“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
Roald Dahl

Ridgeway Ancestors

Stand high on The Ridgeway in what is now South Oxfordshire, close to the raised earth mound of Scutchamer Knob and look northeastwards over Grim’s Dyke and the Icknield Way. You will find yourself gazing over ancient farmland with the valley of the River Thames in the distance. Here are ancient villages and towns dotted around the landscape, where farmers have lived and toiled for countless generations. Imagine, if you can, this scene without the vast power station of Didcot. Journey back in time, perhaps just 50 or 100 years, to see how beautiful and fertile and generous this land was for our forebears.

This is the land of my maternal ancestors. Here are my roots within this island, this beautiful sacred land of Albion. Here, unlike my Irish ancestors, there are no grand tales of heroism and war by my family, of conquest and royal divine marriage. They were of this earth and tilled this soil. Here, in the villages of old Berkshire, in West Hagbourne and in Appleford, is where my mother’s line lived and died for generations.

This is a land steeped in history and legend, and a land of which they were intensely proud. I would sit and talk to my Grandfather and Grandmother, who spoke of their land, their County, their Berkshire. They talked of the land as their lover and friend, they talked of the White Horse of Uffington and of Wayland’s Smithy and Dragon Hill as if they owed it. And of course, they did. It was their land, and was sacred to them. They talked of pride of Abingdon and how old and important it was, and of Wantage and it’s association with King Alfred. And of course, they talked of Oxford, just some 15 miles north, but that was another County, another world of learned and important folk.

The landscape around this magical part of Britain is full of ancient, sacred and magical sites. There is, of course, White Horse Hill at Uffington, but there are other places. Wittenham Clumps, once part of Berkshire and only 2 miles from where my grandmother was born has legends of it’s own.

Wittenham Clumps

Wittenham Clumps is the local name given to a group of three distinct hills, called by some the Sinodun Hills. Ancient trees top them all and so the name of Wittenham Clumps has been given to them. One of the hills is called Castle Hill and is said to be where two Earth Energy lines (not ley lines) – the Michael and Mary Lines – cross and form a ‘nodal point’, similar to those found at Glastonbury and Avebury. Castle Hill has some local folklore and has a reputation with numerous connections to witchcraft and to the forces of light and dark in constant ebb and flow. In 1844 Joseph Tubbs carved this poem on “Poem Tree” in the Clumps:

As up the hill with labouring steps we tread
Where the twin clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit gain’d, at ease reclining stay
And all around the widespread scene survey
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befell.
See on the skyline there, yon shapely mound
That ancient earthwork formed old Mercia’s bound
In misty distance see the furrow heave
There lies forgotten lonely Gwichelm’s grave.
And in the vale where stands the stately tower
In days gone by, up rose the Roman power.
Around the hill the ruthless Danes entrench’d
And these fair plains with gory slaughter drench’d.
And yonder there, where Thames’ smooth waters glide
In later years appeared monastic pride.
And in the field where stands the grazing herd
High walls were crumbled, stone coffins disinterr’d.
Such in the course of time is the wreck which fate
And awful doom await the earthly great.

The Ridgeway

On part of the Ridgeway between where it rises from the Thames Valley at Goring, where it follows the contours of the Berkshire Downs between Goring and White Horse Hill is an area steeped in history and myth. There are many ancient sites here – burial mounds, earthworks whose purpose we cannot tell, and old fortifications. The earliest monuments are the round barrows, burial chambers dating from Bronze Age times, roughly from 2000 to 750 BC. Of course Uffington White Horse, Dragon Hill and Wayland’s Smithy are well known. The White Horse at Uffington feels like a spiritual home for me, the energies are often so intense there. But other sites have captured my imagination and more….

Scutchamer Knob(Cwichelmslaewe)

Within a small woodland adjacent to the ancient Ridgeway path, where it crosses the parish of East Hendred, stands Scutchamer Knob. It is a raised earth mound and legend has it that it is the burial mound of the Saxon king Cwichelm. There are two Cwichelms of the Royal House of Wessex named in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. One, an otherwise unknown prince, died in 593, the other, son of King Cynegils & Sub-King of Upper Wessex, died in 636. Hence the mound’s name, Cwichelmslaewe, first recorded in 990. Scutchamer Knob was excavated and ruthlessly dug away in 1842, which has given it the shape of a crescent moon.

The excavations here discovered the moot-stake, an oaken stump bound with willow twigs – unless this was a post for the beacon, which was later set up on the mound. No sign was found of any burial, although it was clearly believed that the old king Cwichelm lay buried beneath this place of judgement. Cwichelmslaewe may have been the site of the signing of a charter whereby Cwichelm received 3,000 hides of land by Aescendun from the King of Wessex.

The men of Berkshire met at Cwichelmslaewe; it was a meeting place and a place of magic. The Danes struggled uphill to camp here in 1006, observing a prophecy that if they did so they would never take a ship from England again – which came to pass in the usual grim way of prophecies, for the men of Wessex killed them, every one.

Meetings of one kind or another persisted on this hill. As late as 1620 the inhabitants of East Ilsley, on being granted a charter for a fair, demanded in the interests of their monopoly that the customary market at the barrow be put down.

Icknield Way

The Icknield way was a trading route from Norfolk to the southwest, mainly part of the road network now. The Icknield way follows ridges from Thetford to Ivinghoe, follows parts of the Ridgeway and roads to Streatley, here it follows the line of the Ridgeway but slightly to the north via Wantage to Wanborough. The name Icknield comes from the old english word for upper.

Grim’s Dyke

This is a large linear earthwork named after the Nordic god Grim. Little is known about this earthwork, possibilities include boundaries and defence, perhaps to link hill forts. The largest section remaining on the Ridgeway is from Mongewell to Nuffield.

Experiences

Over my lifetime, and since I began to consciously try to attune my own energies with those of the earth around me, the earth beneath my feet, I have seen so many things. Many of them I have come to understand with time, some of them remain a mystery, an elusive truth just out of reach. There has been much discussion on the changes in energies folk are feeling at the moment, some see it as a result of Uranus moving into Pisces, others because of other reasons, and I have to say I have felt something profoundly different over recent months.

But an experience at Glastonbury seems to have caused a ripple, a chain of events, of changed consciousness and experiences that has left me forever changed. I am still trying to come to terms with what happened, to what continues to happen, and recently in conversation with a dear friend, I tried to put it into words.

I failed miserably. But in that failure there was a seed of truth, another small step towards understanding what is happening. On Glastonbury Tor the earth shifted. Not literally, although the feeling was as if it had. I described it as ‘riding the Dragon’, and that is as close as a physical description can come. The air around changed, moved, shifted, and the world seemed to dim and there was a glimmer of something through the atmosphere. Just a glimmer, yet I can see it, perhaps more feel it even now.

Throughout the week of that initial experience there seemed to be something hovering around me, occasionally it was closer, occasionally more elusive, yet it was never far away. Then on my visit to The White Horse at Uffington the most incredible ‘continuation’, the sheer exhilaration of seeing something for the first time came upon me. Once again there was that intense feeling of riding the Dragon, of things, of energies shifting. But this time the air quivered and shifted. This world we inhabit shimmered and shifted and dimmed, as if it were a vision, and I was faced with experiencing the living Otherworld. The truth is I have no idea if it was the real Otherworld, or what, but I cannot describe it any other way. It was as if I was there, in space and time and place within the world I inhabit when I enter my internal Grove and meditate, but this had happened before my eyes, without thought or idea or preconception. In some ways it was the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced, yet it has left me feeling disconnected, strange, maybe a little unsure and nervous. As if I am always looking over my shoulder to see what is there – to see if the spirits are still with me, looking at (after?) me, checking me out. It is often disconcerting, and I find it so hard to settle.

I was at Stonehenge the week after to celebrate Midsummer’s Day with the Bards of Cor Gawr. There seemed to me a strange atmosphere of sheer expectation around. As the Sun rose, and the Skylark sang his greeting and the mist rose around us I felt as if it was once again hiding truths from me, tantalising me, as it shifted and played amongst the stones and those present.

These experiences seem to be coming more and more often to me, unbidden, often unexpectedly, and even in my sleep I am sensing this change, this transformation.

And so my journey continues, taking me to places and experiences I had never imagined let alone expected. Where next? Time will tell.