The River Swale

Rivers had special significance in ancient Britain, both for practical reasons such as transport, navigation and water supply, and for spiritual reasons. Water has always been closely linked to the spiritual realms and Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments were commonly built near rivers. Stonehenge, linked to the River Avon, and the monuments on the Thames and its tributaries are famous. The River Swale in northern Britain was once of similar sacred importance, now largely forgotten.

The Swale derives from sualuae, which means ‘deluge’. The river is one of the fastest flowing in Britain and can rise three metres in twenty minutes as rainwater pours off the dales into the valley. Even where the river crosses the gentler lowlands and joins with the Ure, it is still fierce when in spate.

The Swale as it joins the Ure

The importance of the Swale likely links to the Neolithic trade in stone axes. Greenstone axes were crafted in Langdale in the Lake District and transported all across Britain, and had a significance far beyond their practical use. Their route into southern Britain likely followed the River Eden through Cumbria, also the focus of many sacred monuments, and then the River Swale which leads towards the lowlands.

Maiden Castle

The unusual henge of Maiden Castle was built on high ground above the Swale near the village of Grinton in upper Swaledale. Further downstream at Catterick was another henge and timber enclosure, dated to around 2500BC and only recently discovered. The huge standing stones of the Devil’s Arrows are a short distance from the confluence of the Swale with the River Ure. Another interesting place is St Michael’s Church near Downholme, on a unusually shaped and very prominent hill called How Hill. This would have been a key landmark for people following the river millennia before the church was built, and perhaps had also sacred significance long before this point. It is certainly a peaceful and powerful feeling spot today.

St Michael’s Church and How Hill

Old Sarum

Old Sarum is an Iron Age hillfort just north of Salisbury, later adapted into a Norman motte and bailey castle which contained Salisbury’s first cathedral. Salisbury, only a few miles from Stonehenge, has long been considered one of Britain’s most special spiritual places and this stretches back far into prehistory.

The outer bank of the fort.

The fort is on a natural hill which has commanding views over the Avon valley and surrounding area, and draws the eye from miles around. It was an ideal spot for an Iron Age statement of command and power.

The Iron Age ditch and two banks, which enclose an area around 400m diameter, were cleared and redug in Norman times, the reason for their incredible preservation. A visit is recommended just to see how the vast ditches of places such as Avebury and many other hillforts would have looked before thousands of years of erosion and infilling. Standing on the bank and looking into the thirty-metre deep ditch is a vertigo-inducing experience to say the least. It was about more than simple defence. It was a statement of power.

Old Sarum’s ditch. The very small sheep gives an indication of scale. 

Ironically, little more is known of the early site. The Norman reconstruction which preserved the ditches removed everything else. The fort was first built around 400BC, and occupation continued into the Roman period, where it became known as Sorviodunum. Five Roman roads converge at Salisbury which illustrates the site’s importance. Some of these roads were in use long before the Romans arrived, and may even date back to the Neolithic period, which marks the earliest occupation of the site.

The view east from the bank. The Roman road leading towards London is visible.

Salisbury marks the confluence of five rivers, the Avon, Nadder, Bourne, Ebble and Wylye, which would make it a hugely important place in the time when rivers were the main mode of transport and also the most important landmarks when travelling across a land devoid of manmade features. This is likely a big factor in Sarum’s continuing practical and spiritual importance.

The confluence of the Avon and the Nadder.

Sarum was captured from the British by the Saxons and then abandoned until invading Vikings forced its reoccupation. Saxon mercenaries who guarded the junction of the Roman roads lived and were buried nearby, and other rich Saxon burials were found close to the foot of the fort, including that of a sixth-century woman who was buried with elaborate grave goods including a purse ring made of elephant ivory, blue glass beads and a copper brooch. This high-status woman, who had trade links stretching as far as Africa, illustrates the continuing importance of this district, two thousand years after Wessex had become the richest land in Britain.

It is from this period that the name derives. Sarum is an adaptation of Seresberie, a late Saxon-period burgh and Royal Mint. This later evolved into Salisbury. The prefix Sar or Sear is probably a pre-Saxon personal name.

The Medieval castle, cathedral and town.

The fortified town of Old Sarum and its cathedral were later moved south to New Sarum, or Salisbury town, and the ancient site was abandoned to the wilderness.

The view south towards Salisbury. The new cathedral is visible.

The Burton Dassett Hills

The Burton Dassett Hills in Warwickshire lie just north of the Edgehill ridge, along the course of an ancient routeway which passes sites such as the Rollright Stones, and are associated with a range of strange phenomena.

The hills are a beautiful place with wide views across the countryside in all directions, and have a particularly powerful atmosphere which most visitors consciously or unconsciously sense and draws them back over and again. Ley hunters attest to a powerful current of earth energy flowing through the area.

The view from Bonfire Hill

The hills have long been associated with fiery apparitions, once identified as angels or saints, and in more scientific times as geoplasma or earthlights, which appear as person-sized orbs or columns of light in darkness or as misty clouds in daylight. These apparitions float across the ground, spiral into the sky, and can disturbingly set fire to wooden buildings. Their appearance clusters around periods of heavy rain, and scientists believe the ironstone bedrock combined with underground flowing water creates the phenomena.

Burton Dassett Holy Well

The hills in Roman times were known as the Phoenix Hills, a legendary bird born of fire, which perhaps links to their eerie apparitions. The northernmost hill, Bonfire Hill, was the site of Twelfth Night bonfires in the Middle Ages and was perhaps used as a beacon site long into pre-Christian times. Surprisingly, there are no remains of any prehistoric settlement or ritual sites on the hills, although it certainly seems as if the hills were of special significance.

Some of the stone carvings in the church

A holy well – where an orb of geoplasma once appeared and set light to a gatepost – and a Medieval church known as the ‘cathedral in the hills’ stand beside the ancient route to the hills. The church is popularly described as an especially powerful location, and its pillars are adorned with intriguing carvings including a green man, a winged beast with a human face, a fighting dragon and lion, and other more ordinary animals. Some people would link them to the hills’ tradition of fiery apparitions, but their explanation remains a mystery.  

The Red Horse of Tysoe

A reconstruction of the horse.

This probably ancient hill figure has been long destroyed, but it may once have had significance equal to the White Horse of Uffington. Today it survives only in local place names and business names.

The horse was cut into the steep escarpment of Edgehill in Warwickshire, a ridgeline of high ground which formed part of the long-distance ancient routeway which linked places such as the Rollright Stones, Traitor’s Ford and the Burton Dassett Hills. The area has an ancient spiritual heritage and is linked to ghostly phenomena.

The ancient routeway along Edgehill

The horse was formed of trenches cut into the clay subsoil and filled with a bright red, iron oxide-rich silt which is characteristic of the area and gave the figure its name. The horse, like the hill figure at Uffington, was intended to command the vast plain below the escarpment, which stretches to the west for several miles. From any point in the vale, the escarpment is visible on the horizon and the now vanished hill figure would have drawn the eye. It was a declaration to anyone who passed by.

The view over the Vale of the Red Horse

Unlike other monuments, hill figures are dependent on human agency for their survival. A few years of neglect and they vanish forever. It is also human agency which determines whether they retain their original outline or whether they are altered or improved according to the whim of the scourers. Or maybe this was the intention? So many ancient monuments, Stonehenge being a prime example, are now known to have been constantly modified and rearranged. Perhaps hill figures too were about the process of creation and recreation, and each successive generation added their own stamp to it?

A 19^th century recording of the horse

The first record of the horse’s presence dates to 1612, and local records from the 1640s state it was scoured every year. It seems it was much redefined over the centuries. The final version, ploughed up and destroyed in 1800, was a rather inferior design with a tail resembling a lion’s. A 20^th century investigation found evidence of this horse on the hillside, a little way above two other hill figures which it probably replaced.

The older figure was a galloping horse, 91 metres in length, with a smaller figure, probably a foal, in front of it. These were long grassed over by the 19^th century. The date of its construction is unknown, but it’s been suggested that, like the Uffington Horse, it dates to the Bronze Age. The horse became a symbol of power in the warrior societies of this time, and it features strongly in local legends such as Lady Godiva and the lady of Banbury Cross, perhaps part-forgotten memories of religious rites involving a woman (or Goddess) on horseback. The hill figure may have represented this deity, and proclaimed its might over the vast area it overlooked.

Another interesting point is the name of the nearby village. Tysoe derives from Tiw’s hoe; the hillside of Tiw. Tiw, or Tyr, was the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian God of warriors who gives his name to Tuesday. Was this hillside dedicated to Tiw by Anglo-Saxon settlers who found an already ancient and sacred figure on this hillside? It seems likely.

The escarpment looking down towards Tysoe

Traitor’s Ford, Warwickshire

Traitor’s Ford is a ford across the nascent River Stour in Warwickshire which eventually joins the Avon near Stratford on Avon. The water today trickles peacefully over a modern concrete crossing but the shallow and stony crossing has been in use for millennia.

The intriguing name is not entirely explained. Local legend states that here were hanged rebel soldiers during the Civil War in the 17^th century, but this is probably a recent invention. An antiquarian wrote in 1908 that he could find no local explanation or story for the name at all. More likely it is a corruption of ‘Trader’s Ford’.

           The ancient, sunken routeway

The ford was the crossing point of an ancient trackway, now partly a minor road and partly a footpath, known for some of its length as Ditchedge Lane. This ditch marks the boundary between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, an indication of its antiquity. The routeway was a trader’s route following the high ground in a near perfectly straight line towards the north and south, linking sites such as the Rollright Stones, Edgehill and the Burton Dassett Hills, all places which have a wealth of folklore and history surrounding them. These routeways were well-used by traders and cattle drovers by the Bronze Age, and are perhaps much more ancient still.

                 Ditchedge Lane

It certainly feels like an ancient and powerful routeway, sunken deep from millennia of feet and hooves, and the entirely untouched woodland in the swampy Stour valley is exactly how the ancient travellers would have known it. It feels like a small part of the past reaching out to touch the present.

The River Thames

It's interesting how a river can have a personality, and how that personality can survive through millennia and countless waves of incoming people.
The Thames is Britain’s most important river. Today it is a reflection of Britain’s commercial might as it flows through the heart of London, and for millennia it has been central to trade, defence, invasion, sustenance and ritual.

‘Thames’ is perhaps Britain’s oldest place name. It derives from Tamesis, the name recorded by the Romans, which has a pre-Celtic origin and means ‘dark’. This is in common with other river names including the Thame, a tributary of the Thames, and the Tamar in Cornwall. Its flow is typically muddy and it is tidal for a large stretch of its course. 'Dark' may also reflect its spirit, which even now is said to demand human lives each year, to suck swimmers inexplicably beneath its surface, and to whisper to people on its banks and entice them to jump. 

The confluence of the Thames and the Windrush in Oxfordshire

The river's importance far predates the Romans who founded Londinium. The Thames has one of the highest densities of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments of any British river. These include the great henge monuments of Stanton Harcourt near Oxford, the Dorchester Rings, and the henges under the city of Oxford and at Abingdon. Many of these were situated at confluence points, which were perhaps used strategically for their landmark value or symbolically as a meeting point of waters and people.

The Devil's Quoits at Stanton Harcourt

The source of the Thames is disputed but often said to be at Seven Springs in Gloucestershire. The river Kennet which flows through Wiltshire is one of its earliest tributaries, and is suggested by some to be the original ‘source’ river. The Kennet is sourced at the springs which surround the world-famous monuments of Avebury and Silbury Hill. Perhaps some of these monuments’ prestige came from their location at Britain’s watery heart.

The ritual importance predates even the Neolithic period. Large numbers of human skulls and other bones, along with stone axes and tools, were deposited in the waters of the Thames during the Mesolithic period, long before the first farmers arrived. There is increasing evidence that many of Britain’s sacred sites had a sanctity thousands of years older than previously realised.

                 The River Kennet

Many rivers have a female identity. The Thames is one of the few that is considered male. ‘Old Father Thames’, a bearded old man, has long been the personification of the river. It is often linked to the Egyptian Goddess Isis. The Thames at Oxford is called ‘Isis’. This is suggested to be a cult brought by the Romans, or an esoteric mystery cult of much greater antiquity, but in fact this is a much more recent name, probably coined by Oxford students in the Medieval period, and is a truncation of the Latin ‘Tamesis’.

Unusually, there is little more folklore associated with this mysterious and long-revered river.

            Old Father Thames

The River Severn

The River Severn, at 220 miles, is the longest river in Britain. It has been of vital importance for trading ships since historic times, was of strategic significance to the Romans, and possibly provided the route the earliest Neolithic farmers took into Britain, from which they spread into the Severn valley, the Cotswolds and the Welsh lowlands.

As well as transport, the river provided drinking water, fish and shellfish, a hunting ground for drinking animals and waterbirds, and it snatched life away through floods and tides surging over the mudflats. Like many rivers, the Severn was said to demand a human life every year. Its ever-changing moods were pivotal to the lives of those who lived around it.

The Severn is tidal as far as Maisemore, just north of Gloucester, and its tidal range of 15 metres is one of the highest in the world. This contributes to the formation of the Severn Bore, a tidal-wave like phenomenon caused by the vast volume of water forced into the river channel. The highest bores, of up to two metres and travelling at up to 13mph, are seen at the equinoxes but the bore occurs to some extent at each full and new moon. Tradition stated incorrectly that it took place each Good Friday, and Gloucestershire miners were traditionally given the day off to go and watch.

The Romans believed the bore was the approaching end of the world. The locals would have been well used to the occurrence, but no doubt would have linked it to a magical phenomenon or the actions of Gods or spirits. This probably links to the folklore surrounding the river.

‘Severn’ derives from Sabrina, a Romanised version of ‘Hafren’, the Celtic name which is still used in the Welsh language. This itself is a later adaptation of ‘Habren’, of unclear etymology but perhaps the oldest known British river name.  

Like many rivers worldwide, the Severn in folklore has a female identity, perhaps deriving from a long-forgotten River Goddess. In one story, a great Welsh landowner called Plynlimon, the geographic source of the Severn, decided to divide his estates between his three daughters, Severn, Wye and Rheidol. Each had to travel to the sea within a day and would then own the land they’d covered. Their travels became the three great rivers which arise in the Welsh hills.

In another story, Sabrina or Hafren was a maiden drowned in the river on the orders of her stepmother. She is sometimes seen swimming fruitlessly towards the bank.

The Severn is also linked to the God Nodens, likely a variation of the Celtic Lludd or Nuada, whose temple overlooked the Severn at Lydney. Unusually for an important river in Britain, there are almost no prehistoric sacred or ritual sites along its course. Perhaps its spirit, epitomised by the destructive bore, demanded otherwise.

The Ridgeway

The Ridgeway is a prehistoric trackway, perhaps Britain’s oldest road, which ran from the River Thames to East Anglia. A great deal of it runs along the chalk ridge of the Berkshire Downs, close to the ancient sites of Uffington, Avebury and Wayland’s Smithy, before crossing Salisbury Plain. It’s linked to Grimes Graves in Norfolk, a Neolithic flint mine of national importance.

Dating is difficult and relies on nearby prehistoric sites which seem to have been built in association with it. It’s believed to date from the Neolithic period, c3000BC.

It was used as a secure and passable all-year-round trade route, especially so in the Iron Age period, and forts were built nearby to control the route. Later armies took advantage of it, as did drovers taking livestock to distant markets.

The sarsen fields of the Marlborough Downs

Today it forms part of a long-distance footpath which runs for 87 miles across the downs, where people can walk in the footsteps of five thousand years of history. It’s a beautiful route. It offers views of Avebury and other ancient sites, the sarsen fields where stone was gathered for these ancient monuments and woodlands with unusual trees and plants. With little in the way of modern buildings or roads, it’s possible to imagine it’s a literal walk in history.

Bronze Age burial mounds alongside the Ridgeway