Remains of an Altar

‘Will you come here?’

Jane sighed. How much more of this? Monday she’d have to face Morrell. Tuesday she’d be looking for a new school. Or a job. Maybe stacking shelves for Jim Prosser.

‘It’s my day off, actually,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘I just heard about it on the radio and thought I’d wander over. OK, here—’

She went and looked over Neil Cooper’s shoulder to where a great slice of soil and clay had been peeled away like a giant pencil-shaving. Murray’s work, but somebody had been at it with a spade and there was a trench there now. Neil Cooper tapped the bottom of it with a trowel. It rang sharply off something.

‘Oops, shouldn’t’ve— You know what this is, Jane?’ Jane stood sullenly on the edge of the trench, which was still roughly aligned with the ley.

‘No.’

‘It’s a stone,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘Approximately four metres long. Like a very big cigar. It was about half a metre under the surface. A large part of it would’ve been underground, but when it was standing it would’ve been taller than me.’

Jane said, ‘Standing?’

Cooper walked lightly along the bottom of the trench and then stopped.

‘It seemed even longer at first and then I realized that…’ He bent down, tapped again with his trowel. ‘That this was a separate one.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘And then I brought in a couple of mates and we found a third.’

‘What?’

‘Have you ever seen Harold’s Stones at Trellech? What’s that – forty miles from here?’

‘Thereabouts.’

She and Eirion had been. Twice. Harold’s stones were magnificent. Jane felt herself growing pale.

‘Probably not going to be quite that tall,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘But when we get them up, at least as high as Wern Derys, which is the tallest prehistoric stone in Herefordshire. And, of course, as a stone row. . .’

‘Who are you?’

‘I get the feeling we met once before, when I was working on the renovation of the Cantilupe tomb in the Cathedral. I certainly recognized your mum. I’m with the County Archaeologist’s Department now.’

Cooper was on his feet.

‘Jane, they’ve been buried for centuries. They’re way beyond living memory, and there are no records. There was a time when farmers would do this because the old stones got in the way of ploughing.’

‘Bury them?’

‘Broke them up, sometimes. Fortunately that didn’t happen here, although the one at the far end was quite badly chipped by Mr Murray’s JCB. But then, if he hadn’t been so determined to destroy your bit of … ley line, we wouldn’t have found out about it – if we ever did find out – until the housing estate was well under way, and then it would’ve been just rescue archaeology because the estate would have planning permission. Whereas now—’

‘These are real, actual, prehistoric standing stones?’

Jane felt like her body had filled up with helium and her voice was coming out in this thin squeak.

‘I’d stake my future career on it,’ Neil Cooper said.

‘What … what does that mean?’

‘Means a long and careful excavation, and then, with any luck, the stones will get raised again and carefully repositioned just as they once were.’

‘And the … and the housing estate?’

‘What housing estate?’ Neil Cooper said.

Jane went down on her knees in the trench, rubbing away the soil, getting dirt all over the big plaster on the back of her hand. She closed her eyes and saw a swirl of faces: Neil Cooper looking down on her with Elgar on one side of him and Alfred Watkins on the other, peering over his glasses, eyes alight, and all of them in the enveloping shadow of the batwing poncho of Lucy Devenish.

‘This time, we’ll call the media,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘If that’s all right with you?’

‘I need to talk to my agent,’ Jane said.

Credits Plus

Although links between Edward Elgar and Alfred Watkins have not been mentioned in major biographies of either man, the geographical facts, as discovered by Jane Watkins, speak for themselves. However, confirmation: Jacob O’Callaghan records in Elgar, A Herefordshire Guide how the by-then eminent composer joined the famous Woolhope naturalists’ club, ‘possibly introduced by his neighbour, Alfred Watkins.’ And Laurence Meredith notes in In the News – Herefordshire, that Elgar, who had a photographic darkroom at Plas Gwyn, ‘was also a great friend of Herefordian Alfred Watkins, inventor of the modern photographic light-meter, and he and Elgar frequently met to discuss photography.’ Thanks to Woolhope member Sue Rice for pointing this out. It seems unlikely that Watkins and Elgar would not also explore their mutual fascination with the landscape.

Whiteleafed Oak, of course, exists as described, right down to the severely limited parking. Please treat it with respect. The theory of Whiteleafed Oak and the perpetual choirs was, as explained, first outlined, in comparatively recent times, by John Michell in his inspiring books City of Revelation and New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury, developed by John Merron in an article in The Ley Hunter magazine, investigated by members of the Malvern-based British Society of Dowsers and guarded by Val de Heer, of the Aquarius shop, Malvern, who supplied essential background.

Did Elgar know it? None of the biographers mention it, but local people say, Yes … definitely.

The earliest mention of the Three Choirs Festival seems to have been about 1700. It was established for the performance of sacred music – originally Handel and Purcell – by the combined choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford, with an orchestra behind them. And it was always held in the late summer. A gentrified, fairly formal event … or so they thought.

Many thanks also to Mike Ashley, author of Starlight Man, the excellent biography of Algernon Blackwood, for essential advice and perusal of correspondence; Richard Bartholomew on Elgar and Malvern topography, and Chris Bennett at the Elgar Birthplace Museum; Hereford Cathedral Director of Music Geraint Bowen; the Rev. Peter Brooks for crucial eleventh-hour assistance with the Welsh Triads and other problems; the Rev. Keith Crouch; Paul Devereux, author of Earthlights, Earthlights Revelation, Haunted Land and many other essential books on some of the mysteries dealt with here; Ros Ephraim, chorister and proprietor of Burway Books, Church Stretton, for the essential Gerontius; David Furlong, author of Working with Earth Energies; Nicola Goodwin, author of Tales from Herefordshire’s Graves and Burials; Paul Gormley for atmosphere; Robert Hale of the Malvern Gazette, my agent Andrew Hewson, BBC journalist Dave Howard, Phil Howard, Wendy Howell, Ced Jackson, Helen Lamb, Prof. Bernard Knight, Owen Morgan, John Moss, Mervynne and Ceri Payne and Edith Powell at the Arcade Bookshop in Pershore; Ron Phillips for Elgar-analysis and some inspiring discussions; the playwright David Pownall for Elgar psychology; Alun Rees for Gomer-related offences, Canon John Rowlands, author of Church, State and Society: the Attitudes of John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froud and John Henry Newman, 1827–1845; and leading Hay-on-Wye bookseller Tracy Thursfield, who put me on to The Human Chord and other Elgar-linked esoterica.

Principal books on Elgar consulted include Elgar’s Sacred Music by John Allison; The Life of Elgar by Michael Kennedy; Elgar – Child of Dreams by Jerrold Northrop Moore; Gerontius, a novel about Sir Edward Elgar by James Hamilton