Anima Mundi

Silbury has been in the news lately mainly for the reason of the work that is being conducted in repairing and filling the tunnels that have been dug out by various antiquarians and archaeologists. Being a short term news story, the journalists have had a great source of drama and sensation... plus because Silbury draws so much attention to its mysterious reason for being built, speculation runs riot..
So why title this piece anima mundi, maybe because one of the theories is that it would have been erected to house the souls of the dead. Now animus mundi comes from a saying of Plato...

The soul of the world, a pure ethereal spirit which was proclaimed by some ancient philosophers to be diffused throughout all nature.

This lovely conceit would sit on Silbury's shoulders well, though some would argue that Plato and souls came after she was built. But the idea of Silbury housing the souls of the dead through the medium of sarsen stones is intriguing, whether it is true or not remains in the minds of the people who built her. But to be the soul of the world, a captured essence reminds one of Pandora's Box waiting to leash its chaos. Silbury on the other hand blends in the natural world easily having water at her feet, and if you were to look at Tibetan myths, Silbury as a mountain would be the male god and the water that curves round its base would be female...

Tomorrow is All Saints Day, but the day after is All Souls Day, Hallowmass, it is the day when the spirit world is able to cross the thin veil between life and death. This pagan festival is celebrated through Samhain, a celtic festival, and will be interpreted all over the world in different forms. People will go to worship their ancestors, food will be taken to cemeteries, sweets will be shaped into skulls and bones, and people will acknowledge the dead.

Around Silbury activities will also take place, little ceremonies, candles and dressing up, todays pagans trying to capture the essence of the past, hopefully the souls of the dead that lurk inside this great mound will not join in the ceremonies for they will have known a more fearful past...

Richard Jefferies - The Pageant of Summer

This photo is a favourite of mine, it captures the autumn spider's delicate web attached to an old cow parsley stalk. But if you enlarge the photo, by clicking on it, you will notice the small beads of sparkling morning dew that cluster along the web and in the plant. As a child, the dancing motes of dust caught up in a shaft of sunlight, always led my mind to think of smaller and smaller worlds captured in each particle of dust. This I suppose was an imperfect understanding of infinity, that the one earth we live on could be but only one dimension of an even greater whole. The small beads of dew remind me of this, they are lit by the early morning sun which is behind the camera, a sun that as it rises colours everything a soft rosy glow, highlighting warm colours in the grass and leaves of the trees, so that even my black and white dog is transformed as well.... and so to Jefferies and his green rushes, plant of damp and boggy ground....


"Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound,their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. ......"

Richard Jefferies - Story of my Heart

Trefoil's rich tapestry

One of the joys of the internet is to read the books of people long dead, and to suddenly realise that they express in their words the same feelings that we experience ourselves. At first, as I patiently copied it from Gutenberg, and then realigned it in 'word' I had to stop and just take in the words they were such a revelation. Here was a man trying to express his innermost thoughts, trying to reach down to that 'soul' part we so easily speak of. But this rapture that he experienced, this spiritual ecstasy was transcended into the natural world so exquisitely that he looked outward rather than into that vanity of 'me'. He did not have a camera to record all those things he saw so vividly, so he painted with his words. The soft chalk downland, the long walk of three miles, was it to Liddington, that he sat next to a beautiful tapestry prayer cushion of wild flowers - trefoils, a prayer cushion he could not kneel on, the vivid azure blue of the sky, the parched fields in the heat, all this you can feel and experience; his sadness at the wearisome monotonous daily drudgery of life. And then this escape into nature, the sheer joy of the living world around him suddenly bursts exuberantly forth.
The following piece that occurs by a tumulus as he muses on its long dead occupant, somewhat getting his dates wrong but that can be forgiven, the realisation that good old mechanical time is just a construct humans make up to make sense of our turning world in the wider cosmos of the universe appeals to me. There is nothing more fulfilling to sit quietly in the sun by an ancient longbarrow such as West Kennet, Stony Littleton or Wayland Smithy and feel that intangible pull of long ago humans, the feeling that sometimes they will people the ground in front of you carrying out the duties that they too had to perform in the daily ritual of life......


"Sweetly the summer air came up to the tumulus, the grass sighed softly, the butterflies went by, sometimes alighting on the green dome. Two thousand years! Summer after summer the blue butterflies had visited the mound, the thyme had flowered, the wind sighed in the grass. The azure morning had spread its arms over the low tomb; and full glowing noon burned on it; the purple of sunset rosied the sward. Stars, ruddy in the vapour of the southern horizon, beamed at midnight through the mystic summer night, which is dusky and yet full of light. White mists swept up and hid it; dews rested on the turf; tender harebells drooped; the wings of the finches fanned the air--finches whose colours faded from the wings how many centuries ago!Brown autumn dwelt in the woods beneath; the rime of winter whitened the beech clump on the ridge; again the buds came on the wind-blown hawthorn bushes, and in the evening the broad constellation of Orion covered the east. Two thousand times! Two thousand times the woods grew green, and ring -doves built their nests. Day and night for two thousand years—light and shadow sweeping over the mound--two thousand years of labour by day and slumber by night. Mystery gleaming in the stars, pouring down in the sunshine, speaking in the night, the wonder of the sun and of far space, for twenty centuries round about this low and green-grown dome. Yet all that mystery and wonder is as nothing to the Thought that lies therein, to the spirit that I feel so close. Realising that spirit, recognising my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly"

Old wood


Orchis



richly flowered meadow turf

The delicate harebell

And to add to this, Bill Byron's words that he made in a speech as new President of the CPRE. The speech was entitled ' A Cherished Land' and with his love of numbers and statistics he worked out that Great Britain is but 0.0174069% of the planet earth, and is dangerously finite and every bit should be cherished. He says, to quote;

"..The countryside remains one of this country's supreme achievement, I know of no landscape anywhere that is more universally appreciated, more visited and walked across and gazed upon, more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of England"

Perhaps this is why he chose to live here, but his figures do make one wonder at how much history resides in every square inch of this country. Apparently if you were to visit one parish church a day it would take you 54 years to accomplish it. There are approximately 60 million acres which just allows each one of us an acre each to cherish.

19,000 scheduled ancient monuments, 600,000 recorded archaeological sites, 100,000 miles of public footpaths, 250,000 miles of hedgerow, the list goes on. When I started this particular blog, I was remembering the hawk I had spied near to The Ridgeway by Uffington, I had escaped the mad road system round Swindon and headed for Liddington fort on the horizon. The hawk hovering in the air was a reminder that the real natural world goes on impervious to our frenetic drive to succeed at whatever, the hawks great (how many greats in the life of a hawk) grandparents could have been witnessed by Jefferies, the world's mind spiralling down in the flight of the hawk through the eternity that Jefferies wanted to touch and experience.

Village Life in Weston

Weston Village, for that is what the locals call it, though in truth it should be called Upper Weston as opposed to Lower Weston, which encompasses Chelsea Road, is a village attached to Bath but not quite joining. It is about a 20 minute walk through the park to the centre of Bath, but this green space divides our small space beautifully. So that on walking up from the park, you have to walk along Weston Road, with its elegant large Georgian and Victoria houses, till you reach a curve in the road. Here you are presented with a choice continue down Weston Lane into 'The Dip', the small chasm at the bottom of the hill that once the Locksbrook tumbled over, or you can continue to the right and then left down Weston Park. Here there are even larger victorian houses, set in large gardens with graceful pine and fir trees that reach to the sky.
You will pass the Archery Field on your right and your eye will be led to the fields on the Lansdown, at this time of year the trees are autumnal and their rounded forms seem to dance down the hill. This field, belongs to the village, here dogwalkers perambulate, there is a football pitch, children hurry through from the estate down to schools in the town. It was given by a local benefactor in the 19th century, and because it is on a slope, the ground has had to be built up and levelled, the archery bit is a small square plot at the top by the horses field.
Shopping this morning took me to the other end of the village to the bakers, the vicar's wife was untying her small dog from a lampost, and I was to follow her as she went from shop to shop.
The bakers is a small local one, the price of bread has gone up sharply to reflect the increase in the price of wheat, but it does a good trade with locals walking down to get their bread, and workmen buying their filled rolls and coffee. It belongs in a small row of shops that sit beneath some flats, and as you walk along the pavement there are flowers laid by a pillar to remember a young mother, who accidentally fell and was sadly killed from one of the flats a year or so back.
Next to the chemist, and Charlie the King Charles Spaniel is again tied up outside, always busy this little chemist with people bringing in there prescriptions and then they will wait while the pharmicist makes them up.
Across the road past the pub, the other pub has been turned into an Indian restaurant, and then to the greengrocers. Charlie is once again outside, and I potter amongst the outside stuff, to see what our local vegetable grower has been growing, last week gigantic heads of green celery, today great yellow pumpkins and purple cauliflower. Inside and the gossip is in full flow,the vicar's wife remembers when we got to know each other, which was at the time of the foot and mouth epidemic, and all dogwalkers were confined to the area around Bath. So we would walk our dogs round the Archery Field. We talk of Margery and her new 'rescue' labrador, Margery is a very old lady but indomitable, she lives in one of the cottages on my lane and paints dogs and leads a throughly happy life gossiping. Even in the shop there is a note of tragedy for someone mentions a motorbike accident on Lansdown Lane in the slippery conditions this morning, for the greengrocer's wife lost her son through a motorbike accident down the lane in The Dip. I remember a few years back walking down the High Street and seeing all the shops shut, and then the hearse car passing by very slowly.
Above the High Street, a small back lane runs, Georgian houses, the path, and then small plots of garden, follow the lane up to the church and you enter the graveyard with its elegant tombs and graceful yews. Take the path through the graves and you are now in Church Road, a steep little cul-de-sac of a road that leads to the fields. This is where I first lived when I came to Weston, in one of the small terraced houses opposite the church. The deaf milkman still lives here but the old occupants have gone, old Mrs Gregory who grieved for her 60 year old son who had passed away before her. Bill the gravedigger, who told me terrible tales of how the hair and nails grew on the dead bodies, and the maggots that appeared from the stomachs of the dead, all nonsense I'm sure.
Village life still meshes together in Weston, even though there is a large hospital sprawling on its doorstep. But even here, the buildings of the hospital have spaced themselves out and there are green spaces and trees, blending houses into the countryside with quiet ease. When I first came here, there was a mental unit attached to the hospital, and I would meet all manner of weird and wonderful people as I walked to the shop. Some chattering to themselves, others swearing, some falling into conversation, one I remember dancing about in front of someone's car, reckoning that he had been knocked over by him. People in Weston are used to all this, once I saw a perfectly respectable person sitting on the kerbstone comforting someone who was in flood of tears, or the till girl in our local supermarket explaining patiently over and over again to the girl confused and upset by her till receipt. The tramp who strolled out with a whiskey bottle in his pocket and one under his mac past the bemused people at the till, did'nt end up with the police, just the young store manager following him and relieving him outside and everyone laughing as he came back triumphant and swearing with the two bottles.

The humble bumble bee

"It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort;the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked ironnail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past. "

Richard Jefferies on humble bees

In a lovely tribute to bumble bees, one of my favorite creatures, their soft gentle unhurried flight to rob the foxglove or cantebury bell of its pollen is a reminder of summer as autumn now approaches with the dry brittle sound of leaves falling from the trees.
bumble bees nest in old mice holes, the mice make a little nest of dried grass which the bee favours as the queen bee raises her small brood.

And to another poem written in a beautiful gloomy style by the welsh poet/vicar R.S.Thomas, a somewhat bleak vision of his god......

The Island

And God said I will build a church here

And cause this people to worship me,

And afflict them with poverty and sickness

In return for centuries of hard work

And patience. And its walls shall be as hard as

Their hearts, and its windows let in the light

Grudgingly, as their minds do, and the priest's words be drowned

By the wind's caterwauling. All this I will do.

Said God, and watch the bitterness in their eyes

Grow, and their lips suppurate with

Their prayers. And their women shall bring forth

On my altars, and I will choose the best

Of them to be thrown back into the sea.

And that was only on one island.

Nihilism - some thoughts..

Nihilism is often described as a belief in the nonexistence of truth. In its more extreme forms, such a belief is difficult to justify, because it contains a variation on the liar paradox if it is true that truth does not exist, the statement "truth does not exist" is itself a truth, therefore showing itself to be inconsistent. .

Listening to Leonard Cohen's 'The Future' track, it struck me that though this is the darkest moment of his mood songs, what underlined it for me was it nihilism, a philosophy that negates the point of our lives, negates everything in actual fact, human thought is not even allowed to balance on the proverbial pinhead, everything must be swept away for it does'nt really have any meaning. It is a philosophy one should never teach the children about, as they grow up they will come on it in books and songs but hopefully will only grasp its teachings imperfectly for it is a truth that is both frightening and destructive of the human soul.
There are plenty of explanations in that invaluable resource Wikipedia;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism
it was noted in modern music, you see it in 'millenia doom', the end of the world 2012, there is a fear of the unknown, the impending chaos of natural forces too large to be beaten by human endeavour.
Denying that a god or that many gods exist leads to that ultimate thought that there is no 'truth', that we can only explain in terms of the physical, the sciences, Darwinism, to make sense of the world we live in. Even here we are struck by the limitations of such sciences, these building blocks are as yet incomplete, another 'truth' in the future could sweep them aside.
Our western culture, so contemptuous of the rest of the world, is naive in its youthful appraisal of others, and perhaps especially of the intellectual development that has taken place in other cultures and religions, our truth is thinly balanced on our experiences of a historic background founded on a narrative that is patently made up for the benefit of the society that lives in it.
Religion and beliefs of course provides the much smaller stories that make up our lives, they are the myths created to underwrite our societal needs.
Nihilism is a bleak force, it negates the point of living, it can be used selfishly by the young to lead fruitless lives because nothing is important therefore why bother. Its blackness appeals to the dark time of the emotions when pessimism rules, like a dark cloud it sweeps through ones thoughts but conversely the strong warmth of the sun and the blueness of a beautiful sky will lift the spirit. It is a philosophy that has been explained in great detail, and it is a reminder that 'truth' is as ephemeral as water.

Sunday walk

This is somewhat of a tradition for me, no religon holds me in its grip, but a need for contemplation is important, so my walk in the great outside world of nature must be a reflection of a spiritual need to connect the centre of one's being with the centredness of the earth. The mind opens to the stony path that winds before me, the graceful hedges leaning down to greet you, the chatter of the crows in the trees. Autumn and its death are rather strange this year, leaves are falling prematurely, some still green, the mist is light but the clouds are heavy with greyness, there is a sombre mood that has descended on the earth.
Nothing to remind me on this walk to the Langridge barrows of the first flush of spring, then summer, hedgerows spilling their flowers on to the stones of the path.
Now the bare trunks of the trees entwinned with ivy and the long loops of old man's beard are on show. I keep coming back to this green lane, its history must stretch back to the neolithic age; it is a small thoroughfare joining the two halves of large downlands which are divided by a narrow valley. Its roughly cobbled surface must date back to a medieval period, or perhaps even earlier, to the romans, who mined and had villas up here. History has rumbled over these stones, they are mute, hard to the feet, the clatter of wagons would have been loud on the air.
There is a an old bench in the field, miles from anywhere, 20 years ago the farmer of Lilliput Farm placed it here, so that one could admire the beautiful tranquillity of the valley below. Its inhabited this valley, half a dozen small houses, and a couple not so small, but its at peace with itself, cows and sheep are dotted in the field like a childish representation of how they should be.
Up on the far hill, its called Freezing Hill, the faint lines of iron age terracing can just be discerned, the hill itself runs back smoothly farmed, hardly broken by fences, but it is crowned somewhat incongruously with a row of tall trees.
The problem with meditating on nature is that there is no stillpoint, life and death are all around, the one complementing the other. Life is movement, the birds flying in the sky, death is stillness, a slow brown crumbling into the earth. The dog chasing with great happiness the dozen or so pheasants he has found in the fields has no need for religion or meditation, he will come home and lose himself in sleep and dreams of careering down a hill with flying birds squawking in all directions, his paws will twitch as he reruns the day's events through his mind.
But where does it leave my mind, refreshed of course, strengthened with the willpower to go on, but answers there are not. No god, pagan or otherwise bounds down the hill, Silvanus is not hunting in the woods below, and the sky above its thick cloud only leads into the endless universe of unknowing. Perhaps there lies the truth, the reconstructed gods and beliefs are no more than wisps of fancy of a race not at ease with death, self seeking is an extravagance that would be better laid aside and the mind concentrated on the present.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X_1RtsnBs

Welsh Landscape by R.S.Thomas

To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
vibrant with arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is a language for instance
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.

Sub Megalithic burial chambers

These small rather primitive tombs are to be found hidden from view under great rock tors facing out to sea in Pembrokeshire. 'Houses of the dead' may be a symbolic explanation of the neolithic tombs that dot our landscape and the continent with such variety. To try and place them in some sort of date order is futile, they follow certain patterns, are given ritual significance by modern day archaeologists, but of course at all times they are enigmatic, they refuse to give up their secrets as to why they were constructed in a particular fashion.
Local variation, especially with the use of the rock material present within the geological environment is one factor, placement within the landscape is another, time periods are long, in one place new creative ideas may be at work, whilst in another backwater, the same rituals could have gone on for centuries with little change.
The Pembrokeshire 'cave' like tombs follow a simple pattern, not for them the high swerving grace of the Pentre Ifan tomb, no they are squat, hugging the ground, crouching into the rock faces. Aesthetically unpleasing though they may be to our eye they still present a very strong element of death and ritual within the landscape. Glyn Daniels in The Megalithic Builders of Western Europe calls them half-dolmen, demi dolmen, primary or earthfast. The last term is probably the best description, the back of the capstone resting on the ground, with a single or maybe more orthostats holding up the front of the capstone. The ground beneath the capstone was often dug out into a shallow pit, and presumably stone walls would have been built between the orthostats to protect the bones inside. There is no attempt at dressing the stones to a particular shape, only perhaps that a particular stone was chosen for the capstone. occasionally square in appearance, these stones could also be so arranged as to be diamond shaped so that the front 'point' would lead the eye to a particular aspect in the landscape. More often or not fat grotesque lumps of enormous heavy rock would be placed on tiny vertical stones - they always make me think of limbo dancing - close to the ground.

Porthgain and Abereiddi quarries

Abereiddi Cottages

These two small hamlets are to be found on the Pembrokeshire coast within a mile of each other, Porthgain has the industrial remains of old buildings built to support the quarrying of slate and granite. Slate was originally quarried at Abereiddi for roofing tiles, it was not of particularly good quality, the slate from North Wales was superior, and Abereiddi slate was thought to last only 40 years or so. The quarry itself is in the area of the blue lagoon, originally it was just a large hole but when the quarry had finished the rock that lay between the sea and the disused quarry was blown up and it became a rather beautiful blue lagoon.

Blue lagoon
The black stone ruined quarry buildings can still be seen on
either side of the gap.

In Abereiddi itself, six small attached cottages were built of the same blackstone.

The Street, Abereiddi labourers cottages
These housed the labourers and their families plus also itinerant Irish labourers.
It is sometimes difficult to understand today how these small welsh villages worked, especially as they are all but deserted of welsh people and what houses are left are more often or not holiday homes. But look at any 19th century photograph and you will see a flourishing population of maybe a 100 people with plenty of children. Life would have been hard, sanitary conditions non-existent and water probably fetched from a well but the quarries provided a livelihood for the families.
Porthgain was developed on a greater scale over the century, its quarry was owned by several different companies, all English, and based in Bristol. It changed hands quite a few times mostly due to the fact that profits were low and money had to be spent on machinery and new buildings. Speculators came with high hopes but the cards were stacked against them, mainly because transport was difficult, there was no railway line nearby, and everything had to be carried out by ship, either to various ports in Wales itself or down to the Severn Estuary and Bristol.
There was also a slate quarry in Porthgain, but it was decided to open a granite quarry for supplying gravel for roadbuilding.

The Granite quarry


It was still the period of macadam road building, this was simply different grades of gravel laid on top of each layer, which in turn was rollered down, eventually culminating in a fine layer of gravel. For this operation to be successful, the granite had to be crushed into the various sizes. The quarry was a quarter of a mile from the village itself, and tramways were built to and from, one tramway also going to Abereiddi.

line of old tramway

In the beginning the trams were pulled by horses, but over time two small engines were acquired.
A new harbour was also built for the ships to come in and be loaded by crane, so there was a lot of capital expenditure.
In Porthgain itself what remains of the industrial buildings are dramatic, the great brick hoppers built against the cliff face are still there, here the different sized gravels would be loaded from the top and taken from the bottom of the chute, also a large shed still remains on the quay,this is now used as a restaurant.
Its an eerie place, and walking over the cliffs to the ruined buildings facing out to sea is a savage reminder of all the people who laboured with heavy materials during this period.

Ruined buildings by granite quarry


For them it paid a good wage, but old photographs show thin men their faces lined and tired, work that hauls rock and slate from the ground was tough and backbreaking, and one has only to remember the hard lives of the welsh miners to realise this.
Porthgain also has a 'street' of five labourers cottage, and these are still in use today, there was also a larger house for the manager, and of course the old Sloop Inn still remains.
At one stage bricks were made of the slate dust, they were much heavier than ordinary bricks and there was'nt much of a market for them.

Buildings by harbour, the brick hoppers

Abereiddi slate quarry had opened around 1838, and mining of slate continued on and off, Porthgain's quarry opened in the 1850s, and mining continued right up to the 1930s but again the present company owners landed up in the hands of the recievers, and this time there was no rescue, final closure for the workers must have come as a shock and an eyrie silence would have descended on the place. The dust that would have shrouded the place and the small cottages would now disappear; some of the workers were offered work in Bristol but for the rest, they must have moved away to find jobs elsewhere.

Presceli Mountains

Sheep and stones beneath sun and dark skies

Tuesday is a grey rather bleak day for setting out to visit mountains but rain is forecast tomorrow so greyness must be faced. My torturous route through the back lanes of Pembrokeshire takes me on a delightful tour of small hamlets with sheepdogs sprawled in the road, old churches and even speckled hens parading around in the middle of the lane. Wales is at its verdant best,summer may be over but the hedgerows are still heavy with greenery, blackberries, wild honeysuckle, red berried hawthorns and the sound of splashing water as the car goes over humped bridges.
At last I find my way to Carn Meini, and stop by the moor to take a photo of Waldo's striking stone memorial - his history is not told but what a magnificent place to be remembered.
Foel Drygarn looking towards Carn Meini



Then to Foel Drygarn, a spectacular Iron age fort with three late bronze age barrows inside. Parking in the little layby which is the start of the path to the fort, and by the way the much longer walk to Carn Meini - home of the bluestones - we traipse through a field dotted liberally with sheep. On the far hill, four landrovers are bringing a great stream of sheep down, tooting their horns, the sheep are tightly bunched, though they are so far away I can't see any dogs. Up the steep path to the stony eminence of Foel Drygarn, great slabs of vertical rock guard it well, there are three periods to the fort, but what makes it so spectacular are the three late bronze age stone cairns in the centre. They form a straight line looking towards the spiky top of Carn Meini. They are large and untidy, the stone slipping away on all sides, this of course has happened over millenia, with perhaps more slippage due to people climbing in the last 100 years or so
One of the barrows on Foel Drygarn

Wilderness is forced back to these stony outcrops, up the side of the mountains fields creep then give way to moor and rock, and this yellowish grass of the moor is eaten velvet smooth by the sheep, just leaving patches of gorse and rushes round the little streams that run down the side of the mountain. This open expanse of mountain, moor and sky always lifts the heart and everything in life pales into insignificance - if there is a god to be met than he is here, if its ones soul, then it happily takes flight into the grey cloudy sky full of mountainous clouds and rain.
Of course there is also bleakness up on this tor, iron age people forced to live in a defensive mode, pinned to the rocks and a small livelihood which at all times must be defended. The three bronze age cairns are probably there for a different reason, their occupants are most likely tribal elders; they have been awarded this high eyrie to record their eminence and eternity is given to them under the great pile of stones.

Gors Fawr circle seen from a distance


Back down, turn round to the village and off in search of Gors Fawr circle, which is but a couple of miles down the road; Slowly the geography of the place had started to creep into my consciousness, how everything was near to each other,and as I walked to this little stone circle I realised it stood on the same part of the moor as Waldo's grave.

Standing Stones at Gors Fawr
Another surprise was of course on finding the two standing stones that stand a little way from the circle lead the eye towards Carn Meini's rocky presence on the skyline.
In N.P.Figgis's book, (Prehistoric Preseli) he says there are 16 small stones, squat stones of inderminate shape, mostly of the local erratic stones, some of which are bluestone type. There is supposed to be the remains of an avenue towards the two larger stones, but as there is so much stone around it is difficult to judge. He puts there smallness down to being typical of western Britain or Ireland, but of course they are miniscule to Avebury or Stonehenge. But they have a pleasing presence here in this quiet moorland, and I could quite happily live in the area divorced from all the problems that humans bring into ones life.

Small stones of the circle


To end with the words of Jacquetta Hawkes from her book The Land;-

"It is this immense antiquity that gives our land its look of confidence and peace, its power to give both rest and inspiration. When returning from hill or moor one looks down on a village, one's destination, swaddled in trees, and with only the church tower breaking the thin blue layer of evening smoke, the emotion it provokes is as precious as it may be commonplace. Time, that has caressed this place until it lies as comfortably as a favourite cat in an armchair. Caresses also even the least imaginative of beholders"

Of course the Land of Wales does not have such spires, the grey dull chapel must suffice to walk back to, but when walking back to Avebury the same feeling is felt, some decry the little village in the centre of the great stone circle, but as the church spire appears above the trees, ones heart suddenly aches with such a longing for something that is just out of reach that sometimes I wonder if its our inherited ancestors genes that suddenly call out with such longing for times that have vanished - why is there this yearning for the past?

Know all things to be like this

The other night the harvest moon was reflected in a mirror, its bright light captured in the room, of course the moon moved on, but the poem below seems to echo ones thought when contemplating a moon in a mirror........

--------

Know all things to be like this;

A mirage, a cloud castle,

A dream, an apparition,

Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.

----------------------

Know all things to be like this;

As the moon in a bright sky

In some clear lake reflected,

Though to that lake the moon has never moved.

--------------------------

Know all things to be like this;

As an echoe that derives

From music, sounds and weeping,

Yet in that echo is no melody.

-----------------------

Know all things to be like this;

As a magician makes allusions

Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,

Nothing is at it appears.

----

Samadhirajasutra

Autumn Equinox

23rd September, and the light and dark of days and nights are equal for a moment; late summer drifting into autumn, the natural world drifting towards its annual death. But it does it so exquisitely that death itself is glorious.
The hedgerows are full of blue-black sloes, when winter comes the branches of the blackthorn will be witch black, coal black like an evil presence; the red hawthorn berries have a gentler hue, the leaves of the tree colouring into soft shades of yellow and orange red. The grasses in the field are shot through with brown ribbons of dead grass but viewed from the distance it gives a soft orange hue to the green. In summer before the second cut of hay, the wild grasses are a palette of soft browns, purples and silver shot through with the colour of white from the field parsleys and tall red-brown spikes of the dock flowers, if you examine it closely the tiny flower is yellow but overall the plant is a rich luscious tobacco brown colour.
The swallows are still here, wheeling about in their never ending pursuit of insects, in this aerial soup above the earth, insects are transported, perhaps gossamer light spiders. For they are also emerging, they weave their webs amongst the tall dead plants, here a wasp struggles feebly as a yellow spider winds her web tightly. She has positioned herself well by the cream flowerheads of the ivy, a source of nectar for the late wasp.
This morning it was confirmed that a cow has blue-tongue disease, a virus carried by midges, it has sadly made it across the Channel from the continent where it is rife, and arrived in Suffolk. Is murrain and plague to cross the land one wonders, foot and mouth in Surrey and now this second disease, both carried by the wind, nature may be beautiful but no law governs her, chaos and destruction are the gifts that she can bring as well.

I started with the equinox, the death of summer and light, but in the old farming world of yesteryear, food would have been harvested and stored, apples would scent lofts, dried herbs the kitchen, farm animals would have been brought into the byres and barns to face winter, somehow this modern world seems a much bleaker place to live in we are beset by worries and fears, all that technology gives is a faster route to news of disaster and despair, perhaps sometimes it is better to live in ignorance.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


The last verse of John Keats poem - Autumn

fragments

The little river Kennet, which often flows through my thoughts. Under its clear water green trailing water plants; its small ripplings talk quietly of times past..

River Barrow - Ted Hughes

the light cools, Sun going down clear
Red-molten glass-blob, into green embers crumble
Of hill tree, over the Barrow
Where the flushed ash-grey sky lies perfect...........

-----------------------------------


and Gary Snyder on a different continent

ten million years ago an ocean floor
glides like a snake beneath the continent crunching up
old seabead till it's high as alps
Sandstone layers script of winding tracks
and limestone shining like snow
where ancient beings grow............

"when the axe-strokes stop
the silence grows deeper- "

Chinese Water Dragon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon#The_dragon_as_mythical_creature


This dragon is a chinese water dragon, you can see the pads of water lily plants where his feet should be. He belongs on an old silk piano cover, (probably 200 years old) and is surrounded by beautifully embroidered chrysantheums. Fine grey silks on a background of cream, he hangs in the hall hopefully to bring good luck on the house. The myth legends of chinese water dragons can be found on Wikipedia, interestingly he is supposed to have formed from the long fish, or carp. And is said to swim upstream battling against all odds to reach the dragon gate. This is a bit like our salmon, swimming each year upstream of our rivers to spawn in quiet waters. Again the celtic salmon is a fish of knowledge and a very important symbolic element in celtic tales, though he has not turned into a dragon.
The chinese water dragon is also found in Chinese neolithic depictions and has a long history and a diverse upbringing. A five toed dragon belongs to the Emperor, four toes to his courtiers and a three-toed dragon belongs to the ordinary people. It would have been a treasonable offence to depict a five toed dragon.

Other Dragons

An Anglo Saxon Dragon - Beowulf slaying Grendel in his barrow...


The king once more
took command of his wits, caught up a stabbing-knife
of the keenest battle-sharpness, that he carried in his harness;
and the Geats' Helm struck through the serpent's body.
So daring drove out life: they had downed their foe
by common action, the atheling pair,
and had made an end of him.

The Welsh Dragon, or Red Dragon.

At Dinas Emrys, the traditional site of Vortigen, it is said that a great battle took place between the red dragon of Wales and the white dragon of the Saxons.
Vortigen wanted to lay the foundations of his new capital at Dinas Emrys but every time stones were laid they all disappeared. Merlin, or Myrddin the young magician told the king the reason why. Apparently beneath the ground was a pool, and in the pool was a tent with two dragons sleeping there, if you waken them they will fight. And so, it is said, the two dragons woke up and began fighting the white dragon of the Saxons and the red dragon of the Cymru, they writhed about until they eventually disappeared from the hill. So that is why Dinas Emrys is a wooded tump and the red dragon lives, with only minor excursions from the saxons as they buy their holiday homes in Pembrokeshire and live fairly amicably with their welsh neighbours.

From; The adventures of Tom Bombadil

There was an old dragon under gray stone;
his red eyes blinked as he lay alone.
His joy was dead and his youth spent,
he was knobbed and wrinkled,
and his limbs bent in the long years to his gold chained;
in his heart's furnace the fire waned.
To his belly's slime gems stuck thick,
silver and gold he would snuff and lick:
he knew the place of the least ring
beneath the shadow of his black wing
Of thieves he thought on his hard bed,
and dreamed that on their flesh he fed,
their bones-crushed, and their blood drunk:
his ears drooped and his breath sank.
Mail-rings rang. He heard them not.
A voice echoed in his deep grot:
a young warrior with a bright sword
called him forth to defend his hoard.
His teeth were knives, and on horn his hide,
but iron tore him, and his flame died.

Professor J.R.R.Tolkien

This is a fairly common medieval story of dragons, hoarding their gold waiting for the knight in shining armour to vanquish the poor old dragon....

Folklore and Myths about dragons

http://www.theserenedragon.net/origins.html

This is one of the dragons to be found on the font of St.James Church at Avebury, a christ like figure is depicted with two dragons at his feet, though I must admit finding only one dragon. The font is an earlier saxon font with later Norman embellishments, the arcading below the dragon is reminiscent of Norman blind arcading to be found at Malmesbury Abbey.

Jottings

One of the things that comes to mind when contemplating great exhibitions like the Terracotta Army at the British Museum, is that you are looking at something out of its context, the craftsmanship is superb but the driving force of the belief that undertook this great work has vanished.
It is so with much of the western view, we look, detached from what we are seeing, not understanding Indian elephant gods, Mayan temples, or stone circles. We bring our ideas to bear on the matter and yet it is as if the lense of our eye has become detached from the inner seeing vision of our soul.
Western science has skewed our vision to only see a factual account, we can dissect, describe, attribute but we can never push beyond the physical boundary. Yet religion and belief is always beyond that boundary; now it could be argued by the cynical, hey we can make up any number of fairytales for the naive to believe, and many religions if not founded on this, have of course used it to brutally control the masses.
So are we looking at a primitive need by mankind in justifying his world he has to make up another world. Here we come to the 'why' of course, The Emperor Qin who had the terracotta figures made believed in an afterlife, he was frightened of death and its void. The paradisical nature of Utopia, The Otherworld, is created so that we can step into another world that is so different from the pain and suffering of this world. Of course the christian faith had to construct another pain-wracked hell for non-believers, but this cheap refinement was after all made by the priests. Take for instance this edict;-
The Council of Arles in 452, and Tours in 567, The Archbishop of Bourges in 584, Childebert in 554, Carloman in 742, and Charlemagne all condemned the superstitious regarding of stones, fountains, trees, etc, and enjoined the destruction of the venerated objects. Patrick, Bishop of the Hebrides, desired Orgylus to found a church wherever he should find standing stones. In 959 the Saxon King Eadgar issued an edict against 'enchantments, necromancies and divination' and ordered priests 'totally extinguish heathenism and forbid well-worshipping'
(ref; Aubrey Burl - Great Stone Circles).

In hindsight there is something ludicrous when one religion sets out to dominate another but it illustrates the complexity of the different faiths, the 'believing' in a set of objects and goals. In the above quotation we have dominance of course, the ruling head of the land would ally his reign with his god, both are in the end supreme beings beyond the realms of the ordinary mass, so it is somewhat strange that the Emperor chose to take his people with him, albeit in a servile manner, arrayed for war they would fight the demons and enemies on the other side.

Autumn - Ephemeral Seasons.

Making a Place in Space

This comment which came up in a book, has lived with me for a long time and I use it in a sense to evaluate what I am looking at when I visit longbarrows or cromlechs, I expect most people do.
The first thing that one notices at prehistoric sites is their landscape, and the question must always come to mind as to why people settled within a particular area. Their stone monuments are supposedly places of ritual and ceremonial enactions, and much energetic modern intellectual speculation is spent on trying to fathom out the reason why. The answer is of course we don't know, their is no written evidence, so what evidence there is to gather must come from archaeological exploration.
Three very famous longbarrows lie within a 40 kilometre distance of my home, Stoney Littleton, West Kennet Longbarrow and Wayland Smithy. All have distinct features and an incredible presence within their modern landscapes, and I suspect the same could be said that when originally built they would also have an awesome effect on the neolithic people.
Making a space in place is marking a home spot, a territory to return to, a place where the ancestors can rest and be visited; a longbarrow by its very presence will accumulate its ancestral stories and folklores.
The first thing to notice about the later Welsh cromlechs, (and taking them as an example )is there very cave-like appearance, this perhaps gives us an inkling of what a tomb, the resting place of ancestral bones was all about. Originally through the much earlier periods of mesolithic and paleolithic man, cave dwelling was part of their lives. Simplistically put, this ancestral link to caves came down through to the neolithic period, and when the longbarrows were constructed out of very solid natural stones, the appearance would have suggested going into a cave. This can best be explained by the fact that the constructed stone chambers only go back a short distance compared to the very long length of the barrow itself, the back soil and turf (the major part) of the barrow in actual fact represents the hill or cliff in which the chamber/ cave is situated now this of course is only a theory......

Wayland's Smithy long earthen structure outlined by stones;

the front two chambers and facade being the entrance to the 'cave' as in the photograph below.

The above entrance is a 20th century reconstruction, but

the 'before' picture below, probably taken in the 1930s by Massingham, gives a somewhat different view...

...........................................................................

Stoney Littleton has a different facade, plain, its entrance stones decorated with fossils and the large ammonite stone on the left, but inside the six chambers are very 'cavelike' , and often this is interpreted as a returning to the 'womb' . This statement needs some explaining, it has been suggested that if neolithic people saw the 'earth' as a living body, a mother form, fertility symbol, then returning the dead to the earth/mother, would in some ways keep them alive or renew them. This was after all a primitive culture, that made offerings of flint, pottery, and food into pits and postholes, one presumes in the hope that the earth/mother would make more of this bounty.

Inside Stoney Littleton barrow

The entrance of Stoney Littleton

................................................................

West Kennet Longbarrow

Facade and blocking stones of West Kennet when the longbarrow was 'closed down'

Stoney Littleton is also restored, and was in fact 'closed down' by the neolithic people at some stage by erecting the large blocking stones in front of the entrance and filling up the interior with earth and stones.

Frisky bullocks

One of my favourite walks along the Cotswold Way needs a somewhat risky undertaking to both life and limb, not necessarily to me but to Moss my collie. We have to confront about 40 odd bullocks grazing in a very large field of about 50 acres. Not exactly a field more a steep sided small valley with a large wood at the bottom. It has in it the remains of an old trackway that went from the Brockham Roman site in the Langridge parish across the great valley that the A46 traverses in a north south direction, to Charmy Down and Solsbury Hill.
Three weeks ago was our first encounter, Moss had jumped over the great stone stile into the field and immediately flew back again, when I climbed up the steps I could see why, a dozen or more black and brown faces on the other side. Chiding him for being a coward, I took the opposite direction on the trackway hoping to loop round the cattle, of course they followed, charging poor old Moss with me swearing at them, but this detour did lead me to discover a rock strewn stream emerging from the hillside, and we did eventually reach the safety of a gate.
Once more yesterday deciding to take this particular walk, the cattle happily were still far down at the bottom of the hill, but of course these devious creatures were there to meet us on the way back. Fooling them was easy I just walked on the other side of of some barbed wire fence in the 'quarry' field, and they followed and mooed on the other side, I only had to cross a few yards to the stile and Moss just jumped over a stone wall further on. The sad thing was that some of this wall had been knocked down, obviously by people also frightened by the bullocks.
Knocking down stone walls by walkers is hardly going to make the farmer happy, but as this pathway is part of the Cotswold Way some solution should be arrived at so that walkers can get past these creatures without having to scramble under barbed wire or knock down walls.

The view of another small valley along this walk.

http://www.travelmag.co.uk/article_1314.shtml?page=1

Japanese Anemones

In my garden are two great displays of these tall Japanese anemones, far too early for this time of the year as they are supposed to be autumn flowering. There exuberance is extraordinary probably down to the strange weather we have been having this summer. But suddenly I realised that they have a story behind them. A small plant of these flowers was given to me about 25 years ago by a person who lived in Box in Wiltshire, and they have now grown from small beginnings to giants dominating their positions. The garden they came from, had the remains of a large roman villa under its surface. This villa was enlarged in the 3rd or 4th century by a wealthy owner, and apparently has the largest collection of roman mosaics in the country, with mosaics being found in 20 of the 41 rooms in the complex. The villa was excavated by Hurst in 1967, there are probably pottery and mosaics at Devizes museum somewhere in a dusty box.
The people who owned the Georgian house, obviously had a love of roman things, for I remember that Kate had decorated her house with that dark orangey/ochre affect dado, and the rooms all had strong colour washes.
But leaving aside roman villas and returning to anemones, the following is taken from W.Robinson - The English Garden 1895 -


I have a feeling that these steel engraved plates were copied from photos, for they have a precision only seen in a photograph.


He says of these plants that they are useful for borders, groups, fringes of shrubbery in rich soil, and here and there in half shady places for wood walks. Obviously a different era..... apparently the plant was introduced in 1858 so was relatively new when he wrote his book.
Plants were brought back by plant hunters through the 19th century, and my garden is part of a 19th century garden/parkland. In fact traces of the old garden can be found running through the bank at the bottom. A great rockery that spans four gardens (200 feet) can still be faintly seen falling down to the small valley below, which once had a stream running through. The victorian person who made this large garden also was responsible for the Botanical gardens in Victoria Park, so he was also obviously interested in exotic plants from afar.
When we first came to this house, at the bottom were two old Japanese trees, now both dead, one pink,double petalled, and the other single petalled of a deep carmine pink. On the bank, under the large sycamore tree, also grew bamboo, but one year it flowered and then never appeared again. Also in this bank the notorious Japanese knotweed makes an appearance every now and then. This knotweed was introduced during the Victorian era, has creeping underground roots so that it now takes over large patches of ground and is fairly indestructible. It has become a garden escapee and now can be found rampaging along rivers, canals and damp ground.
Luckily it does'nt like the dry conditions that the sycamore tree creates, so it is not a problem, though ground elder is. But before we dismiss ground elder as another tiresome weed, it was also introduced by medieval monks because in the early months of spring it can be eaten like spinach, sorrel or Good King Henry (fat hen).....

Is the Swallowhead a Sacred Spring?

Stukeley "There are two heads of the river Kennet: one from a little north-west of Abury, at Monkton, runs southward to Silbury Hill: this affords little water, except in wet seasons. At Silbury Hill it joins the Swallow Head, or true fountain of the Kennet, which the country people call by the old name Cunnit, and it is not a little famous among them. This is a plentiful spring."

...The actual sources are indeed two.. one which rises in Clyffe Pypard field, some four miles to the north-west, and the other in the parish of Broad Hinton, some four miles to the north east of Abury: at the latter village these two streams unite, and flow in one channel to Swallow Head, the very picturesque basin whose springs are generally very abundant, and largely increase the infant river: indeed there are seasons when the two real sources have been known to be dry, and the only water in the Kennet has come from this spring.

Other seasons have occurred within my memory when this, too, has failed, and the dry bed of the Kennet has been planted with potatoes.

p175 in Rev. A C Smith's 'Guide to the British and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire Downs' (1884). Referenced from TMA - SwallowHead Spring

one which rises in Clyffe Pypard field some four miles to the north-west. This statement by the Rev.Smith is probably wrong as there is no evidence of a stream rising at Clyffe Pypard and joining up with the stream from Broad Hinton...

Swallowhead Spring - a sad spectacle today with modern 'offerings' disintergrating on the stones.

The answer to that question is I don't know, but because the enigmatic Silbury Hill is just a few hundred metres away could there be some relationship between the two. First of all, the Swallowhead is at a junction where two small rivers meet, the Winterbourne as it is today called, coming down past Avebury, curving round Silbury and then apparently, as it takes a left hand swing by the spring it changes it name to the Kennet. The Kennet is seen as a new river, because the Swallowhead is its source. Now this conjunction of two rivers is important, some might see it as a marriage of the waters, but in neolithic thinking maybe this merging,- and who is to tell whether in prehistoric times the spring was much more energetic than it is today - was an important fact.

The Willow tree facing the supposed meeting place of Kennet and Winterbourne, taken from the Swallowhead Spring

Why, well looking further afield, a somewhat similar homage to water can be found in other places. Bath which is only about 30 kilometres away has the hot springs which the romans capitalised on and built a great temple to the presiding celtic Goddess Sulis there. Just outside the city, Bitton has a similar conjunction of rivers, the little river Boyd meeting the river Avon, a large barrow also dominates the scenery here..

Stanton Drew circles also have an avenue down to a river; an argument could be put forth here that the river was a means of transporting people, but it is significant that these three stone circles were put up right next to the river, thereby including the river as part of the sacred landscape. And of course Stonehenge with its Avenue down to the river as a processional way, and the disappeared large Hatfield barrow by the river Avon.

Here we come to the term 'sacred landscape' what does it mean? For me it means the long term habit of prehistoric people recognising the landscape as a living form, and in doing so gave it a subjective personality, its life forms being an integral part of their lives. Bringing their dead to a special place, recognising the bones of the dead were similar to the stones that they so laboriously erected to construct megalithic tombs....

There are other pointers that the Swallowhead could have been seen as sacred in the roman period, now this is strong circumstantial evidence, there was a roman settlement at the foot of Silbury with the roman road from London to Bath running alongside. There were several wells discovered in the 19th century round the base of Silbury, one of them had a great quantity of small stones atop a large half ton stone which seemed to be vertical within the shaft of the well. Underneath these stones was a variety of roman stuff, coins, pottery, bones, antler tines and

roman coins. An odd assemblage, though it could be argued that this stuff was votive, it could also be seen as rubbish thrown down the nearest receptacle.

Roman wells have a history all their own excavated they often reveal the destruction of the roman settlement or villa. Bodies, pottery, animals and altars are all to be found deposited therin, a testimony to the overthrowing of the roman regime by the local population.

So a word of caution has to be introduced when investigating the depths of wells, they can contain all manner of historical vandalism.

None of this votive evidence remains at Swallowhead because obviously it has been swept away over a long period of time., but the tantalising 'cave like' atmosphere that the Romans constructed round the hot springs of Aqua Sulis, tells us that a little more was going on.

For instance having mentioned the Bitton barrow at the junction of two rivers, a church also lies within a hundred yards and a 'heathen temple' or roman shrine is said to lie nearabouts.

The Apollo Temple at Nettleton Shrub, situated by the Roman Fosse Road, is also overlooking a brook, the settlement on the other side of the Fosse. There is also evidence of Dubonnic coins found in the vicinity, which could mean that native iron age people also lived/worshipped at this spot as well, and that is why the Apollo temple was sited here.

..........

Counterbalancing my argument, is of course the question of a long time period, and the relationship of particular religious ideas being carried down through the centuries by different generations, who would of course bring different and innovative ideas. Silbury for instance could be the creation of a single mind bent on domination, on the other hand, imitation of other built large barrows could be the reason for its presence in the landscape. The spring could be seen as an ordinary source of water, its magical aspect only being picked up when the right combination of religious ideas came along. For instance at times through the Bronze Age when offerings were deposited in water or bogs. This particular ritual act would have been found in the later Iron age, when the pagan religion of that time worshipped in natural places. Being picked up at this stage by the roman colonisers, who had a similar religious perception of the world. We can, in other word, circumscribe the argument as having started at one point and finished nicely with water worship at the other end, but can not really lay claim that water, or at least the presence of a sacred spring, was a constant factor through the prehistoric period ......

And the further question must be asked, IF the Swallowhead was a special spring, how then did its relationship with Silbury hill feature in the general overlay of sacred landscape, because if Silbury was also built because of the low-lying water aspect of the site and the river that curves round it, and in a sense was part of a 'flooded' landscape,( similar for instance to Glastonbury Tor overlooking its 'fen' landscape,) it would'nt have been important at all...

Palisaded enclosures date....