Alton Priors forum 2 room
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No other sarsens nearby? Look in the farmyard opposite the church, look in the garden of the large house - they have a sarsens folly. Unless we have been to two different places, then the sarsens are everywhere. The neighbouring (and older) church at Alton Barnes has massive sarsen stones forming its quoins - they are enormous and totally megalithic in character. Now that may well be worth a closer look!

I'm not adverse to accepting that the church could have been built on a pagan site. I have already quoted the Papal edict that pagan temples were to be reconsecrated, but the idols of stone and wood destroyed. However, I believe that the churches replaced pagan SAXON sites and not prehistoric ones unless in specific cases it can be shown that the Saxons had their temples or groves on such sites. In some cases they clearly did eg the conversion of earlier round barrows into moot hills and their intrusion burials into both round and long barrows.

Some evidence of pre-Christian useage at Alton Priors will happily convince me. As for the trapdoor, well you know that the old time antiquarians were often vicars. They were romantics too and loved to fantasise about Druidic rites and all that. So following floor repair, what could be more natural than to keep open access to impress other gentlemen scholars ;> )

Will check out the farmyard etc next time I'm there - thanks for that info.

> However, I believe that the churches replaced pagan SAXON sites and not prehistoric ones unless in specific cases it can be shown that the Saxons had their temples or groves on such sites. <

Sorry to harp on about the yew tree but, if it is indeed 1,700 years old, that would place it roughly 300-400 hundred years before any pagan Saxon structure that might have existed on the site (in fact the yew tree would have been standing at Alton Priors when the Romans were still in the area). Again, coupled with the nearby spring and the sarsens under the church I would maintain that Alton Priors church (as at Pewsey and possibly Ingatestone?) most likely occupies the site of a prehistoric circle.

I need to do more research on this but, thanks again for the info :-)

>The neighbouring (and older) church at Alton Barnes has massive sarsen stones forming its quoins - they are enormous and totally megalithic in character.<

Sorry to disagree with you Peter but the quoins at Alton Barnes appear to me to be of a soft sandstone and not of the much harder sarsen found in the area (I'm not an expert in this and am happy to be proved wrong). Neither am I sure that the church at Alton Barnes is actually older than the church at Alton Priors; the former is the smaller of the two but I need to check out their dates more carefully (perhaps also of interest is that the yew tree at Alton Barnes is considerably smaller than the yew at Alton Priors).

What did strike me while there over the weekend was the beautiful cobbled pathway that leads across the fields between the two churches. There are literally thousands and thousands of dressed stones making up the pathway - a real labour of love; I wonder when they were laid down but not that they appear to lead <i>from</i> Alton Barnes to Alton Priors.