig's story on the radio that morning.
She had been out with an oldish friend and her mobile had bleeped - the friend turned to her with astonishment - 'is'nt that clever, they can find you even when they don't know where you are'
We have come along way with technology thats for sure, for the last three weeks my 'other half' has 'researched' the best notebook laptop to buy, he now owns one, and its fully fired to work on the wireless system (which I don't understand) but my computer also works on wireless.

Its miniaturisation is of course also mirrored in the new mobiles which can also go on the internet but the thought of having the internet with one permanently does'nt bear thinking about.

Lucy Mangan on the demise of the Post Office

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/31/post-office-lucy-mangan

It does seem that if people don't fight for this particular institution. the 'Mandys' of this world will sell us down the creek - once again!

India

On Friday I wrote about the destruction of open cast mining of the Karanpura Valley in India, today I find in the Guardian another terrible tale of environmental devastation in India, again because of the hungry search for minerals to fuel their economy. Rivers, forests and in this instance the Niyamgiri hill part of a range of hills are to be reduced to nothing in the search for bauxite, and I can only quote Arundhati Roy as to what will happen if this annihilation takes place...

“If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be destroyed, too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will the hundreds of thousands of tribal people who live in the forested heart of India”

Sometimes we are very parochial in our bid to save the planet from disaster, wind turbines are seen as a disaster in this country to a few who don’t want their view obscured, we half-heartedly yell at the bankers and their bonuses, but yet forget that their bonuses are built on the wealth of banks and stocks and shares that are in the very quarry and mineral industries that ruin the life of other people.

Environmental degradation hits us all in the end, whether it is the tar sands of Canada, Alaska’s oil, rainforest destruction in the Amazon, or the forests of India, we become responsible for not speaking out, for allowing our governments to ‘weasel word’ their way out of a responsibility to the Earth on which we live – short term gains equal long term disaster for all our grandchildren.

The comments make interesting reading in the Guardian article, the argument against the Maoists and the argument for taking people out of their way of life and giving them a 'better' life in the cities, I argued in the Karanpura Valley news that cultural heritage was important and should be saved - there is a dilemma over the issue and perhaps one can only fall back on the environmental destruction that will take place, and leave for others to judge how the indigenous people of these forests and hills should respond to their own lives and the place they live in.

What Katy Did Next

Well the title might be misleading, its taken from those books I read when a child, about the late 19th century fortunes of Katy and her family and of course Louise M.Alcott's Little Women.

Well this is not about that Katy but about the non-celebrity Katie Price aka Jordan, who was in town yesterday signing her book (ghost written presumably). I have just read her biography on Wikipedia, knowing nothing about but am furious at her!

Post offices are shutting down everywhere, our government is letting another institution go to the wall with little thought to how we are going to get our letter, parcels, cards etc posted.

So where does our Katie come in to all this, well our local post office has just closed which means a visit to town to the main one for forms.... but, you are never going to believe this, this main office is situated on the first floor of W.H.Smith, and Katie was signing her latest book downstairs. Half a dozen police officers outside and a couple of hundred young females were barricaded between metal barriers clutching their books to be signed. Is she the heroine these young females should aspire to? no, a life of thrusting oneself into the limelight with a pair of big boobs, that seem to go up and down in size as the will takes her, and writing crap in ridiculous magazines is not what the female revolution was all about! though apparently she is very, very rich on all this!

Deciding not to go into Smiths meant coming back to another local post office (closed though because of the strike), all I wanted was a form, yes we can get stamps from our local supermarket, but they don't weigh large envelopes, etc. Another thing as small shops disappear everywhere, it is wise to note that supermarkets only hold a couple of days food, so in case of emergencies have a few tins put by like the Swiss who have to carry a fortnight's spare cache...

Knitting and presents has been my preoccupation this week, a funky pink scarf for Matilda, wooden puzzles for Lillie, and probably some wooden games I spied in one of those shops for the boys.

The children have been banned from Amazon wish lists "Mum and dad are now saying were not aloud on amazon for a strange reson???" according to Matilda yesterday....

Still the weather is beautifully autumny and it would be nice to go into the country for a walk and not face Sainsbury shopping this morning...

The Wild Hunt at Halloween

yn annwfyn ydiwyth, in Annwfyn the peacefulness,
yn annwfyn ygorwyth in Annwfyn the wrath,
yn annwfyn is eluyd in Annwfyn below the earth...

Halloween approaches and maybe the Wild Hunt will take to the skies. It is supposed to come from the kingdom of Annwn in the Welsh version, neither heaven or hell it is like middle-earth, here it is the god Lugh who rides across the sky with his hounds, white with red tipped ears. Maybe the hunt starts from Glastonbury Tor, who knows. They ride through the sky and those that dare look at them are not long on this earth.

Its story has its roots in Germanic or Gaulish stories, one tribe the Harii painting themselves black to attack their neighbours, another tribe the Heruli, nomadic wolf-warriors were dedicated to Wodan.

Or we could go to the Scandinavian version, here the Norse god Odin rides Sleipnir across the skies, if you saw it passing and cursed or mocked it very soon you would vanish from this earth but if you joined in you would be rewarded.

A black dog is also part of the tale, and if you found it on your hearth, than you could exorcise (not exercise it which is a very different thing!) it, similar to the custom for removing changelings, but if that did'nt work you had to look after the dog for a whole year very carefully!

The black dog legend, a story motif that occurs all over Britain, can be found in a northern version, here the dog is called Barghest, which is the name given to a special phantasmal dog. It is supposed to prowl the narrow alleyways of York, and also in Whitby along its narrow streets. The story of Dracula written by Bram Stoker in Whitby, has Dracula changing into a black dog as he leaves the ship for the town, and in this picture Robin Jarvis has him coming down the 199 steps in his children's books called the Whitby Witches.

And according to Wikipedia "The object of this phantom hunt varied greatly, and was either [that of] a visionary boar or wild horse, white-breasted maidens who were caught and borne away bound only once in seven years, or the wood nymphs, called Moss Maidens, who were thought to represent the autumn leaves torn from the trees and whirled away by the wintry gale." Whatever the case, the Hunt was most often seen in the autumn and winter, when the winds blew the fiercest."

Moss maidens of course could live in Wistman's Wood, one of those haunting places with gnarled miniature oaks softly covered in moss.


Mossy Wistman Wood

The Hosting of the Sidhe

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

William Butler Yeats

The 199 steps

All in all halloween or All Saints Night is a time for telling stories of the risen dead, as they coming knocking on your door with their skeletal fingers - its best not to let them in.

I shall not tell them to my grandchildren the two girls have already frightened themselves to death with a ghost story Matilda brought home a few days ago, of a ghost looking through the window, and even little Lillie who doe'snt actually know what a ghost is was scared stiff!

photos from the creative commons, and quite a lot of the information from Wikipedia

Children's book reading;

Hugh Scott - the Shaman Stone; Martha's father dies while investigating the Rollright Stones. She believes that he is reaching out to her, and in this haunted atmosphere the story of the Shaman's stone is unfolded.

Hugh Scott - Why Weeps The Brogan

Hugh Scott - The Haunted Sand

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/hugh-scott/

Yaxley's Cat - Robert Westall.....

Ponies and children books

Something happens around 4 o clock in the afternoon, as the little family gather for tea? or to watch the children come home.

By the pub garden


Inquisitive young

This little family of ponies are incredibly sweet, there is a bond between them all, one wonders what will happen when these two grow up.

Children books, its been a week for the old stories to come to the fore. Firstly, there is Asterix having a 40th birthday, can't say that I bought all of those marvellous books for my son but I bought a great many of them, they were then handed on to my first grandchild, but memories of standing in Waterstones perusing the titles and trying to remember which we had at home comes back to me.

Next Mr.Fox has been made into a film, Roald Dahl is seen as something of a cruel writer, but very readable, my favourite is The Giant Peach not Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Then this morning its Maurice Sendak and The Wild Things that have also been made into a film; surrealistic illustrations is my memory of the book but another favourite with the children.

What else, well I've ordered Shirley Hughes Tom and Lucy books for Lillie the smallest, if only for her marvellous illustrations.

There seems to be a rennaisance of children's books, and I must admit I enjoy them as much as the children. My own treat last year was a set of Fairy Tales by the Folio Society, and the Wind In The Willows cover is absolutely stunning. But strangely my favourite is a rather obscure book called The Little Grey Men by 'BB' - a tale of three gnomes who set off down the stream in a toy boat to find their friend who has disappeared, and though they only travel a mile or two, their adventures are well told as they drift through, spring, summer and autumn, ending up with a very strange meeting with the great god Pan.

And just as I was writing this, a radio programme on Masquerade by Kit Williams - the hunting of the golden hare - has been on, a book I still have, apparently after the finding of the hare (by devious means and old girlfriends!) it disappeared for years but Kit Williams now seems to have it in his possesion.
What is it about the approach of dark nights (the clocks goes back tonight) and halloween next week we all go back to childish things!

Stanton Drew and Folklore

The following which is taken from John Wood's book A Description of Bath of 1765 describes the superstition that lay round the Wedding stones of Stanton Drew as seen by the local people. People being turned to stone, and also drinking from the stones, which is a slightly different aspect of the story.

John Wood had a weird and wonderful theory about Stanton Drew and Druids, that belongs elsewhere, but in writing his book he gave valuable information as to the the existence of the two Tyning stones, and another folklore story about Hakill the Giant who in good giant tradition threw The Coit from Maes Knoll, a hill situated west from Stanton Drew, which also encompasses Maes Knoll Hillfort and the great Wansdyke barrier which either divided two kingdoms in the late British Iron Age or was some form of defense. The work of giants perhaps recognised by our 18th century inhabitants but not rationalised as they are today!

Stanton Drew in the County of Somerset

That's where the Devil played at Sue's request,

They paid the price for dancing on a Sunday.

Now they are standing evermore at rest.

The Wedding Stones

"The remains of this model bear the name of The Wedding, from a tradition that as a woman was going to be married, she and the rest of the company were changed into the stones of which they consist "No one," says the Country People about Stantondrue, was ever able to reckon the "number of these metamorphosed Stones", or to take "a draught of them" or tho' several have attempted to do both, and proceeded till they were either struck dead upon the spot, or with such an illness as soon carried them off.

This was seriously told to me when I began to a Plan of them (the stones) on the 12th August 1740 to deter me from proceeding: And as a storm accidentally arose just after, and blew down part of a Great Tree near the body of the work, the people were then thoroughly satisfied that I had disturbed the Guardian Spirits of the metamorphosed Stones, and from thence great pains were taken to convince me of the Impiety of intent I was about.

Hakim's Quoit

Large flat stone called Hakill on the north-east side of the river by which Stantondrue is situated: And this stone tho' greatly delapidated is till ten feet long, six feet broad, near two feet thick, and lies about 1860 feet from the centre of the circle.

....Now if we draw a line from the centre of the Circle D, to the centre of the Circle B and produce it westward 992 feet, it will terminate on three stones in a garden (Druid Arms now) by the parish church of Stantondrue: two of which stones are erect, and the other lies flat on the ground............. it will terminate on two stone lying flat on the ground in a field call the Lower-Tining (stones now vanished).

In plowing the ground of Maes Knoll as well as that of Solsbury Hill, the people frequently turned up burnt stones, and often find other Marks to prove each Place to have been long inhabited: the former, according to a Tradition among the people of the Country thereabouts, was the Residence of one Hakill, a Giant, who is reported to have toss'd the Coit that make part of the works of Stantondrue from the Top of that Hill to the place where it now lies: He is also reported to have made Maes-Knoll Tump with one spadeful of Earth, and to had the village underneath that Hill given him......

The 'wedding stones' story is found at other stone circles, the wedding taking place on a Saturday and lasting through the night into Sunday, when they were all turned to stone by the piper/harper, or in this case the 'devil'. The christian church again concocting a story to stop people enjoying themselves, one wonders where this story originally came into the history timeline.

The Giant story again a very familar motif in folklore, throwing stones of course explains the long distance some of these stones seem to have travelled down into valleys where there is no obvious sign of stone.

Funnily in these tales caught from the past about Stanton Drew there is no 'drinking stone' myth whereby they would have gone down to the river Chew and refreshed themselves.

The 'Song of Stanton Drew' can be found here

The Sandford Brook

Seagulls follow the plough

We have walked beside this brook several times, its incredibly neglected and yet has that aura of a natural ecosystem getting on with its survival, unworried by human intervention. The brook flows through farmland, ploughed fields on either side, but the farmer is gentle with his use of the plough, and there seems to be bulwarks of unploughed grassland protecting the brook, as it finds its way through a choked waterway.
It curves in a sinuous fashion, a dark brown ribbon threading its way through watercress and tumbled branches, sometimes lost in vegetation, but bubble rising to the surface will indicate its flow. This is not a chalk stream, that flows crystal clear, yet stare into its shallow pools long enough and you will see clear water that the fish enjoy.
The old fallen willow sprawled across the banks, has flood debris caught up in its branches, showing that the brook must rise about five feet when in full flood. This part of Essex has a beautiful landscape of richly furrowed fields set amid rolling woodlands, a farmed landscape that is at home with its underlying fragments of wilderness that escape to the far corners of fields; trees die gracefully in old age, the silver leafed willow is predominate around the rivers and brooks, its fissured trunk often covered in lichen to reflect the clean air. The heavy weeds of nettle, cow parsley and field weeds are very much in evidence.

The fish, though being no expert, are probably graylings (Thymallus thymallus), because apparently they smell like thyme when taken out of the water.

The fish gently swimming against the current as they enjoy a patch of sun

disappearing into the distance

Old willows

looking up into the willow on a perfect warm October day

the fallen willow

natural debris

Abbot Illtud

Abbot Illtud c.475-525/537; This Abbot is no saintly monk to begin with, but was a knight and a warrior until a great tragedy overtook him when all his soldiers were drowned in a swamp.

It's difficult to start when myth and story are mixed up, that he seemed to have studied to become a monk at the monastery of Cassian, near Marseille, and that he is also of Breton origin is part of the story, his father being Bicanus a noble man and his mother the daughter of (Anblaud, Amlawdd Wledig) king of Britain.

That he was a warrior is down to the story that he served the king of Glamorgan, Pawl, and the following dramatic event happened. He lost 50 men, here the story diverges into the fact that they were either monks or soldiers, who were 'swallowed up into the earth'. Breverton goes with the story that they were soldiers, and it is well to remember that these 'celtic' monks were living in a time of turbulence and warfare, and were often of high class, as indeed Illtud was. Breverton speculates that the tragedy took place at Llancarfan, where 7 streams flow and the ford is often flooded there.

Anyway our knight turned monk was admonished by an angel to turn his wife away, Trinihid, and never communicate with her again. So our Illtud took himself off from the court of Pawl and became a monk on the banks of the river Hodnant, and of course eventually built the great monastery of Llanilltud.

He has had many churches dedicated to him, also in Brittany, here he was the patron saint of poultry. In some sources it is stated that he taught David, as well as Samson, Maelgwyn, and others and that he is buried at Bedd Gwyl Illytd in Brecon,

His legends are a touch unbelievable but are'nt they all he was often given to going on retreats to a cave. Basically because he got into trouble with the local king at Llanilltud Fawr - Merchwyn Wylt of Gorfnedd; firstly he seems to have melted the king's steward before a fire and Illtud was forced to flee to a cave. He returned to the monastery after a year but again found himself in trouble with another royal steward, who unfortunately got himself 'swallowed' by the marsh. The king furious and wanting revenge arrived at Llanilltud with his men but suffered the same fate as the royal steward, there was no end to Illtud's ability to kill those he found obstreperous, or maybe it was the divine hand of the angels or god according to the Life of St.Illtud here , which gives a long account of his various 'miraculous exploits.

He was credited as having invented a special plough, the fields around the monastery were full of limestone rock, and before his time it was customary to cultivate the land by mattock and an 'over-treading plough'; he also so it is said claimed land back from the sea.

There is such a lot of 'celtic' myth in the stories wrapped round Illtud, this of course because is story was recorded much later by the monks, so that there is that inevitable twinning of pagan stories being woven into christian angels, and 'miracles', that it is difficult to know where to begin. He is credited with taming a stag and saving it from the king who was out hunting at the time. This stag was to help pull his cart at a later stage, though another version of the story gives the animal as half horse/ half stag.

Maen Illtud at Llanhamlach is known as Ty Illtyd - a dolmen thought to be Illutd's hermitage, and a standing stone at Llanhamlach stands opposite Peterstone Court..ref: Breverton

The Pointed Stone in the Icy Corner

Now that is a name to conjure with but this Welsh, presumably prehistoric stone, found in the entrance porch of Corwen Church looks as weird as its name that it acquired over time. It is known in Welsh as 'Carreg y big yn y fach rhewllyd'.

Delving into the history of the church and we find that the two saints that it is named after, Mael and Sulien are early 6th century saints coming from Brittany. Corwen itself being an important Roman crossroad coming from London to Holyhead.

There is not much information on Mael but Sulien with his cousin Cadfan settled at Bardsey Island. There are many dedications to Sulien across Wales, from the Gower coast to Wrexham, sometimes his name being spelt Silian, and like all good saints his cult is strong in Brittany and Cornwall.. There is a well Ffynnon Sulien about a mile away the church, and other prehistoric sites.

Interestingly a fair was held on May 13th Ffynnon Fael, and at Llansilin in Denbighshire on October 1st, up until the 19th century, the last tuft of corn cut, the 'harvest mare' was mixed with the seed corn for the following year 'to teach it to grow'. The ashes from the 'yule log' were also used mixed with the 'mare' and 'seed', the harvest mare evolving into the corn dolly we see today. So says Breverton though it would be interesting to read other versions of how the corn-dolly came into existence, though less of the romanticised versions we find in the latest tranche of 'mystical' books.

Why was the stone built into the wall is the question, my theory is that it was such a scary stone that no one dared pull it out of the ground, but of course it could also point to the fact that with other prehistoric sites in the vicinity and it being an important Roman road junction, our two saints could easily have founded their church on an old 'pagan' site in their terminology, there would probably also have been a roman pagan shrine somewhere in the vicinity as well.

ref; The Book of Welsh Saints - T.D.Breverton

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Another stone with a rather pointed top comes from Glandwr's churchyard, this having Ogam cut on its side. The stone found in the church yard, or probably chapel, maybe has links with the Via Julia that seems to be found round here according to the map.....

Note; Via Julia Montana - from Caerlon to Carmathen

Autumn Sun on dried flowers

Chelmer - Sandford Mill

A walk by the Chelmer yesterday revealed another part of its history as a navigational water route. This time it was Sandford Mill. Intermittent sun had bought out a butterfly on the nectar rich late ivy flowers, a large hornet was also feasting so I only took a photo of the butterfly. Once many years ago riding in Epping forest, I had stopped for a break, and all of a sudden a hornet appeared. My panic stricken horse just threw one almighty wobbly before dashing into a blackberry thicket to rid herself of it, never will I mess with hornets.

But to return to the canal, two brick bridges grace this part of the river, one by the lock-keepers house. This rather original wooden house replaces an earlier, probably Victorian house, that can be seen in the old picture with the horse drawn barge.

This is rather a lost part of Chelmsford, low-lying fields will hopefully never be built upon because of the flooding which can turn the fields by the Barnes pub into a lake.

Prittlewell Saxon Burial/Staffordshire Hoard

Pictures of all the Staffordshire Hoard have been put on Flickr under the Creative Commons, attributed to Staffordshire Hoard website.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/72157622378376316/

http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/artefacts/

....Hildeguth heartening him,

Never shall work of Wayland fail

a master of Mimming, a man who knows

the handling of that blade, bleeding from its wounds,

lords and aethlings are laid on the field...

This Anglo-Saxon text taken from the fragmented prose of Waldere, is copied from Michael Alexander' s The Earliest English Poems and its' concluding lines reminds us of what battles were fought for in a history founded on myth, glory and heroics. Wayland is the blacksmith of legend forging the great swords like Mimming..........

If he has enemies against whom

He must guard his life's hoard. It has not let me down

when untrue kinsmen have betrayed me

and turned swords on me, as yourselves have done

Prittlewell Saxon Burial

The quality and preservation of the Prittlewell Chamber Tomb has led to inevitable comparisons with the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial and associated graves. The artefacts found were of a quality that it is likely that Prittlewell was a tomb of one of the Kings of Essex and the discovery of golden foil crosses indicates that the inhabitant was an early Christian. Other objects, such as the Coptic bowl and flagon, appear to point the same way. This suggests that it was either Saebert (died 616 AD) or Sigeberht II the Good (murdered 653 AD), who are the two East Saxon Kings known to have converted to Christianity during this period. It is, however, also possible that the occupant is of some other wealthy and powerful individual whose identity has gone unrecorded.......

So says the blurb on Wikipedia, but with the event of the marvellous Staffordshire gold Hoard that has recently been discovered and it being hailed as a greater find than Sutton Hoo, it is also well to remember the Prittlewell Saxon burial of a rich individual, who may also have been one of the Saxon kings.
The unusual factor about our 'christianised' king was that he had a pagan burial, probably arranged by his sons. A reconstruction appeared in the British Archaeology magazine at the time, and as I was in to miniature making I reconstructed the wooden burial chamber over a few days out of curiosity.
I used balsa wood for the planking, it is easy to 'distress' with a fine file, and the rest came from bits and pieces. The little bags hanging up are from fine leather from inside a purse, similar to the seating of the little 'folding 'roman' church. Pegging material is from a specialist wood person, and the stave barrel is made from cardboard strips bound with some material. The bowls are silver chased Persian salt cellars given to me by my mother-in-law. The gold crosses I made from tin were I think found on his breast, but there was sword, etc, food pots and jars for liquid to feed him in the 'otherworld'.
But what struck me this morning was the similarity between the stave church at Greensted and the planked interior of the tomb.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Staffordshire Hoard
What we have of course in the Staffordshire Hoard found in Mercian country, is another exciting episode which may give us a different history from those found in in our text books, the appeal to the christian god, 'Rise up O lord, and may thy enemies be scattered, and those who hate thee be driven from thy face' on the gold strip bent and worn; the fact that most of the gold pieces seem to belong to bits of the sword, with the tantalising fact that it is sword fittings that were handed over as if in defeat, very similar to a line in Beowulf....... when 'the gold hilt was handed over to the old lord, a relic from long ago'. Could this Mercian hoard of the 7th or 8th century change our perception of history, rethinking chronology of metalwork and manuscripts.

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Greensted Staved Church

Detail

Reconstruction

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/03/greensted-church-essex.html


http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/06/sutton-hoo.html

Jumping barge horses

As someone who is always curious as to how things work, we had been puzzling how the canal horses work on the Chelmer Navigational system when there were horse drawn barges, and they had to get from one side to another. Well I stumbled on the answer today, they jumped on to the barges of course and were taken across, this fascinating article by Dudley Courtman explains the how; comparing my handsome black horse to Constable was the clue, it was a Constable picture of a rearing horse that held the truth...........

Jumping Barge Horses on the River Stour

Some of the celebrated paintings of John Constable illustrate this fact most clearly. The White Horse shows a horse being ferried from one bank to the other. The riparian owners of the time had to be persuaded to agree to provide access to their land, consequently the tow path constantly changed sides. It would have been too expensive to build lots of bridges, which meant that a horse had to jump on and off a barge 40 times on the 26 mile journey from Sudbury to the sea. Special jumping stages were provided. It would seem that the barge would be poled close to the bank and, at the optimum moment, the horse would leap aboard, or off, as the case might be. It is recorded that not all jumps were successful and some horses were injured. As if the horses did not have enough to cope with they also had boundary fences to overcome. These had to be at least 2ft 10ins high so that the horse could jump them and the cattle couldn't!
Brian Osman in his article, Barge horses on the River Stour, draws our attention to Constable's painting; The Leaping Horse (1825) is a vivid illustration of how the horses performed a standing leap. The horse is gathering himself up ready to tilt over the fence. This position is the same as that used by the Spanish Riding School in Vienna , where, depending on the angle the horse's body makes with the ground, it is called Levade( 30 degrees) or Pesade (40 degrees). John Constable's picture is carefully observed. The horse is posed ready to tilt forward. The swingle tree lies on the ground attached to the traces, which are slack. A figure half hidden by the tree appears to be taking up the slack in the towrope that is attached to the boat. He may also be lifting it over the fence rails beside the river. The tow rope is not disconnected: presumably frequent disconnections would be too time consuming. The tilt forward would have to be carefully controlled so that the swingle tree did not fly forward and clobber the horse or its rider. It is possible the figure on the ground would have been ready to check the rope to prevent this. ................

Gypsy Horses

He should be in a Constable painting

I quite like the idea of the following being gypsy horses, as they are of course, they have the unkempt air of freedom as they graze the large water meadows down by the river. The two foals are gorgeous and the handsome black gelding has that heavy thickness of a good cart horse. Captured under the willow having a doze, he takes one's mind back to a more peaceful time, when horses ploughed the fields and the world moved at a slower pace.

Two foals, the other mare is down by the river

tender scratching moments

The other two

Sleeping in the shade of the willow tree

Mother and foal show similar markings

Nostalgia.... Gilbert O'Sullivan's name came up on the radio, gosh says I to my love I used to fancy him, though looking at that bouffant hair style not quite sure why. Only to be told that he had actually gone to art school with him and sold him a fireman's jacket for 10 bob (don't ask).

Anyway his music reminded me of Top of the Pops and my daughter teaching my little son to dance on thursday evenings....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9PhLCcOW5Y&feature=related

Fruitcakes

Yesterday I decided to make a fruitcake, and duly put in the dried fruit to soak in tea last night, but then I got thinking about the history of this substantial food. Fruitcake and a slice of cheese by the way are excellent fodder when walking for a long time and one gets physically weak from hunger and the nearest shop or pub is miles away......

First of all pound cakes this seems to come from America but must have surely been exported when a lot of British people emigrated in the 18th century. Probably there was no such things as proper scales so the logical thing to do was to take eight eggs, which weigh about a pound, then weigh equal measurements of flour, butter and sugar, and dried fruit got added to the mix when you had some. There is a history here of the fruitcake, which seems to have started in Roman times with different ingredients.

Susan Hartley's book Food in England gets consulted but not much on fruitcakes, though I notice you can make 'snow' pancakes. Make the batter, then go outside take a spoonful of snow put it into the batter, then fry swiftly before the snow entirely melts, leaving holes in the pancakes!

Crempog or Welsh pancakes;

half a pound of flour, piece of butter the size of a walnut rubbed in, buttermilk to mix (you can add a few drops of vinegar if there is no buttermilk to be found), beat one egg, add it, then leave to stand for one hour. Before frying add half a teaspoon of bicarb. of soda. Sounds like those funny batter things you can make quickly if you have no cakes in the house for unexpected visitors, top with butter that will melt on the hot cake and sprinkle with icing sugar - delicious.

Horses

As a break from my saints and churches, which even bores me sometimes, some photographs of horses by the river Chelmer. I love horses, and often think of owning a couple and then taking to the paths of England, but they are incredibly expensive creatures and though beautiful can be unpredictable.
They are not laughing in the photos but have just woken up from their afternoon siesta and are yawning, surrounded by electric fencing these rather elegant creatures amuse us when we go on a walk, the grey and the brown are geldings and do a lot of 'I'm boss here stuff' which entails snorting, stamping of feet and mock charges.





Stopping for a drink in a Wiltshire pub

Alphamstone Stone Circle

St.Barnabas church

I had forgotten about this stone circle on the boundary between Suffolk and Essex. The county of Essex has been accurately described as a megalithic desert it does have pudding stones around and they may heark back to prehistoric times but Alphamstone has the church of St.Barnabas and seven sarsen stones, though I'm not sure the two in the church foundations are counted, so it may make it nine.

Bronze age burial urns have been found and also Roman material, and it has the classic signs of a church built on a high rise above a river, the Stour being the river in this case.

Sarsen is unusual for Essex, and the stones must have come from the river gravel of the Stour, being dragged up the hill to the site of the church.

The village or hamlet of Alphamstone is approached through a maze of lanes, and the church tower wooden spired. The two stones sunk deep in the foundation can be viewed from inside the church, one having a peculiar texture. The other stones are under the hedge, and can hardly be described as awesome, small and oddly shaped they have signs of rounded, probably root marks on their surfaces.

Flint filling to old archway

Stone 1 inside the church

Stone 2 inside the church

Looking down to Stour River

Church yard

Stone under hedge


Stone by buttress

The church sits in a very peaceful and tranquil setting, and in the literature it is said to be built on a Bronze Age barrow, similar of course to the previously mentioned St.Arild's church.

The story goes that a Saxon called Aelfham came in search of a rich land which would be fertile, he climbed up the hill, presumably to the barrow, and at his feet lay a stone, and he then claimed the hill as his own, and the stone as totem of his clan; a mark of his homestead and that is how it became known as Aelfham's Tun.

Ref; Thorgrim's article - Megalithic Portal

St Arild's Church

Photo copyright - David Napier under the Creative Commons

"Located on the southern fringes of the village, Oldbury's parish church stands boldly on the summit of a tumulus which may be pagan in origin, commanding fine views of the nearby Severn Estuary and downstream, the Severn Bridge motorway crossing opened in 1966."

St.Arild's church is one of those churches that come under the heading of christianised pagan site. Now I cannot verify if there is a tumulus under the church, but given its prominent position on top of a hill overlooking the Severn Estuary and with a well nearby that runs red giving rise to the legend of Saint Arild, there is indeed longevity in the use of the site, probably because of its position as a navigational point. The well is called a chalybeate one, meaning that it seems to run red, though chalybeate is really about iron in the water whereas the reason the water at St.Arild's well runs red is to do freshwater algae called Hildenbrandia rivularis. The following gives the legend of St.Arild. The circularity of the church yard also points to an earlier phrase in its history, probably giving it a pre-christian origin, and roman finds have also been found here.

"John Leland, the sixteenth-century traveller and writer gives us some more information, gathered during his visit to Gloucester Abbey. He tells us that St Arilda, 'martyred at Kington by Thornbury [and] translated to this monastery had done many miracles', and that she was martyred 'by one Muncius, a tyrant who cut off her head because she would not consent to lie with him'. Kington near Thornbury is now in the parish of Oldbury on Severn (which itself was once a chapel of ease to Thornbury church), and here we find the third memorial to St Arilda: her well. A local tradition that the water runs red with her blood is well-founded, as the stones in the well's outflow are stained red."

Anglo-Saxon treasure discoveries

Damien Hirst has nothing to compare with what was found in this Saxon hoard - Dark Ages??? no such thing..........


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8272370.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/24/staffordshire-anglo-saxon-gold-find

Mystery Tour

The Chelmer River

The weather is beautiful this week, autumn at its best, soft winds and no rain. So today we went on a secret trip, at least it was secret for me.

The first call was The Food Company, very expensive, but nice to browse round, the first thing I noticed when we came in was the vegetables and fruit, but no home grown apples and pears in this month of beautiful English apples! Large mushrooms for stuffing, a pound each, and the large white Spanish onion which I have'nt seen for years. The meat counter had lean saltmarsh lamb chops, but the prices per kilos ranged from £20 to £30. Fish counter was good and enough comestibles to stock your larder for life but small jars at £3,£4,£5 is going over the top a bit. Fresh baked bread at £2.50, and beautiful hand made cakes and sweets. We did buy things, frozen mixed berries, cheeses which are my weakness and something reduced to eat for tea tonight.

Next the Cats pub, a favourite of mine, the inside of this old pub is covered with all types of cats, be they ornaments or prints, a large ploughman then we sat out in the garden, which overlooks a great brown field.

Late afternoon and as we drove back, and stopped at a small crossing, in an opening of a field gate, young grouse pottered around, whilst a small rabbit chewed grass at the side. We stopped off for a walk through Blake's Wood, and met a rather agitated couple who were doing a nine mile walk from Danbury and could'nt find the right path. The cleared space in the wood I had photographed this spring full of bluebells, now has thick bush like growths round the stumps of the trees cut.

One of those 'stolen' days that are not often experienced in our temperamental weather, the countryside at its best as it gently slips towards winter.

Grouse and small rabbit

The Cats Pub

Blakes Wood

View from the pub garden which blends into the field

Rivers and Tracks

One of the things that keeps cropping up in my blog are rivers and brooks, so as an exercise I went through my photos to see what I could find.
Firstly is the River Kennet in flood one winter, I remember going with Moss and as I waded the water over the bridge, Moss carefully took himself off over the grass at the side, little snails clung to the grass to escape the water and in the swollen river a brown and white spaniel swam in the cold water.
The Solva river (in Pembrokeshire) photo is the path through the wood to Middle Mill where the strength of the water was used for the mill. Middle Mill is a favourite spot of mine, a place I've fancied living in, in the past. At Solva itself there is also another river or stream that runs down to the sea, here one has to climb the Gribin and descend the steep side to follow this small river in its 'drowned valley'.
The next brook is the Wellow that runs at the foot of the valley that the Stoney Littleton longbarrow overlooks. This is a very pretty brook, with its natural flora still intact.
The River Boyd is in Somerset, and travels by Wick Rock, it empties out into the River Avon at Keynsham, and it is at this junction a bronze age barrow is found.
The Bybrook in Wiltshire runs by the Nettleton Shrub Roman Temple, it also is the brook that runs through Castle Combe, one of those pretty Cotswold villages.

The Kennet in flood


Solva River


The Wellow Brook

The quarried rock at Wick, the small River Boyd runs through here. What makes Wick so interesting is the burial chamber about a mile from here, not very far from the river; and the fact that at the quarry, red ochre was also mined in the 19th century.


The River Boyd as it flows through the Golden Valley at Wick


This is the Bybrook, the brook that runs past Nettleton Shrub Roman Temple



The Bybrook running through Castle Combe

The little pack bridge over the Bybrook




Chalk grass flora at Nettleton Shrub

Reading a chapter in Prehistoric Religion and Ritual about double entrance henges, a subject touched upon in Stanton Drew. The idea put forward was that the two opposing entrances were in fact the trackway that lead from one place to another, a bit like a medieval walled city. The track could be old but what had happened over time was that subsequent trackways could have built up around the old ones, giving a 'braided' effect. THe author of the article Roy Lovedale had put forward the premise that roman roads were often sited, or at least ran parallel to the course of the Neolithic tracks and had given examples as such.

Putting the theory to the test, my first thought was Stanton Drew and the entrance from the River Chew up through the large circle would come out, drawing a fairly straight line past The Cove, heading towards Chew Magna..... Priddy circles also has entrances running fairly parallel with the Roman road to the north....Whilst Bigbury Gorsey (North/south entrances) is situated very near to a Roman fort and settlement, and of course Cheddar Gorge.

Gorsey Bigbury

Minerals mined by the Romans on the Mendips, centred around Charterhouse, and the 'roman fortlet' to the right of the map. Lead and silver were mined, and there is evidence of smelting in the fort itself, also in the Roman settlement in the Town Field. Whilst there is no evidence of prehistoric mining, there is some evidence to suggest that lead was probably mined in the late Iron Age. Also a coin dated to Julius Caesar, has been found, which might represent an earlier excursion into these regions. A report here outlines the industrial nature of this part of the Mendips. Gorsey Bigbury is centre stage for bronze age barrows, the great Cheddar
Gorge and also Ebbor Gorge are to be found in this area, with of course the caves and swallets.

Interestingly the author in the report makes mention of the need for a lot of water for the extraction of lead, something that is in short supply up on this plateau.

Priddy Circles, with the Roman road going between third and fourth circle.

Two things strike you about Priddy Circles, firstly the roman road which goes on to the fortlet at Charterhouse, the other is of course the bronze age barrows that are very close. The Ashen Barrow group which is at right angles to the circles, whereas the very close Nine Barrow group curve slightly around following the ridge down to head towards the Priddy Circles.

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/04/shafts-and-wells.html

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-swallowhead-sacred-spring.html

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/04/above-map-shows-roman-road-that-came.html

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/05/shrines-rivers-and-gods-continued.html

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/04/shrines-and-rivers-continued.html

Goathland Station

Goathland the village is approached over the North Yorkshire moors, past heather, stones and sheep pottering across the small road, this is Postman Pat countryside, and his tune always runs through my head as we go over the little bridge into the village.
Goathland is of course famous for the fact that the long running series 'Heartbeat' is filmed here, and that the the village is called Aikenfield, we had a drink at the Aikenfield pub, and true to style there was a few old Yorkshire men sitting round the tables, a pleasant place to stay the night but a bit pricey at £47.50 per person for B&B.
The village is a great tourist spot, and also had an old railway station snuggled down in a dip by the beck and one of those funny small bridges. The steam engines on this line goes as far as Whitby, and I've done the trip in the past, though it is expensive with all the family.
It is a lovely tranquil setting, the moors on either side, and there is talk of one day taking the line from Whitby to York as well which would be a godsend.

Letters

Two letters caught my eye this weekend, one in the Guardian and the other an email on Eric Avebury's blog.

Tribunes of the People, now thats a nice phrase to play with, it was a rant against the absurd mess we find ourselves in with the 'bankers fiscal hole'. As Penelope Newsome argues in her letter to the Guardian, if the banks returned the money we had lent them there would be no fiscal hole, and spending could be channelled into public services, which apparently now come under the heading of 'irresponsible overfunding' ouch! So paying a new appointee to the Royal Bank of Scotland £7m annual income is not irresponsible overfunding as well? Alice in Wonderland, or at least Lewis Carroll could not have written a better book on the folly of greed and stupidity. Our politicians have had their long summer break and presumably expect us to forget the 'expense scandal' that erupted beforehand, methinks there's something nasty lurking in the coal shed of our political system...Newsome ends 'And why are the people themselves being hoodwinked by immoral elites who are laughing all the way to the bank? Wake up people, we are walking over a precipice'

And the email on Eric Avebury's blog; Lord Avebury believes in 'right action' and campaigns diligently for the rights of people abroad, he is the other side of politics the good side that fights for justice. The email he printed was a response to the furore that has suddenly broken out in America about Obama's healthcare plans, and the backlash that came back on our own National Health service, when one of our politically motivated conservative members decided to trash the National Health care in America .....

Two sides of how our country works, maybe we profit from the games that bankers and city dealers play, we should take the rough with the smooth, accept the facts that corruption and greed maybe helps fund the universal health care we take for granted.... who knows.

Jottings

Since I've been back from Whitby I've had emails from my granddaughter Matilda, and hopefully we will begin a dialogue that will continue. One of the things that was important going up North was to introduce my new partner to the family, well everything went well, Matilda got to be given a little special treatment, and my partner got to see the rather marvellous interaction of my four grandchildren. Surprisingly his favourite impression was when we all walked up to Whitby Museum, when little Lillie asserted her right to be 'first' and raced down the steep path on her short legs and the others all kept behind her. When we were in the museum, there was a quiz paper to fill in, two teams, Tom and Ben, me and Matilda, Lillie and her mum (she also had a pretend quiz paper), the boys won just about, though there was a certain cheating as we followed each other from display case to display case.
Captain Cooke set off from Whitby, and we had to find him in a fight with a polar bear which took ages, the commonest gull was easy but the 'hand of glory' was difficult. This grotesque, I think wax lifelike hand lay in its case, from what I gathered it was used by burglars, when they went into a house, they burnt it to frighten the occupants away? I never quite got the hang of the story.
Museums are strange place, cases full of long dead stuffed birds, boringly old fashioned ships galore, the local artist's gallery, someone called Weatherhill in the 19th century, old clothes, doll houses and dolls, this museum trip was voted for by Matilda, who is a great doll fan.
Funnily enough when we got back home, we had to go to the storehouse of the museum there to look at a large print (I went along for the ride). It was quite a large place out in the countryside, with great racks of print and paintings that are not on show, but as we wandered around the store, there was rocking horses, old 19th century clothes, carefully wrapped in plastic, a coarse cream smock hung up, beautifully stitched and lots of uniforms for the military side of the museum.
One of the things that brought some memories backs were the books I used to buy the children; today at the Oxfam shop I saw the Steven King my son read at one stage, James Patterson is Tom's favourite. But seeing Lillie I was reminded of Shirley Hughes 'Lucy and Tom', so they have been added to my wish list on Amazon. Also The Whitby Witches by Jarvis and the mice tales by the same author.
Managed to buy a couple of books at Oxfam, but the Stone Circles of the Peak by John Barnatt at £20 was too much, so I ended up with a book by John and Caitlin Matthews an Encyclopedia of Myths plus another druid book. And, feeling deprived of books, also ordered Christopher Tilley The Materiality of Stone, and with another book being sent by a friend Ritual and Religion by Tilley should have some reading material for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whitby_Witches

Caedmon's poem

This is a 19th century carved Celtic Cross, it is dedicated to Caedmon the first Christian poet. The cross itself is beautifully carved with runes on one side and the pictorial element of David, Hild and Caedmon on the side above. There is also the latin inscription with birds and flowers on the left hand side. It stands in the graveyard of the church next to Whitby Abbey.

Praise now to the keeper of the kingdom of heaven,
the power of the creator, the profound mind
of the glorious father, who fashioned the beginning
of every wonder, the eternal lord.
For the children of men he made first
heaven as a roof, the holy creator.
Then the lord of mankind the everlasting shepherd,
ordained in the midst as a dwelling place,
almighty lord, the earth for men.





Caedmon's tale was told by Bede, and the elderly lay monk lived in the time of St.Hild at the abbey, who died in 680 ad, so Caedmon must have lived through the 7th century. The first text was recorded in Early Northumbrian in 749 ad, but the text below is late 11th century Saxon.

Nu we sculan herian / heofonrices Weard,
Metodes mihte / and his modgepone,
weore Wulderfaeder; / swa he wundra gehwaes,
ece Dryhten. / ord onstealde.
He aerest gesceop. / eordan bearnum
heofen to hrofe, / halig Scyppend;
oa middongeard / moneynnes Weard,
ece Dryhten, / aefter teode
firum foldan, / frea aelmihtig.

The hole of Holcrum

Known as the Hole of Holcrum this impressive indentation is not caused by giants throwing stones or meteorites from outer space, but by the constant drip of water from the sides I think. Evidence of prehistoric living as well, plus an ancient dyke.

My family

Gerald Durrell once wrote a book about My Family and Other Animals, which was a bit unfair, but there is plenty of gentle humour to be got from one's family. Two children have I, my son who is a computer expert/geek, and writes programmes, most of which seem to relate to complicated ones for Ghana where he spent some time with his best friend. My daughter on the other hand chose to have children and live in the wilds of Yorkshire running a childrens' clothes shop with her husband. She has blessed me with four grandchildren, and they all live in a tall Victorian terraced house up a very steep hill with Ollie the cat who has no tail.

The house is always in a state of renovation, though now the five bedrooms and two bathrooms are together, and it only remains for the central hall area to be painted (but this has to wait until funds are together to repair the ceiling). Whilst we were there the new boiler broke down over the weekend, which meant no hot water or heating. The children have variously occupied different rooms in the house over the years, but now are all settled. Darron my son-in-law has made an office in the attic, with state of the art computers and a number lock on his door, whilst next door Tom my eldest grandson resides in solitary splendour in his attic bedroom, approached by the way via very steep stairs. The attic has a tale to tell, at one stage in its early history, hens were kept up there, I think it had something to do with the butchers family that have a shop at Ruswarp.

Next floor down, Ben has the small bedroom now, whilst the two girls have the larger one, the large bathroom has been refurbished, and gleams white. Now that Ben and Matilda have reached the grown-up age of 7 and 8, they are trusted with plugs for the wash basin - twice they have deliberately let the water overflow, so that it drips into the bedroom below.

The next floor houses the big bedroom, which must have been the drawing room in another life, here the laptop is kept for general use, and children sprawl on the large bed waiting for a go on it.

A spare bedroom has also been created on this floor, and is now in soft browns, though last year was a pink girly room for Matilda.

Downstairs is a calm oasis and tidy, the children live far enough away so that the noise of squabbles are muted. Little Lillie the latest is fast growing up and follows in the tradition of 'tyrant' of the family demanding her own way in everything - and its easier that everyone gives in, rather than face her fury if she is not allowed to be first in everything.

The family, (without the noise) butter would'nt melt in her mouth, little Lillie; Tom dressed for his Sunday rugby game - he's pretty good and plays round the country; Ben who idolises Tom and is football mad; Matilda, or Boudicca in an earlier life; My daughter who gave birth to all of them and is foolishly contemplating having another one....

Adding more useless facts to saints

Well someone has mentioned that the great Pentre Ifan cromlech lies also in a Samson field see TMA folklore by Rhiannon....

George Owen in his 'Description' apparently mentions that the field in which Pentre Ifan stands is called Corlan Samson - Samson's sheepfold. Were his sheep in keeping with his own huge size? It's a bit frightening to think of one big enough to squeeze itself under the capstone.

So the biblical story of Samson has been appended to some of the large stones that have been thrown from the summit of mountains to build the Welsh cromlechs, in many cases with one finger, this throws an interesting light on how this story of Samson came into being. But it looks like we are again with celtic monks who are hanging the christian story of the Herculean Samson onto an old celtic mythology of giants, after all the early British must have been just as confused by these old stones hearking back to an old religion as we are today.

Another tale that shows how near our 'desert' monks were to their celtic pagan brethren, this tale is of Columba's founding of the settlement of Iona, and to quote Geoffrey Ashe (Mythology of the British Isles) its graveyard is dedicated to Oran, and it is the royal graveyard of Scotland, 60 kings, Scottish, Irish and Norwegian are buried here.

One of the tales goes that when Columba arrived he wanted to consecrate the ground with a burial, though according to another version of the tale, the monastic quarters could not be built because the walls kept collapsing and it needed a live burial there. Well up spoke Oran, who had been having a quarrel with another monk about heaven and hell, and he volunteered to be buried! So a pit was dug, Oran placed in it and then the pit was lightly filled (it does'nt say with what in the story). But 20 days later the pit was opened, and Oran's head appeared and uttered these damning words....

'Heaven is not what it is said to be;

Hell is not what it is said to be;

The saved are not for ever happy;

The damned are not for ever lost'

Well this rather jaundiced view of religion seems to reflect the Pelagasian heresy of the old celtic monks, with just a touch of the 'head' motif.

Today we are off to Whitby for the weekend to see my grandchildren, who fortunately are'nt a bit religious and will be more interested in what I have bought them rather than dreary saints, though Whitby of course also likes to dabble in myth with the annual Goths 'do' in the town, when vamperish females in black stalk the town.....

and also a fleeting visit from Darth Vader and his crew to Whitby

Saints and Stones

Carreg Samson

In this instance Samson is the saint, or to be more precise Bishop Samson of Dol (485-565). His name has been appended to a lot of stones, the reason why is not known but there are a few in Pembrokeshire, Carreg Samson perhaps being the most famous. Though the answer here may be that the small island just in front of this cromlech accounts for his presence as there is also the Grave of St.Samson's Finger; one of the stories is that he threw the stones from the island to the mainland. There is also another small cromlech Carnwynda which has his name attached.
Therefore at Longhouse Farm we have Carreg Samson;
Trelly's cromlech in St.Nicholas is Ffyst Samson (Samson's flail)
St.Samson Finger
At Nevern there is Bedd Samson (Samson's Grave).
At Llanfyrnach a great stone said to have been thrown the summit of Freni Fawr in the Prescilies.
Two other cromlechs, one already mentioned at Garn Wynda, the other at Garn Wen
Information taken from Myths and Legends of Wales retold by Tony Roberts

Turning to Breverton, a fuller history reveals that this saint is supposed to have incised a cross on a pagan stone in the district of Tricurius in Cornwall. Three stones in Glamorgan named after him, and there a couple at Dol in Brittany.


Interestingly, there is a tiny (ruined) Chapel at Merythr Mawr set within an Iron age hill fort with two early christian burial stones inside the chapel. One was called the 'Goblin Stone', the story being that a goblin would grab the hands and feet of passers-by and force them through the four holes of the celtic cross.
In the written record his uncle is supposed to be the famous King Arthur (Arthwys ap Meurig)and that his cousin Morgan became king of Glamorgan.

Garn Wynda/Carreg Samson

This particular type of cromlech is known as a sub-megalithic, because the capstone rests on the ground, sub megalithic cromlechs are a particular feature of this area of Pembrokeshire. Though it looks easy to find, this particular one was difficult, they are hidden in the jumble of rocks similar to the ones at Carn Llidi on St.David's Head.

Also managed to jam the lock of the car here, and stood outside the car with my dog panicking on this lonely Welsh lane, eventually drew my wits together and managed to gently unlock it. The car was not happy this time in Wales, and kept heating up with steam gently billowing out of the bonnet. As I had been told it did not need water, was somewhat perplexed where to put it..but travelling out of Haverfordwest back home, it did it again, pulling into a layby and slowly coming to a stop. A police car pulled up behind me, and as the nicest person in the world at that time he identified my problem and went over the road to a golf course and brought back water for me, admonishing me to drive carefully and stop and fill up at garages along the way!

The wild Alexanders/Angelica

Plants of the Celery Order, which would be of some use for their form had we not so many fine hardy plants in the same family. A.Arch-angelica is a well-known plant in most kitchen gardens. Used for conserves; as a vegetable in the north; the roots in medicine and the seeds in making liquer. to quote W.Robinson in the English Flower Garden.

This plant led me a merry dance through books, when I had photographed it (see below) my mind had absentmindedly said Angelica Alexanders the stem of which you candy, but on checking through The Illustrated Flora, Alexanders (smyriunum perfoliatum) and Angelicas (angelica sylvestris) were listed as separate plants - though they look very similar - Robinson provided the clue of course, they more or less all come from the same family and look very much like the cow parsleys, only that the angelicas like to grow in damp places and by rivers, but are edible.

Grigson (The Englishman's Flora) says of this plant that the Alexanders are a relic of old cultivation as a pot herb or vegetable (probably similar to lovage which also has celery tasting leaves and grows enormously in a true Alexandrian fashion) a naturalized plant from the Mediterranean. It was mentioned in 1562 as growing on Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel, where there had a small religious house in the middle ages, and it can often be found by the ruins of castles and abbeys both in England and Wales.

These 13th century monks on Steep Holm apparently left peonies, alexanders, both still growing there to this day, and caper spurge, garlic and red valerian, all must have been grown in their physics garden.

You can make a soup of the alexander, nettles and watercress apparently, so that should some terrible catastrophe befall the supermarkets, wild foraging of the plants will produce a meal, though perhaps a rabbit could be added to the pot as well.

The Lovage plant; which as can be seen from the following article has similar properties to the Alexanders. http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/l/lovage42.html

Note; all these umbelliferae plants belong to a large family and some are poisonous, like mushrooms identification is crucial, hogweed is one of them, though it looks like a cow parsley; hogweed is identified by the spotting on the stalk.

Banks of Green Willow

This music has been haunting me over the weekend, but could'nt remember the title till walking by a brook, the old willows everywhere made me remember. Essex is a very pretty county in its hidden corners, all the waterways seemed to be lined with shimmering gray-green willows and the red gold of the harvested fields is an extraordinary contrast. Two things which are a 'first' for me, plants, set amongst the nettles, that look like angelica, and good sized fish in the brook.

Angelica

Old willows, there were a couple that had fallen over the brook


fish in the shallow pools


a clear stretch


choked up with reedmace and flag irises

Stanton Drew and its stones

The Avenue leading up from the river Chew


I have been to Stanton Drew several times over the years, its stones are less distinguished than either Stonehenge or Avebury, yet it is a favourite of mine, this large circle, the 'cinderalla' of the three great stone circles of Wessex. I have photographed most stones, they lie half hidden in the grass, some as grey as can be, whilst others have that lovely reddish tinge to them. When I first came upon them I saw them as 'bloodstained' with the strange little holes you see on one or two of them as the 'letting of blood' from the stone. Fanciful maybe, the colouring is after all only bought on by oxidisation or something. The village sits to the side of the stones, the church obscuring the great cove in the pub's garden, last time we were there we sat outside by the stones drinking beer and the pub's hens strolled around pecking aimlessly.

The Druid Arms, is a quiet pub and the home to the second cove in the district, funnily enough Avebury cove sits next to the Red Lion, though what's to be made of that fact I don't know.

Recently a thread has appeared on TMA about the nine concentric circles found in the centre, the theory is that what the geo-phys threw up with these enormous timber post holes (though that has'nt been confirmed) that it was a place to learn to hunt and slaughter pigs, an artifical forest or wood..... not sure I agree with that theory but its interesting. Apparently though there was a henge around it, again no longer visible, but additional survey work found that running outside the great stone circle 'is a ditch broken by a 50 metre wide entrance gap to the north-east, with another possibility to the south-west'.

In my Wooden Book on SD the timber circle is denoted as a great thatched house, and has some information on Guy Underwood's dowsing there, but the only spiral/ or concentric circles he found was at Hautville Quoit. When we there there was another dowser called Paul Dawes setting out his little red flags from one of the stones, when I asked him about Maes Knoll, which sits prominently on the horizon, he said that it had a relationship with the great circle - but there again.........

Further reading brings up the subject of 'closed' and 'open' sites, stone circles being open and timber circles being closed, the henge functions as a bank so that the seated spectators can see whatever is happening within the arena. The closed timber circle, and SD would have this aspect with all those timber posts, perhaps could be seen as a place for the ritual slaughter of young pigs, either marking a special feast day, or the culling of too many animals in the autumn. The West Kennet Palisade Enclosures which had evidence of a lot of pig bones (dates 2458-2046) bc) at Avebury seem to have a ritual function with 'offerings' being left around the post holes.

The argument arises as to whether stone and timber were contemporary, and there is no way of showing this at Stanton Drew till excavation takes place, both types of circles might represent completely different religions, or the timber circles could relate to a building, or even totem poles.But the fact is that sometimes timber circles have evidence of fencing, and there are parallel or at least similar features on the nearby Gorsey Bigbury henge and the Priddy Circles. At Gorsey Bigbury Henge there are two postholes in the north entrance, and it could well be that its original function was a stock enclosure, though later usuage during the Beaker period has somewhat disturbed it earlier beginning. Evidence of an 8 foot bank at Gorsey Bigsbury was seen by the Reverend Skinner in the 19th century but was subsequently ploughed out by a farmer.

There are four circles at Priddy, and it is the first one that is the most interesting. Definition of a henge is also a crucial point to understanding how they are often interpreted. For instance Gorsbury has an outer bank and an inner ditch, similar to Avebury, Stonehenge on the other hand has an inner bank and outer ditch. The Priddy circles also have an outer banks and inner ditches, but the bank in Circle One has been revetted with timber posts, with stones being piled into the bank and hurdling attached to post holes against the bank, making it a 'closed' circle

The half fallen stone.LS

'Squared' stone of which there are plenty.LS

The 'lion' stone.LS

The Cove

The church that stands between the circles and the cove

The 'rabbit' stone

http://www.eng-h.gov.uk/archaeometry/StantonDrew/fig1.gif


refs; Jodie Lewis - Neolithic Somerset- Monuments, Ritual and Regionality
Gordon Strong - Stanton Drew and Its Ancient Stone Circle

Lobelia

A recent purchase of this rather lovely hybridised lobelia plant, made me check Robinson's English Flower Garden, for it's parentage. It obviously stems from the Lobelia Cardinalis, which he says is one of the prettiest and rarest of the genus. The parent flower is scarlet, at the nursery there were several different shades, ranging from a deep pink to a dark red. It is a bog loving plant and can tolerant a certain amount of shade. The earliest mention in an English garden is 1629, but it seems to have come from North America or Canada.
There is a wild version also in this country that grows in water, the petals are arranged exactly as in the cultivated variety version.

The lobelias belong to the bellflower family

Notes on Llanrian

Llanrian Church

The church was named after Rhian - 5th or 6th century, a follower of St.David. He founded a church here, "probably a wattle and daub building behind an earth wall" Breverton says, also "In Llanrian parish, not far from Tregynon, is Llain y Sibedau (Place of Whispers) a ruined stone circle" The Book of Welsh Saints.

1849 - Llanrian "Near the church are some Druidical remains, consisting of many large stones, most of them now broken: they were formerly erect, and, in their arrangement and general appearance, formed in miniature, according to Mr. Fenton, a tolerably correct representation of Stonehenge".From: 'Llanrhychwyn - Llansawel', A Topographical Dictionary of Wales (1849), pp. 85-98. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=47856

Chasing ideas takes up many hours, and a few years ago I had taken a photo of a stone on a triangular green in front of a farmhouse, which looked suspiciously prehistoric. Anyway someone said that it was more probably a stone that had been erected in front of the farmhouse.

Llanrian stone with friend for height

Be that as it may, the stone probably did relate to the stone circle mentioned above in the 19th century. Also of course there is a bronze age barrow in a field, leading out of Llanrian towards the Compass and Square.
But just to confuse me another photograph taken by someone else of a stone circle just a kilometre further above Trefin Cove came along. Well this one is definitely modern as can be seen from the following link hopefully on Google Earth. What I did learn about Trefin, is that the ruined mill there had a famous poem written about it by the then archdruid Crwys, and that the memorial stone on the Presceli moor belonged to Waldo William, a famous welsh poet who was born in Haverfordwest but moved to Mynachlog-ddu when he was a child; the small village one heads for to see Carn Drygarn.
I also found out that the rather ugly Mathry church is seemingly built on an ancient site, its high and has a circular churchyard.

Trefin Cove modern circle;

http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=51.948188&lon=-5.15608&z=19.1&r=0&src=msa

Blackberrying

Before we went to the Saxon church of St.Peter on Sunday, we had got up early to go blackberrying at Sandford Mill. The early morning light is as everyone knows, or should know, tinges everything with a soft rose glow, it has a special luminosity. We parked the car by an oak full of acorns, this has indeed been a fruitful year for all the wild berries and nuts. Over the stile into the field by the mill, a great bush covered in rosehips greets you, I might go back and pick some and make rosehip jelly, even if it is only to catch that lovely shade of orange/yellow they are at the present. Blackberries are starting to go over, but there are still a lot on the bushes. Tall teazels in the sunlight, red berries on the hawthorn, a tiny pale lemon closed flower on the ground which looked like a buttercup but was'nt. Which reminds me of the ladies bedstraw at St.Cedd's church which smelt very sweet, and the large stand of bulrushes (edit; not bulrushes but great reedmace)by the side of the track. All things to look up in Margery Blamey's book on wildflowers.

Back over the stile and we walk down to the leat by the bridge, looking down into the enlarged pond small fry dart around, then larger fish come into view, the water is clear and plenty of fish around. Over on the other side by the great willow, a small waterway has an emerald green scum on top, pondweed? or is it algae produced by the hot sun and field run off from fertilisers. There is plenty of these poisonous algaes around at the moment in the sea and rivers, killing off fish.

There are more blackberries down this lane, and the bag is starting to burst with the weight of the fruit, nettles tangle amongst the briar, picking them is a painful affair.

Following photographs, and was'nt the digital camera a marvellous thing , records what I see.

Water forget-me-nots on the other side

Green sludge

Rose hips

Teasels caught in the sun

Greater Reedmace on the track to St.Cedd's church

Old willow at Sandford mill

Pretty gall on wild rose

Teasels are extraordinarly exotic plants

St.Cedd Church

Another visit to a favourite spot, the Celtic church of St.Cedd founded in 653 AD, and as can be seen from this article built out of a Roman fort, in fact on the entrance of the fort. When we were there before we wondered about its pagan history, after all it is one of the first Christian church to be built on a Roman spot, especially as there is a stone in the corner of the church, at odds with christianity.
It has a spiritual tranquillity that transcends a Christian viewpoint, its sober austerity in the flat sparse Essex fields overlooking marshy ground and the estuary gives it a timelessness that says here be a life of hardship. Cedd was one of four brothers all educated at Lindisfarne, he sailed down the coast to these Essex reaches, and built a wooden church here, but a year later he reused the roman stone to build the church that stands today, though of course it has been much modified in the medieval period as a barn.

The starkness in the landscape is emphasised by the great fields of wheat now shorn of their harvest, and in the distance the decommissioned Bradwell Nuclear station. It is a landscape where sky meets the sea and melds into the landscape, so that on walking the straight track down to the church (the old Roman road) it is impossible to distinguish where any of them meet, only the white sails of yachts tell their tale.

This little niche held a carved little figurine of St.Cedd probably, holding his church, the flowers were an offering by LS.

The far end, perfect simplicity with its large flagged stones

Othona Community

We found this building hidden in a copse, the Othona community welcome all religions, though Christian based, and was founded in 1946 just after the last war. I have a feeling that there is probably a green/hippy base to this community, but it looks a welcoming sort of place.



Marshy land in front of the church


A reconstruction

Harvested wheat field


Bradwell Power station and a great stack of bales being built the landscape is somewhat bizarre on this old airfield land

Computers and Wasps

Your service will be activated on the 24th June at midnight; So say BT when they sent me my hub to connect my computer to the wireless system. Well we struggled for a few days to connect to the internet and eventually it began too work in a fashion for a few days. Until one morning, no connection, no association, nil, etc. Yesterday after a visit from a BT engineer it is finally working, almost two months to the date.
Technology is brilliant but it is exceedingly frustrating when it refuses to co-operate. To be quite honest it even would'nt work for the engineer and he got a bit confused when the hub would'nt let him access its secret, my computer programmes were overhauled, throw out Norton he says, cut out the other stations that seem to arrive on my router, all this was done after two hours and now it works. Wireless is not the 100 per cent whizz kid its cracked up to be but considering computers have'nt been around that long I suppose the internet has taken long strides of success. And yes we signed to the contract that is called Home IT Call, whereby phoning someone (probably in India) they can take over your computer thousands of miles away and fix it (hopefully).
This is the time of year when wasps make an appearance, as we picnic or dine out they appear as unwelcome guests. Apparently something to do with the queen dying and the drones having a last feast. Earlier this week eating out in the garden with friends I got stung by one of the wasps, people were flapping around, something you should never do as it makes them angry. Next day I took a ham sandwich out to eat, and a wasp duly appeared, and very beautifully and delicately sliced a small piece of ham off my sandwich on the plate and then flew off with it - makes you think - perhaps if we could leave an offering of food for the wasps, both the human and insect species would be happy.

There is also good news this morning for the great yellow bumble bee in Scotland, which seems to becoming scarce. The bees are happiest in the wild machair grasses with the abundant flowers that seem to provide plenty of pollen over a long period. Well there is to be a two million pound grant to farmers and crofters to manage the machair, grazing etc so that the bee and such birds as the corn crake can be saved from becoming extinct in this part of the world.

Companion planting and caterpillars

Caterpillars, or at least the little green one that develops into the white butterfly. Now under normal circumstances most gardeners get rid of these caterpillars, but I became intrigued by the way they ravished a pot of 'oriental' leaves for eating whilst leaving the lettuces alone.
The oriental leaves obviously came from the crucifera (cabbage) family, and as can be seen are devouring the leaves at a rapid pace.

Ravaging caterpillars


I had come across on another blog of silk butterflies?/moths being kept in this country for the silk cocoons they produce, they were kept in the house and did indeed produce cocoons. In Japanese sericulture, the pupae in the cocoon is suffocated (otherwise it would eat itself out of the silk), and is sent away to be spun, the outer silk of the bave is kept by the farmer and used for wadding or simple clothing.

The silk cocoon or bave is now unwound mechanically and its average length is seven to eight hundred metres, though before it undergoes this treatment it is placed or goes through hot water to remove the sericin (a proteinic gum) which holds the cocoon together. Having bought a quantity of gummed silk for spinning I found it impossible to spin or remove the gum without getting the thread in a terrible mess! But have been dyeing cotton, firstly with an acidic dye of lilac and also with alder fruit using the same mordant mix of salt and white vinegar that I used with the artificial dye, though with acid dyes you are supposed to use Glauber salts....

Light and dark lilac, with alder fruit (brown) and natural cream cotton

Musings on books

Hollyhocks at Avebury, seems to have been a good year for these plants that love to grow in hot sun in practically soil less ground

Life has been quiet this last week, though I have been dyeing cotton to start a weaving project, but at the same time my mind had strayed to making small books, and when I had ordered my cotton yarn I also bought some handmade Lokta paper, with a brown hand printed (fern leave) paper for the cover. All that is in the future but my interest was sparked by someone I had met at our annual megameet in Avebury.

He is a graphic designer called Andrew Johnstone, (though his forum name is Common Era) and his degree final had been a wonderful book called The Prehistoric Peak, beautifully executed with a cover of leather, but not content with just this book, he had also produced a coffee table book of black and white images, and a whole boxful of coloured co-ordinated small walk guides for the peak. This project had run into thousands, but it had been done with such passionate commitment to the subject matter - them old stones - that one can only hope that he will get over the difficulty of photographing on National Trust sites - yes people 'big brother' has just arrived again, you have to get permission to photograph on their outdoor sites!

Anyway details of his book can be found here, on the Wordpress Heritage Journal

http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/the-prehistoric-peak-an-exhibition/

And, because I am very proud of how our democratic Journal is progressing Gordon Kingston's essay on 'Some Thoughts on Portal Dolmens' is pretty well spot on too ;)

http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/

My books on the other hand, will be kept as personal commonplace books, recording all the church material which has now gone across two blogs and needs drawing together. Though how I'm going to make them still needs to be worked out.

Walk by a Brook

A quiet walk along a small brook in the Essex countryside on a hot afternoon. Like the blackberries, sloes are thick on the bush, a soft dark sheen on their fruits, Rosebay willowherb lines the bank,and the Essex fields stretch out in the flat land full of ripe wheat, some fields are already harvested. Heavy green woods edge the fields, and butterflies and demoiselles galore. An old oak, probably 20 foot round, is full of acorns even though it is partly hollow inside, concrete posts support the bank on which it grows, this is a great giant which must be a couple of hundred years old, if not older. Children play in the ford down the narrow lane.

Dappled sunlight on the brook


Old Oak tree

Fleabane

The ford

Banks of Willow herb (fireweed)

And a rather trite rythming poem from Tennyson
called The Brook....

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever .

Winterbourne Basset - St.Catherine Church

A lovely sunday morning, and a visit to this church set above the Winterbourne and which lies hidden behind some houses. It feels old, 13th century but has had bits and pieces added over time. Typical manorial church, but pretty with it, a sprawling flower bed on the south side played host to old fashioned flowers, Japanese anemones were in full flower, and marjoram and thyme flowers were covered in white butterflies. It said on the notice board that there was a service to be held at this church on the first of the month but no one had turned up, except the bell-ringer as we were leaving, and he turned round when he heard there was no one there. It is one of the small parish churches that are tied up with Clyffe Pypard down the road and Avebury church as well. One of the 'Winterbourne' churches, no evidence in the immediate vicinity of prehistoric stuff, but Hackpen Hill of course not so far away produces plenty.

Late 13th century effigies

South Porch

Early font with late wooden cover

The church and its relationship to the manor house

The church was dedicated to St. Catherine in the 16th century but was known as St. Peter's in 1848. Since 1904 it has been dedicated to ST. KATHERINE AND ST. PETER. Much of the building is of coursed sarsen rubble with freestone dressings. It has a chancel, a nave with north transeptal chapel, north aisle, and south porch, and a west tower. The earliest features are an early 13th-century font and a late 13th century effigy slab in the north chapel. The chancel and the nave with its aisle and chapel were apparently rebuilt in the mid 14th century although the nave may follow an older plan. In the late 15th century the tower was added, new windows were made in the north aisle, and the south-west corner of the nave, including a window and the south doorway, was rebuilt. Another window on the south side of the nave is of the 16th century. The south porch was added in 1611. Most of the fittings in the nave, including the pews, pulpit, and font cover, are of the 17th century. The chancel roof, which was lowered at that time, was raised again at a restoration of 1857. New roofs were then built over the nave, aisle, and transept
Ref; British History online.

Part Two - Piggle Dene

The great stone river of sarsens left over from some geological ice age happening is an impressive site, far more attractive than the Lockeridge outcrop a couple of kilometres away.

The 'grey wethers' or sarsen stones - a great drift or river of stone.

Trees and stones

There is a mystical element with the old hawthorns

Old stone gateways, there is another stone gateway in the top photograph

Joshua Pollard in his book, Avebury - A Biography of the Landscape, says that in the neolithic the people would have viewed the stones through this valley very differently and that they would have been set amongst a wooded landscape, giving a different 'feel' to them.
Differently shaped stones would have had an aesthetic and symbolic response to people passing by, the strange shapes of the sarsens would have acquired names or perhaps even neolithic folklore. Their flatness, buried in the earth gives them a benign nature, there is nothing aggressive about their smooth shapes, lichens colour the surfaces, there is a peaceful attractive -ness about them. There was a body found buried beneath a sarsen in the 19th century with a sarsen muller beside it. At Lockeridge as well a grave under one of the sarsens contained a crouched skeleton with a beaker and dagger.

A week end in Wiltshire part one

Music making

Several churches to be seen, a megalithic meeting in the run down pub at Avebury, and in the church there in the porch was a swallows nest with four little heads poking out as busy parents flew in and out feeding. Druids of course on the first day of August, plus a walk down the 'gray wethers' of Piggle Dene. And talking of sheep, why did all the black sheep get the comparitive cloistered calm of Silbury whilst the white sheep were being chased by children round the stones of Avebury.

But firstly the church at Clyffe Pypard, the cliffs can be seen behind the cattle, the ground is very marshy round the church, probably due to springs, and the giant horsetail was flourishing well, a beautiful pale green in the early evening light. The church itself is gloomy, in fact the whole feeling in the church yard is spooky and rather dismal. Nicholas Pevesner is buried here along with his wife Lola, they lived in a cottage at nearby Broad Town.

Handsome long-horned cattle in the field at Clyffe Pypard

Giant Horsetail in the very boggy land round the church

The rather gloomy church at Clyffe Pypard

Nicolas Pevesner's grave - His Buildings of England eventually ran into 42 books

Porth-y-Rhaw - Promontory Fort

This small promontory fort is being eroded by the sea, and is rather dangerous to venture around, but it is to be found next to a beautiful little cove with the same name. The best thing to do is to park your car at the little NT car park just off the bottom of the hill at Nine Wells, outside Solva.
There is a holiday cottage and a small camping site to the right, where I have often camped.
Car parked and then wander down the path towards the sea, this path skirts an old temporary airfield, though you would'nt know it now, as it is more of a nature reserve, though I believe there was also a cromlech here as well amongst the gorse bushes.
You come to a gate and before the sea and the little cove, its a pretty place here, a stream runs down to the sea and the land is very boggy and full of flowers.

Take the left hand path and after about a hundred metres the promontory fort will be on your right. It has been excavated and about eight huts were found, giving it a date about the middle Iron ages, iron working and bead making were also carried on according to this report.
Remedial work on the footpath round this area in 2006 highlights the need for protection of our cliff paths and the archaeological sites that are fast disappearing into the sea because of climate change.

The banks of Porth-y-Rhaw

Field mushrooms

More banks

The cove

Looking down on the old field systems

Sandford Mill

A sunny day and a mooch round Sandford Mill, slightly misnamed as it is an engine house for moving the water round, and is now a museum. But it is at the end of a little lane and by the Chelmer river. Strolling towards the little bridge that goes over one of the leats here, a small very overgrown field catches the eye.
Climbing the fence, and one is immediately aware that an ecosystem has developed through neglect of the field. Firstly there is no grass but short plants, yarrow mostly underfoot, tall teasels are scattered everywhere. A great bushy hedge all round this field is slowly encroaching into the centre, blackberries are already ripening and ready for eating. Maybe this was an 'escape' pond for the water from Sandford Mill, the ground reminds one of a boggy pond gone dry.
Over the field into the untamed wilderness that is the green belt round Chelmsford and the river provide. Purple loosestrife, meadowsweet, beautiful willow trees planted by another pool, and, though I'm not sure of this either aspen or white willow planted along the river banks, giving a soft shimmer of grey as the wind picks up the leaves and shakes them gently. Victorian cottages over the bridge, nestling down a quiet lane, to the left over the fields a busy arterial road and a wind turbine slowly turning in a field. The wheat has turned golden, the year seems to be turning too quickly; a man and his dog walking the path through the fields stops to talk for a while, his cavalier spaniel yapping sharply in the grass for his master to move on.
Children come cycling down the lane, there bare limbs will soon be nettle stung if they take to the river path, a carrier bag of food on someone's bicycle.

A culvert, overgrown with a dense green cover of plants, butterflies flying in the cool shade

Purple loosestrife

the beautiful blue of the damsel fly

Small pond

Small overgrown field

teasels, maybe the mill had been a fulling mill at some time.

Miscellany

Peacock warming himself

Watching a queen bumble bee - probably a second hatching - this morning on the snapdragons, it is fascinating to see how the weight of a heavier queen bee compared to the small worker bees of the brood manages to manipulate the somewhat difficult flower petals of the snapdragon. A snapdragon is well named, childhood games of picking the flower and snapping the 'mouth' of the individual flowers was something I remember. The bumble bee however has to force her way into the petals of the flower, pushing the lower lip down, and having the upper petals on her back, thereby brushing the body with pollen - a good pollination technique that is seen in many flowers.
Growing flowers for bees, and the great range of hover flies (they imitate both bees and wasps) is useful for the vegetable and fruit garden, my apple trees and soft fruit are always covered with fruit because of the early flowers in the garden. Hoverflies are of course good for getting rid of aphids as well, there are just under 300 different species in Britain, and almost impossible to name or identity.
There appears to be plenty of insects round this summer, the nurseries are full of them, so although it appears very windy all the time, the flowers both natural and cultivated have plenty of creatures to pollinate them.

hoverfly on Cosmos

St Justinian

St.Justinian Chapel

Another tale of a monk, this one quite dramatic though it has the 'severed head' motif in it.
St. Justinian was a 6th century monk who lived on the island of Ramsey just off St.David's Head, St. Justinian though was not happy with his servants, they were lazy apparently, so when he asked them to work harder they cut off his head in spite. Where the head fell a spring (St.Justinian Spring) appeared miraculously and there is indeed a well on the island, and evidence of two later monastic settlements.(see below ) The murderers contracted leprosy and lived out the rest of their days on a crag called Leper's Rock

But our saint of course walked across the sea carrying his head, coming ashore at St. Justinian Point, where he wished to be buried, and this was the origin of St. Justinian's Chapel.
There is another chapel dedicated to him at Scleddau, the foundation remains of this chapel lie by a great marsh, with an' enclosure of large stones encompassing seven springs' - This in another book by Elizabeth Rees she calls it a stone circle.
Ramsey Island is a nature reserve for birds, but you can take a trip round the island to see the seals and a large water cavern.
This trip I did with my son, though I was gravely sea-sick, and a need to die quite happily in the cool green waters, but I did manage to focus on the seals and the marvellous quiet as our large rubber boat's engine fell silent and we drifted into the cave where the seals lay on a small rocky ledge. The waters round this Pembrokeshire coast are beautiful, clear, clean and crystal sharp.

Life boat Station at St.Justinian

Historically, the island formed part of the parish of St David's, and contained two medieval chapel sites which may have early medieval origins, one of which - dedicated to St Tyfannog - lies in this character area. It is associated with a holy well site, a cemetery and an inscribed stone which may commemorate a 9th century bishop. It has been suggested that the relationship between the island and the monastery at St David's may be analogous to that between Llancarfan and Flatholm in the Bristol Channel, as an island retreat for the monastic community. The island is laden with legends from its past inhabitants, many of them supernatural and involving the fairies Y Tylwyth Teg and Plant Rhys Dwfn; others tell of the sound of bells beneath the sea. During the post Anglo-Norman conquest period, Ramsey Island, and particularly the well, was an important pilgrimage site.
Taken from; Landscape St.David's Area

St.Tyfanog; Ramsey Island was also known as Ynys Dyfanog, after a chapel near Capel Stinan, an Anglo-Saxon burial inscription on a stone from an early christian burial site, probably relating to a bishop of St.David who died in 831.

(plant hrees thoovn) This, meaning the family of Rhys the Deep, is the name given to a tribe of fairy people who inhabited a small land which was invisible because of a certain herb that grew on it. They were handsome people, rather below the average in height, and it was their custom to attend the market in Cardigan and pay such high prices for the goods there that the ordinary buyer could not compete with them.

Well a little further investigation reveals that the above fairy people lived on an land that was invisible, which would fit nicely into the story of Ramsey Island, as islands disappear into the sea fog. The story originally was told round Cardigan Bay, but the the fairies grew tired of this place and moved down to Fishguard.