May Hill

Wherever you go in north Gloucestershire or anywhere else round and about, there it is. Even if you don't know what it's called, you can probably see it. The silhouette of May Hill on the skyline is unmistakable, with its little clump of trees on the summit, standing out among all the other hills.

The trees are mostly Corsican pines, planted in 1887 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, and supplemented with another cluster (Scots pines this time) planted in 1977 for Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, and a few other clumps marking other occasions. Unfortunately some are now infected with red band needle blight, a defoliating disease to which Corsican pines are especially susceptible, and which will eventually kill off many of the trees. In any event, the tree-clump crown on May Hill goes back way further than 1887. There are references to it going back to 1643 when Prince Rupert and his men are said to have taken refuge up there, and a painting of the hill done in 1780 shows it with much the same arboreal tuft that it sports today.

Amid the clump (above) is a much older Scots pine which, although somewhat worse for wear these days with only one remaining limb, is a survivor from the previous generation of trees which occupied the hilltop before the grand 1887 planting. At the time the hill was enclosed in 1873 there was a reference to some 100-year-old Scots pines on the summit, which are also marked on Isaac Taylor's Gloucestershire map of 1777. This antique chap could be one of those.

It's breezy round that therr trig point.

At around 970 feet, May Hill stands as quite a landmark with fantastic views towards other landmarks. The top bit is in the care of the National Trust but the circular enclosure at the summit is owned by the nearby village of Longhope and is their 'village green'. It has a breathtaking vista over Gloucestershire and Herefordshire and into Wales, with a particularly good view along the length of the meandering River Severn. In the days when the Severn was full of sailing ships, May Hill's distinctive tree clump (evergreen and visible all year round) was an important navigational aid. One legend has it that the trees were originally planted for that very purpose by one Admiral May, hence the name. It's not very likely though, as the only admiral of that name was born a long time after the hill was named. And while the trees could've been planted as a landmark for mariners, it's more likely that they were planted by drovers who grazed their animals on the hill while passing through the area. Drovers had a tradition of planting distinctive clumps of pine trees to mark good grazing land.

South-west view towards Wales and the Forest of Dean.

Admiral May notwithstanding, May Hill was formerly called Yartleton Hill, and that's how it appears on early maps. The May Hill name first appears in 1703, and could well have been a local name which stuck (a bit like Churchdown Hill a few miles away, which is resolutely known to locals as Chosen Hill, despite not being called that on the map). The May Hill name most likely derives from the Beltane knees-up which has taken place up there since time immemorial, and still does. Morris dancers still faithfully troop up there every May Day at dawn to welcome the sunrise, and in the past there was also a tradition of staging a symbolic fight between summer and winter.

May Hill also has a faery legend, which I covered in my post about Hartpury. A faery man is said to have plucked a fruit from a pear tree on May Hill, which turned out to be so bitter he spat the pips out over three surrounding counties, where they germinated and grew into new trees. This supposedly accounts for the unique quality of perry pears to be found in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire (the astringent, semi-wild pears used to make perry, or pear cider).

A faery connection is also apparent in legends of an underground cavern, making May Hill a mythical "hollow hill". Lots of hills have such legends of hollow cores or subterranean chambers, but the May Hill one has some historical basis. There are several early references to a chamber called Crockett's Hole on the east side of the hill, though finding any trace of it today is a bit of a challenge. It was very possibly used as a hidey-hole for those escaping the persecutions of Queen Mary, which may also be the source of a legend (popular in the 17th century) that there was treasure stashed in it. Needless to say all those who have gone looking for it over the last few centuries have come away empty handed. I'm more inclined to believe in faeries than in buried treasure, but there you go.

The antiquarian delights of May Hill don't ever appear to have been investigated, as far as I can see. The top of the hill sports a circular ditch around 100 metres in diameter which could be an Iron Age enclosure, but nobody really knows. It has numerous curious pits and bumps inside it which have never been excavated. Also within this enclosure is a lumpy hump which could be a round barrow, or maybe not. Yes it's all a bit vague, and there's no evidence one way or the other, so we're left to follow our inner senses. And mine tell me that this enclosure has been a special place for a very long time. It has an extraordinary atmosphere which is quite unlike any of the other Gloucestershire hilltops I've stood on. I can only describe it as a feeling of pure euphoria.

Three pictures of the central ring ditch.

In fact the atmosphere on May Hill is euphoric all over, not just in the central ring. Walking up there on a breezy day earlier this year, I was seized by an urge to spread my arms out and run along shouting "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" The north-west side of the hilltop, which is very open and serves as a kind of processional route to the summit, is also a place of inexplicable joy. It's as if the land emanates a sense of delight, laughter, euphoria and benevolence. It's just a "wheeeeeeee!" kind of place.

Whether that has anything to do with the long held May Day traditions of celebration and fun, or whether it's something deeply inherent in the energies of the land, I can't say. But May Hill is an absolutely joyous place to be.

The nearest confirmed antiquities are to be found on the neighbouring Castle Hill, which has an ancient earthwork on the top, but even this doesn't have a confirmed date of origin. Intriguing place-names abound, such as the village of Glasshouse between May Hill and Castle Hill. All readers of Celtic mythology will get a tingle from the association of glass houses and hilltop castles – echoes of Caer Wydyr, the glass castle – though the Glasshouse name has a more mundane origin in the 16th century glass-making industry in the area. The north-west side of the hill also features a house called Glastonbury!

 May Hill pony (with blue eyes).

Geologically, May Hill is a spin-off from the Malverns rather than the Cotswolds, but its geology is made complex by a number of faultlines. It has its own "May Hill sandstone" which is much older than the limestone of the Cotswolds. In my experience the underlying rock can have a significant effect on the atmosphere of a place, and May Hill certainly has a different feel from any of its neighbours.

Faery presences? Definitely. And also an assortment of resident animals. You may see a herd of Belted Galloway cattle grazing on the hill (dark-coloured cows with a white band round the middle), and also a group of free-roaming ponies. Not quite wild, but living a fairly feral lifestyle. When I met them they were having a great time scratching themselves against the trunks of silver birch trees. Five or six ponies all blissfully scratching in unison, while another had a good roll about in the mud with all its legs in the air. But then the hill has that kind of effect on me too.

Sources:
Much of the info for this post came from the excellent Longhope Village and Notable Trees websites.

Well in the Wildwood: the Mussel Well, Churchdown

Churchdown Hill, locally called Chosen Hill, solitary bump in the vale, marshy under the weight of its springs. Only one spring is named. In fact it has three names. The Ordnance Survey map tantalisingly marks the Mussel Well in the woods on the NW slope on or near the ramparts of an Iron Age camp, but without making entirely clear exactly where it is. Older maps show it as the Muzzel Well, with similar lack of precision. Other local sources refer to it, rightly or wrongly, as the Roman Well.

Never mind the maps; how difficult can it be to find a well?

Er ... moderately, in my experience. One of the problems is that you don't know what you're looking for, unless you've seen a picture of it previously. A "well" might turn out to be anything from an elaborate system of stone-built channels and chambers to a simple puddle on the ground. If the Ordnance Survey marks it as a "well" rather than a "spring" then that usually means there's some kind of visible man-made structure in place. Usually, but not always.

Well hidden: the slopes of Churchdown Hill are smothered with ancient woodland.

The first time I tried to discover the Mussel Well I didn't find it. Pitching into the faery-haunted woods below St Bartholomew's church, the magical church-on-a-tump which reminds me a little bit of Glastonbury Tor (only a bit flatter), I soon found myself hopelessly disorientated among the shady tangle of oak, ash and thorn. I squidged my way along endless stretches of boot sucking quagmire – abundant springs just under the surface ensure the paths remain perpetually muddy for most of the year – but realised I didn't have a clue where to look. I tried following my intuition, which led me towards a slight clearing in the trees on a steep slope (the whole hilltop is an Iron Age hillfort), but I was inadequately shod to make my way across an expanse of perilously sloping slop, studded with dog turds, to get to it, and so I reluctantly gave up. Not that I'm a cissy about falling on my arse in the mud, but I prefer not to do it with an expensive camera dangling round my neck. My frustration was increased when I got home and referred back to the maps because I realised that I'd been going the right way and must only have been a matter of yards away from finding it.

So I went back another day with a renewed resolve and a robust pair of boots. This time I got through the mud obstacles with ease, sending iridescent flies spinning from chunks of canine crap in the sunlight, but still no well. I trekked down the path one way, then trekked back up it the other way, all to no avail, and thought I was going to have to give up again. And then a distinctly smug voice in my head said "it's not so hard to find, you know." Meaning that oh yes it is hard to find, but my inner senses could lead me to it if only I'd let them. A moment later I noticed a narrow, informal path running up the rampart slope between the trees, and up it I went. Still no sign of a well, but half way up the earthworks my eye was drawn to a very imposing tree. An old hollow ash with whirls of ivy draped over it and a tall, triangular opening at the base.

Now, holey trees like this are a magnetic draw to my pagan soul, so I went over to get a closer look at it. There was something so powerful about its aura though that I was afraid to go too close; this was a tree Not-To-Be-Messed-With. I've rarely seen ash trees as big and old as this, and it appeared to be part of a row of mature ashes standing in a line; even within the wood with other trees all around, they stood out as venerable sentinels. And when I looked at the next one along, another tangle of ancient boughs, I saw that snuggled under its roots was a stone trough. Aha!

The Mussel Well – and I assume this is the Mussel Well, although there's no sign to say so – is an unprepossessing rectangular trough of indeterminate age, repaired or rebuilt multiple times by the look of it, obscured by dirt and moss and encroached by brambles. The water emerges from a metal pipe in a concrete block embedded into the hillside and falls into the trough, which is only a few inches deep and partially filled with well-rotted crud. The water then flows out through a second pipe at the front end. But maybe flows isn't the right word, because it's really somewhere between a trickle and a drip. So slight, in fact, that there's no drainage as such. The water drips into what appears to be a fairly primitive soakaway and barely even wets the ground. Intriguingly though, the ground below the well has a gulley cut through it as if there were formerly a stream running down the slope, although it's now dry and filled with brambles. There are also a few bits of stone lying about, half buried, which may have been part of it at some point.

Because of the slowness of the flow, the water in the trough is stagnant. I have a little self-anointing ritual I normally do when I encounter a well or spring, but the deep green depths of this pool revealed unappetising corpses of flies and worms and a host of unsavoury insect larva thingies wiggling about in it under a filmy sheen of gluck on the surface, and I really didn't feel inclined to dip my fingers in it. So I compromised by dipping my fingers in the drip of water coming out of the pipe, which was of course just as dirty and disgusting as the trough, but didn't look as horrible.

I'm not painting a very romantic view of this site am I? I have to say though, despite the state of the physical attributes, this felt like a spot with a bit of sacred whoomph behind it. Much of this was coming from the great gnarled and twisted ivy-mantled ash tree which stands guard beside it, a tree with a very active faery presence which takes its guardianship role very seriously, thank you very much. It's no good telling the tree spirit that the well is dirty and polluted; it presides over an older and deeper presence which goes beyond physical conditions.

The guardian of the well

Aside from the ambiance of the place, what can I tell you about the well? Available information is negligible. Most guides to Churchdown Hill make mention of the Mussel Well (frequently misspelt "Mussell") but none seem to offer any enlightenment. The local authority tourist information singles it out as one of the significant historical sites on the hill, and then says simply: "its history is obscure." Right, OK then. There doesn't seem to be any clue as to why it's called the Mussel Well, which I assume doesn't have anything to do with molluscs because the name appears to have evolved from an earlier form spelled "Muzzel". And there aren't any molluscs around here anyway, except fossilised ones. Perhaps the answer lies in an obscure land deed or reference library somewhere.

The Woodland Trust, who own and manage the woods, don't have a lot of historical information either, but they do mention in their leaflet that the Mussel Well provides a water supply to nearby Green Farm via a hidden pipe. If that's the case, then it explains why the current flow of the well is so depleted, and why it has the appearance of having been more gushing in the past. It's hard to guess at the age of the trough, as it looks to have been patched up several times; it has some white ceramic-lined bricks which look to be about a century old, and the lower stonework appears older. The alternative name, the Roman Well, implies that the site, if not the trough, dates back to Roman times – but such names can be misleading. There's no doubt that Churchdown Hill was a site of interest and activity for the Romans, and there's a set of steps credited to them on a nearby slope. But the bank in which the well is set is part of the Iron Age earthwork, long predating the Roman occupation. The well must surely have been known by the Dobunni people who lived here in pre-Christian times, although whether it was simply a water supply or had a religious significance I don't know (though I know what my intuition tells me).

One of the only references I've found in any of my books is in Stephen Yeates' A Dreaming for the Witches (which, interestingly enough, has an aerial photo of Churchdown Hill on the cover). He cites an earlier history of Churchdown by W.T. Swift, published 1905, which reports sightings of a faery funeral procession coming through the entrance of the Iron Age ramparts and disappearing into the hillside at an ash tree by the Mussel Well. There are of course many folk traditions about faeries seen or encountered at a well in the woods: the Mabinogion, the legend of the Faery Melusine, the folk song Tam Lin, and many medieval literary sources. As bonkers as these things may seem to modern readers, I have to say that having felt the aura of awe around that opening in the ash tree, not to mention the intensely solicitous green guardian of the ash tree beside the well, the idea of this place being a long established portal into faery doesn't seem very surprising to me!

Hartpury green man

On May Hill, half way between Gloucester and Ross-on-Wye, a hungry faery took a chomp at a pear he found growing on a tree. The small, hard fruit was disgustingly bitter and he spat it out with such force that the pips flew out across the surrounding countryside, where they landed in the soil and grew into new trees.

That, if you want to believe local legend, is why Gloucestershire and its neighbouring counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire are the heartland of perry pears, native semi-wild pears which are too hard and astringent for eating but can be milled and fermented into the most exquisite perry (or what is known commercially as pear cider). It explains in particular the other local saying that good perry pears can only be grown within sight of May Hill.

Exactly which varieties can be traced to the seeds the faery spat is a matter of conjecture, but one of the places a pip is supposed to have landed is Hartpury, a place where the tradition of perry-making goes back centuries. This Gloucestershire village even takes its name from the perry pear – "Hartpury" evolving from its early name of "Hardepirige" which translates as "hard pear". There is also a pear named after the village: the antique and venerable Hartpury Green.

 Hartpury Green perry pears growing in Hartpury churchyard.

Writing his Vinetum Britannicum in 1691, John Worlidge notes that "Pears that are esteemed for their Vinous Juice in Worcestershire and those adjacent Parts, are the Red and Green Squash-pears, the John-pear, the Green Harpary, the Drake-pear, the Mary-pear, the Lullam-pear, but above all the rest are esteemed the Bosbury and the Bareland pears and the White and Red Horse pears." Of these, around half have since been lost – and of those that survive, some are designated "critically rare", including the Hartpury Green (Green Harpary). Fortunately Gloucestershire Orchard Group have been working hard to identify and propagate all the surviving local pear varieties to ensure they're conserved for the future; their website is full of fascinating information about local apples, pears, plums and nuts. And a number of perry pear trees have been planted in Hartpury churchyard.

The charmingly named Butt

Perry pears are a bit smaller and a lot harder than dessert pears, and most of them are too bitter to eat raw (assuming you can get your teeth into them) as they contain a lot of tannin. They don't always look like pears either – you could be forgiven for mistaking the Hartpury Green for an apple, as it's round rather than pear-shaped. Traditionally, perry was home-made on farms and consumed locally. The process is similar to that of cider-making: the fresh pears are crushed in a mill and left to ferment using the naturally occurring yeasts already present in the pressed fruit. Good quality perry is still made in the area (and is quite distinct from commercial pear ciders which are generally made from concentrate). Among the varieties recorded in Gloucestershire, surviving or otherwise, can be found such delights as Ram's Cods (also known as Stitter Balls), Clipper Dick, Dead Boy, Jug Rumblers, Late Treacle, Sack, Piddle Pear, Bloody Bastard, Chaxhill Rough and Yellow Huffcap.

Not a bad legacy from the May Hill peary faery.

Blakeney Red, probably the most widely grown perry pear

It has been speculated, though I'm not sure if there's anything more than speculation, that it's the pip-spitting fae of May Hill who is depicted in an intriguing carving in Hartpury parish church. This figure is one of two which perches high in the rafters, inserted into slots cut in the tie beam across the middle of the church. The figure is male and human-looking, but is covered with scales, which may be leaves or feathers – who knows. To some people it appears to be chainmail or fool's motley, though if you look closely the 'leaves' are distinctly separate and overlap one another. He has a Celtic-looking face with bulbous eyes and his hands are lightly pressed together over his midriff. There is a suggestion that this is our immortal friend clutching his aching tummy after feasting on the bitter pear! On the other hand, he may be a form of woodwose, or a jack-in-the-green.

There's no denying the fruit theme though for the other figure on the opposite side. This one is a more straightforward green man. He looks a bit fierce in this picture but from other angles he appears to be laughing – a mood changing green man. He has leaf-shaped ears and his body is composed entirely of a grapevine, twirling abundantly with leaves and bunches of grapes. Grapevines may not be a common sight in the English climate, but as it happens there was a vineyard just a few yards away from the church during medieval times. The Abbot of Gloucester built his luxurious mansion house in the adjacent field, and grapes were among the many things the monks cultivated there. The green man is a symbol of abundance.

These two figures are something of a mystery, because they don't belong to the period of the church's original building, but have been put there at some later date. They are, however, very old – perhaps dating to the church's expansion in the 14th century. They're carved from oak and may have originated as bench ends or pew ends. But why they were set into the central beam of the roof – high up where it's difficult to see them – is anyone's guess. Perhaps, like gargoyles on towers, they have a protective role.

One possible explanation is that a fire took hold of the church at some time in its history. The evidence for this is the pink tint on the stonework in parts of the church. It's a characteristic of Cotswold stone that it indelibly turns pink when it's heated, which is a useful way of spotting the scenes of past fires in old churches (Tewkesbury Abbey has a pink line along the sanctuary wall where the monks set fire to a bookshelf). It's just possible that these two carved panels may have been salvaged after the fire and symbolically incorporated into their current display positions.

The church of St Mary the Virgin at Hartpury was built around 1100, or possibly earlier, and has some distinctive Saxon herringbone stonework in a few places in the walls. Whether that means it was built before 1066 or whether it's a case of the Saxon building styles lingering for a while after the Normans arrived, it's certainly a very antique place. The current chancel and tower were added in the 14th century but when you're inside the church there's no question about which part is the original, ancient bit. The atmosphere is incredible ... a tangle of tingles. The whole church has an extraordinary ambience but it's noticeably more intense within the nave.

The walls were originally plastered and painted with decorations (coats of arms are known to have been featured at Hartpury), but the dunderheaded Victorian twerps chipped it all off thinking they were "restoring" the church to some authentic bare-walled ideal. Some older features have stood the test of time though. A fear of witchcraft led to the practice of locking away holy water, usually within the font, as was done at Hartpury. The usefulness of holy water for magical practices made it a sought-after commodity for anointing places, charms and healing, DIY exorcisms, and the banishing of conjured spirits which got out of hand.

 As in many churches, the font at Hartpury is fitted with a sturdy lockable lid to prevent holy water from being stolen and used for nefarious purposes. This 17th century lid is thought to be a replacement for the original.

It's sometimes questioned why such an obviously pagan figure as the green man should show up so often in churches. The reality is that this most pagan of symbols is entrenched in Christian tradition, and they aren't found in any pre-Christian context. The idea that it's either a symbol of the church's dominance over primitive nature spirits (if you're a Christian) or a cheeky re-emergence of the old gods asserting themselves against an oppressive new religion (if you're a pagan) tends to miss the point, I think. The green man is an archetype which just is. He doesn't need to be polarised by anyone's religious preferences, however firmly they may be held. He's as universal and irrepressible as the springing buds and swelling fruits in the land all around.

It also shouldn't be assumed that in times past everyone was simplistically pious and compliant. The parish church was the heart of a village community, with a social and protective role beyond its function for religious services, and everybody went there – yes, including witches! It takes all sorts to make up a community and some people are naturally non-theistic and don't feel or sense anything, while others are intuitively drawn to the natural magic inherent in the land and the seasons, and feel most spiritually alive when they're outdoors in wild places. This was surely as true in the past as it is today. Freed from the polarised viewpoints of our very modern prejudices, the green man is as much at home in a church as he is in a grove in the woods.

Church or greenwood?

Hartpury church is in a quiet spot, some way out of the main village. The Abbot's big house was demolished in Victorian times, the only trace now being its moat undulating through the grass in the field beside the church. The present Hartpury Court is built from its stone. What does survive remarkably unspoiled though, as a reminder of the power and wealth of the medieval church, is the vast tithe barn on the other side of the road – another atmospheric delight of a place. It would have been used by Gloucester Abbey to stash the spoils of local taxation, which was paid to them in the form of agricultural produce.

14th century tithe barn opposite Hartpury church. A legacy of the Abbot of Gloucester living here.

Psst ... if you're visiting Hartpury church, you may find the green man and his friend are not readily visible in normal daylight. On the organ case just inside the door is a row of light-switches, and the one on the far left puts a spotlight on the carved figures. Please remember to switch it off before you go and leave a little something in the collection box to thank them for their electricity.

Sources:
St Mary the Virgin, Hartpury, church guide (Hartpury Historic Land & Building Trust, 2005).
Martell, Charles, Pears of Gloucestershire, free PDF download available here and well worth a read.

A long barrow's tale: Notgrove

Most people visiting Notgrove long barrow these days have one overriding reaction: disappointment. "A lumpy mess" is one reasonable response. "Fucked" is another. But I would suggest that your appreciation of this barrow might depend on whether you believe in faeries. Or how much you appreciate wildflower biodiversity. Either of those perspectives will allow you to see something beyond the sorry sagging remains of this once impressive site.

I remember being "disappointed" when I first saw Notgrove long barrow in the late 1980s. To all outward appearances, it's an undulating wobble of indeterminate lumps and bumps, bereft of distinguishing features. Graceless and scraggy, it isn't even obvious which way round it is - nor where the barrow ends and the natural lumpiness of the landscape begins. Its position on the elevated plateau of the Cotswolds is quite spectacular, but unflattered by being crammed into a tightly cropped corner of a field, enclosed by trees and severely sliced round on all edges by fencing, so you can't stand far enough away from it to view it in its entirety. Being right next to the A436, access is easy enough with plentiful parking in a large, dirty, pothole-pocked layby, but you have to watch you don't get your arse knocked off while walking the few yards along the grass verge to the barrow, such is the speed of the cars tanking through this rural idyll.

I'd like to be able to say that this indentation is the horned forecourt, but no – it's the other end. Merely a scar from the bad old days of invasive and irresponsible archaeology.

So much for the outer impressions, but Notgrove barrow still has a very nice atmosphere. As a site which was once made sacred, it retains its gravitas. As a place where a seeker of ancient resonances can connect with the ancestral magnetism within the mound, it retains its power. There are many archaeological perspectives on this barrow which can be found across the internet, but I'm more concerned with attuning to what the barrow offers on an inner level which might not be apparent in physical dimensions.

Long barrows of the Cotswolds and elsewhere have a long association with Faery, there being a deeply embedded tradition that hollow mounds are where the faeries hang out. In this region it seems to apply whether the mound be a man-made barrow or a natural conical hill of some kind. Most hills and mounds across Gloucestershire have some kind of faery legend associated with them, even if it's only the tales collected by Victorian mythographers from local farmworkers who encountered mysterious music or lights while wobbling home from the pub on a dark night. The tradition has its roots in Celtic legends of the Sidhe, who lived in the "hollow hills" and were often associated with burial mounds; these early portrayals of the "shining ones" are much closer to the root and spark of Faery than the more modern gauzy-winged notions. I'd say Notgrove barrow makes a pretty decent faery mound even today, and if you can find an entrance on the inner (there are many, find one which opens for you), it's a warm and friendly one too.

A local legend associated with Notgrove long barrow is that a golden coffin was buried within it (a very common claim which applies to many other barrows too). Not surprisingly, the two recorded excavations in 1881 and 1934 didn't turn up anything of that nature. And although the barrow had been plundered multiple times prior to that, if there ever was a golden coffin it wouldn't have been a physical one. It might be the mortuary receptacle of choice for the likes of King Tut and Jimmy Savile but the Neolithic people didn't really go in for coffins, other than simple stone cists, and certainly didn't make them from precious metals – a gold coffin actually sounds much more like a faery myth. The ubiquity of the legend at different sites suggests a lingering folk memory of an old myth associated with barrows and hollow hills. Common misconceptions about physical treasure in burial mounds were responsible for much of the lamentable destruction of ancient sites, during the 18th century in particular, and the Cotswolds are littered with half-dismembered barrows torn apart by get-rich-quick treasure-hunters and abandoned in disappointment when they failed to yield anything more than a jumble of bones and a few stone beads.

Indeed the idea that digging into a barrow will reveal, Tutankhamun-like, a glittering hoard of bling is quite a strange one as it doesn't seem to have any basis in reality. While some fancy burials with rich grave goods do exist in England, they tend to be from later periods – the Anglo-Saxons being the masters of this in their burial of an entire ship at Sutton Hoo. But whatever the long barrows were used for, there was more to it than a mere disposal of the dead. For the most part they were not built for a single interment of one important person but chaotic multiple burial. Many of the Cotswold barrows – Notgrove included – are found to contain a jumbled assortment of skeletons. While some of this might be put down to earth movement, burrowing animals, careless looters etc, that doesn't account for all of it, and it seems to have been the way these barrow-people did things. Either they let their dead decompose before putting the bones in the barrow, or they went back in and moved them from one chamber to another after they'd been buried for a while. Either way, they seem to have purposely given them a good shuffle. Why?

To understand something of the Neolithic mentality you have to put aside the individualism which dominates modern thinking. People in the past were less focused on themselves as individuals and more conscious of the group or tribe of which they formed a part. Within this collective sense of self could be found a reverence for ancestors as part of the continuing collective whole. Again we have to detach our modern preconceptions which see ancestors in terms of specific lineage and genealogy – a line of individuals. To the barrow-people, ancestors were a much more nebulous and collective group representing "those who had gone before", in a more abstract and archetypal sense. The cycles of death and rebirth were all around them in the tides of nature and this cyclical pattern would have been obvious. Drawing upon the insights and blessings of those who were travelling the realms of the unseen would have been obvious too. And so it's not surprising that several barrows have presented evidence of regular and repeated entry and interaction with the bones of the ancestors over long periods of time, supporting the view that barrows were communal ritual sites and not just graves.

We can't know what rituals or practices the barrow-people followed. But we can see that it included a dynamic relationship with the ancestors, as the living entered the hollow dark spaces of the tomb and spread the bones from one space to another. Perhaps the multiple chambers represent different stages of the ancestors' journey through the afterlife, with the barrow itself a chamber of initiation for living and dead alike.

Notgrove long barrow was built with five internal chambers off a central passage, in common with many other barrows in what is called the Cotswold Severn group. It had a forecourt area at the eastern end and was structured all around with a double kerb of drystone walling. One thing that is quite unusual is that it was built on top of an earlier round barrow. In this instance there was a burial of a single individual: underneath the dome of the round barrow was the crouched skeleton of an old man. The body of a young girl had, at some later date, been placed on the top. The round barrow sits hidden in the centre of the long barrow immediately behind the furthest chamber. The passage and chambers of the long barrow contained disarticulated skeletons representing at least six people, with the jumbled bones of at least two more underneath the horned forecourt. It also had a possible standing stone on its north side.

Plan of Notgrove long barrow – not that you can identify any of these features definitively from what now remains, sadly. Based on a plan in Timothy Darvill's book, itself based on the excavation map of 1934.

Far from yielding any golden coffins, the only treasures were a flint arrowhead and a black shale bead.

In the course of its first excavation in 1881, Notgrove barrow was ripped right open and its passage and chambers exposed to view. The 1934 excavation was also an exercise in regrettable unsubtlety. Photos of it in this exposed condition show it to be quite an impressive sight, but a rather melancholy inversion of what a barrow is supposed to be. Writing in 1931, H.W. Timperley laments that "the stones were meant to remain unseen – we have uncovered them and let the wind swirl in their empty spaces."

It was a fair point – with as much of problem for conservation as for the violation of ancient solitude. By the 1970s the condition of the stones was becoming a serious issue and the barrow was deteriorating rapidly, easy prey to vandalism and the wear and tear of visitors as well as the ravages of the weather. In an ideal world, the barrow would have been carefully reconstructed with its original materials, as was done at the magnificent Belas Knap barrow nearby. However, it being a non-ideal world, Gloucestershire County Council went for the more basic solution of dumping a load of soil over the stones to cover them. Thus we have ended up with the lumpy mangled bollocksation that so disappoints visitors today.

On the plus side, the barrow is managed as a miniature reserve for wild flowers. Limestone grassland in the Cotswolds is now rare and precious, as modern industrial farming has destroyed most of it. In the traditional way, the grass on the barrow is only mown once a year, in August. This means that for much of the summer it appears to be an overgrown mess of long grass, which understandably leads to an impression that it's being neglected. However, if you look more closely it's a beautiful tangle of blossoms: scabious, knapweed, harebells and yellow-wort – while in spring the whole mound is bursting with cowslips.

More words from H.W. Timperley (1931):

"The tomb looks desolate in decay, yet it still holds something of the serene and simple impressiveness which must always have hung about it. There must be more than earth and stones in a form that, destroyed, can fill the mind with the peacefulness of the eternal and make it seem no greater and no less than the living quiescence which keeps the hills stable and puts the wind which sweeps over them into place as a ripple on the surface of time."

Sources:
Notgrove Long Barrow page on The Modern Antiquarian.
Long Barrows of the Cotswolds by Timothy Darvill (Tempus, 2004).
 


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Wyche Cutting

Topical weathervane on the bus shelter at the Wyche Cutting, Malvern.

The Wyche is a notch or cleft on the crown of the Malvern Hills, straddling the border between Worcestershire and Herefordshire. It can be seen from miles away as a cleft in the long line of undulations and it marks an important crossing point. It's one of only two places where you can drive over the top of the Malverns rather than having to go all the way round the perimeter, although it is steep and bendy and something of a white knuckle ride in an ancient 1.0 litre VW Polo.

The pass over the hills as it appears today owes a fair bit to the Victorian road-improvers, and some of the tumps and bumps are the remains of spoil heaps from their digging endeavours. But the Wyche pass is ancient – known to have been in use in prehistoric times and to have formed part of a neolithic trade route, used amongst other things for the transportation of salt from Droitwich to South Wales. A small village occupies the high ground on either side of the hill, and a village green bounded by the intriguingly named Fossil Bank.

A special feature of the Malvern hills is the proliferation of roadside springs, spouts and wells – some drinkable, some dry – some sacred, some rancid. The Wyche Cutting has several, bringing together the symbolism of a cleft in the hills with a water-bearing cleft in the earth. They come in a variety of forms but are often at their most interesting on 1st May, when they are "dressed" with flowers and flags as part of a revival tradition.

The Wyche Spring (below) bears the distinction, apparently, of being the highest well on the Malvern ridge – a moot point really, as the flow has been shut off for some twenty years, possibly amid concerns of pollution. The spout is totally dry and in this Beltane well-dressing a twist of blue cellophane has been used to recreate the tumbling waters. The spring that feeds (or used to feed) this roadside water spout rises beside a cottage at the edge of the Wyche Cutting and reaches it through a pipe under the road. Unlike most of the springs and wells on the Malverns, which consist of rainwater squeezed through geological faults, the Wyche Spring is from a true underground watercourse, an Archaean spring.

Here be the Willow Spring (below), only a few yards down the road on the other side, with its May Day dressing. The well doesn't look very much but it's one of the genuinely ancient Malvern springs. The water originally poured straight out of a cleft in the rock beside a willow tree, a proper sacred spring of the kind that opens into the underworld, for those that know how to look. The water was once fast-flowing, so much so that it was something of a hazard in winter, when the gushing abundance flowed over the road and froze into a sheet of solid ice – which is no joke on this stretch of road with its steep slope. An engraving of 1855 shows a very rustic scene with a willow tree growing out over the road at an angle and the waters pouring from the top of a boulder at the roadside. Although still rural, the scene is quite different today. For one thing, the flow is reduced to a piddly little dribble, enough to cultivate a small crop of moss but not much use for anything else.

This is because the spring was damaged during WW2 by a bomb which landed close to it, and has not flowed properly since. Malvern springs are extremely sensitive to disturbance and it's not unusual for them to stop flowing properly if the ground around them is interfered with. The waters pass through layers of impervious pre-Cambrian rock whose alignments are very precise. The springs consist of rainwater which soaks into the hills and is filtered through minutely fine fissures in the rock, so tightly pressed together that even minerals and bacteria are unable to pass through the gaps, resulting in a water which is incredibly pure and essentially has nothing in it. It's a very delicate balance and if the rocks take a thumping the fissures can become so tight the waters can't get through them any more.

The Willow Spring was reconstructed in 1946 following the bomb damage, and set into a little stone enclosure. Its pootling trickle falls into a stone basin and into the earth through a simple soakaway under the ground. Because of this lack of proper drainage, it was decided during recent restoration not to undertake further work to improve the flow of the spring, for fear of causing icy overflow on the winter road. And so a dribble it remains. The willow tree is gone. So is the magic. Whether it's because of the bomb damage or whether it's just me, I can't sense any of the inner dynamics I would normally expect to find at a sacred well of such provenance.

Down below the road on the steep slope of the hillside is a place where the real magic flows. You won't find it named or signposted, but you might find it if you follow the sound of chuckling water.

Nature's well-dressing: Beltane flowers deck an abandoned spring.

A small stream emerges from a mossy spout in the side of the hill and splashes into the pebble-gulley it's traced out for itself. The spout is most likely the outflow from the abandoned spring which formerly served the Royal Malvern Well Spa, long vanished, crumbled under ivy, its presence deleted. The flow from this spring is much greater than that of the two roadside wells round the corner, but its opening is hidden. It lies to the side of a footpath below the road and in its lushness it can only be found by listening to the tumbling of its water through the stones and weeds. Nobody "dresses" this spring at Beltane, but it dresses itself in the colours of the wild weeds and garden escapes. A radiant sky-blue trickles down its far side from a clump of forget-me-nots, a domestic cultivar gone feral and rejoicing in the marshy soil, fronded with fern and eyes of herb robert, green nettles and dusky watermint, tangles of buttercups and golden saxifrage. In the wooded shade of the footpath another garden escape, tissue-fine Iceland poppies, catch the shafts of the sun in translucent crêpe, a flaming orange.

As the spring makes its way down the hill so the footpath follows in parallel, down a dappled corridor to a wooden stile where the bluebell woods meet an open green, giving way to a break in the trees where blue takes over. In the wood shade it's the royal earth blue, the saturated colour of pendular bells, and in the sunlit grass it's an astral faery light, radiant blue on a green wave.

And so the path opens out into a meadow, where a solitary oak tree roots into the ancestral pitch and ancient memories flame the grass.

 The Wyche oak, hub of the meadow.

Sources:
Aquae Malvernensis: The Springs and Fountains of the Malvern Hills by Cora Weaver and Bruce Osborne (private publication, 1994)
The website of the Malvern Spa Association