'About 1810 the ground covering and surrounding the stones was planted with fir trees and beeches, forming a circular plantation called here a folly, hence Wayland's Folly, a name that did not stick. The planting was after the site had been cleared at the direction of Lord Craven who owned the site, the monument being made considerably more conspicuous . . . In 1859 the firs having died were cut down, leaving the exterior ring of beeches. In 1861 it was referred to as in a very neglected state, covered with elder bushes, briars and nettles and when A L Lewis visited it in 1868 he referred to it as within a plantation the denseness of which made it difficult to trace the surrounding layout of stones.'
Clive Alfred Spinage
Myths and Mysteries of Wayland Smith
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At Rams Hill, on the downs about two miles north of seven barrows, part of the hilltop was at first enclosed by a bank and ditch; but around 1500BC stronger defensive ramparts were put up, with stout palisades on either side of the ditch. Recent excavations suggest that Uffington Castle may have superseded Rams Hill when a much larger and stronger encampment was needed.
Daphne Phillips
Berkshire - A County History
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The most important funerary monument remaining is the Lambourn Long Barrow, on the northern boundary of Lambourn parish, and standinga t the head of a shallow valley containing a group of later monuments known as Seven Barrows. The valley is now dry but may once have contained a spring worshipped in ancient times, and which, perhaps, was the reaosn for siting the barrows here. The Long Barrow has been badly damaged by centuries of ploughing and by a track running across one end used by farm vehicles and race horses. The barrow was excavated at least twice, but inexpertly, in the 19th century, and some human remains were removed. Rescue operations in 1964 found no great quantity of artefacts, but some of the potsherds resembled pottery found at the famous Neolithic camp on Windmill Hill, 20 miles away. A mass of sarsen stones disturbed by previous excavators may have formed a central core to the barrow.
Daphne Phillips
Berkshire - a county history
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I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of my day;
Along the sweet horse gallops I'd run.
And in the stars I'd play.
Where daisies fall, nightingales call
Little owls to play.
Oh I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of the day.
Come crows come sheep come chalk hedgerows,
I'd fly the big green hill.
Come nights come snow come stars' haloes,
I'd follow the greensand trail.
Where daisies fall, nightingales call
Little owls to play.
Oh I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of my day.
The horse the pack the moon the track,
All travel the north wind road.
The Thames it flows, the man down he goes
Along his winter road,
Far down his winter road.
Where daisies fall, nightingales call
Little owls to play.
Oh I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of my day.
Peter Please
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Vesper Vale
June, at evening, on the White Horse Hills!
O, joy is overflowing, hope fulfilled,
For summer lures long days to lavish pride.
Lush her rising cornfields - rich the downs
That trail, deep rounded, far to failing east.
Hedgerows riot thick and countless starred;
Green slopes are swathed with blush of clover pink.
Beneath, past weighing elms, in soundless rest
A village clusters down its ancient street.
Distance silver, amber, stretches over;
Wide the Vale and far the furthest view.
Droop of sundown, musing, dwells the listless
Prospect lightly. Sheltered farms, half hid,
Yet lie outspread, and meadows lonely; woods
Apparelled darkly - straying byways lost
In gathered trees, and low-set fields struck gold
By myriad buttercups. Afloat the plain
Late scented breaths are stirred, and fitful murmurs.
Hint of tedded hay pervades the heights'
Rare potpourri. The listening air goes filled
With trilling, winged of larks, from all the hills;
In random field light-footed rabbits play
And cattle gaze in deep unthoughtfulness.
Roye England
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The Ridgeway Long Distance Footpath was officially opened at Coombe Hill, near Wendover on 27th September, 1973. It runs for 85 miles from Overton Hill in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire, crossing the Thames at Goring Gap, and is marked along the way by sturdy oak signposts, low stone plinths and white painted 'acorn' waymarks. The trackways it follows were old before the Romans came, having been in continuous use since man first travelled across the face of Britain. Indeed, the Ridgeway is thought to be the oldest prehistoric track in the country.
Excerpt from the introduction of 'Walks Along the Ridgeway' by Elizabeth Cull and published in 1975.
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Vale of White Horse
The Vale was once a gem:
Far years speak beauty - make us long to know
Their ways - to treasure, prize,
As not the present, Can they be relived?
No, hardly now. And yet
Their joys survive - made yours, within these pages.
Come, let's seek them. Backward
Glance, and prove
What gracious days then shone.
This book recalls, alive, time past, sublime -
The massing of great elms,
Their shaded fields; deep thatch, men one with nature.
Roam with us these pages...
Find rich lands unspoilt - their paradise
Till now not sung, not known.
The Vale, seen still superb, awaits you here:
Oh, come with hope -
Explore...
-
Roye England
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To all those, of every generation,
who made the Vale the gem it once was -
a paradise,
shared and tended by the men who lived there;
who worked it, loved it, and kept it unspoilt:
till modern change struck, and not caring,
betrayed its charm.
Roye England
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All Ages Waken
Long thousand years fly lost
Since Alfred gazed the Vale in moods as these -
Ago when wildboar ranged the marshy plain
Ere forest yielded: when, cut hoar, the Horse
Saw Saxon truce with Dane. Yet no more rapt
Hung vesper magic then than pauses now
In beauty hallowed timeless, unbetrayed:
For, God -
All ages waken when there falls
Of evening, spell-bound, so enchanted calm
Roye England
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extract from Berkshire by Daphne Phillips
'...and in the grounds of Heatherwood Hospital at Ascot, where the remaining barrow was formerly one of a group of four. Excavation of the Heatherwood barrow in 1973 dated it to circa 1800BC.'
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'The ridge on which stands the iron-age hillfort of Tadmarton Camp is tentatively identified as the site of an Anglo-Saxon royal vill and the scene of a battle in 913. Nearby was the original glebeland of Hook Norton parish church, suggesting that the early ecclesiastical centre may also have been on the ridge, not in the village 2+1/2 miles away'
John Blair
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from Oxoniensia vol LI 1986
'in 1979 an earthwork enclosure known as the Devil's Churchyard was cleared of trees and undergrowth. The enclosure and associated boundary ditches have since been dated by excavation to the mid to late Iron Age.'
The site is described in the report as a heart-shaped enclosure of about 1 acre. A recent ash tree plantation has obliterated the NW earthworks.
From the ditch fills were identified bones of cattle, sheep and dog. Worked flint was also found, as was pottery which dated the site to the Iron Age.
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'The name is from that of a curvilinear earthwork upon the hill OE Weala byrig, 'Briton's or Welshman's fort'. In Gough's Camden it is called Cornhill, which may be the older name...'
Berkshire place names, G W B Huntingford
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'Discovered about 1850, the NE end of the site is in the wood and crossed by the cart tack. It is c.220ft long, 70ft wide at its E end and here 4+1/2ft high. Parallel side-ditches originally 7ft deep, flank the mound, whose ends are open. Excavation has shown that their contents provided a turf cover with chalk crust to a core of sarsens which constitute the mound. Near the E end a contracted female burial has been found, associated with extra human bones and a necklace or bracelet of polished common dog whelk. Date (C14) circa 3,400 BC.'
Nicholas Thomas, Guide to Prehistoric England, 1976
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The burh or 'fort' is that on Blewburton Hill, "now and for some time past under the plough... on the summit an irregular oval of about 408 by 149 yards, that seems to have been enclosed by a ditch and rampart."
Rev J Wilson D.D. in Transactions Newbury FC 1872)
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The Oldest Road, J R L Anderson and Fay Godwin
'To the north of the punchbowl there is a hillock or tumulus, and beyond the tumulus there is an area of curiously broken ground, like the remains of quarrying on a doll's house scale, which I think must once have been open-cast flint workings, though they are not markes as such. Where the chalk is exposed there are plenty of flint cores still to be seen, and you can re-create in your imagination a vivid picture of prehistoric men working away with antler picks to get at them.'
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A sharks tooth (a 'mako' shark) was found in the bell barrow and reported as possibly having been used as a decoration (i.e. necklace).
(wiltshire archaeological mag, vols 72/73 - 1977/78)
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Barry Cunliffe - Wessex to 1000 AD (published 1993)
'Apart from the dog, which existed in domesticated form in the Mesolithic period, the earliest domesticated animals known from Wessex are cattle and sheep or goat, both of which have been identified at the long barrows of Lambourn (c.4200BC) and Fussel's Lodge (c.4000BC). Domesticated pigs are first recorded in the pre-enclosure level at Windmill Hill in a context dated to c.3800BC.'
Wysefool says: Interesting that the date for the animal find (presumably bone) is given as circa 4200BC, an earlier date than I'd previously thought for the 'Oldest Long Barrow in England' an older than the 'Magic' date of 3415BC. The date of 4200BC was from radiocarbon dating and therefore could be plus/minus a fair few years, but not 800 odd!
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extract from 'Berkshire' by Harold Peake, concerning the first dig at Waylands:
'... it was not until 1919 that any scientific exploration of it was undertaken. This exploration was conducted by Mr Reginald Smith and Mr C R Peers, with a number of Berkshire Colleagues, in July 1919 and June 1920. Among the interesting things that they found were two iron currency bars, dating from the Early Iron Age, dug up from the foot of the stone upon which it had been customary to place the groat.
The chamber has always been known to consist of a central passage, with a square chamber on either side and one at the end. The end slab has every appearance of having been a roofing slab that has slipped down behind two side stones at the end of this chamber, but no steps have been taken to ascertain whether the passage continued beyond it. The most interesting discovery made was that the sides of the barrow had been supported by dry walling of large sarsen stones set with a decided ramp. Remains of eight skeletons were found in the chambers, but in a bad state of preservation, while a burial in a crouched position was found just outside on the west. In spite of a careful search no grave furniture was found.'
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from 'Berkshire' by Ian Yarrow
'... the camp is enclosed within a single rampart and ditch, and a walk right round is about one mile in length. A Neolithic axehead and a Bronze Age urn have been found within the camp, indicating that it was in use for some purpose before the Iron Age.'
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Live near the Ridgeway and most interested in sites 'up the rudge'.
Hates: people leaving rubbish at Wayland Smithy (groan, gripe, rant, rage, dribble etc!)
Loves: people taking their rubbish away with them in bags. And yes, that includes nitelites, coins (at least make them silver!), glass, sweet wrappers and dog ends.
Q. what's brown and sticky?
A. try collecting firewood at Waylands.
THINK. would you shit in a church?
... ... ... here endeth the rant
} cUrReNt NoNsEnSe {
Doesn't pagan to a roman just mean some old person who lives in the sticks?
"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"
"God dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor not a Dealer"
"We have sat waiting like this many times before. Sometimes I tire... of the fighting and killing. At night, I can hear the call of my race. They wait for me. When I join them, we will be forgotten."
"We're dealing with a Gnome! A Devil!... A Devil? Now you listen to me. The Devil in the Keep wears a black uniform, has a Death's Head in his cap, and calls himself a Sturmbannführer!"
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