Last week The Bedfordshire Times published a picture of Marston Church and with it a story of certain alleged exploits of the Evil One. Mr F.W. Marsom, of Northill, has some more stories to tell about the athletic prowess of Mephistopheles round and about Northill:
In Northill two versions of the story of the jumping powers of the devil are told, and both in connexion with Marston. The first is the same as that told before, but with the addition that when he took his leap he landed on Moxhill near Northill in a field called Hopper’s Hole.
The other version is that the devil took a hop, step, and a jump from Marston. His hop brought him to Hopper’s Hole, he stepped across Northill parish to Caesar’s Camp, Sandy, and from here he jumped and disappeared.
( Mr Marson then goes on to connect the story to leylines, an idea Alfred Watkins had in the early 1920s. ...) Applying these theories to the one-inch ordnance survey map we find that a straight line from Moat Farm, Marston, passes through the moat of Manor Farm, Cotton End, across Moxhill, Northill, to Caesar’s Camp, Sandy, which is the site of a prehistoric camp. This seems to fit the trackway theory, but the trouble is that so many lines can be found that the map soon begins to look like a spider’s web gone crazy.
Well I’m sold anyway :) From the Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 18th September 1936.
No. hang on. They’re not in a straight line at all.