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On Saturday 17th May Shaun is leading a walk for WAHNS Archaeology Field Group. Meet at 10:30 in the car park below Knap Hill off the Lockeridge to Alton Barnes road at SU 116637. The walk will be six or seven miles looking at archaeology, history, folklore etc. Bring a packed lunch and suitable footware and clothing for a day out on the downs.
The AGM will be held next month but should hopefully only take a few minutes.
I think all the tickets for Stonehenge have now been sold but give Chris a ring if you wish to be put on the list in case anyone cancels.
Bookings are starting to come in for the Summer Watson Workshop to be held later this year, ring Chris Hinton for details and there is a booking form at the back of this journal. It promises to be an interesting day.
If you are interested in house clearing visit http://www.professional-house-clearing.com/. Nigel contacted me about Dennis Wheatley recently and as he had a web site I made a quick visit. Looks interesting.
This month’s trip is to Lodge Park, part of the Sherborne estate near Aldsworth, which is near Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire.
From Cirencester head north along the A429 Fossway, past the traffic lights at Northleach on to the roundabout. Take the 3rd right the A40 (Oxford). After about 2˝ miles follow a brown National Trust sign for Lodge Park. Carry on down the contry road for about a mile turn in entrance and park in car park. Map Ref SP146123. Meet at 10:45 in the Car Park.
The morning session will be to the long-barrow on the site and after lunch we will be looking at some of the other interesting features at the park. These include a large area of restored working water-meadow system.
The house at Lodge Park is in fact a rare surviving example of a seventeenth century grandstand, to watch deer-coursing from the roof platform and for entertaining on a fairly grand scale, not as a residential house. It is part of the Sherborne Estate created in 1634 by John Dutton, who loved gambling and having a good time.
The estate was left to the National Trust in 1983 by the 7th Lord Sherborne and the restoration undertaken by the Trust was the first that they did which relied completely on archaeological evidence.
The estate covers 4000 acres so I don’t expect we’ll manage to dowse the whole lot in one day!
There are a few resident ghosts, in the Lodge and several spots with a strongly dowsable “presence”. Not all the building is yet open to the public as several parts have yet to be restored and are currently unsafe.
Plenty of dowsing to do in a beautiful part of the Cotswolds, bring waterproofs and suitable footwear as always – see you there.
The March meeting was the first to be held in the new venue, the Woodshaw Inn at Wootten Bassett. As the function room is a different shape to the previous one, and slightly smaller, we were not quite sure of the best way to arrange the room, particularly since a large number were expected due to the speaker for the evening being the well-known dowser and author, Sig Lonegren.
In the event everything was fine although we will probably tweak the layout of the chairs and tables slightly.
The talk, entitled Sig’s Hypothesis No.2 was a new one that Sig had recently put together and this was the first time that he had given the talk. An earlier talk by Sig was called Sig’s Hypothesis No.1, and was about people picking up dowsing reactions at slightly different locations when working on earth-energies at ancient sites. The new talk goes much deeper into the reasons why this disparity happens, and why some sites don’t “follow the rules”
Sig began with an analogy – that there have been eight great prophets, including Mohammed, Jesus, Zoroaster and Moses who all had had a vision of God. In spite of these eight men all having seen “The One”, they all came back and told different stories. Sig believes that, in the same way, no two dowsers will find exactly the same thing when they are dowsing intangible targets such as earth energies in sacred space.
This is why it is impossible to convince scientists that dowsing “works”, as they think that subtle differences are in fact, inaccuracies.
Sig has come to the belief that one answer could lie in Refraction. Most of us are familiar with the way that the Earth’s atmosphere causes light to refract, or “bend”. This could explain why the fullest effect of the Sun coming through the light boxes at sites such as Newgrange don’t always occur when we think they should, but at the point when the Sun is at an angle where it is no longer affected by refraction. The long-barrow at Stoney Littleton is another good example.
If this is also true for electro-magnetic radiation, which is probable, the effect could be that the sun looks as though it rises before it really does, and could affect the time at which dowsers get reactions when dowsing earth energies at sacred sites.
These theories were explained by Sig with the aid of an interesting selection of slides and particularly by a 6 minute film taken from a longer 45 minute film of the sunrise effect at Newgrange, showing the phenomenon from inside the barrow.
Thanks to Sig for such a fascinating and thought-provoking talk to get us off to a good start at the new venue. S.C.
On the front cover is a photo of the entrance to Newgrange, the well known passage grave in Ireland. On the stone at the front you might be able to make out a carved triple spiral. When you look at the triple spiral, a definite ancient symbol and the slightly more modern Shamrock made famous by St Patrick and his friends, but still an enduring modern symbol of Ireland it makes you realise that some of our every day symbols may go back many thousands of years. Guinness anyone?
This trip took place as usual on the Sunday following the monthly meeting. It was also Easter Sunday so we were a slightly smaller group than usual but still a good number considering the dreadful weather forecast. In the event, the forecast proved to be wrong and we had a decent day at Lotmead Farm near Wanborough then at The Lawn in Swindon.
The pre-lunch session had been arranged by Chris, who knew of a friendly farmer who had an archaeological dig take place on his land some years ago. The diggers had concentrated on collecting all the posher finds, ignoring the smaller and humbler bits and leaving them behind – ideal for a group of dowsers to practice their archaeology hunting skills on.
Chris had kindly drawn up a site-plan of the farm but we mainly concentrated on one side of the “pick-your-own” field where Roman pot-sherds were in abundance. Apparently many Roman coins were found here and are often still picked up, although none of us found any. Chris explained that the archaeologists found evidence of buildings on this stretch of land and that these had plank floors, leaving small gaps which coins may have accidentally been lost in.
Between us we managed a respectable amount of finds, mostly bits of pot although Pete got some roof tile complete with hole for fixing it to a roof, and Lyn found a very early Bovril jar in absolutely perfect condition. –However, I’ve a feeling that this may not be Roman! I managed to find a nice piece of jug-handle. Chris had brought along a selection of drawings of cross-sections of typical Roman pots, enabling us to identify some of the finds.
After lunch we moved on to The Lawn in Old Town, Swindon where we dowsed parts of the old Goddard family estate. Last time we came we dowsed the site of the now-demolished house and tried to find the location of the old pet’s cemetery. This time we dowsed trees and around the old ice-house. Also Shaun dowsed to find where the spring rose that serviced the long-disappeared Mill. We also dowsed some large sarcen stones that are possibly the remains of an ancient row of standing stones although they are no longer in their original position.
The WDS road show will be out and about again this year. We set up a stall and sell various dowsing paraphernalia to the innocent, and give hands on dowsing experiences to all comers. 80 or 90 quickie dowsing lessons in the day are not unknown.
Dates arranged so far are:-
Lodge Park Sunday 6th July. (We have a field trip there in April)
Crop Circle Conference, Marlborough 6th/7th August.
Chedworth Roman Villa 23rd August. Only the one day this year.
Please be aware that if you plan to visit us at these events, entry fees may be payable.
The Daily Telegraph, on April 5th, printed a quite positive article about dowsing, written by Adrian Tierney-Jones.
The article, called Divining Inspiration featured a young Cornish dowser, Aaron Bray, who also works for his family firm as a water engineer, installing pumps. He also gets called upon to look for gas supplies, mineral lodes, unmapped water pipes and sewers and oil. He uses L rods for the initial location and then switches to a Y rod for the exact spot. He makes his Y rods out of kite sticks taped together at one end.
Apparently one lady on Exmoor was thrilled when her dowser detected oil, or “black gold” as the article termed it, until they found that the oil was merely spillage from an oil-tank.
One Cornish farmer, himself a dowser, who is convinced of its worth, hired Aaron Bray to find a source of good quality water for his vegetables and strawberries. He claims the water they found is much better quality than the tap water.
A Devon brewery also used the services of a dowser to find a suitable source of water for brewing their beer and was extremely pleased with the results.
The article did point out that many sceptics refuse to believe in the worth of dowsing, but in general it dealt with the subject in a positive and encouraging manner, even giving a few brief instructions on how to do it.
What we now think of as the tradition of playing tricks on the morning of the 1st. of April probably began in France in 1564, although the idea may have come from an ancient Roman festival.
In 1564, the Gregorian Calendar was adopted, causing the date of the New Year to be changed from 25th. March to 1st. January. Since 25th March often fell in Holy Week the celebrations associated with New Year were postponed until April 1st.
Many French peasants apparently played the trick of turning up unexpectedly at their friends and neighbours on April 1st after the calendar change, to fool them into thinking it was New Year.
Gradually the first day of April became known in many countries as a day to play tricks, the most popular being to send people off on pointless errands.
Anyone who fails to treat the joke in a tolerant way is likely to suffer bad luck, as will the perpetrator if the joke is played after mid-day.
Other cultures also have similar traditions, including Huli, the Indian festival which has a similar tradition of playing practical jokes. S.C.