I've since learnt that one of the features of St Paul's - St Paul's Cross, a place of free speech in the churchyard - was once a rough stone called St Paul's stump. There were also stones directly between the hills, including (maybe) the London Stone. St Paul's stump was originally called Pol's Stump (where the Paul connection comes from?) and Pol was the Saxon name of Balder, the Norse dieing / resurrecting light god. And historians say pagan Saxons worshiped in the uninhabited post Roman ruins of London long before the place was (re)Christianised, amongst the possible ruins of a Diana and Apollo temple at St Pauls (and if so a probable Pre Roman sacred site as well). So Pol's Stump may have been pre St Paul's and maybe even pre Saxon. Where the stone originally was exactly is unknown it seems. It would be nice to find it marked the sunrise orientation of the site!
Though not strictly our kind of thing (pardon pun) there is a rather nice article at http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/crockern.htm that discusses very early English local sites of government that could provide some of our fellows with clues to prehistoric boundaries and such for further investigation.
Fascinating stuff, Wyrd Brother, it set me thinking about a possibility that's been riddling me that may interest you. I wouldn't call it a full-blown theory or anything, mind you - it's something I'm still researching, although I must say that the foundations of it feel solid to me.
I'm obsessed with a place called Ludwell:
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3667
It interests me not simply because I (unknowingly) drank its water for many years, but because of it's name. As I say in my fieldnote there, I consider Lud to be a name of Odin (by "Odin" I mean the pre-Viking Odin) - basically I consider the deities known in Irish and Welsh myth as Lugh and Law to be a "Celtic" Odin. I'm not alone in that, either, plenty of writers think the same thing (Robert Graves, for example, although simply mentioning his name is probably enough to completely undermine this theory in the eyes of "orthodox" historians!). Anyway, I recently came across this (which I also link to on the Ludwell page):
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/efft/efft47.htm
The association of Odin with the gallows is well known, and this hangman's tale seemed to back up what I thought about Ludwell and it's name. It was when I started trying to find out more about Saint Ludgvan that things became tantalizing, though. His name is fascinating - it's basically a compound of Lud and Wan ("v" easily becomes a "w" by known sound laws - in German, for instance, the written letter "v" is pronounced "w", and vice versa). Wan is another Odin name - that's easy enough to prove, since the Eddas specifically state it. So I tried digging around on the internet for information on this "Irish missionary", and found very little. This page...
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/Cornwall/Ludgvan/
...revealed that there's a Saint Ludgvan's church in Penwith, Cornwall, and also that this saint's more usual name was Ludowanus, a name that is even more blatantly Lud and Wan. It was when I saw this page, though...
http://homepages.tesco.net/~k.wasley/Ludgvan.htm
...that I became completely confused. It's another page about Saint Ludgvan's in Penwith, and it comments that the church is "dedicated to St Ludowanus (now Saint Paul) whose feast is celebrated January 25th". This utterly baffled me, at the time, since Saint Paul didn't strike me as "a heathen deity in a threadbare Christian cloak" (which is how James Frazer described Saint Bridget, words that stick in my head because of their accuracy). But what you say here sets me wondering... London, I believe, used to be called Lugudonum? (or something similar) I'm by no means the first to argue that it's named for Odin (although I believe I am the first to point to the name Scotland's capital for another Odin name as supporting evidence in this context!). If I understand it rightly, then Saint Paul's is a place of huge heathen significance. If Saint Paul = Ludowanus = Odin then perhaps we can start to grasp the reason for London's Odinist name?
Like I say, I'm still researching this Pauline Odinist connection, so please remember that I consider this to be an intriguing possibility and a riddle, rather than a fact. Thanks for sending me on a different tangent of thought with it all - little gems of information have a habit of turning up at serendipidous times, and it never ceases to amaze me! :)
"Pol was the Saxon name of Balder, the Norse dieing / resurrecting light god"
"the possible ruins of a Diana and Apollo temple"
Interesting. One of the major differences between Odin of the Eddas and Lugh is that Lugh has certain solar connotations - I'd argue that his name is behind words like "light", "luminescent" and "lustre". The Eddas, however, state that Odin and Loki are "blood brothers", and they sometimes seem so closely related as to almost be one figure. It's my view that Odin and Loki are descended from the same earlier deity (Ur-Odin, let's call him). Balder, on the other hand I'd argue to be descended from a more ancient solar deity called Baal (try not to think Phoenican Baal, but more Balor of the Evil Eye in Irish myth). In the Eddas Balder is killed because of Loki's machinations. Parallels can be found in Irish myth, I understand, where Lugh supplants Balor (need to look into that one a bit more mind you). I read this as essentially a myth remembering an early Sun cult (the Baal cult) being supplanted by a later one (the Lugh cult). Lugh has a lot in common with Apollo. Whilst we're on the subject, the Odin-Loki relationship is best understood within the context of the Wainamoinen-Louhi relationship in Sami Finland's Kalevala, which I believe to be truer to the Ur-Odinist root than the Eddas. The tale of Louhi's theft of the Sun (she - and yes, that's she - hides it in "a copper coloured mountain" for several months) is essentially a solar myth, explaining the utter absence of the Sun during the winter months (it remains dark 24 hours a day during winter, that far north).