Rhiannon

This long barrow lies near Rode church, and is apparently a popular spot for local people to scatter the ashes of their departed loved-ones*. Also it is a spot on the Mary or Michael ley (I forget which), which some people believe crosses from Cornwall to East Anglia, and is explored by the dowsing writers of ‘The Sun and the Serpent’*.

In the Bath Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club journal for 1872, there is an account of an excursion to the area. They spoke to a local man who said that the Bed and Bolster was once twice as large as it is now, adding that when people had tried to take the stones away, bad weather had always prevented them. At the time about 22 sarsens were visible, with 5 upright – 3 or 4 (strange they couldn’t remember) at the east end, and one large flat one at the west. The writer also noted that the site was in full view of the Wiltshire Downs and the White Horse (at Westbury).

(on my visit in 09/07 you could certainly not see the horse, and only part of the downs if you walked further along the path).

You can see two bell barrows here, one on either side of the road. The common is the original landing place of the Martians in Wells’ War of the Worlds! and is a rare piece of heathland.

The stone at Pyrford is said to move about at midnight (surely this was not noticed en route home from the pub?). It used to lie in the centre of the road but was moved to the side (1976?). It’s on the corner of Upshott Lane – I hope the OS ref is accurate.

St Nicholas’s church up the road has a circular churchyard, which has been suggested as proof of the site’s pre-christian origins.

Another story says the stone turns round when the clock on St Nicholas’s strikes midnight. But in true local humour style, the church has never had a clock.

(I think these snippets may come from one of the Bord’s collections).

Anyone who has read Alan Garner’s books will be particularly transported by visiting The Edge. His first, ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’ is based on this story about Merlin. King Arthur and his knights sleep on under the Edge waiting...
web.ukonline.co.uk/conker/conkers-and-ghosts/alderley-edge.htm
(part of the KidsArk website)

I doubt there’s much left to see of this Neolithic causewayed camp, seeing as how it’s surrounded by houses and the racecourse. It was excavated in the 30s and the detail that interested me was that two fossilised sea urchins had been buried with some people. Folklore has it that fossil sea urchins are ‘fairy loaves’ or ‘fairy stones’. I guess they are pretty strange – obviously not ordinary rocks, but they look like something living or manmade. Also without their spines they bear little resemblence to anything alive that you’re familiar with, particularly if you’re not living by the sea (like at the Five Knolls in Bedfordshire). I’ve also read that people have kept them in their houses so that their loaflike similarity would ensure the occupants would never go without bread (or food, no doubt). They were also kept in dairies to stop the milk going sour.

Of course, none of this need have any relevance to the reason these prehistoric people took them to their graves. They presumably serve no hands-on practical purpose? so we have to assume that they did hold a symbolic value of some kind (even if it could have been merely that they were weird and interesting?).

The village sign shows Ye Ancient Britons and the nasty Danes in front of the hill fort. Legend has it that their battle was rather vicious, hence the rather disgusting name of the road down the hill – Bloodgate – down which all the blood from the slaughter flowed. Nasty.

Warham camp overlooks the river Stiffkey (Stewkey) with a sweeping view. It’s bound to be Iron age but tradition has it that the Danes built it after they landed at Weyborne Hope (He who would Old England win, must at Weyborne Hoop begin)

Next to the Devil’s Ditch on Garboldisham Heath, a round barrow supposedly the resting place of Queen Boudicca..

This looks like a round barrow because it straddles the county boundary, and the Hertfordshire side has been ploughed, but it’s actually* a long barrow [*er, actually, see below]. I had a childhood friend from Pegsdon and I remember her mentioning the story that you could hear someone inside knocking. I was (pleasantly) scared to believe it but I wanted to believe it. I can’t remember if she said she’d heard it herself but I’m sure we must have pressed her on the point..

In her book ‘Albion’ Jennifer Westwood agrees that there is an old man inside who knocks to be let out. She mentions the Herts Illus. Review for 1894, which says a British Chieftain is buried here with his treasure chest. From time to time he knocks thrice on it to make sure it’s still there (I guess it’s dark in there). The hill is/was also known as ‘Money Knoll’.

Westwood also suggests the name could come from ‘cnycyn’ – the welsh for a bump or small hillock. It’s a long way from Wales, mind.

In her later book, ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005) Westwood mentions the Hertfordshire folklorist W B Gerish, who heard from a Mr Aylott that it was a ‘warrior in armour’ knocking. Purple pasque flower grew (grows?) on the knoll, and this was said to grow only where Danish blood had been spilt.

Magic powers they have
Men that are sick
Fare to that stone;
and they wash that stone
and bathe away their evil.

Layamon reporting in ‘Brut’ in the 12th century.

Manley, V.S. (1924). Folk-lore of the Warminster district: a supplement to the History of Warminster and the Official Guide. Collected by V.S. Manley.
Warminster: Coates & Parker. I’m sure I’ve seen a copy but don’t have one now. In a review of Manley’s book in WANHM v43, it says that

“One of the most curious items is ‘The Spirit of Cley Hill,’ a legend which would apparently have died with its narrator, an old woman of 80. The legend records that the guardian spirit of the Bugley folk lived inside the barrow on the top of the hill, and one day hearing water running beneath him he directed its course underground until it came out at Hogs Well. He told the people not to drink it but to use it only for curing weak eyes, and an old woman who disregarded his order and drank the water died that night, and a cow that polluted the water was drowned in the mud. It is in any case a fact that until recently this water has been in great request for bad eyes, 6d. a bottle being paid for it, provided some Ground Ivy was included to be brewed with it. The appearance of the Well Fiend is recorded of Bicker’s Well, in Prince Croft Lane, at Bugley, and under a large oak tree which formerly stood where North Lane meets the Half, below Blue Ball, Bugley, elves lived and might sometimes be seen gambolling by children.

This is a weird kind of place.

The folk of Devizes had offended the devil, who sore he would serve them out. So he went “down the country” (ie into Somerset), and found a big “hump” and put it on his back, to carry it and fling it at them. On his journey back he met a man and asked the way to Devizes. The man replied,
That’s just what I want to know myself. I started for Devizes when my beard was black, and now it’s grey, and I haven’t got there yet.
The devil replied, “If that’s how it is, I won’t carry this thing no further, so here goes, ” and he flung the “girt (great) hump” off his shoulder, and there it is.

Collected in Warminster, 1893. On p78 of
Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts
John U. Powell
Folklore, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Mar., 1901), pp. 71-83.