Category: Ancient Sites

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The Arcane Landscape In Suffolk Revealed

History, the ritual landscape and geometry once resonated very much as one. Faint traces of our ancestors whose silent whispers in the landscape once conveyed so much awe and splendour now sadly lie silent, their purpose and meaning largely forgotten, for in general there is a present day lack of any real sense of connectedness.

The Avebury Complex

The stone circle and henge that surrounds the village of Avebury, is only one in a series of monuments concentrated in this small area. The site is a remnant of a ritual Neolithic landscape, which still survives although degraded with time and the actions of over zealous groups in past centuries.

Kilmichael Country House Hotel, Brodick

Kilmichael is possibly the oldest house on the Isle of Arran and is associated with the Fullerton family who were one of the two major landowners on the island. The name itself indicates the location of the house may be on the site of an early Christian cell dedicated to St Michael. An apparition of a Grey Lady supposedly haunts the hotel.

St Patrick’s Well

Around 450AD St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland is supposed to have preached on the banks of Ullswater in Cumbria. The whole Patterdale area is named after him. In Glenridding a Holy Well dedicated to St Patrick can still be found roughly one mile outside of the village of Glenridding.

St Machar’s Cathedral

Still referred to as a Cathedral, St Machar’s has not held a Bishop’s seat since the Reformation and is in reality a high kirk. Legend has it that St Machar was informed by God to find a place where a river bends like a bishops crozier and then to establish a church there. Hence in 580 St Machar founded his church in Aberdeen where the River Don flows upon such a route.

Loch Awe

Loch Awe is Scotlands third largest fresh water loch at with a length of 35km and total surface area of 14.9 miles. It shares a common legend about its creation which concerns a well that flooded.

Silbury Hill

This hill is the biggest man made mound in Europe. It is 130 feet high and 100 feet across its flat top surface.

The hill was built around 2500BC, formed with some of the chalk from the great henge at Avebury, and built in a complex lattice structure of in-filled chalk walls.

Westbury White Horse

A conventional looking horse it measures 107 feet tall and 175 feet across. The horse sits below Bratton Hill Iron Age fort. The hillfort has a Bronze Age barrow within its fortifications suggesting an earlier heritage.

Woodhenge

Woodhenge is much older than Stonehenge and is aligned to the Midsummer sunrise. The monument consisted of concentric rings of tall wooden posts and must have been an impressive sight when it was completed. Rings of concrete markers now mark where the posts would have originally stood.