We are currently writing and researching a series of new works for future publication. Keep your eyes peeled for updates.
Staverton – Part 2: Landscapes and Skyscapes
This work will thoroughly explore how three distinct and ancient landscapes from the late antique – early medieval period fit within the wider ritual landscape and are all integrated within a designed landscape that is oriented around primary and mythological celestial events. Looking at Rendlesham, a wholly unique site and the richest longest lived settlement in England of the period, Staverton, one of the most important surviving areas of woodland pasture in England and home to a mysterious earthwork of questionable origin, and Burrow Hill, an island minster site containing pseudo boat burials.
Roman Forts and Shrines were typically designed on a standardised rectangular form along the empire’s frontier across much of Great Britain. However, we know that there were unusual geometric exceptions to this. We will explore the design exceptions to this, paying close attention to the square Fort of Hardknott in Cumbria that was oriented to the sunrise and sunset on the summer and winter solstices, the triple ditched rhombus shaped Fort at Pakenham in Suffolk, the hexagonal Shrine near Winchester in Hampshire, and the decahexagonal / sixteen-sided polygonal Temple at Silchester, also in Hampshire.
The Black Ditches at Risby and Cavenham in Suffolk are the most easterly of 5 such dykes and ditches that stretch out across Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The Black Ditches are believed to have been up to a staggering 4.5 miles in length, yet their origin, date and purpose remains somewhat unclear. Described as either Roman sewers or more typically as being built in the late 6th century as a defensive measure against invasion and designed to protect the ancient Icknield Way, a key line of communication and transport at the time. However, this standard military and defensive interpretation for many such ancient linear earthworks is now being called into question. New research suggests that these linear monuments are far older, potenitially early Iron Age, and formed part of a ritual landscape that was dotted along their course with sacred sites, springs, burial mounds and temples, often having heath and woodland at their southern ends with springs and votive offering sites at their northern point.
Castlerigg Stone Circle set in the Lake District in Keswick is generally considered to have been raised in about 3000 BC, 5000 years ago during the Neolithic period. According to recent archaeological analysis, new findings indicate that its first phase of construction may be far older and predate Stonehenge, approximately 3100 BC by as much as 600 years. Part of the circle, known as the ‘Sanctuary’ replicates in stone many smaller rectangular Neolithic structures in Ireland and Yorkshire. These were built with timber and used from around 5700 to 5600 years ago. We will explore how this transitional phase of ritual architecture developed and transformed over the centuries and across the country.
Staverton Park is a bold, otherworldly punctuated verse in the East Anglian sacred landscape, potentially unspoilt for nearly two thousands years. Few places on earth touch the soul as deeply, be this the mighty contorted oaks in the park itself, home to one of the largest collections of ancient trees in the whole of Europe, or the sheer overwhelming density of the trees in the area known as The Thicks.
Staverton is a place of mystery and wonder; it has a peculiar effect on first-time visitors who have no foreknowledge that the world contains such places.
Rackham, O (1986)*
Jeremy’s research and personal experience of this enchanting and eerily evocative landscape invites us to re-evaluate our understanding of the sites relationship with the more widely known sacred settings of the surrounding Wuffing kingdom in nearby Sutton Hoo, Snape and Rendlesham.
As with his previous study ‘A Ritual Landscape Considered’, we hope that Jeremy’s new research shines a light on this richly integrated environment; a landscape like no other, one that resonates so strongly today just as much as it deeply connects us to the ancestors of the Suffolk Sandlings.
Lying at the heart of all these traditions, in one way or another, is a clear sense that the arboreal or horticultural setting – whether natural or constructed – presented a sacred space in which individuals, through meditation, prayer and reflection, might open their minds to commune with supernatural powers.
Bintley, M.D.J (2015)**
Forthcoming:
Staverton – Wonderland of Kings: Part 2: Skyscapes and landscapes of the Wuffing Kingdom
This work will explore how this ritually planned landscape is integrated within systematic sites that were chosen for their mythological and cosmological functions.
The oak woods at Staverton are the forests of childhood, the forests of dreams. Here perhaps more than anywhere else I have ever been, the forest of the imagination materialises, becomes actual; here perhaps more than anywhere else I have ever been, a smallish piece of ancient deciduous woodland opens into the world of magic, the place of fairy story that we inhabited as children and lost, I had thought, for ever.
Maitland, S. (2012)***
* Rackham, O (1986) The History of the Countryside: The Classic History of Britain’s landscape, flora and fauna ** Bintley, M.D.J (2015) Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England *** Maitland, S. (2012) Gossip from the Forest: the Tangled Roots of our Forests and Fairytales
Far away from the mind boggling complexity of the pyramids of Giza, yet equally compelling, sit seven sites of mythic antiquity whose geomantic and geometric design collectively creates a beautiful and vast heptagon in the landscape. The distances between the locations and the dimension of this symbol has been faithfully duplicated at other locations in Southern Britain, consciously created and designed to personify a harmonious fusion between temple proportion, the Earth’s circumference and ancient units of measure.
I was seduced into reading it. It’s wealth of antiquarian detail is woven around a core of mystical knowledge.
John Michell
FORWARD – BY DAVID FURLONG
Making sense of the faint echoes from an ancient culture is a slow and painstaking task, relying as much on intuition as hard factual evidence. We all know of great monuments like Stonehenge and Avebury but what sort of people built these amazing edifices and what other secrets might they have woven into the landscape? In today’s culture we link our cities by road, rail and electricity grid networks. Perhaps our ancestors had the same idea but from a slightly different perspective.
In this study on the Suffolk landscape Jeremy Taylor has spent long hours researching obscured landscape traces that reach back in time more than four thousand years. His discoveries point to a connection with the landscape that can be expressed in geometric terms. Simple geometry discovered by a peg, stick marker and a length of string, scratched into the dirt on the ground, must have seemed a magical operation to an ancient people. Perhaps it was a way of understanding the two great astronomical bodies in the sky – the sun and the moon and the attendant patterns of the night time sky – perhaps it was just a fascination with the way that lines, circles and number could be combined. Whatever the impulse what we do know is that megalithic man built huge structures that reflected this symbolism. It is not too much of a jump to postulate that he/she might have wanted to express these same principles on a macrocosmic scale in their landscape, perhaps as a way of creating a ritual space in which to reside.
My own researches on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, set out in my book The Keys to the Temple, showed the amazing skills of the Neolithic people in surveying and setting out a vast twin circle pattern in the landscape. To have done this they would have to have had a high level of numeracy and the ability to work with accurate measurements. In this work Jeremy Taylor shows another such pattern set out in the landscape of Suffolk creating, in this case, a seven pointed star, centred on the great abbey of Bury St Edmunds. We may wonder at the ingenuity of our ancestors who perceived their landscape as a ritual place, perhaps holding ceremonies at significant points in the pattern on key dates in the year.
This is a well researched book which adds to our perception and understanding of the peoples who inhabited our lands millennia ago and I would commend it to the reader.
