Cursuswalker

I came up here to photograph the site two days before the Solstice as the light was good considering the time of year.

It is a very low barrow that does not come out well on camera, though is easy to make out while actually there. The setting is perfect for a bronze-age burial and it is still very easy to imagine what the view looked like before London existed.

On the Winter Solstice the Sun apparently sets along the Crooked Valley that apparently gives Croydon its name. This is the valley through Purley that the A23 now follows.

In the woods to the south east, along the ridge, there is a raised area of ground that looks like it MAY be another barrow, but I can’t be certain. It isn’t marked as such on the OS map. The established barrow is at TQ338632 and this other area is at TQ338631. The path divides either side of it and when I was there it was a distinct area of greenery (See picture)

The hillside is covered by an ancient field system and finds at the top indicate an Iron Age settlement up there. I have to admit to not having seen many signs of ancient remains, but I wasn’t hanging around to look to be honest..

Excellent views though.

Nearby, in the Country Park, the type of settlement it is thought to have been has been recreated (See links).

It’s a shame you can’t get into the chamber at Knowth. The artificial room that tour parties are led into might as well be in the Visitor Centre.
The view from the top really gives you a sense of the place of this tomb within the landscape and I could spend hours looking at the rock-art on the displayed kerb-stones.
The later use of the site by Celts and Normans are also of interest, in particular the creep passage east of the main mound. Children of all ages (!) can crawl through it during the guided tours.

Newgrange looks amazing from the outside, but is blatantly too good to be true. The chamber is beyond belief. I just wish I could spend some time in there without an official guide’s voice as accompaniment.

I’ve been to the Complex three times now. On the whole the preservation of the area, and the way tourism here is carefully managed, seems understandable, bearing in mind that people live here and don’t need their roads choked with cars. The Visitor Centre is also impressively unobtrusive.

I just can’t help getting the urge, though, to stick two fingers up at the buses that you are strong-armed into using in order to get to Newgrange and Knowth. On all three visits I have wished I walked to the tombs instead and this has been the source of a couple of heated discussions with my partner.

I just can’t stand feeling openly “managed” at such sites.

We visited Carrowmore on a drizzly day and missed much of the view of Sligo one gets from the complex, which was a shame.

There are an impressive number of tombs here in a tiny area, and in various states of preservation. Being with non-megarak family members meant I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious gleefully bounding around the place photographing every rock that stuck out of the ground.

My family were interested at first, but after about an hour of being rained on, the advantages of walking around a field full of rocks were rapidly waning as far as they were concerned. We returned to the Visitor’s Centre and I was granted a brief visit over the road to Tombs 1-7, with strict orders to return quickly or lose body-parts.

Tomb 7 I will not forget in a hurry.
As soon as I had settled myself in the chamber of the dolmen for a brief bit of megalithic contemplation, a bullock nosed right up to the entrance and stood sniffing the air in the tomb inches from my face. I don’t mind admitting I can be a bit of a big girl’s blouse when it comes to bullocks and on this occasion I froze and felt my heart begin to leap into my throat.
He obviously could not see me and my smell was making him nervous. Looking back now it’s obvious that one movement from me would have caused him to bolt, but at the time this didn’t even occur to me. Eventually he got bored and walked off.

I can’t convey it in writing, but it was somehow an incredibly intense, and not entirely negative, experience. Being one of those druidy types I tend to like reading meaning into such encounters. The meaning I gleaned from this incident, distilled into a phrase, was “Fair enough. Have your little sit in here, but remember you actually belong elsewhere”
Such overactive imaginings can make sense when one is sitting in a tomb, I always find. Walking away from Tomb 7 I was smiling at my unexpected experience, as the visit to Carrowmore had been very practical and down to earth up to that point.

“Fair enough” I said to myself, with a last, very respectful, glance back at the tomb.

Though it is called a camp on the map, it is actually an Iron Age boundary dyke or an unfinished hillfort, depending on who you listen to. From the aerial photo on multimap I must admit that the latter seems more likely. There is also evidence in the link posted by wideford that further justifies this conclusion (Evidence of post-holes for example)

I have seen it from the road, or from Caburn just to the east, for years, but never visited it. I plan to remedy that soon...

As a Sussex schoolboy I was always told that the Tump was a Calvary Hill, used by the monks of the nearby Priory as a punishment, the idea being that they had to carry a cross to the top. However, apparently a fragment of Neolithic bone was found when the new path was created, so that puts paid to yet another “lazy monk” theory of ancient-site creation, as far as this druid is concerned.

At some point in the late 19th or early 20th century Lewes Bowling Club, who own the site, decided to carve a huge chunk out of the side of the mound, in order to accommodate a bowling green. This act of vandalism also cut into the original spiral path, which originally began around the northwest sector and ran anti-clockwise to a small platform on the summit.

Most of the spiral path is still intact, and can be reached via the new tarmac path, which runs clockwise from the southeast sector. Once on the spiral path, you can leave the world of tarmac behind, and what remains of the spiral is a gentle and beautifully simple short stroll. However, the fact remains that this site is right on the edge of a built up area, and technically in the town, all the land to the south being taken up with sports pitches. Expect to find the evidence of teenage drinking at the top, as I have most of the times I have visited.

…Which brings us neatly on to the Hole.

The Hole is a square concrete-sided monstrosity which was dug into the top of the Tump at some point (I can only assume in the sixties) in order to hold the cross that Lewes Christians carry to the summit every Good Friday.

The rest of the year it holds empty lager cans (see picture).

I actually don’t begrudge them this tradition that much (The cross that is). It only stands there for a few days and actually looks quite impressive. In 2000 they re-enacted the crucifixion up there, leading “Jesus” through the town from Lewes Castle. I tagged along and found it fascinating, as an outsider.

What does really anger me is the way they leave this ugly concrete thing exposed for the rest of the year. A few years back local Pagans used to go up there, once the cross was gone, and fill in the hole again. Unfortunately this has to be a covert activity, due to the Bowling Club locking the gate from the car park in the evening, so I am naturally not advocating such action. That would, clearly, be wrong.

If you visit the Tump during the day you will not be hassled at all. Many people climb it in the daytime and this does not seem to be a problem. However, I remember climbing it to watch the midwinter sunset a few years back. Sitting there, minding my own business, I heard an upper class voice shout from below:

“Excuse me! What are you doing?!”

Two instincts fought for supremacy. The first said “Apologise at once and get orf their land!” The other said “What the hell does it LOOK like I’m doing?”

I looked at her as if she was mad and asked her what she meant, which she didn’t seem to have an answer for. She disappeared.

I have to admit to having not stayed too much longer after that. She had succeeded in spooking me, and the moment was lost. As I drove away I saw her again. She looked at me as if memorising my face for a police line-up. I looked back, I hope in the same way.

Another time, during the day, I faced the four quarters on the summit as part of a private druid working. No robes. No chanting. Just a bloke in jeans and t-shirt, facing four directions and lost in his own little world.

That was until I noticed a man who broke off from the bowling taking place below (On the green that cuts into the Tump) and, hands on hips, stared at me as if I was smeared in goat’s blood and howling to Satan.

Just be warned: this is the attitude you risk encountering if you stray onto the Lewes Tump after sundown or looking remotely “alternative”.

In summary the site is a bloody disgrace (albeit delightfully manicured), but sitting on the summit on your own, feeling the wind on your face, it is possible to forget that, for a little while at least.