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.