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Round Barrow(s)
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I walked here along the Cotswold Way from the Bevil Grenville monument: it's a very pleasant walk, though it was extremely hot at the time. You do feel as though you are treading in the footsteps of people of long ago, as you walk along a secluded sunken green lane with water trickling down it. To add to Moss's nature notes, in the summer sunshine the route was full of fluttering butterflies of many different species.
The mounds were overgrown with nettles. It felt like a very domestic or specifically personal spot - the views are quite enclosed and limited really, and you could imagine that the people in the barrows were definitely the farmers of the valley below. The windows of the buildings down there stared up at me and I felt I was intruding. I followed a little path in the grass in an effort to find St. E..'s holy well*. I found a circular concrete capped well and assumed that was it (it was nice to think the water was still being used, even if it didn't look as romantic as I'd hoped). In retrospect I may have been looking in the wrong place - there are a lot of springs round here.
As I made back for the car I realised I could see Morgan's Hill from the top of Lansdown - practically Avebury and a long way away.
*finally found the name - St Eanswyth. Phil Quinn's book on the 'holy wells of Bath and Bristol region' mentions it being at ST734705. It's on the parish boundary and is on the Anglo Saxon estate charter of 931 as Eanswythe Wyllas (St Eanswyth's Well).
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Posted by Rhiannon
8th July 2006ce
Edited 24th February 2014ce
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