King Arthur on the telly

King Arthur, it seems, can still grab people’s attention. The mythical Once and Future King of the Britons has cropped up twice on the telly recently – first with someone coming up with a theory (or rather, another theory) about where Camelot may have been located, and then in the title of a documentary that, as it turned out, wasn’t really about him.

The latest Camelot theory came from the TV presenter Nick Knowles who, while plugging a special edition of his show DIY SOS on The One Show last month, decided to go a bit off-message and state that he, or rather he and a professor from Bristol University, has (have?) a new theory about the location of Arthur’s court. Cirencester, apparently, is where the Arthur and his knights met around a round table that was in fact the old Roman amphitheatre there. In Roman times, the Gloucestershire market town was Corinium, a fort built at the point where the Fosse Way crosses the River Churn which became one of the biggest cities in Roman Britain. 

Archaeological evidence has shown that in the period after the Romans left the amphitheatre was fortified but it takes quite a leap of the imagination to go from there to claiming that this little corner of the Cotswolds was once Camelot – a place that’s also been claimed to have been identified as having been in Cornwall, Hampshire, Somerset or even Yorkshire, and that’s before you take into account the various possible Welsh locations that have been suggested over the years.

I’m not convinced by this new claim. If you’re going to go around stating that the round table part of the King Arthur legend is based on the notion that a Dark Ages warrior leader might have met with his followers in an amphitheatre (which makes sense), then the one at the old Roman legionary fortress at Caerleon over in south-eastern Wales is a much better bet.

Next up was a BBC2 documentary called King Arthur’s Britain: The Truth Unearthed which was broadcast a couple of weeks ago. Fronted by Alice Roberts – a presenter with much more credibility than Mr Knowles, she being an academic (the Professor of Public Engagement in Science at Birmingham University, no less) with shows like Time Team and Coast on her CV – this focussed on a place that has long been associated with Arthur; in fact, according to the legends it’s where his life began. Tintagel, on Cornwall’s north coast.

What followed wasn’t really about Arthur – somewhat unsurprisingly, the story (as told by the medieval chronicler/historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose rather fanciful writings provide us with the basis of the King Arthur legends as we know them today) of his having been conceived on a stormy night at Tintagel during which his dad made use of Merlin’s magic to trick his mum into thinking that he was actually her husband was quickly dismissed as legend rather than fact (but then, one of the key things to remember is that much of the Arthur story is more legend than fact; in fact, when touching on anything relating to King Arthur it is worth remembering that line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend”). There were also some rather cheap-looking animated graphics but I think those can safely be disregarded as unimportant.

There were two main strands – an archaeological dig at Tintagel itself (long known to have been a high-status settlement in the Dark Ages, the focus being on the rocky peninsular known as Tintagel Island, upon which the medieval castle was later built; historically, this was always regarded as being distinct from the village on the mainland which was called Trevena until the mid-nineteenth century) and a wider look at archaeological studies across the country in order to find evidence for the Anglo-Saxon invasion during the post-Roman period which provided the backdrop for the legends of Arthur which originate in the Celtic/British resistance to this new influx. Although he wasn’t mentioned in the earliest records of the time (not that there are many of those), it is Arthur who over time emerged in the stories about an heroic leader who led the fight against the invaders. 

Professor Roberts concluded that the available archaeological evidence doesn’t really support the idea of a large-scale invasion, contrary to what the chroniclers (not just Geoffrey of Monmouth but also the monk Gildas, who was writing in the sixth century) tell us; a very detailed study in Yorkshire has revealed evidence for settlement rather than conquest, while a scan of an Anglo-Saxon cross found in a grave in Cambridgeshire and DNA analysis of human remains points more to co-existence and assimilation than conflict. That said, there does seem to have been a clear cultural divide between eastern Britain (which was being settled by the Anglo-Saxons and so was linked primarily with Northern Europe) and the west. The dig at Tintagel unearthed a lot of high-end pottery which hinted at trading links with the Mediterranean world having been maintained after the Romans had left (the most obvious commodity that the Cornish of the Dark Ages had to trade with was quickly and correctly identified as tin). Then there was an inscribed piece of stone which seemed to indicate that the people who lived there were probably Christians. By placing King Arthur’s conception at Tintagel, maybe Geoffrey of Monmouth was alluding to the importance of that place in the Dark Ages?

All very interesting, fascinating in part. Yet I couldn’t help but think I’ve heard a lot of this before. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out where – a TV academic of an older vintage called Michael Wood, who covered King Arthur in In Search of the Dark Ages and in a couple of chapters of a later book called In Search of England. In the former, a TV series which aired between 1978 and 1980 and can now be found on YouTube, he too sought the facts behind the Arthurian legends by looking at how archaeologists were trying to piece together what happened in Britain after the Romans left (during the course of which he visited the amphitheatre at Cirencester) and found evidence hinting at continuity rather than conquest in Dark Ages Britain before going off to look at hill-forts in rural Southern England and concluding by casting doubt on whether King Arthur really existed. In the latter, he referred to a stone with an inscription on it being unearthed at a 1998 archaeological dig at Tintagel, which at the time generated quite a bit of excitement due to the name on it, Artognou, being not a million miles from ‘Arthur’ although it’s a bit of a stretch of the imagination to link the stone with the Once and Future King! 

England's lesser-known stone circles (part two)

To Cornwall next, to take a look at another stone circle! This one can be found a couple of miles to the south-east of St Buryan which is off the A30 after you’ve gone west of Penzance. This circle is called the Merry Maidens and consists of nineteen granite megaliths, all of them roughly four feet high arranged in a circle that’s about 78 feet in diameter. They’re said to date back to either the Neolithic period (the late Stone Age) or the early Bronze Age.

They’re easy to get to, being located in a field that’s easily accessible (and sign-posted) from the B3315. The access-point to the field even has a convenient lay-by for parking, and the footpath from the lay-by goes right through the circle itself.

As is apparently the case with most British stone circles, there’s a notable gap between the stones at the circle’s eastern-most part. It’s also worth noting that the size of the stones varies, decreasing slightly in size from south-west to north-east; this, archaeologists reckon, may well have been deliberate so as to mirror the cycle of the moon. Nearby are a pair of much taller standing stones called the Pipers, two of the largest standing stones in Cornwall which due to their alignment with the Merry Maidens are indelibly associated with said circle.

Like the Rollrights, the Merry Maidens are the subject of a ‘petrification’ legend which is where they get their name from. The story is that the stones were nineteen young ladies who were turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday (the stones’ Cornish name is dans maen, which means ‘stone dance’ although it has given the stones their alternative name of the Dawn’s Men). The Pipers are said to have been the two men who were providing the music for the girls, but they heard the bells of the church at St Buryan striking midnight and tried to run away, which supposedly explains their distance from the Merry Maidens. The Maidens and the Pipers are not the only Neolithic remnants in the vicinity; there’s also the Tregiffian Burial Chamber not far away, as well as a lone standing stone called Gun Rith which is reckoned to be also linked with the Merry Maidens, by proximity if nothing else.

Of more recent vintage is the Boskenna Cross, Medieval a way-marker located at the junction with the road to or from St Buryan to the west; this was unearthed in the nineteenth century, having probably been buried at the time of the Reformation.

The Merry Maidens probably owe their survival in part to a nineteenth-century landowner who, obviously recognising their significance, ensured that they weren’t removed so the field could be ploughed and the stones broken up for building material – a fate that befell many stone circles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Western Cornwall, though, does have a rather high concentration of ancient monuments – as well as stone circles, there are also various standing stones as well as cairns, hut circles and holy wells – which has led the area to be described as a ‘sacred country in miniature’. Worth keeping an eye on the road-signs, then.

England's lesser-known stone circles (part one)

There’s more to stone circles in England than Stonehenge and Avebury. It’s just that the rest are smaller and as such they don’t tend to get much of a look-in. Today, though, I’m going to take a closer look at one of the smaller, lesser-known ones. The Rollright Stones can be found in the Cotswolds and are reckoned to date back to the Neolithic period. The reasons behind their construction have been lost in the mists of time (our Neolithic ancestors lived in a pre-literacy age) although the stones themselves were sourced locally – from within a few miles of the circle, archaeologists reckon. The lack of a reason for building a stone circle has created a void that’s been filled by a ‘petrification’ myth (the stones are people who were turned to stone) which has been used in times past to explain how they came to be, with the myth having become part of the story (for, as the man once said, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend). The Rollrights are by no means alone in having a petrification myth attached to them.

They’re located high on the eastern edge of the Cotswolds (around 220 metres, or just over 720 feet, above sea level according to the Ordnance Survey map which covers the area) just off the A3400 on the Oxfordshire/Warwickshire border. The stone circle, known as the King’s Men, is just over a hundred feet in diameter and consists of some 77 closely-placed stones (oolitic limestone, this being the Cotswolds – that’s the material that forms the bedrock of the Cotswolds and which has been used as the local building material of choice for centuries; to this day it is still quarried as Cotswold stone) although legend has it that it is supposed to be impossible to count them all, and if you manage to do so and get the same number three times you get to make a wish!

The location is almost nondescript, or perhaps the word should be modest – parking is in a lay-by on a minor road just off the A3400, and within yards from the road just to the south you’re confronted with the circle which seems almost discreetly tucked away to the side. The private charity that runs it, the Rollright Trust, doesn’t have anyone there to meet and greet but there is an honesty-box next to the gate (it’s £1 per adult). There’s nothing stopping you from touching the stones should you so desire, although sitting on them is frowned upon as it would add to the erosion of the stones. Every now and again, a visitor is confronted with the sight of the occasional neo-pagan who’s gone there for some meditation (pagan groups can book the site for ceremonies, and the Trust apparently stages an annual Shakespeare production in the circle).

As well as the circle, there’s also a free-standing monolith called the King Stone which is located on the north side of the road, which at this point also serves as the border between the counties of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. This is likely to have been erected as a marker for a burial area, for archaeologists have found much by way of evidence of cremated human remains having been buried in the immediate vicinity. Its strange shape can be explained by the fact that it suffered at the hands of nineteenth-century souvenir-hunters (who, as was the case with Stonehenge, often came to visit with a hammer and chisel at the ready), and not long after legal protection was introduced for ancient monuments in 1882 the King Stone was encircled by railings to prevent further damage.

Finishing off the ancient monuments that make up the Rollright Stones is a portal dolmen – a Neolithic burial chamber which is several hundred yards east of the circle. It consists of four upright stones (plus a capstone which is now lying on the ground) and is known as the Whispering Knights. They make for an interesting stop if you’re in the area; the Cotswold towns of Chipping Norton and Moreton-in-Marsh aren’t far away, and nor for that matter is Hook Norton with its brewery, while they’re located just over half-way between Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon. So, if you’re going for a drive around the Cotswolds, why not take a look?

The names given to the various component parts of the Rollrights relate to the ‘petrification’ myth attached to them. The story goes that a king was riding across the country with his followers when they were stopped by a witch (sometimes credited as Mother Shipton) who challenged the king to walk forward, with the promise that if he could see the nearby village of Long Compton he would be King of England. However, his view was blocked by the rising ground, at which point the witch turned him to stone. She then promptly did the same to the king’s followers, who’d gathered in a circle to discuss the challenge, and then she did likewise to four of the followers who had lagged behind, quite possibly to discuss a plot against the king; they became the Whispering Knights.

An interesting story, for the King Stone does indeed stand just below the ridge from which you can see Long Compton which is on lower ground to the north (and a lovely view it is too). 

Another story about the stones is of a more recent vintage and comes from Doctor Who, for the Rollrights were used as a filming location for that show, back in Tom Baker’s day. In it, the stones were used as a worship-site by modern-day druids but they (the stones, not the druids) turned out to be blood-sucking aliens in disguise!

The story of the beast of Bodmin Moor

An article in Metro, the free newspaper that’s somehow always more interesting when you read it over someone’s shoulder, caught my eye earlier this year: “Roaming leopard snared by Cornish sheep farmer” ran the headline. A farmer down in Cornwall had set some traps for foxes after one of his sheep was killed. To his surprise, when he went to check them he found a clouded leopard, an animal usually found in the foothills of the Himalayas. It had escaped from someone’s garden in the vicinity of Par, a fishing-village on the south Cornish coast. Its owner had kept it in an enclosure – legally, for he apparently has a licence allowing him to keep dangerous wild animals, but evidently his security arrangements were lacking somewhat.

This got me thinking about one thing and one thing only. I take tour groups down to Cornwall, and one of the stories I like to tell when driving along the A30 is the tale of the ‘Beast of Bodmin Moor’, a modern-day local legend which would really be an urban myth were it not for the decidedly rural setting.

It’s one of many ‘phantom cat’ stories concerning alleged big cat sightings, of which there have apparently been over 2,000 in Britain since the Sixties, about one-fifth of them in the South West. On the other side of the Tamar, Exmoor and Dartmoor both have their own ‘beast’ stories but it’s the Bodmin Moor one which seems to get the most attention. The story would appear to have originated in the Seventies, not long after the closure of Plymouth Zoo whose owners are reputed to have released a couple of their pumas into the wild.

From then on, farmers attributed any dead livestock they found to some kind of wild animal of the large feline variety, and a rash of photographs appeared which purported to show a big cat of some sort out on the moor, rather like those photos taken at Loch Ness that claim to show ‘Nessie’. Most of these photos were of poor quality and may well have been doctored (this in the days before digital cameras and photoshopping) but some nevertheless made their way into the newspapers. The tabloids in particular were rather taken by any story they could find about what was dubbed the ‘Beast of Bodmin Moor’, especially during the summer ‘silly season’ when there wasn’t much by way of real news and which also happened to be when most of the photos were taken by holiday-makers. It was even reckoned that trainee reporters were sent down to Cornwall as part of their on-the-job training, just to see if they could get a new angle on the ‘beast’ story. The media’s fascination with this was satirised in an episode of the Nineties TV sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey, when one of the reporters went out of his way to fake some video footage of a big cat on the moor in order to boost his network’s viewing figures.

By the mid-Nineties, the volume of tabloid stories about sightings of the alleged beast was getting out of hand. In 1995, the government (in the form of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food) conducted an official investigation, which looked into several livestock disappearances that had been reported and examined the photos that had been taken. The men from the Ministry concluded that there was no real evidence for any wild cat on Bodmin Moor.

But the story didn’t end there, for a week after the report was published the skull of a big cat was found by the River Fowey, which rises on the moor! This was sent to the Natural History Museum for examination, and they came to the conclusion that it was the skull of a leopard … which had died somewhere in East Africa in the early twentieth century, and had most likely been imported into Britain as part of a leopard-skin rug. Although it could’ve just been thrown away, the fact that it was found so soon after the Ministry’s report means that it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility to suppose that it might have been planted by a journalist, looking for one last ‘beast’ story.

And, thanks to some idiot who perhaps shouldn’t have been keeping a big cat in his back garden, the story briefly surfaced once again earlier this year.

A first-time sighting at the Minack

Wherever I go, I do try to keep an eye out for the birds. You never know what you might see. A case in point was on Dartmoor a few days ago, when a Hobby swooped across the road about twenty yards in front of me. When did I last see a Hobby? Years ago. Incidentally, the Hobby is just about the only bird whose Latin name I know off by heart – falco subbuteo, and yes that has a lot to do with the old table football game.

A couple of days later, I was down at one of my favourite West Country locations, the Minack Theatre.

I reckoned I knew what to expect, bird-wise. Gulls overhead. Jackdaws on the cliffs. Gannets diving out at sea. But then, looking out to sea from the stage, I saw something flying out from the cliff below that I hadn’t bargained for. Black, but a glossier black than you get on a Jackdaw. A little bit bigger than a Jackdaw, but more slender-looking. Red, curved beak. Even though I’d never actually seen one before, I knew at once what it was, from a lifetime of glancing at pictures of it in bird books when flicking through the pages about the crow family. A Chough.

The Chough (it’s pronounced ‘chuff’) is the county bird of Cornwall and has been a Cornish icon for centuries. Legend even has it that King Arthur’s soul entered the body of a Chough after he died (which led to the belief that it’s considered unlucky to kill one), while over in Kent the bird has long been associated with Thomas Becket to the point where three of them can be seen on the Canterbury coat-of-arms. Back in Cornwall, due to loss of habitat they were extinct in the county by the early Seventies. Then in 2001, they were seen again – a few of them had flown over from Ireland and settled on the Lizard Peninsular. Since then, numbers have steadily grown to the point where there were twelve breeding pairs last year. So things are looking up for the Cornish Choughs.

As for my lone sighting, It was gone in a matter of seconds so I didn’t even have time to grab my binoculars, let alone take a photo. Although I kept an eye out at the place where I’d seen it for some time afterwards, this would be one appearance at the Minack with no repeat performance. Maybe next time. For now, I’m very happy to report another ‘lifer’. And I will, of course, continue to keep an eye out for the birds.

Interesting things in Wiltshire pubs (part 1)

Back to Wiltshire, that county in Southern England well-known for its ancient stone circles, Salisbury Cathedral, several Army bases and the fact that the M4 and the A303 go through it. In recent years it has played host to the reintroduction of the Great Bustard, a species of bird which became extinct in Britain in the 1830s (it’s Wiltshire’s county bird; more on that in the unlikely event of my actually seeing one). What is perhaps less well-known is that a couple of pubs in the county have some rather odd things in them…

First up is the Red Lion in Avebury. 

That’s a fairly common pub name, the most common in the country in fact. It’s one of those pub names that has more than one origin. A a red lion was the personal badge of John of Gaunt (the “time-honour’d Lancaster” who does the “this scepter’d isle” speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II, in real life a younger son of Edward III and the father of Henry IV). It was also the Royal arms of Scotland, which were merged with the Royal arms of England when King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England following the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. But then again, the Red Lion in Avebury could derive from the coat-of-arms of an eighteenth-century lord of the manor, Lieutenant-General Williamson, which can be seen on display in the local church.

Anyway – the pub. The Red Lion in Avebury does have something that makes it unique, for it claims to be the only pub in the world that’s located within an ancient stone circle. Since I cannot think of any other ancient stone circle which has part of a village inside it, they’re probably right. So if you want to go for a pint in a pub that is truly unique, this one’s worth a visit.

Inside, there’s more. A mural on the wall shows a map of southern England, with the Line of St Michael marked out. This is probably the most famous ley line in the country, running diagonally from Cornwall to Suffolk, passing through such places as St Michael’s Mount, Glastonbury, Avebury and Bury St Edmunds, among others. Its saintly dedication derives from the fact that there are several churches or places dedicated to said archangel on its length – for example, the hilltop church at Brentor in Devon and the ruined tower atop Glastonbury Tor, as well as the afore-mentioned Cornish island. Some people get very excited by this; occasionally at Avebury, you may even run into someone who’s brought his divining-rods with him. Although I regard the notion of ley lines with a degree of cynicism, a journey along this one would certainly make for an interesting travelogue. Reading up on this, I note that I’m not the only cynic, for Geoffrey Ashe (in Mythology of the British Isles) refers to them as “modern myth” although he does note that “Avebury is at the point where it [the St Michael Line] cuts a parallel of latitude distant from the equator by exactly one-seventh of the earth’s circumference”; make of that what you will, if anything.

Of more tangible interest in the pub, though, is the well. Yes, the village well in Avebury – 86 feet deep, dating back to around 1600 and “believed to be the last resting place of at least one unfortunate villager” – is located inside the pub. How many pubs can claim to have a well inside them? And even if they do, how many of those wells have had a glass top put over them so they can serve as a table?

The presence of the well would seem to indicate that there wasn’t always a pub on this site – and there’s evidence for that, in the form of a map of Avebury drawn up by the antiquarian William Stukeley in 1724. His main purpose was to mark the locations of the stones themselves, and the locations of spots where stones had once stood, but he marked out other key points as well – his map shows a pub (“The Inn”) that is located on the other side of the road to the present-day Red Lion, although crucially (as far as this particular study is concerned) he didn’t mark the location of the village well.

To be continued...

Avebury

The county of Wiltshire has long been noted for its ancient landmarks and monuments – there’s much more to it than just Stonehenge. To the north – just off the A4 as opposed to the A303 – is a village called Avebury, and that is home to the largest ancient stone circle in all of Europe. It may not have the immediate impact of Stonehenge – the number of stones has over the centuries been greatly reduced – but it has a distinct charm of its own, which is helped by the fact that part of the village actually lies within the stone circle. Plus, unlike Stonehenge, it’s free to visit and you can actually go up and touch the stones.

In fact, it could be said that the stone circle at Avebury, which dates back to the third millennium BC, is more of a circular enclosure with various arrangements of standing stones (including two smaller circles) inside, and that it’s merely a part of a whole complex of ancient structures in the vicinity, “one of a cluster of major prehistoric works,” according to the book Mythology of the British Isles by Geoffrey Ashe which I have been dipping into recently. Other stones form an avenue leading away from the Avebury circle towards a smaller site known as the Sanctuary, an easy-to-miss site close to the A4 which is not far from the burial mound that is the West Kennet Long Barrow and Silbury Hill, which looks man-made because it is (it’s the largest prehistoric mound in Europe, similar in size to the smaller pyramids at Giza); it dates back to around the same time as Avebury and apparently took several centuries to make.

The stone circle at Avebury, which as well as various other standing stones also encloses part of the village (including the pub, the Red Lion, which can therefore claim to be the only pub to be located within an ancient stone circle), is itself enclosed by a henge – a ditch and earth bank which would appear to have served as a means of restricting entrance to the site to certain key points (rather like, I suppose, the doors of a cathedral).

Quite a few of the stones are no longer there. Over time, some were broken up for use as building materials while others were removed to allow for cultivation of the land. It’s also been noted that even though there has been a Christian church at Avebury since the seventh century (it is located outside the stone circle), superstition about the stones led to the removal and burial of quite a few of them in the fourteenth century. It was this removal of the stones that led to the only known death to have been directly associated with them. “About 1320,” states Ashe, “a man who was helping to smash one of the stones was crushed to death when it keeled over on top of him. In 1938 his skeleton was found, with the tools of his trade – he was a barber-surgeon.” One imagines an itinerant tradesman unexpectedly getting roped into helping out with some heavy lifting while he was passing through the village, with fatal results.

As for what it was built for, that is a mystery that continues to fascinate – and the Neolithic people who built it left us no clues, as they were of a pre-literate age. The lack of human remains that have been unearthed precludes the notion of Avebury having been a place of death or sacrifice, and the best guess is that it was a temple used for ceremonies of some sort, in which the path of the sun played a key role, for the stones’ astronomical alignment has been remarked upon (light-heartedly as well as seriously; in 2014, the National Trust claimed that they were planning to move one of the stones at Avebury in order to align the circle with British Summer Time – a claim that was, of course, made on April Fools’ Day). What can be in no doubt is that this was clearly something of great importance to our Neolithic ancestors; even though the rocks/blocks are local (they are sarsen, a type of sandstone) it would have taken a long time to drag them over several miles before erecting them in pre-determined positions. To make the whole thing would have taken years, if not decades or even centuries (much like the building of cathedrals in the Middle Ages).

In the eighteenth century, the antiquarian William Stukeley pioneered archaeological investigative techniques at Avebury – taking notes, making drawings and doing careful measurements in a bid to unlock the mystery of the stones (at the same time as some of the local farmers were busy removing some of the stones, not out of superstition but in order to obtain building materials and clear the land for the plough). Stukeley figured out that there were two stone avenues extending out from Avebury – one, the Kennet Avenue, heading south-east to the Sanctuary and another, the Beckhampton Avenue, heading south-west (few stones from the latter had survived even in Stukeley’s time, and for many years archaeologists reckoned he’d got it wrong although buried stones have recently been unearthed along its route). He theorised that Avebury had been built by the Druids (who actually post-date the construction of the site) and that the avenues formed a ‘solar serpent’ and he reckoned that to be similar to symbols used in ancient Egypt. 

Wishful thinking, probably (as Ashe states, a “past guess at serpent-worship had no basis but the fancy that the Avebury-Avenue-Sanctuary formation was serpentine”) – although in Stukeley’s favour he was right about the Beckhampton Avenue, and by studying Avebury at a time when quite a few of the stones were being dismantled his contribution towards our understanding of the site is invaluable. He also seems like a fascinating chap, as antiquarians often do, being from a time when men could get away with having multiple scholarly interests (as well as digging around at Avebury and Stonehenge, he was a biographer of Newton, no less, as well as being a C of E priest who was obsessed about the Druids).

Further theorising came in the early twentieth century with the development of the notion of ley lines, the idea that prehistoric and not-so-prehistoric sites are not located at random points but are arranged in straight lines. Avebury plays a part in this. “One of the longest and most impressive leys in the country,” state Janet and Colin Bord in their book Mysterious Britain, “cuts through the southern edge of the Avebury circle … This ley or ‘dragon line’ stretches from Land’s End to Burrow Mump and Glastonbury Tor, thence on to Avebury, and eventually reaches Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, touching en route many hills and churches dedicated to St Michael”. Mysterious Britain is a work from the Seventies which focuses on Britain’s ancient monuments with a strong emphasis on the weird and the wonderful, and seems to take a lot of the mythology at face value (I suspect that Stukeley would’ve loved it). Ley lines are a good example of people making way too much about what is essentially a couple of coincidences, and in the case of the example mention it falls flat when you look at a map and realise that several the places mentioned aren’t really aligned on a straight line, although I guess it depends on how thick said line is (a mile, perhaps?), while Ashe hedges his bets by stating that the St Michael Line (as he calls it) is “not perfectly straight, but good enough to be significant”.

More seriously, the early twentieth century saw an archaeologist by the name of Alexander Keiller working at Avebury. His excavations led to the reconstruction of some of the stone settings, for he was able to find quite a few of the stones that had been buried and re-erect them in their original positions (or as close as possible); in addition, he marked the positions of stones that had been lost for good with concrete posts which he’d designed specially for this purpose. It was he who found the remains of the unfortunate barber-surgeon. It’s also thanks to Keiller that the site is the way it is today, for he was a wealthy man who purchased much of the land in Avebury so that he could carry out his excavations, and he later sold it to the National Trust – which runs the site today. It is most definitely worth a visit.