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Going Walkabout (British History)
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Hatty
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Does anyone here walk along ancient tracks or wander off to explore hill forts, barrows or tumuli and, if so, would you be able to locate them without the help of a map? It seems you would be hard pressed to get onto even such a well-known route as the Ridgeway unless you had a guide or an OS map to hand.

Once atop the ridge it's clearly marked by signposts, unnecessary one might think but it isn't always straightforward or indeed straight going; for instance, heading east the path suddenly descends from the ridge into the valley where Ogbourne St George is located, presumably the 'bourne' (the River Og) was a much-needed water stop (for animals or for people?). This village, intersected by the Ridgeway, is on a noticeably straight north-south "Roman" road now the A346 (there's a similarly straight footpath running parallel) from the M4 to Marlborough.

Heading west from Ogbourne St George the track passes through Barbury Castle, described as an iron-age hill fort, lying unavoidably across the middle of the route (just to the south of the Ridgeway is Barbury Down earthworks), now equipped with car park and cafe. It's a fairly desolate area empty of 'scenery' apart from copses to focus the eye (and judge distance?) but there's no reason to suppose there weren't places for travellers to park and get refreshment at strategic intervals along the route.
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Mick Harper
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As an experiment, could somebody with an OS map of the area, stick a ruler along either of these two straight lines

a noticeably straight north-south "Roman" road now the A346 (there's a similarly straight footpath running parallel) from the M4 to Marlborough.

and report back whether anything significant pops up when you extend the lines. Don't be picky (at this stage) whether they are significant or not (ie rule out only things you know are not). Also anything that is just 'off the line' for reasons which I'll explain later.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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If you follow the road marked 'Roman road' it crosses Savernake Forest and crosses the Kennet at Mildenhall to the south of which is Cunetio. This looks like a meeting point for various Roman roads connecting Winchester and Cirencester, also going west to Bristol via Avebury and east to Silchester on what is now the A4.

Returning to Ogbourne St George, the Ridgeway makes a detour around the village and crosses the River Og about half-way between Ogbourne St George and Ogbourne St Andrew. It then runs in a straight south-north direction, parallel with the same Roman road, but on the eastern (i.e.sheltered?) side of a wide and steep escarpment with "earthwork" markings at quite regular intervals, up to Liddington Castle, one of the earliest hill forts according to wiki, which also says it occupies the highest point in the borough of Swindon.
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Mick Harper
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We know that St George and St Michael are 'dragon' saints and bound up with the Megalithic System but how did St Andrew creep in?
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Hatty
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There's a round barrow in the churchyard of Ogbourne St Andrew complete with a legend (recorded in 1938) of "venomous vipers". Snakes and dragons connection? The barrow, not the church, would have been right on the St Michael line. There's no way of knowing if St Andrew was there from the beginning I suppose. At the southern end of Ogbourne St Andrew is a hamlet called Ogbourne Maizey, which doesn't have a church (though it does have a pub, formerly called The Wheatsheaf but re-named 'The Silk on the Down' being surrounded by race horse owners).
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Mick Harper
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At the southern end of Osbourne St Andrew is a hamlet called Ogbourne Maizey

Ah-ha, bubbling nicely. The Maze, or Troy Game, is a spiral sign put up to show that you have slightly fallen to one side of the route you're meant to follow.

But this is the only refererence to the actual word maizey that I can find.

We go to Marazion (near Penzance) for a week in June, and a week in September every year. The Maizey Day celebrations in Penzance are worth a visit. They take place at around mid-summer's day. Cornwall is a bit of heaven on earth!


More on this, please!
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Hatty
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We know that St George and St Michael are 'dragon' saints and bound up with the Megalithic System but how did St Andrew creep in?

Can you explain to us who are less enlightened why St George and St Michael have a megalithic meaning, or St Andrew while we're on Christian saints' names? They're surely later, superimposed onto earlier names? It might however, in this context, be relevant that Ogbourne St Andrew is to the west of the Og and Ogbourne St George to the east; the feast day of St Andrew is, interestingly, held on 30th November. Ogbourne or Okebourne is said to mean 'Occa's stream' (does a 'Scots' burn have any connection with a bourne?)

The village of Rockley which lies due west of Ogbourne Maizey was the site of a Templar priory, one hide of land was given to the order in 1155-6 according to Victoria County History. By my reckoning Rockley is equidistant from Avebury and Ogbourne St George. Half-way between Rockley and Ogbourne Maizey is 'Old Eagle', an inn officially called the St John Arms, at a sort of triangular 'T' junction bisected by the Ridgeway, snaking north to Barbury, and the Wessex Ridgeway (also marked as 'Herepath or Green Street') heading west to Avebury from Marlborough in the east.

{Rockley's name derives from rooks not rocks apparently which I willingly accept; along the Ridgeway in the intermittent copses the sound of rooks is inescapable adding an air of loneliness. A local legend proclaimed that the manor at Rockley would fall if the rooks left, which recalls a similar story attached to the Tower of London. Is there a Tower connection too or was it a common-or-garden legend?}.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
We know that St George and St Michael are 'dragon' saints and bound up with the Megalithic System but how did St Andrew creep in?


Don't forget that in Ireland, the snakes were driven into the sea by a St. Patrick.
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Ishmael


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Isn't it funny that today, it is popular to construct mazes in corn fields -- and another, older American word for corn is maize.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Ogbourne Maizey is said to derive its name from the Maizey family but the only member of the family with a Maizey that's mentioned in a thirteenth century land transaction is one Robert de Maizey. The family could have just as well taken their name from the existing manor or they may have been from Maizey in Lorraine, France, which, by a strange coincidence, is just down the valley from Saint-Mihiel on the Meuse river. {Do these names pregnant with possible significance just crop up when you're looking?}

Ogbourne St George acquired its name in the fourteenth century, it was previously called Great Ogbourne or North Ogbourne (to distinguish it from Ogbourne St Andrew which was called Little Ogbourne and then South Ogbourne).
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Mick Harper
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Goodness, what a typical can of worms or just another mare's nest we have turned up. It's always impossible to tell which despite the urgings of both sides. For instance

Maizey in Lorraine, France, which, by a strange coincidence, is just down the valley from Saint-Mihiel on the Meuse river

How do you assess coincidence? It's probably a simple case of
a) Maizey being a corruption of Meuse
b) the Lord of Maizey joining William the Conker
c) being given the estate of Ogbourne for his assistance
d) and naming the bit where he lived Ogbourne Maizey

Alternatively
a) Maizey is a corruption of maze
b) a maze (ie a spiral) is the sign you put on the landscape to tell travellers that they are off the St Michael line
c) St Mihiel is on the local St Michael line.

Ogbourne St George acquired its name in the fourteenth century, it was previously called Great Ogbourne or North Ogbourne (to distinguish it from Ogbourne St Andrew which was called Little Ogbourne and then South Ogbourne).

Now frankly this makes no sense. You are saying that a village was called North Ogbourne then it was called Great Ogbourne then it was called Ogbourne St George, and all this to distinguish it from Ogbourne St Andrew when it was already distinguishable by being called Ogbourne rather than Ogbourne St Andrew.

This simply cannot be true, which is no surprise to anyone who has spent five minutes in the company of the dreaded place-name-tribe. What is fascinating is that so many names (six!) can be traced for two very obscure settlements in a time when not a single place in England can be identified for sure (no maps so you are constantly relying on subjective accounts).

Can you explain to us who are less enlightened why St George and St Michael have a megalithic meaning, or St Andrew while we're on Christian saints' names? They're surely later, superimposed onto earlier names?

Orthodoxy says that somebody came along in the fourteenth century and renamed Great Ogbourne Ogbourne St George. Presumably they would say that this was because a church was built there and dedicated to St George, the patron saint of England.

Megalithics would probably say that St George was selected centuries before this because the early church built on/rededicated sacred sites already there and tended to use the appropriate saint. In this case, Ogbourne -- being on the Dragon Line...is it? -- was given a dragon saint's name.
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Hatty
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What is fascinating is that so many names (six!) can be traced for two very obscure settlements in a time when not a single place in England can be identified for sure

The Og doesn't amount to much on paper but there isn't a great deal of competition; there's no other river in the area. {Rockley to the west is on the Hungerbourne or Rockley Bourne which has a 'rising' every three or four years for a few weeks in winter.}

The church of St Andrew was given to the abbey of Bec-Hellouin (a prestigious Benedictine monastery in Normandy which also owned St Neots Priory in Cambridgeshire as well as land just outside London, now Tooting Bec) by Maud of Wallingford but it's hard to determine whether the various estates that passed back and forth were part of St George or St Andrew and why such august institutions as the London Charterhouse and King's College Cambridge vied for land rights in this unprepossessing, though presumably profitable, area. The church lands of St Andrew along with the manor eventually passed to St. George's chapel, Windsor, in the early fifteenth century.

Megalithics would probably say that St George was selected centuries before this because the early church built on/rededicated sacred sites already there

Ogbourne St Andrew is the only known example of a prehistoric barrow in a Wiltshire churchyard, but the juxtaposition of churches and Roman or prehistoric features occurs elsewhere in the Marlborough region, most obviously at Avebury.

The barrow was excavated in 1884 and it was found to contain Saxon and medieval burials which is unsurprising; apparently in the seventeenth century it was used as "the base of a windmill". A windmill in a valley in a downland region is rather surprising (especially as the valley is narrowest at this point). The sails of a windmill are like a cross, a saltire cross rather.
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Mick Harper
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Hatty's last post reminded me that St Neots cropped up in the As I was Going To St Ives thread (the two places are quite close) and in which Bec also appeared (can't remember how) so I googled in st neots and bec and got this

http://www.stevesachs.com/papers/paper_thesis.html

Just read the first para of the Acknowledgements to get a flavour of how these things can wend their weird way.

why such august institutions as the London Charterhouse and King's College Cambridge vied for land rights in this unprepossessing, though presumably profitable, area

The only explanation for this would appear to be that control of the Ogbourne area gives you control over animals coming and going along the Ridgeway. This 'control' might be a formal toll or it might be permission to use the 'bourne' in Ogbourne as the only available water in an area of dry chalk upland. But either way it would (wouldn't it?) be something rather unusual in late medieval England.
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Hatty
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Just read the first para of the Acknowledgements to get a flavour of how these things can wend their weird way.

A strange juxtaposition, mercantile and internet law; there is however a definite sense of 'networking' carrying on looking at land and legal records of territorial grants and marriages. {It's surely not correct to say that merchants were above the law, rather that, bar the Templars whose organisation was effectively disbanded, the entrepreneurs and 'industrialists' consisted of the great landowning aristocrats and monastic orders; the London merchant corporations with their Hanseatic connections were the exception.}

The only explanation for this would appear to be that control of the Ogbourne area gives you control over animals coming and going along the Ridgeway. .... But either way it would (wouldn't it?) be something rather unusual in late medieval England.

Even now there are noticeably few roads in the downs, you can literally walk for miles and only see an occasional minor north-south one. Between the northern (M4) route to Bristol and the southern (A4) one to Bath via Avebury (another 'Roman' road) there are no other obvious east-west connections. Without major rivers there would be no means of controlling the traffic or profiting from it; you could circumvent Ogbourne St George by using a drover's route (which I inadvertently discovered) connecting the road leading to the village with the main 'Roman' road but it would add several miles to the journey.

Is Avebury the point at which the chalk uplands run out and normal conditions prevail as it were?
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Hatty
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a maze (ie a spiral) is the sign you put on the landscape to tell travellers that they are off the St Michael line

Never heard of this 'sign' before. It's odd though, as a spiral is snake-like you'd think a snake-like sign would confirm you were on the right track (the Dragon line). British signposting was probably never enlightening, then or now.
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