Throughout this lockdown I have made a point to be as quietly non compliant as possible while not positioning myself to be "guilty" of violating any lockdown laws... A tight rope to walk. What is justifiable travel? What is legitimate excuse to be on the grass beneath your feet? ... this is a world changing around us so how do we go to those places we always wanted to go or connect with those people that we love? Travel presents a way for us to take those people with us, share in that enjoyment, and be human in general. For those who love visiting those special little places there's no response more joyous than hearing from the person next to you "Oooh. Lets go there. I've always wanted to visit that place."
So the UK is on lockdown and my general demeanour has been resistant to it all. So while out driving with legitimate reason to "travel" I thought I'd unplug the sat nav. I knew I was in the region of Knowlton Church and it was a site my partner and I had always wanted to visit. In many ways this site sitting high up on the hills of the south west is a powerful reminder of histories tendency to rhyme, sat for us to go wander around. It was also convenient ... after hours in the car the dog needed a walk as she had been crossing her paws for a few miles, so we turned off at the first sign for the monument.
One of the things that makes this site a sort of pilgrimage point for the new age minded is that it's a church built in the middle of a henge. It's often portrayed by certain enthusiasts of various persuasions as a site where the infliction of the patriarchy upon a perceived feminist culture occurred. It's an absurd notion for those who have an accurate understanding of Gaelic/Celtic culture and its bloody ways... much less the role of the woman in those societies. But at one point there would have been standing stones here in a circle that potentially would have aligned with certain stars and been of extreme importance to the inhabitants of pre Roman Britain (think Stonehenge, Avebury, etc.). Well the stones were ripped down and a Norman church was put in the middle of it.
There is a good chance that this was a move by the church to smash out any remnants of the pre Roman religious structure that still existed culturally in this region at the time. Sites that were of a great deal of importance did remain after the Roman invasion, and the Saxon invasion brought with it its own version of religion, but the real concrete boot stomp came under the Normans. Mainly due to the Catholic Church having its shit together in a highly organised/militaristic fashion at that point in history. The spiritual importance and exacts of the belief system by the people who constructed the original site are largely unknown. However, culturally the location did hold importance to the descendants of those who lived here before.
By the time the Saxon invasion arrived almost no remnant of the specifics of that importance would have remained in the local inhabitants mind. They would remake it, and they did as people always do. The now missing stones and the raised ground would be a place of disembodied spirits, fairies, or curses. They would bury their dead here now at a place that could have been a calendar (truth is we will never know the real reasons behind the stone circles of Europe). When the Normans rolled in most of what could have been the original belief structure of the original inhabitants of Britain would have been reduced to the well documented deeply animist hybridisation of the belief structure of three different conquering cultures.
One of the things that will always make me pause and reflect is that even after people remake their belief structure around places like this... certain themes persist. The dominant one being animism. Today a popular idea is that somehow these places once represented the divine feminine, or the infliction and ultimate victory of the patriarchy... it's a colourful fiction and light years away from fact in all reality.
To be any woman in Celtic society here or on the continent... or to be a herbalist or wise woman specifically... would have been a brutal affair. Life would have been about horrendously performed medical procedures, being ostracised from your community, and hunted by the current power structure. What those women practiced would have been what we call today a common sense understanding of the landscape and the things that live on it. However, their understanding what natural forces were would have been no different than any other peasants at that time. Fever was the work of elf shot (arrows), to walk around anything old, whether tree or rock, would grant wishes, if you're child hit the terrible two's it was a changeling and must be drowned. Often times the village herbalist who lived her life in the muck of human existence would be the one to perform the drowning. It was that way in Celtic society as well, then Roman/Celtic society, Saxon society, and then the Normans who followed.
The whole idea of "The divine feminine" in Celtic society is widely manufactured, but as erroneous middle class prozac induced as it gets. It has some small validity in certain cases, but when widely and mechanically applied (as it is in popular culture) to the complexity of human history in Europe the concept utterly breaks down into shreds. Today the conspiracy theorist (man or woman) who occasionally gets it right has more in common with the village wise woman of the 12th century than the yoga practicing new age soccer mom burning nag champa incense shouting divine feminine. There were cultures where that concept existed, but Celtic culture just wasn't one of them in a societal or hierarchal sense.
By the time the inquisition had asserted itself here to earn establishment scrutiny/punishment had nothing to do with witchcraft or the divine feminine, but rather a disgruntled envious neighbour reporting you for not following conventional forcefully asserted orthodoxy. This was the value of walking around Knowlton Church for me personally. I felt like its raised mounds sighed with an understanding of what we face today. It's seen it before.
I could stand on a piece of ground that had witnessed many occasions of human history rhyming. It had seen warriors, priests, the condemned, the amnesia of culture after culture, new priests by a different name, force after force, remaking after remaking. Today we are in a new remaking whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Our current remaking's complexities are just as infuriating as the ones that came before with the other remakings, just as rife with persecution, and rest assured... the norms of our forefathers will have what they built torn down and something new put in its place. Chances are we will accept it just like the many generations raised around this church will have accepted the new normal in their time.
Well guys if you made it this far then thank you for reading. This was a post that was as much travel thought as it was travel babble. I can't recommend visiting this site strongly enough. The drive up to it is stunning, and there is a definite atmosphere to the place. I would have taken more photos of the drive, but we were hesitant to stop as we were on full lock down at the time. It seems at this point law enforcement in the UK has nothing better to do with their time than enforce covid regulations and we passed a few on our way in. Didn't want to chance an argument with a jumped up civil servant as had already had my fill with previous confrontations... still haven't gotten a fine though so I guess that's something.
However the next time I'm in that region I will heavily document the area around Knowlton. If any of you great folks with team UK get a chance to head up that way it's a post gold mine. Whether you're a photographer, urban explorer like @slobberchops (love his urban ex posts), or just like history, it doesn't matter. There's all of that on offer ranging from WW2 bunkers and forgotten tunnel systems, breath taking views, and remarkable sites to visit. Above all to find a lot of it you gotta get mud on your boots or tires.
Again if you made it this far thanks for reading. As always looking forward to checking out all your amazing posts and projects. Hope all you folks in the travel community keep up the awesome work.
image credits:
google earth
my ipad