Going Walkabout (British History)

[Hatty]

Aside from Ogbourne priory, the Abbey of Bec also held lands in Swincombe in Oxfordshire, Wantage in Berkshire and Bledlow in Buckinghamshire; all these locations are on or near the Ridgeway.

Bledlow, whose lord of the manor was the Ogbourne prior, is about half a mile from the lower Icknield Way, a trading route from the south-west to Norfolk. {Another of their holdings was Ruislip in Middlesex; Ruislip farm was owned by King's College Cambridge from 1500 till the 20th century -- it has a splendid barn, now a listed building, which together with the sense of manorial placidity is testament to the place's prosperity.} Henry V who dissolved the Ogbourne priory granted Bledlow manor to his brother the Duke of Bedford (the Bedford family made its fortune from the cloth trade).

It could be that Bec Abbey had properties at intervals along the Ridgeway because chalk downlands are suitable for the purposes of sheep-rearing for wool (this is the reason given for the location of the Templar priory at Rockley, in the Marlborough Downs); it would make commercial sense to have access to, and possibly control over, a route in constant use and would also have afforded an excellent means of intelligence-gathering. Benedictine monks no doubt disapproved of the Ridgeway's pre-Christian associations, it's somewhat puzzling that so much of the area's history has been ignored for so long.

[Hatty]

Looking at the somewhat complicated account of Bledlow manor in Victoria County History this caught my eye:

[Hatty]

PS. "Pell mell" may not always have had the meaning of 'muddled confusion'; it suggests 'hair in a tangle', i.e. windswept, which could have had heroic/chivalric overtones (like a knight spurring forth to do battle...with a dragon?)

[Mick Harper]

There is one overwhelming problem of using landscape features to make your way across country and that is the infinite number of features in any given landscape. Which is the one that you are meant to be going toward?

There is an elegant and economic way of solving this problem. First you introduce the 'straight line principle'. The only unambiguous way of selecting landscape feature C is to ensure that it is in a straight line from landscape feature A and landscape feature B. But note it doesn't have to be absolutely straight, simply straight enough to be recognisable.

But this is still somewhat hit-and-miss Should you ever make a mistake in landscape feature selection (which is possible at every stage), then the infinite number of landscape features will ensure you are led forever along the wrong straight line.

Enter the continuous fail-safe feature built into the system. Let's say the general line is roughly west-east. To the north of the line are etched a whole lot of cup-and-ring petraglyphs (though they can be carved into trees as well) in handy and clearly visible places. (You can even put up standing stones.). So whenever the traveller spots a cup-and-ring sign he knows he is too far to the north of his required route.

But if he goes too far south he runs into the Troy Game spiral petraglyph which similarly instructs him to shift northwards. It will soon be obvious when he is back on the 'straight and narrow'. In fact both the cup-and-ring and the spiral probably tell him how far to go and in which precise direction in order to reach the nearest appropriate landscape feature though I don't yet know how they do this.

Look here to see how far orthodoxy has got with all of this which as you might have guessed is nowheresville
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_and_ring_mark

[Hatty]

It might be a more logical system if cup-and-ring marks signalled a particular route; some tracks have their own symbols though they are not always easy to distinguish (oh the relief of espying a white arrow painted onto a tree trunk) especially where tracks cross each other. The most obvious feature is the ridge itself; it's more reassuring to follow a path that keeps that in view than looking out for signs on a tree trunk.

[Mick Harper]

[Hatty]

[Mick Harper]

Nah, it's got something to do with dragons=worms=snakes=serpents=wisdom
which is the Megalithic Corporation's logo.

[Hatty]

The programme on the Narnia books reminded me of that other series of seven, the Harry Potter books (in J.K. Rowlings' case there had to be seven in total for each year that Harry was at Hogwarts school, from 11 to 18). Both book series started well, the first in the series being easily the most absorbing (and funniest); C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew is far and away the best and the last one The Last Battle is embarrassingly bad, which makes it eminently plausible that he too decided in advance to write a seven book series.

If the Narnia books were based on the seven planets of medieval cosmology, which planet was Magician's Nephew based on? The story of creation complete with apple features in it but the really arresting and most "creative" central section deals with parallel universes reached via pools of water, some of which are dying and others, like Narnia itself, waiting to have life breathed upon them. The two protagonists, a boy and a girl, are clearly Adam and Eve, the first humans to enter Narnia apart from the "magician" himself, a cunning and amoral scientist. [The wardrobe incidentally was hewn from a tree that grew from the apple core brought back from Narnia and was later blown down in a storm].

It could be that the books are based on the book of Genesis rather than on planets, tracing the Narnian life cycle from "In the beginning" through the story of the Flood (Dawn Treader) and so forth up to the conquest of the Promised Land (Last Battle).

[Hatty]

The 'line' from Land's End to the east coast of Norfolk shows Avebury slap bang in the centre and ending in the town of 'Hope' (that's my reading anyway).

The line would appear to be replete with Michaels to the west of Avebury but conspicuously devoid of him or his colleagues to the east, yet this is not a strictly accurate picture for if you looked at a map of England you would discover a veritable host of Michael and George churches in indiscriminate locations of which some happen to be on or near the St Michael Line.

Church spires, with or without the name Michael attached, are evidently of immense importance in fixing a point in the landscape.

[Mick Harper]

shows Avebury slap bang in the centre

Ah, but that's not why Avebury is there. Try moving it northwards... what would happen to the Dragon Line?

[Mick Harper]

[Hatty]

The standing stones at Avebury would be an even better marker than a steeple. If the cup-and-ring and spiral signs are only found west of Avebury, it would be clear to the lost traveller that he'd missed his turn-off.

You have to bear in mind that the Ridgeway, which runs north east from Overton Hill by Avebury stretched as far as Hunstanton in Norfolk; the trail ends officially at Ivinghoe Beacon, the highest point in the Chilterns, near Tring in Buckinghamshire and once started at Lyme Regis but the Salisbury Plains are now out of bounds due to army manoeuvres. Ivinghoe is visible a long way off thanks to the war memorial on its summit; in fact come to think of it Ibstone, another high point, has a large stone in the middle of the common marking the boundary between Bucks and Oxfordshire.

[Mick Harper]

[Hatty]