Thepoint of reference to who was where we have them mentioned atWestonsupermarein particularatworlebury camp somerset

The geography of this area must be much changed from3000yrs ago

From brean tobleadontoaxetocheddartowellsto glastonbury we havemany old burial moundssuggeting to me that the neolithic living on this raised plateau looked over the somerset levels which were possibaly uninhabitable.

The distance from south wales nowadays indicates thatsouth gloucesterbeing dobunni territory was around the river severn and that the mouth of the river and the levels mingle

The burial cairn atstony littletonis similar to other cairns in gloucester

Belas Knapis a neolithic chambered long barrow, situated on Cleeve Hill, near Cheltenham and Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire, England

With another cairn at the area behind Kelston nr Bath

THE MENDIP HILLS they are full of deserted camps and barrows that were once used and defended and meant something to someone of whom we may know nothing ; every height or headland is bastioned or crowned with the work of man, work that was already crumbling, nay, already a forgotten ruin, before the beginning of history.  These remain. But the work of the Romans, those deserted mines beyond Charterhouse, what is there left of them . What is there to be found of those two religious houses of the Carthusians, Charterhouse a cell of Witham, and Green Ore a cell of Hinton ?  Not a stone, not a single foundation.  For them no man can say here they stood or there. It is as though Mendip were outside History and Christendom.

And yet on a day of wind, a clear day after rain, this great plateau which a man fears almost as much as he loves is
capable of offering you endless reward.

On such a day Mendip awakes ; the thin grass laughs like an old man in the sun, the grey rock shines golden with lichen, the spare woods are filled with the strength and the joy of the wind, and suddenly you find as you come up southward out of the plateau on to the height, on to Beacon Hill or Pen Hill or Maesbury for
instance, all the world spread out at your feet.
It is a glory that passes and' yet cannot pass away.

For when, as a man, suddenly and without warning, after years of absence, I looked one evening from that great height, I saw not th is ; I saw my home.

Spread out beneath me lay a vast and mysterious plain, blue and grey and gold in the setting sun, and beyond far and far away the great hills of the West Country.

To one returning after long absence that view must always be the most beautiful and the most consoling in
the world, for it gives him at a glance all his childhood and his home.
Setting out from Chewton Mendip to explore the hills, one will take the straight road to Wells, passing Chewton Priory,
the seat of Earl Waldegrave, whose family has held Chewton so long. The Priory stands upon the site of a Benedictine house belonging to the monks of Jumieges; when the alien priories were suppressed the King, Henry V , granted this
appropriation to the Carthusian priory of Sheen, which he had founded in 1413.
Climbing steadily past the Priory, one comes to Green Ore, in about half an hour, and here the road to Wells

in the year 1900 in a few gigantic heaps of barren earth.

 For upon the Mendips as upon no other mountains in the world, perhaps because few are so old as they, man and his efforts fade into nothing; their futility is exposed by the emptiness of space and the passing of time.

And if, as he will, the traveller turns to the sky for assurance and for comfort that sky is too often a grey immensity of cloud, of great clouds hurrying no whither before the south-west wind, laden with the memory of the emptiness of the sea.
The loneliness of Mendip is a real loneliness.

A man turns to the sky because he must; he is shut away there from the great and fruitful world he knows, the towns, the villages, the ploughlands, and the steadings beneath him, not only by the height, but also by the breadth and flatness of the great plateau which
the roads, purposeless for the most part, shepherded by their loose walls of grey stone, traverse so swiftly, anxious only to pass on their endless ways. One is caught as it were in an empty space, a featureless desolation, a solitude that is like no other solitude.

A man there is utterly alone, he cannot stay, he passes on with deliberate step down the roads that only lead
away. And there is no one who has persisted in the exploration of these hills but has been astonished by their silence, the absence of trees, of cattle, of sheep, of all voices, and of the sound of bells, a sound, one thinks, that might break the spell that lies over all this great desolate upland.

Yet such a man will know too that Mendip has voices and sounds of its own that are a part of the silence.
For the hills of Mendip are hollow and are full of secrets; secret springs, secret underground rivers whose courses you may not know, but whose voices you may sometimes hear suddenly on a still day as you lie on the shady side of one of the many swallets or pits, a curious murmuring hollow sound, rising and falling; and sometimes as you pass by where no visible spring is to be found you will be drenched with spray suddenly in the face; but whence it comes you will not know.

It is not everyone who in such a loneliness can bear such music or encounter such natural malice and still remain in firm possession of his soul.
Yes, the hills are full of secrets; they are dreadful for they are very old ; they are full of caves where are mingled the bones of men and of beasts that are dateless and have no history;

PRIDDY
possesses several fine ornaments, among them two ancient screens, one the rood screen still in position, and the other across the north aisle.

That across the south aisle is modern.
Here, too, is a curious stone pulpit and a very beautiful altar cloth of mediaeval needlework.
Priddy, as its little church would lead us to believe, is a very old place.

A chapel of Westbury, it was anciently a part of the estates of the Bishop of Wells, but in 1164 the rectory of Westbury, near Priddy, was added to the endowments of the Augustinian Priory of Bruton, by Bishop Robert.
T he Canons, in return, were obliged, among other payments, to
supply a wax taper to burn continually before the High Altar of the Cathedral Church of Wells.
In 1225 a curious murder was committed at Priddy. T he
account of the outrage runs: “ John Swete-bi-the-bone killed
Richard, the Shepherd, and fled. H e was o f the mainpast of
the Abbot of Bruere, in his sh'eepcote of Bridie (Priddy).
Therefore, he (the abbot) is in mercy, and he (John) is suspected, and no one else. Therefore, let him be exacted
and outlawed. He had no chattels.” This verdict was given at Ilchester Assizes, in 1225. To be of the mainpast of the abbot, was to have the abbot for surety; the abbot, therefore,
was held at the mercy o f the court.1
T he mention of Richard the shepherd brings us to the subject of sheep. A very peculiar and valuable breed once inhabited the Mendip Hills.

They bore a considerable resemblance to the Exmoor sheep and to the Dorsets.

Perhaps
they were an intermediate breed between the two. The horns were smaller and the countenance wilder, the sheep altogether
more diminutive and the wool finer, and the flesh more finely flavoured than the Dorsets. “ They were,” says Youatt, “ a hardy breed, and would thrive upon the poorest soil. They
covered the Mendips in immense numbers, and were alternately changed from the moors to the hills as the season
demanded. They bred, too, twice a year. When a considerable tract of the hills became enclosed the number of sheep
diminished, and the character little by little was changed.
T h e old wild Mendips were crossed with the heavier Devons and others, and the genuine Mendip sheep' became extinct.”
\See Rev. Preb. J. Coleman, “ Historical Notes on Priddy” (Som. Arch. Soc. Proc., LV , (ii), 13S et seq

MAESBURY CAMP  is crossed at right angles by the old Roman Road to the lead mines, and, perhaps, to Uphill on the coast. Turning along this road, to the left, on the hollow top of Mendip, in three
miles the traveller will come to Maesbury Camp, through which the Roman Way passes as a mere track, onward to Beacon Hill, where at the Inn, which sells as good cider as is to be had in the known world, the Roman Road is continued for half a mile as a modern highway, to be lost again at Long Cross, where the modern road swerves to the north for
Leigh-upon-Mendip and Frome. Maesbury Camp is chiefly celebrated for the great view it offers south and west of the county of Somerset.

It is an ancient fortress, how ancient who shall say, upon a hill top, with artificial defences following the natural line of the hill.
Its very name means hill-fort, and it must have been a verystrong one.
Returning from Maesbury to Green Ore, one again follows the Wells Road for half a mile, and then turns westward, tothe right, at Hill Grove, and, continuing past Hunter’s Lodge Inn, near which is one of the many Mendip caverns, one comes to Priddy. There is not, in all the Mendip country, a more desolate village than Priddy, yet it is the chief place upon these
heights.
T h e church, as indeed we might expect, is very plain, but
it contains a font of the eleventh century, though it is mainly,
as we see it, a building of the Perpendicular period. It
1 Prof. Boyd Dawkins assigns it to the Prehistoric Iron A g e ; Mr.
St. George Gray to the Bronze A ge “ and it may subsequently have been
occupied in the Prehistoric Iron Age. ” Only excavation can decide the
question.
“ We are at present only on the threshold of our knowledge as regards
the hundreds of camps, fortifications, and ancient enclosures with which
the whole of England is studded, and which as a rule occupy the most
elevated and commanding positions. . . . Wherever we find isolated
encampments of prehistoric date on the top of hills we may be pretty sure
that they were simply places of refuge for local tribes . . . to which they
resorted when attacked. Endeavours to differentiate the Stone A ge and
Bronze Age camps from Roman, post-Roman, and Norman camps in
Britain are for the future. . . . A s a rule the art of castramentation was
very much the same in all periods . . . the only real method o f throwing
light upon the subject is by means of the pick and shovel, provided these
potent instruments are wielded in the right manner.”— H. St. George Gray
in Som. Arch. Soc. Proc., 1903, pp. 27, 28.

The Synod of Whitby 664

Celtic vs Roman

St. Hilda's Priory

Sneaton Castle, Whitby, Yorks.

Not to be reproduced without their permissionSynod of Whitby Mural

by Juliet MacMichael

in the St. Hilda Room

St. Hilda's Priory

Sneaton Castle, Whitby, Yorks.

The spreading of Christianity to the pagan settlers in Northumbria was not made any easier by the differing traditions of the Celtic monks who evangelised from Scotland with Irish roots, and the separate Roman mission of Pope St Gregory I the Great who commissioned Augustine to establish a mission in Kent.

The problem was that the Celtic traditions were sealed in a 'time capsule' of religious traditions that emanated from Columba when he formed a monastery one hundred years earlier, and most of the rest of the world (including apparently Ireland!) had moved on to adopt customs following more up to date and different Roman ways. Two pressing conflicts were the setting the date of Easter and also the form of tonsure (haircut) of the monks.

In the Celtic tradition the king was all-powerful (which suited the reigning king Oswiu) but now he had as his second queen Eanfled, a devout Roman Christian, where the head of the church was not the king but the Pope. Things might have been easier but for the fact that due to the differences in the calculation of Easter in the thirteen month lunar calendar, there could exist a situation in some years where Oswiu wanted to celebrate Easter at exactly the same time that Queen Eanfled was still fasting in Lent! The next occasion when this would happen was going to be 665 and that might explain why the Synod was called in 664!

Wilfrid, fresh from all his experiences of customs in Rome and Gaul, was an enthusiastic supporter of Roman ways. Oswiu's son Alhfrith, sub-king of Deira, and Wilfrid's friend, also became an enthusiastic follower of Roman traditions, just like his step-mother1Eanfled. Things started to get critical in 660/1when king Alhfrith removed the Celtic abbot Eata from the monastery at Ripon (one of the twelve grants of land made by Oswiu after his defeat of Penda in 655) and controversially installed Wilfrid in his place; furthermore it would appear that Alhfrith took the unilateral step of adopting the Roman ways in Deira, thus putting the kingdom out of kilter with Oswiu's Bernician part of Northumbria.

In 661 Finnan was succeeded as bishop of Lindisfarne by Colman, another Celtic monk from Iona and in the same year a Scottish monk Rohan strongly urged Colman to change to Roman customs throughout the land.

Oswiu, now seriously concerned about the religious differences that were threatening to destabilize his family and his kingdom decided to call a meeting of church leaders in 664 to resolve things once and for all. This became known as The Synod of Whitby as it was held atHilda'smonastery.

There are two known accounts of this great meeting, Bede's Ecclesistical History (III 25) and Eddius Steppanus's Life of Wilfrid. (C10). Bede did not start his Ecclesistical history until 731 whereas Eddius was with Wilfrid as his choir cantor and therefore his account should be fresher and not second hand. However the time differences are not so significant as Eddius did not write his account until many years later between 710 and 720 and often seemed to write through very rose tinted spectacles! In any event Bede's account is a much more robust and interesting read and the Synod meeting rises from the pages as a real courtroom drama.

Bede first set the scene where Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons and friend of Alhfrith king of Deira and Wilfrid (recently made abbot of Ripon) was staying with them and, at the request of Alhfrith, Agilbert ordained Wilfrid a priest in his own monastery.

When the council meeting was called at Whitby, Bishop Colman, his Irish clergy, and Hilda supported the Celtic view whilst the Roman side was represented by Agilbert, one of his priests Agatho, Wilfrid, James the Deacon (formerly of Paulinus) and Romanus. The two kings Oswiu and his son Ahlfrith were present and the venerable bishop Cedd acted as interpreter.

After Oswiu opened the proceedings he invited Colman to make his case for continuing with the Celtic customs. Colman replied that he observed Easter as he had been instructed at Iona and cited that the method was that used by the evangelist John.

The king then asked Agilbert to expound on his method for the calculation and Agilbert, a Gaul, wisely suggested that Wilfrid speak as they both agreed on the method and that this would save going through an interpreter. Wilfrid then named all the major places in the world that the Roman method was adopted and intimated that it was only the Picts and the British who obstinately did otherwise and were 'foolishly attempting to fight against the whole world.' Colman objected to Wilfrid saying that they were foolish citing that they followed the apostle reckoned worthy to recline on the breast of the Lord (John).

At this Wilfrid explained that actually John celebrated Easter according to the decrees of Mosaic law from the evening of the 14th day of the first month (Nisan) irrespective of whether it fell on the Sabbath or not, whereas the Celtic calculation made Easter the first Sunday between the 14th and 20th day of the first moon. Wilfrid explained that the Roman calculation was based on Peter's preaching in Rome where he waited for the rising of the moon on the 14th day of the first moon and if in the morning it was the Lord's day, then Easter was on that day, if not, he waited for the first Sunday up to the 21st and began the Easter ceremonies the night before so it came about that Easter Sunday was kept on the first Sunday between the 15th and the 21st day of the first moon. Wilfrid then faced Colman and said 'in your calculation you follow neither John or Peter, neither the law nor the Gospel.'

Colman then said that Anatolius had decreed that the calculation should be between the 14th and 20th day of the first moon and that was what Columba had followed. Wilfrid then proceeded to show that actually the Celtic calculation did not follow the 19 year lunar cycle used by Anatolius and implied in effect that Colman did not know what he was talking about!

Wilfrid, by clever argument, was able to show that the Roman ways stemmed directly from St. Peter, holder to the keys of heaven, and a superior authority to the Irish Columba advocated by bishop Colman. Oswiu asked Colman if it was true that Peter held the keys to heaven to which Colman said it was true. Oswiu then asked Colman whether he had evidence that equal authority was given to Columba to which Colman could only reply 'Nothing'. Oswiu, who hardly wished to offend St. Peter lest he be denied passage to heaven, decided in favour of the Wilfridian party.

Hilda accepted the change to Roman ways but bishop Colman resigned his see and left Lindisfarne with many of his monks and returned to Iona.

Oswiu then appointed Eata, one of Aidan's '12 English Boys' as abbot and Tuda, another Irishman of the Celtic tradition but compliant with Roman ways, as bishop of Lindisfarne.

664 proved to be a cataclysmic year in more ways that one. Bede recalls that on 3 May there was an eclipse of the sun and later a plague that first ravished the south and then found its way up to Northumbria and led to the death of the newly installed bishop Tuda! Bede goes on to say that 'king Alhfrith sent the priest Wilfrid to the king of Gaul to be consecrated bishop for himself and his people'. This is a different and possibly more accurate interpretation to that offered by Eddius Stephanus in his Life of Wilfrid where he indicates that it was agreed Wilfrid should be made bishop and that Wilfrid argued for and gained the agreement of both Oswiu and Alhfrith to travel to Gaul to be consecrated in the Roman tradition by Roman rather than Celtic monks.

There is evidence of a growing rift between Oswiu and his son king Alhfrith as in 664/5 Ahlfrith wanted to go with Benedict Biscop on his second journey to Rome whilst Wilfrid was in Gaul, but Oswiu would not let his son go [LAWJ 12]. Another telling reference to a rift is in Bede where it says 'He (Oswiu) was attacked by the heathen people, the Mercians, who had slain his brother, and in addition, by his own son Alhfrith and his nephew Oethelwald, the son of his brother and predecessor.' [EH 3,14]

Evidently by the time of Wilfrid's return Alhfrith had disappeared from the history books and Oswiu had installed Chad into a newly restored see at York, but the ordination in Gaul and what happened on Wilfrid's return is the next story.

Suffice to say that in 664 at the age of 30 Wilfrid had made his mark in a most impressive victory at the Synod of Whitby. However, he had clearly nailed his Roman colours to the mast and started to generate a great deal of hostility and resentment from those who were affected by the change from Celtic to Roman ways; something that would cost him dearly later in his amazing life.

Peter Green

Notes:

Alhfrith (also known asAlchfrith or Ealhfrith) was a son of King Oswiu of Northumbria and Rieinmelth ofRheged.

Rivers and navigable creeks, p. 36. Tamar, Lynher, p. 38. Tide, or Tidi, p. 40. Seaton, ib.
Loo, or Eaft-Loo, ibid. ProfpoCt of Loo Bridge," ib. Duloo, or Weft Loo river, p. 41. fawy, ib.
Fal, 42, and it’s harbour. Hel, or Heyl river in Kerricr, p. 43. Lo or Low river in Kerrier, p 44.
A1
Heyl in Penwith, ibid. Ganal creek, p. 45. River Alan, al Lamel, ibid. Wade navigable rivers in
may be made notbeneficial, p. 47. Subject: to obftrudtions, p. 49.