When You Get Home (Waverley)

December 13th, 2012 § 2 comments

Having verified on your walk that the old trackways are extant in places, you can trace even more of the original route from the map, but reconstructing the whole network requires a bit of sleuthing on the internet aided by some flights of informed fancy.

The name Guildford or Geldeford is said to mean ‘golden ford’, from the colour of the sand on the slopes to the south of the town centre.  A less poetic and more likely reading is ‘geld ford’ where geld or tax was paid to the custodian of the river crossing, the point on the ridge where the Pilgrims’ Way plunges downhill via Ferry Lane to the ford, the only crossing place over the Wey.  As a Megalithic centre, it might easily be the origins of the town itself, manned by hermits, guardians of the well, beacon-lighters, ferrymen, toll-keepers, hosteliers and their hangers-on. It is easy to see that such locations can achieve urban momentum once you accept that Neolithic Britain was a place of intensive long distance transportation. Both the ford and the ferry were going strong right up until 1764 when the river was canalised as part of the Godalming Navigation, and a wholly different nexus-of-routes ushered in the New Britain.

 

Catherine and Martha

A ‘Catherine hill’ is always of interest especially here where it is twinned with a St Martha’s Hill and both with ‘chapels of ease’ on their summits. Chapels-on-a-hill are built over former standing stones, in this case acting as waymarkers for megalithic travellers coming up from the Channel coast. Despite their Christian names, Catherine and Martha have gone down in legend as giantesses who allegedly built the two chapels by tossing a hammer to and fro across the valley, a recognisably Megalithic motif. Sites that are imposing and supposed to be unimaginably old are often ascribed to mythic giants, just as huge dykes are thought to have been built by the Devil. The legend suggests the two hills are to some extent man-made. At any rate, these hills, as with so many holy springs and wells, have been only unconvincingly incorporated into Christianity. St Catherine’s Hill used to be the site of a festive fair, known as Tap-up Sunday due to the amount of beer sold, on the Sunday preceding the Feast of Guardian Angels of 2nd October, the closest available feast-day after the Feast of St. Michael, which was introduced into the official Catholic calendar in the early seventeenth century. Devotion to guardian angels had long been an integral part of monastic tradition, particularly espoused by Bernard of Clairvaux.

 

 

St. Catherine’s and St. Martha’s Hills

St. Catherine’s Chapel is a prominent landmark to the south of Guildford Castle next to the river and particularly conspicuous seen from the Pilgrims’ Way. The Artington spring still bubbles away at the foot of St. Catherine’s. Access to the Wey is via the steep and narrow Ferry Lane, which leads past the hill-top chapel and back up to the Pilgrims’ Way (the modern North Downs Way).[1] St. Martha’s is less accessible, the closest road being the aptly named Halfpenny Lane. It was the only St. Martha’s church in the country up to 1939.

 

St Catherine’s Hill overlooks the Artington springs[2] whose waters were believed to have healing properties, particularly for eye complaints, a common attribute of ‘holy wells’. The art in Artington is probably a reference to artemisia or ‘magic art’ since the drug is a powerful hallucinogenic. The alternative explanation offered, that it is connected to hart as in harts/deer/stags, etc., is actually further evidence since these are thoroughly Megalithic animals. The springs may have already existed or been specially provided at this designated crossing point, presumably for a fee in either case. While we think of wells and springs as free, Megalithia does not since it actually had to build and maintain such amenities in the first place. When Megalithia ceased, the payment ceased and the folk memories could begin. First of all, the good luck element (of a now free service!) always becomes entrenched, then the notion of magic (an after-glow of Megalithic science) gets attached and, finally, the Christian claim of curative powers completes the modern water cult. Now people pay by dressing the wells, throwing coins in and draping cloths on nearby trees. It will generally be found that superstitions always have their basis in superceded practices. It is not that we particularly believe in any of it but it is human nature to wish to partake in communal ceremonial.

St. Catherine’s Hill was formerly called Drake Hill, i.e. Dragon Hill, and according to legend a dragon guarded the springs. All this is a latter-day recasting of a Megalithic site, the dragon being one of the standard symbols of hermetic activity.  If this was the only St. Catherine’s Hill in the country one might think the conjunction of a chapel, a sacred spring and a ‘dragon hill’ serendipitous but there are other St. Catherine hills on the south coast, all with highly visible ‘chapels’ on top. It is likely that Drake Hill was renamed for St. Catherine by the Normans, a central component of the Medieval Megalithic Revival, since her cult was strong in Rouen, the capital of Normandy. Her name derives from katharos meaning ‘pure’ in Greek, also the root of the Cathars, the contemporaneous heretical sect of southern France. Needless to say, whenever you come across a St. Catherine’s anything, you should be on the look-out for ancient trackways, sacred wells, ruined chapels and the rest. Another example of a solitary church-cum-tollbooth on the Pilgrims’ Way is at Chaldon, best known for an unusual ‘Ladder of Salvation’[3] wall-painting more characteristic of a monastery on Mount Athos than a church on a Surrey hill-top.  Aside from the church, in megalithic Rook Lane, there is Chaldon Manor but no village. Chaldon church has a disproportionately high roof, equivalent to a two-storey building. It is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul but contains a St Catherine’s chapel.

St. Martha’s Hill is a markedly solitary feature and yet the Pilgrims’ Way, somewhat contrarily, chooses to go over it, via the chapel, instead of bypassing it as one might expect. This however is quite characteristic of Megalithic passages which seem to prefer the highly visible over the strictly convenient. Crop marks on the hill have been interpreted as Neolithic hut circles and a great number of flint tools and flakes have also been found, all evidence of a settlement, or equally of a trading post. One commentator has written of “huge boulders” in nearby Weston Wood which point to the presence of a dolmen or stone circle. The church is only open on Sundays due to its isolation but May Day festivities are still observed on the hill when local Morris dancers perform at sunrise. St. Martha’s Hill is such a conspicuous landmark from the south that it had to be camouflaged to avoid giving navigational aid to Luftwaffe pilots.

If you look up St. Martha on the internet you will find a mare’s nest of martyrology; let us try to unpick some of the themes. First off, a Saint Martha is listed as the mother of Simeon Stylites the Younger. Stylites were the most extreme form of hermit, the sort who perched on top of pillars, usually at crossroads. Simeon Stylites the Elder suffered from an ulcer in his thigh and was forced to stand on one leg. This is all grist for the Megalithic mill first of all because mythical heroes like the Fisher King were always wounded in the thigh (a Victorian euphemism for wedding tackle generally) and secondly metal-workers were always lame in mythology. A Persian Martha was martyred, significantly enough, by being thrown into a well. Her even more colourful namesake in Provence was the tamer of La Tarasque, the she-dragon  Provençal saints are unusual in England and the Martha reference here reflects dynastic and territorial ties established in the twelfth century by the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Guildford’s castle gardens were laid out by Eleanor who officially introduced the Provençal culture of courtly love, troubadours and the chivalric code into England. In truth historians have yet to sort out the precise cultural contributions of Normandy, Anjou, Picardy and Aquitaine in this era, or the part Britain played. Certainly the prominence of the Arthurian cycle suggests things were bubbling here as well. The troubadours of Provence and the mythos of Britain then became entwined in the Grail romances. The Angevins following the Normans seemed similarly infused with Megalithic principles but it is noticeable that a slightly different strain of reform, arising originally from proto-Jewish Septimania, arrived at about the same time as Eleanor. All this is important because it is reasonably clear, at least as clear as covert historical records can make it, that this high-level intellectual and artistic modishness was accompanied by a lower, broader strain of mercantile, industrial and scientific development.[4]

There is no direct link between St. Catherine and St. Martha apart from their cults as virgin-martyrs but they both seem to have Provençal connections. The name of La Tarasque is from tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus) or “dragon herb”[5] which is related to wormwood, and it also has bull connotations; in the procession through Tarascon the aim was to pull off one of La Tarasque’s spikes, reminiscent of bull-wrestlers of ancient Crete and modern bull-running in north-west Spain. Because the Megalithic Tradition went underground in the Christian era it is always worthwhile looking out for these kinds of esoteric connections. Do not be afraid to dive into modern conspiracy theories because these can be painless introductions to otherwise dry history. “Going underground” came to be understood literally since the background to these crypto-Megalithian heresies was the bull-cult of Mithraism, an early competitor to, or as some say a precursor of, Christianity. Mithras was supposedly born from rock (a reference to the mining of metal ores) and his followers were said to perform rituals in caves and underground temples. We are dealing here with yet one more attempt to combine Christianity and the Megalithic Tradition.[6]

 

La Tarasque

The Tarasque is a dragoness, a half-land half-sea creature (cf. Grendel in Beowulf, or swan-maidens and selkies in Celtic lore) from Provence. She was covered in spikes and breathed fire, clearly a reference to the (dangerous) art of metal-working. Dragons are traditionally resistant to metal weapons unless their armour is pierced in exactly the right place. She has been adopted as the mascot of Tarascon in southern France near the Spanish border where an annual ‘running of La Tarasque’ is held reminiscent of the bull-running festival of San Fermín (fer = iron, Fermin = Hermes) in Pamplona. A renowned ‘Celtic’ saint, St. Petroc, patron saint of Cornwall (and of tinners), similarly tamed the last Cornish dragon by throwing his girdle round its neck and leading it to the sea. This change of heart, taming rather than killing dragons, seems to chime with the courtly, more civilised atmosphere of southern France.

What is interesting about Martha (and Petroc) is that their attitude to “the dragon” is morally ambivalent, more reminiscent of much later legends of the misunderstood beast —Frankenstein, King Kong and so forth—than the earlier straightforward heroic epics which involved despatching it with some brio. This reflects a development first seen in the decline of the Roman gladiatorial industry and the general substitution of hippodrome for arena. The new era of tolerance and gentility became most closely associated Septimania in southern France, the birthplace of chivalry. Septimania and its later incarnations were hotbeds of polyglot influences—Christians, Jews, Muslims and, later, Cathars—itself requiring institutional tolerance. All this can be viewed as Megalithic at base and certainly the forces of Catholic reaction were quick to make sure that the whole area became a quiescent backwater through the very intolerant actions of the Albigensian Crusade and the Dominican Inquisition. But an alternative reading would be that once the Provencal ‘lessons’ had been learnt and disseminated to Europe generally, this centre of Megalithia could be allowed to die out quite naturally.

 

The Age of Guildford  

Guildford’s origins are always described as Saxon but this is only because its name first appears in the historical record during Saxon times. The tiresome habit of historians to state everything according to first written mention throws vast aeons of our past into disarray. The most egregious example is their claim that the Lapps first came into existence in the twelfth century A.D. (first mention in Scandinavian tax records) when in fact the Lapps are the earliest extant human race. Guildford’s town church, St. Mary’s, is on a characteristically megalithic site, a south-facing hillside visible to anyone on the ridge path or coming up from the coast. Such a strategic site naturally has a castle and beneath Castle Hill are ancient caves and tunnels dug into the chalk; St. Mary’s itself is on Quarry Street. Manmade caves and old chalk pits line the ridge beside the Pilgrims’ Way. Such extensive quarrying demonstrates there was a large amount of building going on hereabouts long before any Saxons showed up. The lanes running north and south of Guildford High Street used to be known as ‘Gates’, denoting sites where animals had to be counted through and tolls paid before entering the town.

 

Heath and Forest  

There are various theories as to the origin of the name Waverley but these should be ignored in favour of the obvious: ‘Wey valley’. Crooksbury Common is also worth checking: ‘cruc’ in Old Welsh means hill or mound. It may be related to another Celtic word, creagh (cruach in Irish), meaning rock or rocky, but this could simply be a borrowing from the English ‘crag’[7].  In other words the name of Crooksbury Common could just as well be from crag. Crooksbury Common looks rather bereft today along with the rest of the “heathland belt” of southern England but the archaeological evidence says different. The area would seem to have been continuously inhabited since deforestation seven thousand years ago, but then the entire “heathland belt” is something of a puzzle. This kind of habitat reverts back to scrub and woodland very quickly if it is not grazed regularly and while geologists are a bit shifty about the underlying rocks and the soil it produces (their arguments being highly circular), there must be a suspicion that the barrenness is not so much natural as the result of being “worked out”.  The fact that this entire stretch of land is right in the heart of Megalithic Country suggests that overuse might be the cause.  Whether this is true or not, it is certainly the case that the powers-that-were went to great pains to leave these landscapes in a “state of nature” to make sure they were good for hunting, and little else. We are often led to believe that hunting was introduced by the Normans but game laws had long been established prior to 1066 and ‘afforestation’ was merely extended even further under both Williams. We know from historical accounts from everywhere in the world that hunting is the chief pastime of the upper classes and no doubt this was just as true in Megalithic times as in any other.  Either way it is best not to assume that everything hereabouts is naturally bad because putting it down to geology suggests that a Megalithic Brit could be defeated by the elements. Oddly enough, we see the same attitude adopted by the powers-that-are today when vast tracts are turned over to army ranges, golf courses and little else.

On the other hand this is an area renowned for trees, viz. the nearby Winkworth Arboretum and the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens at Wisley. Surrey is one of the most wooded regions in England and was never turned into giant sheep-ranges like the Lake District or Yorkshire. This is not to say that cereal agriculture was preferred, it may be that Surrey was like the Weald of Kent and Sussex, that is a highly industrialised region where timber took precedence over pasturage. Alder is of little use as firewood but second only to oak for charcoal-making.[8]  The Gaelic for alder is fearn so Farnham, like nearby Aldershot, was presumably named after alders, though we do not know whether the alders themselves are naturally abundant or were introduced as plantations. We can draw a veil over the place-name fanatics’ theory that Farnham is ‘the fern enclosure’ since this would be the first recorded instance of somewhere being named in honour of a completely useless plant.

 

Mellow Fruitfulness

Autumn is not only the most beautiful time of year for a woodland walk, it is also the mushroom-gathering season. One of the species of fungi that grow on Crooksbury Common is fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, the ‘magic mushroom’. Surprisingly little is known of fungal ancestry.  Perhaps fly agaric, an integral part of shamanic lore, was already growing here when the first settlers cleared the land, or perhaps they brought it with them. Certainly at this time, directly after the Ice Age, the area was tundra-like, but well-populated judging by the number of Palaeolithic flints found. Fly agaric grows near trees associated with near-tundra climates, such as spruce and pine and, most commonly, birch. Birch twigs were collected to make brooms and are of course associated with witches;[9] circles of mushrooms are known as fairy rings, as are stone circles. The red-capped fly agaric would appear to directly point to Scottish Redcaps, a breed of ‘little people’ more fearsome than pixies and much more fearsome than the English version, Little Red Riding Hood.[10]

 

A Countryman Writes 

The nineteenth-century writer William Cobbett, of Rural Rides fame, was born and raised in Farnham and is something of a hero in the countryside due to his preference for the byways over the turnpikes.[11]  In the Rides he notes that the soil on Hampshire hills is of very good quality despite the lack of water and springs and even better on the tops of hills than in the valleys, declaring “It has great tenacity; does not wash away like sand, or light loam”.  He visited Thursley (probably named after Thor), a village near Hindhead and the Devil’s Punchbowl, and wrote about the unnatural hill formations: “At Churt I had, upon my left, three hills out upon the common called the Devil’s Jumps. …. Will they (the Unitarians) come here to Churt, go and look at these “Devil’s Jumps”, and account to me for the placing of those three hills, or the placing of a rock-stone upon the top of one of them as big as a Church tower? For my part I cannot account for this placing of these hills. That they should have been formed by mere chance is hardly to be believed.” He also commented on shelving, saying the ploughed or sown horizontal parts of hills which he compared to ‘stairs’ were clearly man-made and must have involved a huge number of people.

 

Old Wife’s Tale   

Mother Ludlam’s Cave beside the Moor Park bridlepath existed long before Waverley Abbey. ‘Mother Ludlam’, ostensibly a witch or wise woman, is typical of the legends that get attached to megalithic sites. Many of these tales feature copper kettles or cauldrons, one of which can be seen in Frensham church but is said to have belonged originally to Mother Ludlam. Coins would be dropped into it “to persuade the fairies to grant wishes”. This is yet another reference back to the megalithic practice of paying the hermit/guardian of the well although the ‘cauldron’ was originally a device for putting coins in (without being able to steal coins already deposited) when there was no well-keeper available. As you may suppose, all “Mother Ludlam” stories and their ilk have the common theme that non-payment results in unfortunate consequences. The church at Frensham has a window of St. George and St. Michael by the altar.

 

The Wey, The Life, The Sheep  

The area around the Wey and its tributaries was important industrially, Domesday records six mills in Farnham alone. Some, like Farnham Hatch and Tilford, were fulling mills operated by monks. There was also a mill at Frensham, the water from Frensham Great Pond half a mile upstream ensuring a constant year-round supply of falling water. The Waverley Abbey monks seem to have been commercially successful though Cistercians would later become famous for their sheep-rearing in the great Yorkshire houses (Fountains, Rievaulx, Jervaulx, Roche, etc.). In the more densely populated south, they concentrated on cattle and crops, being granted ‘full rights of pasture at Farnham’. Investigations of monastic history will often reveal a parallel and astonishingly efficient  “capitalist” economy. All the profits would go into building new houses. Records indicate this was an exemplary community with a modest life style though this might be more PR than reality since the aforementioned records were written by the aforementioned monks. Certainly they were paragons of capitalism in so far as their constant acquisition of land and granges was accompanied by the usual wranglings over rights and dues.

Tilford is an important crossing point with two bridges over the branches of the Wey, one of which you might see on the walk, slightly upstream from a weir near the Barley Mow pub. Fish-weirs or traps were by no means a monkish invention, being extensively used as far back as the Neolithic. The abbey constructed a series of bridges between Farnham and Guildford to assist the transport of goods and livestock; the river is prone to flooding and has to be regulated by channelling devices. The monks especially were aware of this problem since the abbey was on meadowland right next to the river and on more than one occasion the buildings were nearly demolished by floods. In fact these kinds of hazardous flood plains might well have originally been the southern equivalent of the northern moors, that is land that could only be realistically exploited by the corporate organisation of religious houses, the medieval inheritors of the Megalithic tradition of collective enterprise for the long haul.

If you trace the route of the Pilgrim’s Way going west you will reach a large roundabout where it crosses the A31. This is The Shepherd and Flock named after the pub which is located in a hamlet, fifty feet from the Wey. This “road island” used to be a real island in the middle of marshland and was an important intersection and drovers’ stop. You should get used to reinterpreting the landscape so that names and places start to make sense rather than standing out as anomalies in the countryside. East of Guildford the Pilgrims’ Way reverts to a track and converges with sections of the modern North Downs Way. These recent walkers’ routes no doubt have an affinity with Megalithic trackways but the actual relationship in each case requires attention.

 

Map of the Pilgrims’ Way (OS version)

The “Pilgrims’ Way” is named for the Winchester to Canterbury section, but this is a later version for the benefit of Christian pilgrims visiting the two premier cathedrals of southern England. The original route ran from Avebury to Dover with offshoots to the Isle of Thanet. The ancient trackway follows the chalk ridge across southern England passing several ‘holy wells’ such as Farnham’s Mother Ludlam’s, Shere’s Silent Pool and Canterbury’s St. Martin’s Well. Much of the route now lies hidden beneath paved roads and tracks such as the Wayfarers’ and Monks’ Way. 

Further east the Pilgrims’ Way has extensions linking Canterbury with Margate, Ramsgate and Dover. Margate is five miles from Ramsgate, at the tip of the Isle of Thanet, a very important but much-ignored Megalithic promontory. We have two unusual seaside ‘gates’ which, as at Guildford, seemingly denote animal toll-points but here presumably they control the export of animals to the near-Continent.  The ram in Ramsgate is presumably a ‘sheep-gate’, whereas the mar in Margate makes it ‘sea-gate’, so perhaps this was for more general cargo.  But whatever the linguistic complexities here, the true megalithic significance of Margate should not be lost. It is on a curious (and therefore possibly man-made) promontory sticking out into the southern North Sea[12].  It is reasonable to assume that the Isle of Thanet has been protected from erosion—the local crumbly chalk is falling forever into the sea—because this is the most easterly point in the south-east of England, a fact marked by the building of the Margate Grotto, that scandalously neglected Megalithic masterpiece.  Furthermore there are reasons to believe that Margate is sited on the direct rhumb line joining the English Stonehenge with the German one at Nebra.

Be that as it may, the Grotto itself has a more direct connection with Avebury. Here is Avebury’s original layout, according to Stukeley:

 

Stukeley’s diagram of Avebury

 

And here is the underground version, the layout of the Margate Grotto.

 

 

Plan of Margate’s Shell Grotto

Anything called ‘gate’ is a reminder that animals were passing through and tolls being collected. Recognising the practical function of sites does not automatically detract from the ‘atmosphere’, their very ancientness is poignant enough.  Wells and springs where strips of cloth have been tied to nearby branches have a special aura, perhaps because modern religion only pays lip service to the sacred aspect of water. Margate, a gateway to and from the sea, is a reminder that Meglithia began (and possibly ended) with a knowledge of sea-ways.

 


[1]  In Welsh crag appears to resonate with dragon associations, one of the dragons that infested Wales being called Y Garrog (the Carrog) which can be translated as ‘sharp tooth’, or crag.

[2] Fearn or alder is the ‘fire tree’, an indirect reference to Hermes who was credited with inventing fire-sticks for kindling. In Celtic mythology the alder was sacred to Brân, the crow-god.

[3] Twigs are used to ‘write’ Ogham, the ancient Irish ‘tree-alphabet’ that represented a counter-culture to Christianity.  If Macbeth is anything to go by, witches stirred their cauldrons on blasted heaths, the habitat best suited to birches, and ‘by the pricking of their thumbs’ they were versed in the (Ogham) finger-alphabet.  This form of communication was, it goes without saying, as impenetrable to outsiders as a unicorn thicket.

[4] There may be a connection with the mysterious red ochre found in ancient burial sites not only on the coast of Newfoundland but also in the Preseli Hills and on Salisbury Plain, hence the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’ (a ceremonial burial on the Gower peninsula dated to the Palaeolithic which contains evidence of red ochre). Drugs, whether for mind-altering or pain relief purposes, turn up in Ancient Egyptian tombs. It is perhaps merely a coincidence but southern England, the Old World and Ancient Egypt are advanced megalith- and pyramid-building societies.

[5] More because he resented paying the tolls than any fondness for the picturesque it must be said.

[6] As does the local Masonic lodge.

[7] A familiar ladder in fairy tale is the Beanstalk, the means of ascent for Jack the giant-killer. According to Pliny the Greeks believed beans contained the souls of the dead , which suggests Jack’s ‘magic beans’ led to a higher plane, reminiscent of the Tree of Knowledge. For practitioners of the Orphic cult beans were taboo.

[8] This combination of foppish poets and tough mercantile adventurers reoccurs in Elizabethan England. The Megalithic underpinnings in both courts are very discernible.

[9] Often claimed to be from tarkhum Arabic for ‘little dragon’, which simply shows that dragons, like hermits, are ‘global’ phenomena.

[10] St. Martin of Tours, a secondary patron saint of France, is always worth a second look. He is clearly the Christian equivalent of Mithras being the patron saint of soldiers and he also has a horse and a cloak, symbols that were later taken up by the Knights Templar.

[11] St. Catherine’s Hill at Winchester has the same layout, a hill next to a river crossing at the southern entrance to the town with a now vanished chapel on top. It too is on the Pilgrims’ Way. Just as Guildford’s Catherine’s Hill looks across to Martha’s Hill so Winchester’s Catherine’s Hill faces Magdalen Hill but of course they are actually referring to the same thing, Mary Magdalen being Martha’s sister in the Bible.

[12] On the Isle of Thanet, as well as Margate and Ramsgate there is Herne (the Hunter) Bay.  Between Herne Bay and Margate is Minnis Rock, which, says the local guide-book, “…is one of the few rock cells in the country and though almost choked with earth and rubbish is still worth inspection. The three square-headed openings were the entrances to the separate chambers of the cave, which went back nine feet into the rock.” The hermitage was a beacon to passing sailors like those at Whitby, Reculver, Broadstairs, Dover and so on.

§ 2 Responses to When You Get Home (Waverley)"

  • Stuart says:

    I was looking at Quarley or Quarley Hill the other day (because it is on the Michael Line) and noticed Quarley church, strangely isolated, is dedicated to St Michael & All Angels. According to the Megalithic Portal site a “Roman road” (ha) passes just south of Quarley Hill fort running southwest to northeast. This fort dominates the Hampshire countryside as well as the trackway but why on earth does the Megalithic Portal call it an Iron Age hillfort after stating it is associated with several Bronze Age earthworks in the same sentence?

    Imagine my pleasure to read that a certain Mr. H.J. Massingham claimed that the Pilgrims’ Way begins at Marazion in Cornwall and continues east via Amesbury and Quarley all the way to Dover. The Pilgrims’ Way between Farnham and Salisbury Plain was christened the Harrow Way which Masingham and others interpreted as ‘Hoary Way’, presumably out of deference for its hoary antiquity…

  • hvered says:

    Martha’s Hill came up on the Megalithic Portal.

    This article — http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-379-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_54/surreyac054_010-046_wood.pdf — discusses the nearby earthworks and says that the church is visited on Good Friday.

    The church’s location, high up on the Pilgrims’ Way track and miles from Guildford or any village, is steadfastly ignored.

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