A Walk to Kelston Round Hill

After a day of torrential rain on Friday Saturday is at least dry, so starting early the dog and I make our way to Kelston Round Hill. First of all I see the buzzard on his watching post scanning the field for mice, he seems slightly bedraggled but that could be because of bad weather. Further on a muntjac makes it way slowly across the path, Moss chases after it but comes back when I call him. Kelston is bathed in sunlight, its fields recently mown and its prominent position in the landscape is a distinctive feature when driving back from Bristol or even from the car park at Sainsbury, so that when you are forced into that large hellhole, coming out you can look up to the yellow path of the Cotswold Way that leads up to the Hill.

But now we are approaching it from the viewpoint on the racecourse, down the path, past the newly planted Shiners Wood.

its emerging saplings buried beneath the tall plants of yellow ragweed. Great spires of fresh green teasel heads line the path, with butterbur plants growing like small bushes. Now the Cotswold Path comes to the small crossroads of green lanes, through the gates and the path stretches ahead. On the left of the path is a small headstone, a memorial to a young girl of 17 years who died of an asthma attack whilst out riding up here.

An ugly box of concrete lies discreetly in the field, a remnant of the last war, when the race course was turned into a temporary airfield.

There is the blue flowers of scabious in the hedgerow and the soft yellow/pink berries of the wayfaring tree hidden also. Through the gate to Kelston Hill, this is a permissive path, the land on this side of the hill belongs to John Osbourn, a farmer and poet. Up over the shorn grass, Moss rolling happily on the hill. At the top, you have views to Bristol,

and beyond to the great gap between the English hill to the sea and Wales. Turn to your right, looking over the flat plain in which Bristol lies you will see the two bridges that go over the Bristol Channel and the Welsh mountains beyond,

Move around the trees on the top and you will look down into the bowl of the City of Bath surrounded by its seven hills.

Someone said it was volcanic, something I had never thought of before, but presumably the hot springs would point to this, did it erupt one day millions of years ago,and throw up all its debris creating this giant bowl, or did the ridge on which the Hill sits, suddenly breach and let the seas through. Weston Village is nearer to hand, the newer houses stretching slightly up the slopes of the Lansdown. Up here with the crown of trees to wander round, and a small bench to sit on, you will find small memories of departed animals and people. Someone who breeds hounds, will bring their ashes up here to scatter to the wind, these four legged creatures that have run wildly over the hill. And just inside the trees is a young sapling, planted in memory of someone’s mother, sadly it does tend to accrue dying flowers and branch drapery!

This walk is a small reflection of the English countryside today, parts of history are caught up all along its way, the bronze age tumulus that lies behind the viewpoint, a chieftan maybe also glorifying in the view and happy to have his bones rest quietly overlooking the hill. Further down the trackway I have just walked, there were roman coffins found alongside, probably burials from the Northstoke Villa, and at the green crossroads, an old marking stone, prehistoric reused by romans probably, still sits.

The trapping of time in place means that history is always present, it is foolish to think otherwise.

Offerings at Scheduled Ancient Monuments

"Any place can be a sacred site if a group of people regard it as such. To be of more general significance, however, it also has to be given value by a wider community, and the greatest importance should be given to those valued by the nation. Thus, an ancient or historic monument becomes of general importance if it is scheduled as a site to be protected as part of the national heritage, especially if no established religious group is responsible for its upkeep. Where such places become vulnerable due to damage through overuse or misuse, then the role of a network concerned with the protection of sacred sites becomes especially relevant, and urgent. (Ronald Hutton 1997ce) "

ASLaN Sacred Site Charter

Please take care when visiting sacred sites to leave them as the next Visitor would like to find them. Respect the land and all its inhabitants -spirits, people, animals, plants and stones.

Digging holes for any purpose will damage plants and probably insects and archaeological remains. Damaging any aspect of nature will not please the Spirit of Place. Damaging archaeology may upset the official guardians or owners of the site and lead to it being closed to all.

Lighting fires can cause similar damage to digging. A fire can damage standing stones - if they get too hot, they split. Fires can spread quickly in summer, killing wildlife, and it can be very difficult to make sure a fire is truly out. Heat, candle wax and graffiti damage moss and lichens which can take decades to recover. The Spirits of Place are more likely to be displeased at fire damage than upset that you haven't lit one.

If an offering seems appropriate please think about all its effects. Don't leave artificial materials. Choose your offerings carefully so that they can't be mistaken for litter. Please don't bury things. Please don't leave biodegradable materials that may be offensive as they decay. If the site is already overloaded with offerings consider the effects of adding more.

Taking things from a site needs similar careful thought. Much of the vegetation around sacred sites is unusual or rare so don't pick flowers.

Don't take stones - they may be an important part of the site in ways which aren't obvious.
In times past it was traditional to leave no traces of any ritual because of persecution. This tradition is worth reviving because it shows reverence to nature and the Spirits of Place.

Don't change the site, let the site change you.

Respect

Whole books have been written around the word respect, it has moral, ethical and philosphical areas that cover respect for human and non-human forms of life. It is a way of percieving the relationship that exists between the beholder and the object that he or she sees. It can be subjective, but its truth should be objective. It can, and must, be applied to the relationships between people, to all forms of religion - whether we believe them or not is immaterial - and in the light of our understanding of the world around us, to all living entities, whatever form or shape they take.

Respect governs the decisions of society and how we treat each other, respect for nature is perhaps a minority view, respect for old cultures is still in the throes of being defined by what is now a modern secular society, the questions as to how we should view our past and its history, is more often than not left in the hands of a scientific handful of people such as archaeologists, who are trained in the art of excavation for instance, but who lack education in the moral and ethical rules of society as a whole, past and present.

"care respect, which is exemplified in an environmentalist's deep respect for nature. Care respect involves regarding the object as having profound and perhaps unique value and so cherishing it, and perceiving it as fragile or calling for special care and so acting or forbearing to act out of felt benevolent concern for it. This analysis of respect draws explicitly from a feminist ethics of care and has been influential in feminist and non-feminist discussions of respecting persons as unique....."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/respect/

Alternative Theories For Silbury Hill

Silbury Hill like Stonehenge has many theories to explain its construction and what went on in the mind of the people who built it. Each theory has a point of reference that seems to validate its particular idea but of course speculation as to something that took place in the past is one of the driving forces that our human imagination is very good at – it is after all the reason why we succeed in the ‘survival game’.
The first idea is to see Silbury as a Sun Temple and Shadow Hill. If you study aerial photos of the mound, one thing that is particularly striking is how it casts its cone shape on the surrounding meadows. Now at the beginning of the 20th century, Silbury was seen as an imitation of the pyramids of Egypt by some folk, and their explanation was that the sun would have taken precedent over the moon because it was by the journey of the sun that the planting of crops would be measured. The division of the year into days and months. Now it is put forward in R.Hippisley Cox’s book The Green Roads of England, that if you placed a pole on top of the hill the shadow would fall north on the level meadows, the daily gauge being about four feet “or almost, exactly that of the Great Pyramid” to quote the author.
The second theory that springs to mind is by a Scandinavian author who lives locally, Loethar Respondek is his name, and he concentrates on the water that abounds round the hill, his foolish idea sadly is rather more down to earth, for he sees Silbury as a great spoil heap that is the result of a need for water and the creation of a reservoir.

­ a spoil heap created by a generation of humans facing a water crisis.

Instead the Corsham author thinks the numerous springs and streams meant the area would have provided a vital water supply to nearby settlements. In 3,000 BC a period of climatic change could have had an impact on the amount of water coming from the springs, leading Mr Respondek to believe water supplies were under threat. He came up with the theory that as the earth began to heat up, water sources evaporated during the Sub-Boreal period. "Neolithic man on the parched Downs was confronted by a looming climatic catastrophe," Mr Respondek said. Topsoil dried up, grassland replaced the boggy environment and the water table gradually dropped lower and lower.

This, he said, is backed up by remnants of nibbled grass in the mound, which he thinks shows livestock were brought to graze on land that was once boggy marshland. "Somehow Neolithic man had to adapt in order to ensure his survival. A way had to be found to collect and store water," he said. He believes Neolithic man started to dig a trench to reach the sunken water table, dumping the soil removed in a central pile and using fencing to keep it in place. Over hundreds of years men used more and more skilful techniques to build a series of trenches and to contain the soil, so it grew into the mound that exists today. "They didn’t intend trying to build a huge hill but the drier periods got longer and they had to dig deeper and deeper," he said. "It was built on the hoof. Silbury Hill is a spoil heap."

Of course his theory is a lot of nonsense and shows a one-sided scientific approach by a person who has not read all the relevant facts, he has of course just joined in the speculative game with his particular discipline which is geology. If he had studied some of the reports, he would have seen that many of the seeds of the plants found inside Silbury represent a wide range of habitat beside water loving plants, and damp meadow plants. Notwithstanding the most obvious clue - why did they bother with constructing a well made mound if all they were doing was throwing aside spoil to dig for water.
..............................




Putting aside weird theories it is interesting to read Jaccquetta Hawkes on the subject of Sun Gods and gnomons at Machu Picchu. Married to an archaeologist, and of course an archaeologist herself, she was fortunate to travel the world and see many of the ancient sites, and it is best to quote her description of the site of this wonderful mountain top city she must have seen 60 or 70 years ago.
"The town is built on a rock spur about a thousand feet above the valley, which itself is nine thousand feet above sea level. On the approach side it is delimited be a massive wall. The other sides are terraced with astonishing skill before they drop into sheer precipices that fall straight to where the River Vilcanota sweeps round in a bold horseshoe. This whole spur, with its green valley skirt and city crown, is enclosed by a vast cirque of rock peaks decked with slender waterfalls. The rock seems pecularily smooth and many faceted, so that these fangs glitter like cut jet. Behind them rise the white, sharp summits of the Andean giants, pointing nineteen and twenty thousand feet towards the sun, and bathed in the stillness of eternal
snow"
When she visited Machu Picchu she sat by the side of the Intihuatana, the great foursided gnomon at the highest part of the city and watching a large butterfly that circled her on this lofty eminence decided to write a book about man and the sun. Like all of us she imagined how the priests of the Sun had read the shadows of this monument and how they interpreted it for the people below.

Notes; West Kennet Palisaded Enclosures

Enclosure 1 straddles the present course of the river Kennet, whilst enclosure 2 lies to the south of the river. Behind is Waden Hill, and to the n/e the steep chalk ridge of Overton Hill.
The sites are roughly equidistant from Silbury Hill to the west and the Sanctuary to the east, being about 1 km from each. The s/e end of the West Kennet Avenue passes within 170 metres to the n/e of enclosure 2. First chalk ridge to the south lies the WKLB and EKLB. Ditches have been traced north of the river and east of Gunsight lane, on the terrace south of the Kennet floodplain meadows and in the southern edge of the floodplain meadows.
There has been no investigation in the grounds of the manor west of Gunsight Lane - buildings will mask the sight here. 1970s a pipe trench was dug along the Kennet Ave - site observed by the Vatchers, they recorded several features - postpipes, some sarsen packing and patches of charcoal. 2 ditches; more easterly was about 2m broad, the more westerly over 3 m broad, they were not bottomed by the pipe trench. They ran obliquely across the pipe trench and showed more clearly than in section a pattern of closely spaced postpipes with small sarsens and charcoal concentrations.
Other features to the west of the more westerly feature were series of smaller features; shallow scoops and stakeholes. Finds; worked flints, including scrapers, single dec.sherd (grooved ware bowl) animal bone - cattle and an ox horncore of neolithic type....1987 Sept. 5 trenches; An inner and outer ditch about 25-30 m apart were located and excavated in trenches E and F, both features were also located in trench D. An oblique ripple flaked flint arrowhead was found in outer ditch trench D, also antler samples ( 2317-2142 and 2032-1890)...... in trench C a deep broad natural channel or hollow was found - its fill was mainly R/B and then Saxon date... ...Pig bones;
The most dominant species of animal bone "it is clear that the that the comnsumption of pork was a central concern in the events surrounding the enclosure" slaughter of young pigs must have been on a considerable scale, similar perhaps to the trees felled for the palisade, pig bone in every cutting. Sampling was from less than one percent of total perimeters, but if the same pattern of deposition occured all round the ditches, original total could have run into thousands of animals (conspicious consumption and large scale feasting).
Whittle's conclusion that this maybe reflect a short lived situation, in which pigs were used to clear secondary woodland, and maybe bracken, since bracken spore has been found in the Avebury area, and may have caused an infestation. Slaughter on site, or immediate vicinity; emphasis on particular body parts, and on body sides - lack of gnawing and placing of bone by palisade posts indicate the immediacy of bone treatment. Cattle may have been valued for ritual and slaughter (greater fragmentation of cattle bones) no evidence for marrow extraction.
Ritual and deposition; animal bone was placed around posts in the process of backfilling the ditches and constructing the palisades. Slaughter, sacrifice, feasting and deposition were closely related...In late neolithic long established tradition of feasting, the enclosures were overlooked by the ancestors in WKLB, most bone concealed but some left on top as a visual reminder for later gatherings...pigs may have had symbolic meaning in their own right. Emphasis on right side may be connected with a sense of propitiousness...comparing them to tribes in Papua New Guinea - a largely vegetarian society, their pigs were bound up with warfare and peace making, spirits and ritual, reared from a young age by women. When pig numbers reached a peak a kaiko was held. Pigs were slaughtered but not all eaten they were sacrificed, the ceremony was designed to bring peace with neighbouring tribes
http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Avebury/Longstones99/Interim/index.html

Tree and Gods

This thin carved branch is a goddess figure called Nerthus, found at Foerlev Nymolle in 1961." Under some stones a cloven oak branch was placed 9 feet in length. The branch possessed natural "feminine" form, suggesting a slender body, rounded hips and long legs, most distinctive features were shown by working or carving.

" Nerthus; Germanic goddess, a mother goddess who had a sacred grove on a Frisian island. At certain times Nerthus travelled inland along a recognized path, her image being placed in an oxen cart and attended by a priest, during this sacred journey, peace was expected to prevail and "all iron was put away"

She bathed at a lake and afterwards slaves who had helped in this ritual were drowned.. some say that in fact Tacitus may have been referring to Freyja, but some myths say that Nerthus was the mother of Freyja.The sacrificial bodies found in the "cauldron bogs" such as the Grauballe man and the Tollund Man maybe the "husbands" of the goddess Nerthus, sacrificed in some rite of spring after the mating with the goddess.
Male fertility gods were also found in the bogs, they are strangely grotesque, the following image (purloined from Glob) shows a rather playful nature.




Nerthus represents late Scandinavian Bronze Age earth goddess figure, a powerful female deity on which the fertility of the land and animals depended, later on she loses her power to the male deities - probably of war and Tacitus also gives evidence of this.

Also found in the bogs, apart from boats, were war spoils - silver helmets, coats of mail, roman coins, fine raiments - this war gear sacrifices were made at a time when there was strife amongst the tribal areas."When they join battle they promise the spoils of war to the war god, after victory, captured animals are sacrificed to him and the rest of the booty is gathered in one place. In many places heaps of such things are piled up in sacred places"

The above evidence is taken from Scandinavian iron age history, and their gods were somewhat different to ours, but what is interesting is the use of wood to represent their gods, and the wonderful image of the Tree of Yrgradsil, which in its mythological stories spread its great roots over their world. We have little evidence of wooden effigies in this country, though some small fertility objects have been found in the Somerset Levels, and the tree is also significant in celtic tradition.
Interestingly, phallic stone heads have been found in this country, one at Eype, Dorset. Presumably, they were brought in by the roman legion native soldiers, homesick for their own pagan gods, they would have carved replicas to worship out in the open. These heads are crude affairs, roughly shaped, and are only denoted as phallic by long necks with a head on top.

Fragments - The Mountain Spirit by Gary Snyder

ten million years ago an ocean floor

glides like a snake beneath the continent crunching up

old seabed till it's high as alps.

Sandstone layers script of winding tracks

and limestone shine like snow

where ancient beings grow.

"When the axe strokes stop

the silence grows deeper--"

Peaks like Buddhas at the heights

send waters streaming down

to the deep center of the turning world.

And the Mountain Spirit always wandering

hillsides fade like walls of cloud

pebbles smoothed off sloshing in the sea......

Ghosts of lost landscapes

herds and flocks, toowns and clans,

great teachers from all lands,

tucked in Wovoka's empty hat

Stored in Baby Krishna's mouth,

kneeling for tea

in Vimalakirti's one small room...............

Bristlecone pines live long

on the taste of carbon dolomite.

Spiraled standing coil

dead wood with the living,

four thousand years of mineral glimmer

spaced out growing in the icy airy sky

white bones under summer stars.

The Mountain spirit and me

like ripples of the Cambrian Sea

dance the pine tree

old arms, old limbs, twisting, twining

scatter cones across the ground

stamp the root-foot Down

and then she's gone.

Mistreatment of the Long Man of Wilmington

This famous site is under the stewardship of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and was given in trust to the Society in 1925. The terms of the gift include keeping it safe from injury, damage and defacement, and to keep it free from weeds, etc allowing public access to the land around the figure at all reasonable times.
One would think that this policy could be adhered to easily but no, this is the 21st century and the media on the lookout for cheap publicity has to intrude in the form of a popular ITV programme featuring two famous females whose job it is to dress its badly attired viewers properly. The particular form of abuse that the television show perpetuated on the monument was to ask 80 women to lie down surrounding the Long Man and to give him the form of a woman – all this in the name of 'female empowerment' and a quick gimmick to be featured in the programme.
The Long Man of Wilmington has been dated by written evidence to 1711, but it has many folktales in its history and could in fact be dated much earlier. In recent times it has become the focus for Pagan ceremonies, and they have naturally been infuriated by this blatant intrusion and superficial use of a cherished monument.
The Sussex Archaeological Society laid down certain strictures to the tv company and in their press release have stated that:

"Our professional staff judged that the activities involved in filming this sequence, essentially walking and lying on the monument, will not damage the archaeology underneath. Thousands of Scheduled Ancient Monuments are walked on every year, not least Stonehenge at the recent solstice."

True enough, the archaeology may or may not have been damaged, but surely a respect for our historical and archaeological past should be the first call of any historic Society and they should definitely not set a precedent of historical sites being used for cheapskate shows. One further point, the Sussex Society states that "monuments are walked on every year, not least Stonehenge at the recent Solstice". Heritage Action would also like to point out that most of the people who attended the Solstice were there for a good reason which was to watch the sunrise appearing above the horizon and bathing the stones in its light - they were experiencing an age-old event that has happened for five thousand years, very different from a two minute frivolous television appearance making a questionable statement!
For a detailed report of what took place in the name of entertainment at a Scheduled Ancient Monument, follow the link to The Modern Antiquarian and view the report from Heritage Action's South East Site Inspector, Jim Mitchell:
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/60425/weblog/

The Pharaoh Akhenaten's Hymn to the Sun

Part of the hymn..

How manifold it is, what thou hast made!
They are hidden from the face (of man).
O sole god, like whom there is no other!
Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,
Whatever is on earth, going upon (its) feet,
And what is on high, flying with its wings.
The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,
Thou settest every man in his place,
Thou suppliest their necessities:
Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
Their tongues are separate in speech,
And their natures as well;
Their skins are distinguished,
As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.
Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,
Thou bringest forth as thou desirest
To maintain the people (of Egypt)
According as thou madest them for thyself,
The lord of all of them, wearying (himself) with them,
The lord of every land, rising for them,
The Aton of the day, great of majesty.



Aton or Aten was the sun-god that was brought to importance from being a minor god to the sole god, it was in fact a step forward from the worship of many gods to the worship of one god. It was the pharaoh Amenhotep 111 that established this change, his son Akhenaton established this solar god then took it on himself to create another new city, and abandoning Thebes chose a place by a river's curving bank and built the city of Akhetan. He moved here with his wife Nefertiti and their three children. There were two temples, one dedicated to the rising of the sun Aton, the other to its setting, this temple was presided over by Nefertiti. Of course it did'nt last long, jealous priests saw to that, and the city was overthrown and the fate of Akhenaton and his family unknown.

ref; Man and the Sun - Jacquetta Hawkes.

Yews

........................nor tree
Grows here, but what is fed with Majick Juice
All full of humane Souls; that cleave their barks
To dance at Midnight by the Moon's pale beams.

Nathaniel Lee - Oedipus

Spirituality

A subject that is somewhat fraught, we talk of our own spirituality in terms that are not easy to define, but is there behind the life force another layer of being, invisible but transcending the physical world. Can we touch it, does it belong to our senses, created by our minds - does it really exist?
There is no answer to that, we as humans are fallible capable of great evil and yet capable of self-sacrificing courage, people aspire to higher ideals and in doing so lay down there own lives for the greater good of everyone. Yet animals also fight to save their young, defend territory, can they be spiritually blessed as well.
When reading poetry or looking at a painting, behind the words or daubs of paint will be a person trying to express his vision of the world, trying to draw through the medium of expressive art, the inner essence of the subject matter. Sometimes the expression will be abstract, it will become fragmented into a subjective view, and the onlooker will have to construct his own vision.
Thinking about the landscape and the natural world as having a spiritual meaning is sometimes more difficult. We can perhaps classify it as a Gaian term, seeing the world functioning as a whole, each part dependent on each other. Whether there is a divine force behind all this we cannot tell, yet we are born within its safekeeping, we eat its fruits, and wonder at the marvel of a perpetually changing sky, the beauty of a flower caught for a moment in its upward seeking movement, - it is as if the world is sometimes laid out for our delight, as if its beauty is indeed the spiritual message we seek.
Yet within this life force, there is the opposition, death and decay, autumn leaves crumble to dust, we kill to eat, paradise is lost, or at least out of reach. When someone dies we are deeply unhappy, a life force has been extinguished, a void has been made in the web of our lives. We return their dust to the earth where it belongs, to shift and blow in the wind maybe, or to be driven deep into the matrix of the soil becoming part of the minute teeming organic life that exists beneath our feet.
As I write this, I remember all the deaths that have occurred during my lifetime, and how we must bear witness to the final moments of death, and the giving back to the earth the life form that was once so active. When the young are taken there is bitterness and anger that life has been so cruelly shortened, we grieve for their pain and the loss of a happy fulfilling life.
So in coming to this moment of death, to the spirituality of the person and the spirituality of the place we marry these two aspects together, it is a moment of closure, a time of serenity and peace, it should not be an unhappy event but one of contemplation and acknowledgement that there is something indefinable that exists beyond the mere physical world that is our everyday life.

Wayland's smithy longbarrow

Notes; The longbarrow was excavated by Richard Atkinson in the years 1962-63. He seems to have uncovered two periods, though it could well be that there was much more there given his bad recording.
Period 1 barrow contained a wooden mortuary hut shaped like a ridge tent, but with a sarsen stone floor. Here some fourteen bodies had been laid, some articulated, others with limbs separated - probably due to the practice of excarnation. When the hut was full sarsen stones were placed around it, and chalk from ditches on either side were piled on top. The mound being kept in position by a kerb of boulders.
Period 11 consists of the mound that is now visible 54.9 metres long by 14.6 m at the front tapering to 6.1. m at the back. The front facade originally contained 6 great sarsen stones, each about 9 foot high, at the back was the passageway with a chamber on either side.
In the restoration work drystone walling was used to fill the gaps between the stones. Apparently an earlier excavation in 1919, in the left hand chamber 8 skeletons were found including 1 child. The latest excavation showed that the final barrow was excavated from ditches on either side of the mound and was held in place by a continuous kerb of sarsens. Radio carbon dating at this time was between 3700 and 3400 bc.
Apparently the two missing stones beside the entrance are marked by irregular dry-stone walling. There seems to have been a rather more formalised 'restoration' in which the flanks of the barrow were sharply revetted to form walls. Now, in 2007, the mound has acquired a graceful curve with what remains of the kerbing stone sitting comfortably in the ground. The work was done by the DoE, and it is well to remember that 'neatness' in the restoration work, may not necessarily give a true final picture..


Taken from James Dyer; An Archaeological Guide to Southern England; Gen.Ed. Glyn Daniels 1973.

Black and white photo from H.J.Massingham - Downland England 1930

The Broken Circle by O.H.Holmes 1887

I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.

"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply
"A mystery, as are you that gaze.

"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.

"But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--

"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.

"No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few."

My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.

Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean, and that must fall?

Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.

So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!

Sodbury Hillfort

This is a somewhat updated version of an earlier blog, it relates to the hillfort at Sodbury, though in actual fact defended settlement would be a much better term, on the A46 to Cirencester. The best way to approach this hillfort is from the village of Little Sodbury. Park up somewhere near the church and head for the path that goes past the small school, walk through the fields following the path, the escarpment will be on your right and to the left  the flat farming land that heads west to the Bristol Channel. The path curves upward through the trees, and then comes out on a little lane, follow this for a short while, then turn right down a driveway. Here I went wrong, and continued down the drive, but a gardener put me right, in actual fact, just off the lane turn sharp right up into the woods along the path.

Either sneak past the back of the farmhouse at the top, over their lawn to the wicket gate that leads between the banks of the fort, or find another path that leads more directly through the wood.

It is an amazing place, the ground is as flat as a pancake, 24 acres (according to Nicholas Thomas's Guide to Prehistoric England) he describes it thus;

"Its outer bank and ditch are iron age; the earthworks at the S.W. end enclosing 12 acres are probably Roman. In places the inner (Roman) bank is 10 foot high> Original entrance to the I/A camp is approached by a track up the escarpment along the N.W.side of the camp (the one already described). It enters just S.W. of the N. corner of the pre-Roman earthwork; here there are in-turned banks defining it. Date of pre-Roman earthwork; 3rd to 2nd century B.C. Traces of earthwork to the N belong to deserted medieval village"

surrounded on three sides by two high banks, the internal one, neatly 'romanised'. The fourth side is of course the steep escarpment, now somewhat obscured by trees. This is the largest of the three hillforts that lie close to each other along this particular bit of the escarpment, Horton and Hinton (Dyrham) being the other two.

As a pleasant walk it lingers in the memory, taken in June 2006, the sun was warm and the banks were covered in ladies Bedstraw, a sweet smelling herb, the place was absolutely deserted and apart from Moss I wandered round marvelling at such a place could be so unexplored by archaeologists with its rich tapestry of history.

Its size as an Iron age defended settlement is huge, and must point to a largish settlement with animals penned in as well. Sometimes with the wonder of the Avebury bank and ditch, we forget to look at the work of people 2000 years later who also built such large defence systems, did it for instance have a wooden palisade on top? It points to a time of hardship, of having to protect ones animals from raiders, there is some evidence that the weather was poor through this particular millenia, wet weather would have meant reliance on animals rather than crops, perhaps that is why we see such a burgeoning growth of hill top settlement around this part of the country.

                                                    Looking back to Little Sodbury Village

This well known Roman camp is situated in the parish of Chipping Sodbury, •two miles east of the town, and •eleven miles due north of Bath. The defended area, which contains •upwards of twelve acres, is rectangular in shape, with the west side resting on the escarpment of the hill, the other three sides being defended by a double line of intrenchments, each consisting of a single bank and ditch. There are entrances both on the west and west sides, the camp in all respects being very perfect in form. Mr. King says:— "This seems to have been incomparably well adapted to have contained three cohorts, with double the number of allied foot and half as many more allied horse, encamped after the Polybian.

Taken from Archaeological Handbook of County of Gloucester by George Witts 1882

Nails of Gold or Kingcups

"Nails of gold driven so thickly that the true surface was not visible - countless rootlets drew up the richness of the earth like miners in the darkness throwing their yellow patches of ore broadcast about them."

Whilst reading Richard Jeffries book The Life of the Fields I came across an essay on The Roman Brook, Jeffries out on a walk one afternoon by a favorite brook of his came across an old man working in his garden. He stopped to chat, and the old man grumbled about how the hares pigeons, rooks and water rats ate his vegetables and as he rambled on Jeffries saw an old jug hanging from from one of the apple trees in the orchard. On enquiring why it was hanging he was told that it came from the brook from the time of the Caesars and that lots of pottery and coins had been found also. The children played with the coins and the labourers from the village tried to buy their beer with them at the inn, but of course as they were roman the innkeeper refused them as payment.

Strangely this story has an echo in an earlier tale of the fourth century at Nettleton Shrub, a roman temple situated by the Fosse Way and also by a small brook. Ransacking the temple, Irish raiders, also threw away the roman coins along the path as they came away from the temple, the money having no value for them; these coins were discovered in the 20th century when the site was excavated. The brook at Nettleton Shrub, also has the same story of pottery sherds to be found within its depths

The two photographs show Kingcups or Marsh Marigold that can be be found at Nettleton Shrub, the little valley is a nature reserve and is a quiet enchanting place to wander through. To find it one must take the road from The Shoe, towards the motorway, this lane is the Old Fosse Way from Bath, and winds up and down till you eventually reach a small bridge over a brook, here you can just about park the car by the farm gate, and crossing the bridge take the path on your left, following the old 'canalised' roman brook (now a path) through the valley. Its roman history belongs in another essay, buts it natural beauty of wild flowers and dark sluggish brook is still there. As you walk along following the waters edge, curving hither and thither amongst the trees, echoing down through the centuries the voices of the native British-romano people may faintly be heard, from the buildings and temple just up on the hill. There will be the sound of soldiers cantering along the Fosse, stopping here to rest their horses, and pay homage to the gods that adorn the temple.

Further on you will come to a wicker gate, and if it is summer, as you open the gate, you will be greeted by a profusion of meadowsweet, and policeman's helmet (impatiens glandifura - a pretty foreign flower it is cited as a noxious weed!) flowers all of which thrive in boggy areas. The path is crossed here by a small muddy stream, perhaps the site of an old roman well. Keep walking and now you come to an old packhorse bridge, for this track also served the little villages round here, cross over and climb the hill through the trees. In spring there will be bluebells and wood anemones on the banks and of course the little primrose.

Marsh Marigold- Caltha Palustris has another historic tale to tell, this time from Geoffrey Grigson. He says that this flower was growing before the Ice Age in Britain and its bright yellow flowers that arrive so early in the year must have forced itself into the consciousness of all who saw it on damp, cold grey days of early spring. In Iceland it appears when the snow is still on the ground, and its flowers surround the farmsteads on the high dry knolls separated from the boggy land below.

The Anglo-saxons when they arrived as colonists must have welcomed this flower from their home country and they probably called it Meargealla or mersc meargealla. Mear from 'horse' and gealla from 'swelling' or 'blister', a horse-blob or mare-blob. This is of course conjecture on the part of Grigson but is well to remember that names, and especially saxon names, have a direct correlation between that which is seen and experienced, and apparently because the round globe flower suggest a round swelling, and the flower itself looks like a large buttercup, whose roots were used as a soothing concoction for blisters.

I began with Richard Jeffries as he reminscenced about a walk he took way back in the 19th century along a brook and found evidence of a past roman history, my walk along the little valley of Nettleton Shrub shows a similar picture, but the exuberant wildlife and plants that Jeffries experienced is fast fading, over the intervening period much has been lost, we erode the diversity of the natural world till one day all that will be left are top predators and rank weeds that thrive in the artifical nitrogen rich world we have created in our farming regime.

His prose, and other writers, will be all that remains of a lost world we have polluted with our insatiable need to be prosperous, to rob the earth of all its wealth .....

Jaquetta Hawkes-Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales 1954

Jaccquetta Hawkes is an evocative writer on archaeology and the remains of the past and in the above book her obvious love of our prehistory stands out. In days when the world was much quieter and the open road beckoned one can only envy her freedom to wander round the countryside. The following extracts are on Stonehenge;

.......We may have regretted the tickets, the waste-paper baskets, our fellow visitors; we may feel that publicity has destroyed the spirit of this too famous building; yet once among the stones all but the most stubbornly resistant mood must surrender to their power.

The massive, roughly squared blocks of sarsen seem to possessa forceful presence which asserts itself within the human consciousness. Their silvery grey colour fills the eye but now shows itself to be variegated with dark lichens and with the shadow of grotesque fissures and hollows worn by centuries of rain and frost. One upright has been so deeply and curiously carved by the weather that it looks like one of those huge wooden totem poles made by the Vancouver Island Indians. The visitor must be struck, too by an unexpected combination of static with dynamic forms; the uprights with their heavy lintels have stood for thousands of years and seem eternal, while some of the fallen stones, particularly the inner trilithons, although they have lain there long enough to have been trodden smooth, seem to preserve the force and movement, the noise almost of their colossal fall........

She goes on to describe the layout of the sarsen and bluestone circles and the horseshoe setting of bluestones following the theory that the bluestones came from Preseli and possessed their own mana. And she then describes the altar stone...

Across the toe of the bluestone horseshoe and therefore immediately in front of the great central trilithon lies a sandstone slab, also of welsh origin, now much encumbered with fragments of a fallen upright. Ever since Inigo Jones made the first plan of Stonehenge for James 1 this slab has been popularly been identified as the Altar Stone, but is far more likely once to have stood as a monolith. Certainly this central enclosure where the Altar Stone now lies must have been the most holy, the most charged with mana in the whole sanctuary...

She approached her visit to Stonehenge from the Winterbourne Stoke side past Yarnbury Castle, crossing the River Till....

...As he reaches the quiet cross roads on the summit, he will be on the edge of one of the greatest, and certainly the richest, congregations of burial mounds in all Britain. Here was a kind of vast scattered cemetery on ground hallowed by its proximity to the renowned sanctuary. Barrows cluster round Stonehenge on all sides - three hundred of them - but here to the west is the greatest concentration and the area most sequestered from the blighting military activities of Amesbury......

When the ritual and whatever its accompaniment may have been of masks, effigies and offerings have vanished so long ago, when there is no stir of emotion and the ghost which keeps emotion alive, when the very people responsible for raising these mounds have been overwhelmed, absorbed and forgotten, then their detailed study can become lifeless enough. Better perhaps to look at them with knowledge but with knowledge unexpressed, these round barrows that are like the floating bubbles of events drowned in time.

And so to H.J.Massingham - English Downland 1936

Massingham again explores the Wessex tribal lands with language both eloquent and emotional, and his writings on Stonehenge, fall more into the dramatic mode of imaginary grandeur.. but again he lays stress on the fact that all roads point to Stonehenge, a point still echoed today as once more roads are to be planned around or under Stonehenge..

So with Stonehenge. The hoary great pile exercises a magnetic pull over all the roads of the south, the south-east and the west. It holds the reins of allthe roads in its fist, from the Isle of Wight to the scalloped escarpment of the Marlborough Downs between the headlands of Tan Hill and Martinsell, and from Beaminster to Beachy Head. So deeply buried in the unrecorded past are these twin realms of ancient Wiltshire (here he is talking of Avebury as the other twin) that they have left us a mighty graveyard only, and nothing more, not even an inscription upon the tombs. Yet he chalk country belongs to them still, and of this mystery all who travel it are conscious. Their tombs are little rounded headlands and promontories, their roads and banks the very gestures of the downland manner, the peace in which the barrow builders dwelt together caught a breath of that lofty repose that clothes the downs themselves. The downs were the high places of their high cult of life and death. But we, we step upon their springing turflines as aliens, or at least with the dim awareness of having strayed and of seeking once more the ancient mother of our race..........

He goes on to say, wrongly as we now know, that Stonehenge resembles the Lion Gate of the pre-Hellenic Peloponnese, the tympaneum of the Lion Gate revealing the older and simpler religon of the Goddess of the Earth., overlaid with the state and political (as opposed to the elemental) creed of the sun, which was mainly kingship (interesting idea). Stonehenge and Avebury as two separate waves of colonial adventure.

...It is a monarch of stone circles with a court. A church with a church-yard inseperable from it. This court, this churchyard consists of the multitudes of barrows mostly round, which are set along the slight ridges in various groups, often in definite alignment, within an area of 12 square miles of the Temple..... and on

Avebury was by far the mightier work, but not erected with that precision and nicety of orientation which distinguished the lesser home of divinity, not were the stones so elaborately dressed. The Temple of the Plain was something of an observatory as well as a house of deified presences; it had its Cursus for the sacred spectacles and ball games between the sky and the underworld,..

It is interesting to see how early 20th education coloured the minds of its writers, and perhaps more important 19th century books with their flights of fancy, to imagine the world of the bronze age people. Today, archaeologists still play a somewhat different game, now the words have become more analytical and scientific, they may also play the game of imagining the past, but has anyone actually unfolded or come nearer to the truth of what happened round these great monuments? The answer is of course no, we still shuffle the bits around the board, like a great complicated jigsaw, we try to fit the pieces together but that picture of the past will never really be complete, it belongs to the people who lived it.

Wayland's Smithy and the White Horse

Wayland's Smithy

I once blew a blast into the Blowing Stone, which rolled a hollow wave of sepulchral sound into the hills. The megalith builders, taking their lesson from the conch-shells of the Eastern Mediterranean, blew into this very stone to summon the gods or, more probably, the goddess of the high places. Another two miles and there is the goddess herself or rather, the celtic descendant of the goddess, stretched in white and in flight across the bald brow of Uffington Hill. The downs lift to 800 feet and by their very godliness of combe and crescent, of jutting ness and plunging spur, ordain the tie beam of White Horse Hill to be one more of the holy places of the chalk. So it was on Windover Hill.... and so it is here where the Celtic town of Uffington is flanked by the galloping horse and a Neolithic workshop on the one side, and the chambered long barrow of Wayland's Smithy with its grove of beeches on the other........

H.J.Massingham - English Downland

White Horse of Uffington

Massingham walked the Ridgeway through Berkshire and on to Avebury, he savoured the great beauty of these soft downland uplands, he likens the Manger below the Horse as a "tree butt", and stopped and blew into the Blowing Stone which he felt sure our neolithic forefathers had once done as well. All this perhaps 80 years ago, his love of the English countryside and its villages and history are a reminder of those more nostalgic times before the roads became congested with cars and the noise of our modern society.

Places have there own special magic, The Ridgeway one of the great green trackways that follow the dry uplands, prehistoric people followed this track, driving their animals, trading their goods, moving through a landscape very different to what it is today. They would have come upon the Neolithic Barrow, but it would'nt have had its smithy legend then, what legend it had we can only guess at, a burial place for the local clan, a gathering place for ceremony.

Its been restored since Massingham passed by, and now has an almost cathedral atmosphere, a neatness that is modern and structured, and perhaps does not reflect its original state. Be that as it may, it still has the air of profound majesty, it reminds us that this stone monument has survived thousands of years, and dear old Moss standing atop it oblivious to history and death is also a reminder that humankind and animals are linked over the centuries too...

And a poem that is not so gentle....

As I Came, I Saw a Wood Ted Hughes
Where trees craned in dirt, clutching at the sky
Like savages photographed in the middle of a ritual
Birds danced among them and animals took part
Insects too and around their feet flowers

And time was not present none ever stopped
Or left anything old or reached any new thing
Everything moved in an excitement that seemed permanent

They were so ecstatic,
I could go in among them, touching them,even break pieces off them
Pluck up flowers, without disturbing them in the least.
The birds simply flew wide, but were not for one moment distracted.
From the performance of their feathers and eyes.
And the animals the same, though they avoided me
They did so with holy steps and never paused
In the glow of fur which was their absolution in sanctity

And their obedience, I could see that.

I saw I stood in a paradise of tremblings

At the crowded crossroads of all the heavens
the festival of the religions.

But a voice, a bell of cracked iron
Jarred in my skull
Summoning me to prayer
To eat flesh and drink blood.

Kicking the Carbon Habit

Using cars less and walking and cycling more.

Buying more in local shops rather than in supermarkets.

Growing more of our own food and managing woodlands for firewood.

Encouraging the purchase of fairly traded, low carbon-footprint goods which truly benefit producer communities in other parts of the world.

Measuring our carbon footprints in order to identify where we can improve, and to monitor progress.

Reducing the number of non-essential overseas flights we take.

Reducing our energy use within the home, by insulating, installing low-energy bulbs, etc.

Generating our own power renewably, including solar panels, wind turbines and biomass as appropriate.

Reducing our landfill waste to zero by reducing consumption, re-using and recycling our waste
.
Supporting those around the world, particularly the poorest, who suffer the impacts of global warming-related disasters.

We no longer want to act as if climate change is someone else's problem. The problem is ours. But, if we act collectively, so too is the solution.

The Seafarer

The following anglo-saxon poem is one of my favourites, its harsh gloomy mood speaks down to us through the centuries, the misery of cold and ice and dangers faced are captured clearly. The strength of the spoken language comes over vividly. Michael Alexander in his book Earliest English poetry, stresses the fact that these Saxon poems come from a much earlier tradition of bardic poetry, it has the same strong echoes that are found in the early British poet Taliesin. To read them out loud, one must remember that they were delivered in a great smoky timbered hall to the assembled company as they feasted. Because they are spoken, the person who recites them can alter the words to suit the moment, the drama of the words are underlined by the half-line rendition; between these two half-lines one must imagine the sound of a harp giving the dramatic pause of a story in the telling. Also, like Shakespeare, there are rich metaphoric images, so that the sun is woruld candel the sea is swan-rud (swans riding).



Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan,
May I for my own self song's truth reckon,

siþas secgan, hu ic geswincdagum
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days

earfoðhwile oft þrowade,
Hardship endured oft

bitre breostceare gebiden hæbbe,
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,

gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela,
Known on my keel many a care's hold

atol yþa gewealc, þær mec oft bigeat
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent

nearo nihtwaco æt nacan stefnan,
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head

þonne he be clifum cnossað. Calde geþrungen
While she tossed close to cliffs.
Coldly afflicted

wæron mine fet, forste gebunden,
My feet were by frost benumbed

caldum clommum, þær þa ceare seofedun
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs

hot'ymb heortan; hungor innan slat
Hew my heart round and hunger begot

merewerges mod. þæt se mon ne wat
Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not

þe him on foldan fægrost limpeð,
That he on dry land loveliest liveth,

hu ic earmcearig iscealdne sæ
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,

winter wunade wræccan lastum,
Weathered the winter, wretched outcast

winemægum bidroren,
Deprived of my kinsmen; .

bihongen hrimgicelum; hægl scurum fleag.
Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,

pær ic ne gehyrde butan hlimman sæ
There I heard naught save the harsh sea

iscaldne wæg. Hwilum yifete song
And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries

dyde ic me to gomene, ganetes hleo€or
Did for my games the gannet's clamour,

ond huilpan sweg fore hleahtor wera,
Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter

mæw singende fore medodrince.
The mews' singing all my mead-drink

Stormas pær stanclifu beotan. €ær him stearn oncwæõ
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern

isigfe€era; ful oft €æ earn bigeal,
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed

urigfe€ næra; nænig hieomæga
With spray on his pinion.

Anglo Saxon transcribed by Alan Watson
English by Ezra Pound

The rest of the poem can be found here.
link; http://www.aspp.ca/about.html

Silbury Hill seeds

Seed identified from seed and fruit remains from the old land surface and the turf stack (1136 species examined (D.Williams) Taken from; SACRED MOUND, HOLY RINGS by Alastair Whittle.

As Silbury Hill is in the public eye at the moment because of the work undertaken to fill and make good the terrible damage it has sustained over the years by tunnelling into its heart, I thought to list the great number of plants that were found from the primary mound.
The thought was provoked by something someone said on the radio, it went thus, to be always dismayed by the terrible encroachment of modern civilisation on our wild and natural places it is well to remember that even the tallest building is built on soil, but that within the soil there can still be found the seeds of yesteryear. This spark of hope, as motorways slice through our archaeological inheritance may be small, but the intrinsic small parts of history still remain and it is well to rejoice in such things.
What makes the list below so interesting is the commonplace nature of the flowers found. Short turf is illustrated by the presence of bugle, trefoil and ground ivy, a pretty tapestry of blue and yellow snaking through the grass, "Colonisers" such as nettles and rosebay willowherb (fireweed) show disturbed land, the nettle always growing, as it does today, on old sites that have a rich nitrogenous soil. Rosebay is supposed to colonise after a fire, so maybe there was burning of trees. Hazel and yew are represented as well, hazel that most useful of tree for nuts and hurdling material, and slow growing yew, now mostly found in churchyards but then it would have been wild in the forests. Its stately grace dark and menacing against the other forms of trees. Water is represented in the sedges and crowfoot, with the damp edged plants such as buttercups. Stitchwort and red campion are wildflowers well suited to growing near hedges, whilst bedstraw and scabious are flowers of the open aspect.

Ajuga reptans Bugle - blue flowers in spikes, slightly bronzed leaves
Arenaria serpyllifolia Thyme leafed sandwort - small rough greyish annual with white flowers
CarexSedge
Centaurea sp (cf.C.nigra) Common knapweed - medium to tall purple hardheads
Cerastium holosteoides Fr Common mouse-ear - weedy white flower
Chamaenerion augustifolium Rosebay-willowherb - large rose or purple coloured flowers
Chenopodium album Fat-hen - spiky flowers, mealy leaves, and of course edible
Corylus avellana LHazel - catkin flowers and nuts
Galium sp.(cf.aparine L) Bedstraw
Glechoma hederacea - ground ivy - ground creeping, heart shaped leaves with soft purple flowers
Lapsana communis LNipplewort - leaves toothed, flowerheads yellow
Leontondon hispidus Rough hawkbit -deeply toothed leaves, yellow flowers (dandelion like)Linum catharticum Fairy flax -( interesting calcerous) fragile plant with small white flowers lotus corniculatus Common birds - foot trefoil, flowers yellow to orange yellow
Montia fontana (vr.chrondosperma) Blinks - small inconspicious white flowered plant
Plantago Lanceolata- Ribwort plantain - leaves linear lanceolate, flowers brown
Polygonum aviculare Knotgrass - silvery leaf, flowers greenish with pink tinge
Polygala sp. ( cf. P vulgaris) Common milkwort - leaves not bitter tasting, flowers bell-like, blue, pink or white
Poterium sanguisorba Salad burnet - upper flowers with reddish styles, lower with yellow anther (edible)
Prunella vulgaris Self-heal - low to short, leaves oval to diamond shaped, flowers deep purple-blue, occasionally pink or white
Ranunculus sp(R aquatilis) Common water-crowfoot - floating water plant with white flowers
Ranunculus acris - LMeadow buttercup
Ranunculus repens - Creeping buttercup
Rubus fruiticosus L sensu lato
Blackberry bramble Sambucus nigra
Common elder - white elderflower
Scabiosa columburaia - Small scabious - soft purple flowers
Silene dioica - Red campion - flowers bright rose pink
Stachys sp (sp.S.Palustris) - Marsh woundwort - Flowers purple, whorls forming a dense pyramidal shape down stalk
Stellaria graminea - Lesser stitchwort - straggly weak branches, white star flowers
Taraxavum sp (cf.T.Laevigatum) - dandelion
Taxus baccata - Yew
Urtica diocia - Stinging nettle
Viola -Violet

Uncertain identification
Composita fruit stones
Cyperaceae small berries

Presceli Landscape

The Presceli range of mountains is of course supposed to be the place where the famous 'bluestones' of Stonehenge came from. The large rocky outcrop of Carn Meini rises from the mountains dominating the land around a distinctive landmark. Firstly, it is beautiful, more hill like than mountains, golden grass in early autumn with hundreds of sheep (and a few ponies) dotted round. Natural stone carns are scattered around rising from the earth and stand like untidy longbarrows on the ridges.
The day I went it was hot with a blue sky and to the west you could glimpse the sea. The narrow lane you follow for several miles is from Machenclog to Cymrwych, it follows the line of the mountains, there are apparently standing stones in several places in the fields, but you would need a GPS to track them down. .. There is a small stopping place, to one side of the road marked by one of the modern bluestones brought down from the mountain by helicopter, another went to Stonehenge.
Parking the car, the short turfed path, nibbled by the sheep who lounge around either side of the path, peters out and one is forced to follow the smaller animal paths, when you gain the ridge Carn Meini faces you in all its grandeur about a mile away, the river of stone in the valley below a strange figment of natures imagination. Viewed from a distance there is a certain heart-stopping moment, time kaleidoscopes down and at last you can enter the world of prehistoric man. You see as his eyes saw the curving darkness of this great outcrop, stone circles, barrows are given their true religious nature when you understand that it is the earth upheavals of all its wondrous rocks that entered into the imagination of neolithic people. Carn Meini must have been a symbolic monument, part of the trade route from Ireland, through Wales down to the south west and Stonehenge. Wainwright and Darvill have put forward the theory that the springs that are to be found here, where sacred and had some sort of healing force, and that is why the bluestones were taken to Stonehenge. This fits in rather well with the theory that Silbury was also a place of worship surrounded by her sacred springs and rivers.
Below the ridge and just above the stone river is Bedd Arthur, its horseshoe shape of stones echoing the similar shape in the Stonehenge circle
Carn Meini looks like a quarry, stone that could be taken from the mountainside easily. Its value would have been immense, both on a practical and spiritual level. People talk of moving a bit of the landscape from this place to Stonehenge and you can understand why.It could well be that the land became exhausted on the mountains, and the hunting scarce forcing a move to a more productive environment and that is why they eventually arrived on Salisbury Plain.
One of the things you notice in the later iron age in this part of Wales is the proliferation of so-called forts, mostly promontory, situated by the sea. They point to a need for defense, either from local warring tribes, or more likely from Ireland. There could have been some sort of pressure in the bronze age as well, forcing a move by the Carn Meini people further south.

The way the stones may have travelled;The Eastern Cleddau starts near Waun Isaf today, at least 4 to 5 kilometres south of the bluestone outcrop it journeys south towards Picton Point where it meets the Western Cleddau it then travels down the Daugleddau to Milford Haven (Aberdaugledau).

What you feel on the Preseli mountains is similar to the experience of the down lands of Avebury and perhaps Stonehenge, an open wide landscape - there is no sense of enclosure only sky and land.
Letting my mind drift on this notion took me back to "The Mother's Jam" in Julian Cope's TMA, nature's moodiness in a landscape littered with a drift of stones, a place where the mind can take flight and see shifting shapes, Carn Meini reminded me of the Gorsedd stone, a symbolic natural outcrop of rock that maybe neolithic people saw as the first sacred site.

Simulacra; John Mitchell;-"The concept of the visible world as an elaborate code, which conceals, but yet may be used to reveal. the metaphysical causes behind it, is of great antiquity, arising from the experience of people before the age of settlements, who wandered the face of the earth, and whose existence depended on their ability to read the subtle signs that prefigure Nature's moods and changes.They did not consider it unreasonable to find significance in the shape of the rocks or clouds or in the flight pattern of migrating birds, and they accepted the guidance through dreams and visions of oracular trees, stones and springs.

Perhaps this is the only way to explain it; this human affinity with the land snakes down through the centuries and though we may have lost the instinctive sense of wonder at nature, there is still a small kernel in the deeper levels of our consciousness that responds
Speculation is the most we can do to understand stone circles and burial places, but the spiritual content, the need to recognise ancestral and significance of place, is important - longbarrows and circles become imitations of each other, they define a culture, they move forward in time and technology, a timber circle will replace stone, it is this fluidity of motion that teaches human history, .
Refs; Julian Cope The Modern Antiquarian

The Silbury Game

A term coined by Julian Cope in his book The Modern Antiquarian to explain the visual game that Silbury plays with you as it unfolds itself within the landscape. This sacred landscape has accrued from its early beginnings in the Neolithic, a series of monuments that mark it out as a special place. Monument is a dryasdust terminology for what is re-enacted; mythological stories written into the landscape for us to observe and contemplate on as we wander its paths and byeways.
The great West Kennet longbarrow, snaking its way along the ridge like a great serpent,its back broken by the track some medieval farmer drove through its centre, its huge stone facade faces the sun in its morning coming, welcoming it down through the ages as dawn breaks. There is nothing quite so bare and austere as the great fields that surround the longbarrow, linking it to the earth, and the surrounding plain that stretches down to the Vale of Pewsey. A statement of territory, it faces the Ridgeway defiantly, its stone shapes vaguely echoing the monsters of some distant past.
Perhaps we should look at the landscape as mystical, a quiet play on mother goddess Earth, and Sky God father to get a better understanding, here Silbury can be seen as a central womb, a great hill altar, perhaps giving birth to the fertility of the earth. Cope sees it as the great eye goddess Suil, similar to of course the goddess Sulis at Bath . But we are not as yet in the era of gods and goddesses, this is the time when mother earth is asked to give her bounty, to renew and replenish her gifts.
Silbury Hill in its watery enclave sits low, yet it faces the longbarrow on the ridge, it can be seen from The Sanctuary, a few hundred yards to the east. Trace your way past the great Seofren barrows along the Ridgeway, and Silbury will follow you just above Waden Hill,
the long Avenue of stones below winding its way back to Avebury and its stone circles. There is a certain playfulness here, could it have shone shining white with its cap of chalk all those thousands of years ago, sparkling in the sun as you made your way down the Ridgeway. Luring the pilgrims and wanderers on who came to the festivals and yearly meetings to feast and meet one another. Did they go back to their settlements and talk of the stone circles, great barrows of the dead,
and this enormous hill, as one of the wonders of their world. Well it still draws its pilgrims to
wonder who would have the vision of mind to undertake such a feat, we are no nearer the truth.
The treasures of this landscapes are best seen as interlinking nodes, a visual marking of that which is important, death, festivity, ritual, the great primeval matter of the earth itself, a human
map inscribing on the earth the small follies of our beliefs.

River Severn

Of the English stones*there is a story told

of Roman soldiers from the days of old

There is a legend that on these stones lye

the remains of many roman bones

The estuary of the Severn is a remarkable place, for people who live in Somerset, to drive over the new Severn bridge to Wales is like entering another land. As you drive over the vast expanse of dangerous fast flowing water there is a palpable beat of the heart experienced, you are entering into the magical world of Wales, mountains, rocky coasts, small farm nestling in the valleys, but you are also entering into a celtic history of dragons, a giant boar who fought Arthur, saints who colonised it in the 5th/6th centuries - it is a land of myth and stories, prehistoric stones dedicated to a celtic king all muddled with fairy tales, so that there are no edges just a blending of myth and fact.

It would probably be impossible to explain a British mind to an American when asked how we view this magical , religious, mythical world to rationalise it into a coherent whole, it is best experienced through the inner eye that sees great celtic nobleman riding on their horses with the red-eared white hounds that always accompany them on the hunt, flowing down the hillside at Llanthony maybe, or galloping along the cliff tops at that most holy of places - St.David.

So crossing the estuary is entering into another world, a world where it is told that St.Augustine preached at St.Aust, by the old motorway bridge, and if you don't believe that story what about the iron age hoard that was found in the 19th century below the cliff at St.Aust, perhaps buried in haste from rogues, or perhaps, my version, offerings to the river god for a safe crossing over the water.

And truly you needed a safe crossing for there is a tale told of roman horsemen caught up on a sandbank in the middle of the estuary, and as the waters rose they screamed for help as did the horses neighing wildly but all were drowned, the tale is told by Nennius below, but as in all good celtic stories, if you were to turn away from the tide it would not drown you - always there is another magical world running parallel in the tale.

The Mouth of Llyn Lliwan 'Another wonder is the mouth of Llyn Lliwan. Its estuary is in the Severn and when the Severn is flooded in the bore and the sea also floods up the estuary of the aforesaid river, the river is received into the estuary waters like a whirlpool, and the sea does not go up; and there is a shore by the river, and whenever the Severn is flooded in the bore, that shore is not touched, and when the sea ebbs from the Severn, then Lake Lliwan spews up everything that is devoured from the sea and that shore is touched, and, like a hill, breaks and spews up in one wave.And if the army of the whole country where it is should be there, and should front the wave, the force of the wave would drag down the army, its clothing filled with water, and the horses would also be dragged down. But if the army should turn its back on the wave, the wave does not harm it, and when the sea ebbs, then the whole of the shore that the wave covered is laid bare again, and the sea ebbs from it. 

Of course Nennius is talking about the Bore that great tidal wave, driven by the moon, that runs up the estuary to the river until as the channel gets narrower so it gets higher, and people surf the wave early in the year, sometimes going for miles, other times it is but a short journey as they tumble into the water.

Spectacular today as it was back in history, though the Bristol channel is now straddled by two flowing modern toll bridges, an underground train tunnel, which leaks water from the great spring that was breached in the building of the tunnel.. It's best to hold your breath today when going through the tunnel and pray that the waters don't come splashing in, I believe it takes three minutes to go through. Not forgetting of course the two nuclear stations as well that line the sides of the channel, alongside prehistoric stones that seem to march down to the waters edge, reminding us always of other times.

On the Welsh side there is a roman road and the famous Caerwent town and Caerlon camp, with the Gray's Circle up on the hill above Wentwood Forest.Further on past Chepstow, there is the roman healing temple of Lydney,(Noden Mars) a tripartite cella points to a complex trinity of gods. Wheeler gives it a date of 364 ad. Like the temple of Nettleton Shrub (very early essay) it paints the world of roman religion and mythology. Nine small bronze dogs were found, (dogs were considered healing, as their saliva has an antiseptic balm), a bronze arm, an oculist stamp, all point to a healing centre.

In the iconography, sea monsters and fish, fisherman and tritons and probably the hunting god Silvanus was represented.

The Bore - Nennius The River Severn Dan Ri Hafren (The Two Kings of the Severn)

'Another wonder is Dan Ri Hafren, that is, the Two Kings of the Severn. When the sea floods into the Severn estuary, two heaped-up wave crests are built up separately, and fight each other like rams. One goes against the other, and they clash in turn, and then one withdraws from the other and they go forth together again at each tide. This they have done, from the beginning of the world to the present day...

Note: There are only two locations on the Severn where such an event can be witnessed. Before the weir was built at Maisemore, the west channel tide would wrap around the Upper Parting into the eastern channel and collide with the flood tide running up that channel. But more famous, is the collision that occurs in the eastern channel of the Noose, as the leading west-channel tide rebounds of Hock Cliff and flows straight back into collision with the advancing flood tide in the eastern channel. Just as the Roman Army experienced.

.* English stone, probably a bone of contention to the Welsh, but they are the rocks that lie under the estuary and upon which the tunnel and presumably the bridges are built.