It’s around 3100BC. You are standing in the middle of a large clearing in a vast forest in South-West Anglia (or maybe it already was a wind-swept plain). Around you, you and your friends have dug out an amazing large round circular ditch and bank, using deer antler picks, a hugely laborious project…some 120 meters in diameter. You left a large gap to the north-east and a smaller one to the south to provide entrance to this holy place. Just inside the ring, you dug 56 pits for standing timbers, forming a timber circle. Near the pits you buried your cremated dead.
Time passed. 600 hundred years later, timber was abandoned in favour of stone. Your descendants formed two much smaller concentric circle of standing stones, (blue stones) up to 80 in all, around the center point of the circular ditch. The ditch is hardly noticeable these days, having mostly silted up over the centuries. The outlines are visible. It was another herculean task to haul these two-ton stones from a quarry about 140 miles away!! In fact, one stone, the Altar Stone came from the barbarians in Scotland, strong evidence of contact between northern Scotland and southern Anglia. Game was plentiful to hunt and thus there was spare time for this task. It was important.
Just outside the ring, but in line with the entrance to the south-east, you erected the Heel Stone. At the Summer solstice an observer standing within the stone circle, looking northeast through the entrance, would see the Sun rise in the approximate direction of the Heel Stone.
More time passed. It is now 2600-2400BC and the blue stones have mostly disappeared or fallen, but in another burst of activity, 30 enormous sarsen stones, each weighing up to 25 tons were dragged here from a quarry nearby. The stones were erected in a circle, thirty meters in diameter… using bronze tools, you dreesed their tops and fashioned mortise and tenon joints with the 30 lintel stones resting on top. Within the circle, these Neolithic people placed five megaliths, each weighing 50 tons, upright with lintels on top in a horseshoe shape facing northeast. Later in the early Bronze age, 2300BC, another ring of smaller blue stones were erected inside the ring of huge sarsen stones. This was the last sloppy effort, as all of them fell down or disappeared with the passage of time.
It is thought that as many as 4000 individuals would have gathered here for the midwinter and midsummer celebrations from the skeletons of the large numbers of animals slaughtered around the site. Some animals had been brought from as far as the Scottish Highlands for the celebrations.
Of course, this is the history of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK. We visited on a cold blustery day. Standing behind the rope barricade, staring at these immense behemoths, up to 24 feet tall (with another six feet under ground), I was amazed and awed (and cold) thinking that these were built by Neolithic man (with help from aliens from outer space…kidding, just kidding, I think?).
The place felt…special. I am sure I have trod in the footsteps of ancient peoples countless times before, but…this place felt special. I could have wished for a nice sunny warm day, but not to be. Before being blown off our feet, we made our way back to the visitor center. BTW, the entrance fee was a steep $50CDN. It is, of course, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Only some 25 miles north of Stonehenge is another henge…the Avebury Henge, Europe’s largest Neolithic stone circle built between 2800 and 2200 BC and it encloses, in turn, two smaller circles. Like Stonehenge, there is a circular bank and ditch outside the outside circle. Its diameter is 380 yards and the circumference is one kilometer. Impressive! This area of Wiltshire is full of Neolithic henges, ‘other’ standing stones (there is the Adam and Eve stones nearby), burial barrows here and there. They are all walkable from Avebury and are considered to be a vast sacred site, aaaaaand it is FREE. Of course, it is a World Heritage Site.
We chose a converted barn, Beaconsfield Farm Holiday Cottages, near selected sites for two weeks for our stay..
A few kilometers away was Wells, the little city that calls itself the biggest little city in England. The Cathedral is the big draw, dating to 1175 in the 'new' gothic style.
Inside, the Jesse Window is a most splendid example of 14th century stained glass, and has miraculously survived the vicissitudes of the times during the English Civil War, narrowly escaping destruction…
…and a most distinguishing feature of the cathedral is its scissor arches. In 1313, a wooden tower covered by lead was added to the church, and like Pisa, almost as soon as it was finished it began to lean. To prevent its total collapse, the two main supporting pillars were buttressed, until the famous arches were put in place by the master mason, William Joy, and a very distinctive feature it is - never seen its like elsewhere.
The cathedral clock is the second oldest clock mechanism in Britain, and probably in the world, having survived in its original condition; built in 1390, having two faces, one towards the inside of the church, with jousting knights rushing around above the clock every quarter hour, and a face to the outside with kind-of-knights (squires?) banging on bells.
And why is Wells called Wells, well. it’s because of the wells, or rather several springs which still gush forth abundant waters, and in one case, run down the gutters of Main Street, others feed the enormous moat around the Bishop’s Palace, where, every year on the August Bank Holiday, the annual Wells Moat Boat Races occur, featuring unique, one of a kind rafts…well attended this year due to decent weather, i.e. it did not rain.
The Bishop’s Palace is really not worth a look, though the place is more like a fortress (anything could happen in those days to Bishops), but the gate houses were neat.
Wells offered one more interesting tidbit, The Vicar’s Close. It is Europe’s oldest residential street with the original buildings still intact – a planned street from the mid-14th century. Twenty-seven residences line the sides of the street with a chapel and library at the north end and the entrance and a hall at the south.
The entrance to the right has a spiral staircase to the upper ‘hall’ and also provided a covered walkway to the Cathedral.
Nearby Glastonbury has a long history but its claim to fame are the various legends swirling in the neighbourhood, which has attracted a New Age Community into Druidism, the occult, etc. The High Street has various shops where you can have your Tarot cards deciphered to tell you whether you will be rich soon, or dead soon, (actually, I believe they remove the Death card from the deck), or have your tea leaves read, your hand scrutinized, or your head examined…you can buy special crystals aligned to your wavelength…or just buy a nice geode (for a nice price). The shops offer hippie style clothes and there was occasionally the whiff of a certain herb as a person walked by…
A ways outside the town stands Glastonbury Tor, a sandstone hill with St. Michaels’ Tower on top. There used to be a church as well, but it was destroyed by the “Dissolution (read: Destruction) of the Monasteries” during the time of Henry VIII, at which time Glastonbury Abbey was also destroyed. The Tor has been reputed to be the Avalon of the legend of King Arthur, since the discovery in the 12th century of his and his queen Guenivere’s tomb (neatly labelled, by the way, hmmmmm). There is, in fact, a so-described, tomb of King Arthur in the ruins of the Abbey, and some old bones were found underneath but Arthur?? Really?
Someone did a four-year study of all the various claims, which included a visit by Jesus!!!, by Joseph of Arimathea with the Holy Grail, etc, etc… they speculated that the ‘myth’ of King Arthur’s connection to Glastonbury was concocted by the monks of the Abbey to meet a crisis of finances caused by a devastating fire. So, guess what, the Tor has been a place of pilgrimage over the ages. Success!!
Glastonbury Abbey was founded in the 8th century and by the 14th it was one of the richest and most powerful monasteries in England. The monks controlled vast tracts of land, but with Henry’s schism from Rome, most all the Abbeys were sacked, destroyed and their lands and valuables delivered to Henry and his followers. Sic transit gloria.
Close to Wells and near our rental is the town of Cheddar and the Cheddar gorges and cave system. Its claim to fame is that this large village is the origin of cheddar cheese, and in fact during our tour of the caves we saw some large rounds of cheddar aging in their cages. Cheddar (or, at least, a cheese made in Cheddar) has been made here since the 12th century.
The drive through the gorge was pretty, though all too short, however, it is the deepest gorge in Britain. The shortest way to Cheddar from our digs was blocked by road construction, so we took a detour up into the Mendip Hills and around to come at it from the north instead of from the west…on single track roads. More on this later, however on this trip, easing around a bend I came to a screeching halt in front of a tractor pulling a load of hay in the opposite direction. No choice but to back up until I would come to one of the lay-byes where you can pull in and let the other vehicle pass. As I was backing up another car pulled up behind me…forced to back up as well. By the time the third car was behind, I knew we were not all going to fit into the lay-bye, only to have the tractor, after only a few hundred feet, open a gate and pull into a pasture (note that it was really the human who opened the gate).
As expected, the cave system was very civilized, no scrambling and getting yourself dirty, not even a helmet, though in places, ducking for tall people was much recommended. Otherwise, cute, with the added mood lighting, and some modified settings, but mostly original drip stone stuff.
Not too far to the north from Wells is the city of Bath, a decidedly Georgian city – no nonsense severe buildings, no Baroque fancies here, it’s British Empire stuff, the premier showcase of which is the Royal Crescent. Of course, the reason one came to Bath in the 18th century was to ‘take the waters’, curative, don’t you know, as the Romans knew, almost two millenia earlier, taking advantage of the hot springs to build their iconic baths. We came to look see. The city sits on the river Avon of Stratford/Shakespeare fame, although up there it’s pretty narrow.
The Roman Baths are worth a look, for sure, The attached museum and the videos of Roman life projected onto wall-sized screens were cleverly done. The museum also has one of the sulfurous springs gushing forth and then flowing into the central basin.
Of note is the view of the basement, where columns of typical flat bricks used by the Romans were used to hold up the floor AND was heated, thereby heating the floor and the room itself (this was a strictly female bath video). Clothed servants were seen bustling around serving the patrons. The tourist scene around the baths was in constant motion, with the occasional bobbies patrolling the area.
Unfortunately, just as we were exiting the baths, the sky started to spit, the winds picked up…we stopped and had snacks on the square and headed for home…hoping to return the next day. Not to be, as the next three days were washouts. Oh well, every trip can’t be perfect.
OK, about those roads. Make sure to tell your GPS to choose the quickest route, not the shortest route as it will take you through the narrowest single lane forest paths available. The most annoying parts of our journeys were that just when you thought that your single lane road had broadened out to accommodate two cars, and just as you stepped onto the accelerator, it quickly shut down again...and heaven help you, if you get caught in rush hour in Axbridge, just west of Cheddar, very picturesque (King John's supposed hunting lodge is there)...when cars converge from three directions through the single main square, along single-ish roads, heaven help you, some more, if there is a lorry (truck to us non-Brits). Not for those with high blood pressure.
Somerset: gently rolling hills, ample hiking opportunities, that we did not take, this time, archaeology galore, did I mention the hamlet of Wookey (yes, Wookey) with its attractive pub, or the one in Wells on the square, 'mind your head', (only short people served here...just kidding) serving pub fare. Plenty to do and see, to discover, just mind those roads.
More pics below:
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