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The Watkins Memorial Stones Are Installed and a Short Unveiling Took Place in the Rain on 13Th June

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The Watkins Memorial Stones Are Installed and a Short Unveiling Took Place in the Rain on 13Th June The Society of LEY HUNTERS Newsletter # 53 August 2015 The Watkins Memorial Stones are installed and a short unveiling took place in the rain on 13th June. Thanks to all who were able to attend and all who made the project possible with your donations and assistance. Subscriptions: G. Frawley, 17Victoria St, Cheltenham, GL50 4HU. UK. (£15 per annum) Cheques payable to; The Society of Ley Hunters. enquiries: [email protected] editorial: [email protected] LEYHUNTERS ® 1 A Tribute to Alfred Watkins BOB SHAVE Humber Woodland of Remembrance, Saturday 13th June 2015 In June 1921 Alfred Watkins came to this spot and experienced his revelation of the ley system. Ninety years later, in June 2011, I followed him, eager to see what he had seen here and to better understand his experience. I must admit to feeling disappointed with what I found here. There was no visible alignment or any feature which would obviously suggest a ley. I needn’t have been so disappointed. I had not seen much, but then, as far as we can tell, Watkins had not seen much here either. That was not the nature of his experience. His writings, and those of his son Allen, tell us that Watkins’ vision of the ley system came into his mind instantaneously, without warning, his mind flooded with images so coherent that there were only a few basic ideas to be added to his theory after that day. His perception of leys was sudden, complete and intuitive in nature. Let’s turn for a moment to some of Watkins’ other achievements, outside of the field of leys, as these make up an important part of who he was. He was a skilful photographer, in a time when photography was hard work, and not the trivial exercise that it is today. In Watkins’ young day you needed a tent, to provide shade while you dipped your glass plate in the silver solution, before loading it into the camera which had to be mounted on a tripod. Next time you take a selfie with your smartphone, spare a thought for poor Watkins. The famous Bee Meter, the light meter that Watkins designed and built, was taken to Antarctica by photographer H.G. Ponting to help record Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition in 1910. Ponting later wrote to Watkins, thanking him, and saying that his photos would have been impossible without the meter. Watkins was also a keen innovator as a baker of bread. After careful experimentation he designed instruments to help calculate baking times based on how fast the dough rose before baking started. And in the early days of his father’s flour mill, it was Watkins who pioneered the use of electric light in the mill, from a generator, the first such use of electricity in Herefordshire. Watkins’ innovations arose from an inquiring mind coupled with patience, a methodical approach and accurate observation. He was to apply all these skills in his famous book on leys, The Old Straight Track, where he tried to amass evidence for the ley system which would convince sceptics. Throughout his life, Watkins had explored and observed his local landscape. As a teenager he had entered Radnor Vale in Powys, driving his father’s brewery waggon, noticing the tumuli and megaliths of that area. Later, as a keen photographer, he travelled around Herefordshire and the Welsh borders, recording on glass plates towns, villages and countryside. When the moment at Blackwardine came in 1921 he had been absorbing the landscape for decades. After the discovery of leys he went on to write The Old Standing Crosses of Herefordshire, a photographic pilgrimage to record images of all the stone crosses he knew of in the county, of which there were many. Later still he went on to write about the Ledbury Hills in eastern Herefordshire and their literary connections. His life was characterised by a restless energy which drove him to 2 experiment and to explore, and, having explored, to reveal what he had found to others. On Watkins’ death in 1935, a poem was written by a Mr. H. Hudson in tribute to him. This poem was found by Society of Leyhunters researchers in 2004 in the Straight Track Club archives in Hereford library. I’d like to read it out now. I’m grateful to Jon Lord for finding it and to Adrian Hyde for copying it out and posting it to me. He was a valiant law unto himself; He framed a ladder other feet will climb; From Yule to Yule – from Vespers until Prime Through four score years he laboured not for self. With hand upon the plough, he turned not back; His life’s long span knew not the even-time When none may work – he only knew to climb Amid forgotten way-marks on the old straight track To where there gleamed for him the beacons of a world sublime. It’s a beautiful poem, I think, and one thing I like about it is that we’re all mentioned in it. “He framed a ladder other feet will climb.” Some of those feet are our feet. And when we just walked up from Risbury, we were climbing another rung of that ladder. Some people might say that Watkins was wrong, that there are no such things as leys. They are entitled to their opinion. Others will say, OK, there are leys, but so what? Are they relevant to us today? In my opinion, yes they are. For thousands of years human beings have walked the land, we have farmed and hunted, observed the heavens and told stories about the landscape around us. It’s only in the last hundred years or so that we haven’t. We are cut off from the land. Studying leys, and especially walking them, re- connects us with something that we have lost. Alfred Watkins was a methodical, analytical experimenter with a strongly intuitive streak; an explorer who didn’t often leave Herefordshire; a new-age pioneer who wore a suit. He is a difficult person to categorise. But there can be no doubt that he felt a strong connection with the landscape and its ancient sites. He begins his introduction to The Old Straight Track with this quotation from W.H. Hudson’s Hampshire Days: We sometimes feel a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to the dead, the long long dead, the men who knew not life in towns, and knew no strangeness in sun and wind and rain. In such a mood on that evening I went to one of those lonely barrows. This quote was surely important to Watkins, describing what we might call today a spiritual attraction to the sacred sites, a yearning to spend time there and to feel the presence and guidance of the ancestors. We have followed in his footsteps by walking from Risbury, and stepping up another rung on his ladder. Let’s carry on climbing the ladder – and remember, the ladder has no end. Bob Shave Society of Leyhunters 3 FIRST LEY Society of Ley Hunters Moot, 12th-14th June 2015 In September, 1921, Alfred Watkins gave a talk to the Woolhope Club in Hereford about his discovery of leys the previous June, published in detail in the Hereford Times and which can be seen in the Michael Behrend Archive at: http://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/aw_cuttings/ocr/p_009.html The report says: "Mr. Watkins, in his lecture, said that he knew nothing in June of what he now communicated. After visiting Blackwardine, he noted on the map a straight line starting from Croft Ambury, lying on parts of Croft Lane past the Broad, over hill points, through Blackwardine, over Risbury Camp, and through the high ground at Stretton Grandison, where he surmised a Roman station. He followed up the clue of sighting from hill top, unhampered by other theories, and found it yielding astounding results in all districts, the straight lines to his amazement passing over and over again through the same class of objects, which he soon found to be (or to have been) practical sighting points." The Society of Ley Hunters, which has recently erected a memorial stone to Watkins and his discovery, sited at Blackwardine crossroads on the original ley, devoted its June moot to honouring Watkins and the discovery. On Friday 12th June we gathered in the Woolhope Room at Hereford Library, where the archive of the Straight Track Club had been brought for us to see. This is the huge collection of the Club's postal folios, sent round to all members for them to read and add contributions. After seeing these and a lot of discussion about the early years of ley hunting, we finished the day with a walk round Hereford seeing some of Watkins' leys in the city, including the spectacular Offa Street ley, with Gerald Frawley. Alfred Watkins’ house in Hereford The following day we met at the Hop Kiln, set at the base of Risbury hillfort and immediately adjacent to the ley. Philip Heselton, who had been the first editor of The Ley Hunter magazine in the 1960s, began proceedings by speaking on the early days of the revival of interest in leys. For him it started at his local library at Sunbury-on-Thames, which had an interesting acquisition policy covering a lot of unusual subjects, such things as spiritualism, ghosts and flying saucers. Two which particularly interested him had been Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski, and The Coming of the Space Ships by Gavin Gibbopns.
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