wysefool

Thoughts of the Icknield Way
(downs of Berkshire)

When wild west winds sweep o’er these Downlands free
And sway ripe cornfields ‘neath a changing sky
They lash to dancing ev’ry storm-tossed tree
And shout and sing of ages long gone by -
We walk the Ridge, as did those skin-clad men
Who chipped the flint and worshipped each new day,
The Sun, Deliverer from night’s terrors then,
Ere Roman legions tramped that windy way.

Where now wave toadflax and the scabious blue,
Where Pasque flowers nestle, as the heights begin
Of rounded hills lit with a rainbow hue: -
Once ran the hares before the battle’s din.
Time was, when as the startled larks took wing,
The blowing-stone went sounding far and near,
As Saxon warriors rallied round a King,
Who saved his land, yet held Christ’s Faith more dear.

Men saw his valour on the Field of Fame,
His great forgiving of a captive foe,
To whom, baptised into Christ’s saving Name,
Was granted freedom, and a new life to know.
Men knew his zeal for learning and for law,
Culture and music, love of kith and kin,
But God alone his nightly vigils saw: -
Those prayers in suff’ring that Heaven’s strength could win.

Sister Sylvia
Wantage

notes:
‘Field of Fame’ = Ethandune
‘captive foe’ = Guthrum and the Danish Leaders

‘Madmarston Iron Age hill fort, occupied from 200BC to 50AD., was defended by three banks and a ditch, now much reduced by ploughing.‘

‘A History of Oxfordshire’ by Mary Jessup

Whitehouse is the site of the old Oxford City FC ground (Marlborough Road, Oxford). The club moved ground and the land has since been partially developed.

Aerial photography revealed a gravel site with Middle Iron Age (third to first century BC) settlement overlain by Medieval.

Source: ‘Oxfordshire’ by John Steane

Ridgeway Pageant

All the hills are watching,
Awed and still:
Away below
Retreats the faint-heart Vale.
Above,
An angry, mighty sky
Rears high,
Piled all triumphant to the setting sun -
Lit mad in changing chaos:
Silver backed, then gilded.
Mottle-splashed with crimson...
Darkened depths, part broken,
Upward pierced
By shafts of sunlight questing -
Molten vistas glistening
And portals passioned low
In ranks of terraced fire.
They drift, they fade..
New forms take shape -
With opal half-light intermingle...
Glare reflects a lustre
On the pale, dry headland mass
Of White Horse Hill.
A strange, tense calm -
Impending dusk alight with radiance:
A wild serenity.

In slow, rough accent:
“That ther’ brings some weather, sna...”
A shepherd stays his sheep
Before the blaze.

Roye England

‘About 1810 the ground covering and surrounding the stones was planted with fir trees and beeches, forming a circular plantation called here a folly, hence Wayland’s Folly, a name that did not stick. The planting was after the site had been cleared at the direction of Lord Craven who owned the site, the monument being made considerably more conspicuous . . . In 1859 the firs having died were cut down, leaving the exterior ring of beeches. In 1861 it was referred to as in a very neglected state, covered with elder bushes, briars and nettles and when A L Lewis visited it in 1868 he referred to it as within a plantation the denseness of which made it difficult to trace the surrounding layout of stones.‘

Clive Alfred Spinage
Myths and Mysteries of Wayland Smith

At Rams Hill, on the downs about two miles north of seven barrows, part of the hilltop was at first enclosed by a bank and ditch; but around 1500BC stronger defensive ramparts were put up, with stout palisades on either side of the ditch. Recent excavations suggest that Uffington Castle may have superseded Rams Hill when a much larger and stronger encampment was needed.

Daphne Phillips
Berkshire – A County History

The most important funerary monument remaining is the Lambourn Long Barrow, on the northern boundary of Lambourn parish, and standinga t the head of a shallow valley containing a group of later monuments known as Seven Barrows. The valley is now dry but may once have contained a spring worshipped in ancient times, and which, perhaps, was the reaosn for siting the barrows here. The Long Barrow has been badly damaged by centuries of ploughing and by a track running across one end used by farm vehicles and race horses. The barrow was excavated at least twice, but inexpertly, in the 19th century, and some human remains were removed. Rescue operations in 1964 found no great quantity of artefacts, but some of the potsherds resembled pottery found at the famous Neolithic camp on Windmill Hill, 20 miles away. A mass of sarsen stones disturbed by previous excavators may have formed a central core to the barrow.

Daphne Phillips
Berkshire – a county history

I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of my day;
Along the sweet horse gallops I’d run.
And in the stars I’d play.
Where daisies fall, nightingales call
Little owls to play.
Oh I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of the day.

Come crows come sheep come chalk hedgerows,
I’d fly the big green hill.
Come nights come snow come stars’ haloes,
I’d follow the greensand trail.
Where daisies fall, nightingales call
Little owls to play.
Oh I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of my day.

The horse the pack the moon the track,
All travel the north wind road.

The Thames it flows, the man down he goes
Along his winter road,
Far down his winter road.
Where daisies fall, nightingales call
Little owls to play.
Oh I wish I was on White Horse Hill
At the breaking of my day.

Peter Please

Vesper Vale

June, at evening, on the White Horse Hills!
O, joy is overflowing, hope fulfilled,
For summer lures long days to lavish pride.
Lush her rising cornfields – rich the downs
That trail, deep rounded, far to failing east.
Hedgerows riot thick and countless starred;
Green slopes are swathed with blush of clover pink.
Beneath, past weighing elms, in soundless rest
A village clusters down its ancient street.
Distance silver, amber, stretches over;
Wide the Vale and far the furthest view.

Droop of sundown, musing, dwells the listless
Prospect lightly. Sheltered farms, half hid,
Yet lie outspread, and meadows lonely; woods
Apparelled darkly – straying byways lost
In gathered trees, and low-set fields struck gold
By myriad buttercups. Afloat the plain
Late scented breaths are stirred, and fitful murmurs.
Hint of tedded hay pervades the heights‘
Rare potpourri. The listening air goes filled
With trilling, winged of larks, from all the hills;
In random field light-footed rabbits play
And cattle gaze in deep unthoughtfulness.

Roye England

The Ridgeway Long Distance Footpath was officially opened at Coombe Hill, near Wendover on 27th September, 1973. It runs for 85 miles from Overton Hill in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire, crossing the Thames at Goring Gap, and is marked along the way by sturdy oak signposts, low stone plinths and white painted ‘acorn’ waymarks. The trackways it follows were old before the Romans came, having been in continuous use since man first travelled across the face of Britain. Indeed, the Ridgeway is thought to be the oldest prehistoric track in the country.

Excerpt from the introduction of ‘Walks Along the Ridgeway’ by Elizabeth Cull and published in 1975.

Vale of White Horse

The Vale was once a gem:
Far years speak beauty – make us long to know
Their ways – to treasure, prize,
As not the present, Can they be relived?
No, hardly now. And yet
Their joys survive – made yours, within these pages.
Come, let’s seek them. Backward
Glance, and prove
What gracious days then shone.

This book recalls, alive, time past, sublime -
The massing of great elms,
Their shaded fields; deep thatch, men one with nature.
Roam with us these pages...
Find rich lands unspoilt – their paradise
Till now not sung, not known.
The Vale, seen still superb, awaits you here:
Oh, come with hope -

Explore...

-

Roye England

To all those, of every generation,
who made the Vale the gem it once was –
a paradise,
shared and tended by the men who lived there;
who worked it, loved it, and kept it unspoilt:
till modern change struck, and not caring,
betrayed its charm.

Roye England

All Ages Waken

Long thousand years fly lost
Since Alfred gazed the Vale in moods as these -
Ago when wildboar ranged the marshy plain
Ere forest yielded: when, cut hoar, the Horse
Saw Saxon truce with Dane. Yet no more rapt
Hung vesper magic then than pauses now
In beauty hallowed timeless, unbetrayed:
For, God -

All ages waken when there falls
Of evening, spell-bound, so enchanted calm

Roye England

extract from Berkshire by Daphne Phillips

‘...and in the grounds of Heatherwood Hospital at Ascot, where the remaining barrow was formerly one of a group of four. Excavation of the Heatherwood barrow in 1973 dated it to circa 1800BC.‘

‘The ridge on which stands the iron-age hillfort of Tadmarton Camp is tentatively identified as the site of an Anglo-Saxon royal vill and the scene of a battle in 913. Nearby was the original glebeland of Hook Norton parish church, suggesting that the early ecclesiastical centre may also have been on the ridge, not in the village 2+1/2 miles away‘

John Blair

from Oxoniensia vol LI 1986

‘in 1979 an earthwork enclosure known as the Devil’s Churchyard was cleared of trees and undergrowth. The enclosure and associated boundary ditches have since been dated by excavation to the mid to late Iron Age.‘

The site is described in the report as a heart-shaped enclosure of about 1 acre. A recent ash tree plantation has obliterated the NW earthworks.

From the ditch fills were identified bones of cattle, sheep and dog. Worked flint was also found, as was pottery which dated the site to the Iron Age.

‘The name is from that of a curvilinear earthwork upon the hill OE Weala byrig, ‘Briton’s or Welshman’s fort’. In Gough’s Camden it is called Cornhill, which may be the older name...‘

Berkshire place names, G W B Huntingford

‘Discovered about 1850, the NE end of the site is in the wood and crossed by the cart tack. It is c.220ft long, 70ft wide at its E end and here 4+1/2ft high. Parallel side-ditches originally 7ft deep, flank the mound, whose ends are open. Excavation has shown that their contents provided a turf cover with chalk crust to a core of sarsens which constitute the mound. Near the E end a contracted female burial has been found, associated with extra human bones and a necklace or bracelet of polished common dog whelk. Date (C14) circa 3,400 BC.‘

Nicholas Thomas, Guide to Prehistoric England, 1976

The burh or ‘fort’ is that on Blewburton Hill, “now and for some time past under the plough... on the summit an irregular oval of about 408 by 149 yards, that seems to have been enclosed by a ditch and rampart.”

Rev J Wilson D.D. in Transactions Newbury FC 1872)

The Oldest Road, J R L Anderson and Fay Godwin

‘To the north of the punchbowl there is a hillock or tumulus, and beyond the tumulus there is an area of curiously broken ground, like the remains of quarrying on a doll’s house scale, which I think must once have been open-cast flint workings, though they are not markes as such. Where the chalk is exposed there are plenty of flint cores still to be seen, and you can re-create in your imagination a vivid picture of prehistoric men working away with antler picks to get at them.‘