Woodensborough

You could be forgiven for dismissing the attractive little village, near where I live in England, as being just one of many around here, with its 16th Century cottages still standing and the church of St. Mary with its columns dating back to 1180.

But if we delve a little deeper, back to pre-Christian times, we will discover the true origin of this village named Woodnesborough.

From the excavation and discovery of spearheads and Roman glass vessels during the 18th and 19th Centuries, which, incidentally, the local ladies at that time used as "sugar basins" and "glasses" from which to drink ale, at the Harvest Home festival, to the revelation of the earthwork known as the "heathen mound".

And it is here that the connection is made between the mound, latterly known as Woden's Hill, and the village's name. For that mound is, indeed, the site of the Jutish pagan temple of Winzbru, where the god Woden was worshipped and in whose honour the parish was designated.

There is a golden statue, said to be buried in the field of the nearby village of Ash, which was reputed to have been taken from the shrine for safekeeping when the Christians persecuted the pagans.

Another early Saxon worship connection can be made from the name of the main street that runs through the village, although considered to be a paved way of the Romans, its name "Cold Friday Street", comes originally from the goddess Friga.

Although the name of the village has changed many times over centuries, its villagers still today, have a hoodening festival, where Morris dancers parade a wooden horse's head through the village, a tradition dating from pre- Christian worship of Woden.

I often wonder, especially as the quaint parish church is built on top of that old pagan shrine, if the Old Gods have a wry smile of their faces as they consider who's worshipping who.

A little further along this Kentish road, lies another unassuming village, that of Sarre, and looking to all the world, so typical of many around this district, with its mix of Georgian, Edwardian, Victorian and modern dwelling places. Yet here too has been revealed a wonderful secret past.

When the Jutes, who were part of three very powerful Germanic tribes, along with the Saxons and Angles, settled in this small place on the river's edge, they were not, as once believed to be, ignorant, isolated smallholders but people of great artistic skills. There were, perhaps, 25,000 of them in the country, living in small groups of about 50 people, abiding where the land was easiest to work.

The men, like the Celtic tribes before the long Roman occupation, were warriors and hunters and farmed the land simply, whilst the women wove and spun.

Beautiful finds have been discovered at the burial sites of these people, and here lies, under the soil, the evidence of the days when burials were carried out under different conditions than those which prevail today.

With the bodies were buried ornaments, vessels of fine glass and other materials, crystals, weapons, implements, and a host of various articles, each of which was applicable to the station in life of the man, woman or child.

But one lady buried there is special to my heart, she would have been of some status, and with her were her possessions, her beads of amber, amethyst and glass, her golden brooch with the sun's radiating rays set with garnets and the batten she used for weaving gold thread.

Whilst these objects are quite often found in this part of the country, this lady also had buried with her, what surely must have been a most treasured possession, her crystal ball set in a silver mount.

We can only imagine, with intrigue and wonder, at the visions of the future she may have seen in this beautiful object all those many moons ago.

The Saxon Lady

A look at the life of a Saxon lady

Last time, I told of the discovery of a Saxon lady who was buried,near to where I live, with her crystal ball.
140 years before her death,the ancestors of the lady with the crystal ball,the Jutes,believed to have come from Denmark,and the Frisians,from the coast of the Netherlands had arrived in England.

As the Roman armies were withdrawn from Britain early in the 5th century, these new settlers were,effectively,their own masters,doing little to keep alive the legacy of the Romans.
Their language was their own and they replaced the stone buildings with those made of wood.

She was pagan, and whilst her religion would have had similarities with the pre-Roman Celtic beliefs as well as the Scandinavian ones,the supreme deities of her faith were probably goddesses and not gods.

Nerthus, the earth mother,would have been the most important,it was she who looked after the well being of man and beast,Frija, with her associations of love and friendship,
Eostre, the goddess of dawn, spring and new life and Rheda the goddess of winter were amongst the others worshipped.

Of the gods,Woden,the lord of magic and leader of the Wild Hunt was the most important.

And so, a look at her possessions. The brooches, found with her,reveal to us that she was not of the poorer class, for these were used to clasp her woven woollen gown at the shoulders, whereas those not so wealthy would have had to stitch the garment together. The weaving batten, with the gold braid may have been a project she was working on, a new braid to keep her veil in place as she worshipped her goddesses.
Buckled belts, with personal items hanging from them ,keys, knives, amulets and pouches,and an abundance of jewelry were a common trend in this area of England.
Sometimes a pair of brooches would be used to pin a robe open, to show the undergarment and from one of these would hang a silver caged crystal ball, often with a perforated silver spoon. Although we do not know precisely what these items were used for, we can be fairly certain that they were for ritual use.

But there will be no physical evidence of the temple or shrine she worshipped at, as these were not buildings but sacred places, a grove or a pool,for everywhere in England there are places bearing the names of the old gods.
And in the words of Tacitus we see how they perceived them……” They judge that gods cannot be contained inside walls nor can the greatness of the heavenly ones be represented in the likeness of any human face: they consecrate groves and woodland glades and call by the name of ‘gods’ that mystery which they only perceive by their sense of reverence.”

Martyr's Field

On a wet and windy morning, in the depths of winter's cold, I decided it was time to find and see for myself the sad and sorry tribute to the Canterbury Martyrs. This was not going to be an outing to look forward to, more a pilgrimage of respect for those forty two "good and godly" people who were burned there at the stake for their beliefs. During the reign of Queen Mary, a person's religious convictions were counted as more worth than life itself and toward the close of this reign, the Archbishop, Cardinal Pole, set forth certain articles of enquiry to be made, of both lay-people and the clergy, at a visitation throughout the diocese of Canterbury. Any person who was suspected of having Protestant opinions came under his fearful scrutiny, schoolmaster, priest, the tavern-keeper, the poor, the sick and unlearned women and children , all risked the same fate if these suspicions were thought to be proved. Even a careless song from a minstrel's lips could be construed as heresy. As a result, six men and women were burned for heresy in the Martyr's Hollow in January 1557 and seven more, most of them peasants from the surrounding countryside, in June 1558. In all a total of forty two suffered this fate before the end came. However, all did not survive to reach the stake, many died of hunger while they were imprisoned at the castle. A preserved letter, thrown out by the prisoners hoping to that it would catch the eye of a passer-by, tells how they were kept in cold irons and that their keepers denied them any meat to comfort them. It also told that anyone who did bring them bread, butter or cheese would have to pay money to the guards. The end of the letter ask that they might not be famished for the Lord Jesus's sake. These were all people who lived in and about the villages that surround my own. One heroine, Alice Bendon, practised living on two and a halfpence a day, to try to see how well she could sustain hunger before being actually put to it, as she knew that when she was put in the Archbishop's prison her allowance would be a half pennyworth of bread and a farthing drink and her lodging a bit of straw between the stocks and a stone wall. And so to the monument itself, it stands in a place now called the Martyr's Field, but bears little resemblance to a field, rows of houses surround the grassy area that looks like a small park, yet the remembrance of what eyes have seen there haunts it still. The names of those so cruelly murdered are chisled in the stone cross, the grass is clipped and tidy, the flower beds weeded and seating is provided. But who would want to dwell too long on this site of sorrow, where the earth and the air surrounding have witnessed the cries and screams of those burnings? They do not bring the tourists here and it's not in many guide books. The modern pilgrim to Canterbury heads straight to the Cathedral with all it's pomp and splendour, perhaps unaware of the cruelty inflicted upon some of the people from the past who's eyes had also gazed at it's magnificence. The memorial is not a place that I would wish to return to, but I will, for in my haste to beat the cold, spiky wind that accompanied me to it, I forgot to take some flowers to lay there.