Re: Pagans removed | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Ravensroost wrote:

In her "Standing stones/Gloucestershire", Celia Haddon recounts that, when the Jackbarrow long barrow was destroyed in the nineteenth century, the bones of its 'residents' were reburied in nearby Duntisbourne Abbots churchyard and decorated with a large cross embellished with a quotation from St. John's gospel.

No doubt the reburial was done with the best of intentions, but it does seem incongruous that the bones of people who died a few thousand years before Jesus was born should have their bones reburied in a christian burial ground.

Peter Berresford Ellis in his book "The Celts: a history" states "The Celtic idea of immortality was that death was but a changing of place and that life went on with all its forms and goods in another world." But does that include changing to the back of a Cotswold churchyard?

I can't help feeling that they would have been happier left on the top of their Cotswold hill.

I'm sure most people would agree with you on that one Ravensroost, perhaps it was done as a means of justifying the destruction of the barrow; more recently the remains may have found their way into a museum collection.

There seems to be a tradition of building/rebuilding churches on pre-christian burial sites which amounts to much the same thing. Last year I visited St David's Church on Caldey Island off the Pembrokeshire coast - it is a small Norman church built on the foundations of a Celtic chapel which in turn was built on the site of a pre-christian Celtic burial ground - the place was one of the few small churches I've entered that actually felt ancient and sacred.