Hessary

How often have you overheard or taken part in a discussion about what you would doing you won the lottery?

I’ve often found these conversations rather dull as they invariably involve flash cars, cruises and other vulgarity. Or the implausibly pious…

So I was thinking what I would buy with winnings of different amounts, archaeology themed of course.

£1 – a Chelsea bun from Honey’s

£10 – A nice new trowel

£100 – Boots

£1000 – Emlid Reach RS+ GNSS receiver plus pole etc.

£10,000 – Magnetometry drone

£100,000 – Lidar survey of my study area

£1,000,000 – Retirement, so I can more of the archaeology I want

£10,000,000 – Build an institute for what I’m interested in, walking distance from my house.

£100,000,000 – Influence and persuasion to protect and advance scholarship.

£1,000,000,000 – Crete

Last year I wrote about a small mound which appeared to have become the object of some veneration (http://hessary.com/2018/03/22/a-new-kitty-jay/). This morning I saw that it’s been visited again.

Looking back at old photos I note that they were taken on 14th March 2018 and 9th March 2017. I don’t have any older so my dataset is rather limited, but it’s clear that I’m looking for some event in early March being commemorated.

The feast day of St Piran is 5th of March: we’re near Cornwall and there are traces of mining activity on the Down. I don’t think that this is a likely candidate.

According to various “language of flowers” websites a red tulip signifies perfect love. It’s also apparently the flower for an eleventh wedding anniversary.

I suspect that we’re seeing the appropriation of an existing “monument” for a new commemoration, something for which there are numerous precedents.

Next year I will stake out the site in good time to catch the flower scatterers and ask, delicately of course, what the story is.

I’ve been interested in place-names for a long time, particularly as regards those descriptive of topography. The work of Margaret Gelling in demonstrating the rich and subtle vocabulary of Old English and Norse toponymy was compelling and still stands scrutiny today. The work of her later collaborator Ann Cole reinforces the general cast of the argument: that the profusion of words for different features is not merely a salad of synonyms but rather evidence of a discerning appreciation of landscape and an ability to describe that clearly.

One aspect which intrigues me is that of audience or scope: who was the intended user of a name? Whitchurch (Devon) is ‘white church’ – as distinct from which other churches? For the name to make sense at least one other church must have been visible at the same time. Making the bold assumption that the sites of today’s surviving medieval churches in the area represent original buildings contemporary with Whitchurch, that would give us Tavistock Abbey, Sampford Spiney, Walkhampton and St Michael de Rupe at Brentor. All would have been visible from Whitchurch Common above and to the north of the church. Another possible vantage point would have been from Roborough Common to the south across the River Walkham.

In either case, a distinctive white church would provide a useful landmark to the traveller: following the road from Buckland Monachorum down the sticklepath, across Grenofen Bridge towards Tavistock; or following the West Devon Spinal road [1] across Whitchurch Common between Horrabridge and Harford Bridge.

Ann Cole [2] has also written about the possibility of place-names as navigational aids for travellers . She suggests that a traveller could learn the sequence of places through or by which they would travel. Some names would indicate not only useful information such as sources of drinking water or places to sleep but more importantly ensure that by noting the topographical features along the way they would remain on the learned route. One inference from this is that place-names would have had to have meaning across a larger area to avoid ambiguity.

This contrasts with the forms and variety observed in field names. These need only be distinctive within a holding, be that a nucleated farm or an open-field manor. Within a modern village there are often many examples of repeated field names, for example the parish of Walkhampton has several  instances of ‘Three Corner Field’, ‘Down Park’, ‘Homer Field’ and ‘Yonder Field’.

This conjectured navigation-by-name doesn’t, so far as I can tell, have any direct documentary evidence. It’s entirely possible that it died out relatively early – perhaps the decline in toponymic precision is a reflection of that.

References

1. Rosamond Faith & Andrew Fleming (2012) The Walkhampton Enclosure (Devon), Landscape History, 33:2, 5-28, DOI: 10.1080/01433768.2012.739392

2. Cole, A. (2011). Place-Names as Travellers’ Landmarks. In Higham N. & Ryan M. (Eds.), Place-names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape (pp. 51-68

Having grumbled previously about clumsy or just plain wrong versions of Devon Banks, it is only fair to acknowledge that decent, sympathetic work does exist.

Recent improvement works in Plymouth’s Central Park included repairs to the Devon banks there. These pre-date the laying out of the park and have been neglected for many years.

As these pictures show, the repairs are authentic, using on-edge slate slabs to revet the earth banks. No granite, no dry-stone walling and no Cornish herring-bone. Well done Plymouth City Council! (How often do they hear that?

 

Probably the most Romantic, or perhaps Gothic, of Dartmoor legends is the tale of Kitty Jay, the suicide buried by a crossroads near Manaton. Stories vary, naming the maid as variously Ann Jay and Betty Kay. Some later aspects of the tale, such as her being an orphan of the workhouse, echo themes of Thomas Hardy’s novels. See the Wikipedia article for more details.

On Roborough Down, at SX 5078 6905, is a small mound about 6ft long by 3ft wide by about 1ft high. There are many like it across the down and the most convincing interpretation I have is that they are brake-burn mounds, based on concentration of charcoal fragments revealed by animal burrowing. Brake-burning is a variation on swaling where the burned bracken and gorse is raked up for collection and spreading on fields. It was also associated with the mediaeval practice of bringing marginal grazing or waste into arable production for one or two seasons.

(Photograph, scale 1m)

This particular mound is different though in that daffodils emerge in the spring; as this is an open unsheltered location this does stand out. I’ve also noticed that cut flowers are sometimes placed on the mound, the most recent occasion being around Mothering Sunday.

Apologies for the quality of the picture but it’s still possible to see the emerging daffodils and the deposited tulips.

I’ve been wondering what’s going on here. Clearly it’s a place of pilgrimage or commemoration for someone. I don’t think that a group is involved, given the simplicity of the offering. Perhaps the ashes of a person or a pet werew scattered here; there are several memorials to pets across the Down and I have personally witnessed scatters of ashes. I did once see ashes spread to form the word “Mum”, which was a little disconcerting.

Another possibility is that some is trying to create a new legend, although I’ve yet to hear murmurs of this.

Or maybe it’s just pagans honouring a mini tumulus.

I need to survey some things: mediaeval boundaries and longhouses, prehistoric enclosures and nineteenth century mining pits. Having done preliminary plotting using a handheld leisure GPS receiver, for this work I would like to use a combination of GPS and Total Station instruments.

Hire costs don’t seem to unreasonable: from £65 for a basic Total Station, £200 for a robotic model and £400 for a GPS rover-and-base kit.

However, hire companies require you to set up a trade account with them; I’m not a commercial entity so that’s hurdle number one.

Hurdle number two is insurance. I could set myself up as an archaeological society or club and take out a suitable policy for a few hundred pounds. But there’s an excess of £1,000.

If I were to win the lottery I wouldn’t be off to the Porsche dealer, I’d be filling my old car with Leica’s shiniest, fanciest kit.