The Loveston Erratic Revisited

A closer view of the Loveston stone.

I have been back to look at the Loveston Erratic, in the farmyard in St. Twynnells, Pembrokeshire. See my previous posts and the discussion at Brian John's blog, here:

http://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-loveston-erratic.html

I was also able to have a good discussion about the stone with the farmer, Mr Morris. He told me that the stone had always been in the yard, as far as he could recall. about forty years ago people came "down from Cardiff" and took photographs of the stone and tried to cut a slice off it - hence the groove on the upper surface of the stone. The northern end of the stone, hidden from view in the picture I posted before, has a very clean, smooth, seemingly sawn, face. See the photographs below.

The Erratic in the farmyard at Loveston, viewed form the west in January 2013.

View of stone from the east. The book is 32 cm long.

View from north-east . The book is 32 cm x 24 cm.

View from north. Note flat "sawn" end. Attempt at cutting the stone can be seen running away from the camera.

View from north-west.

View from WNW appx.

View from WSW appx.

View from south-west appx.

View from south.

View from SSE appx.

View from south-east.

Saw cut in top of stone.

Saw cut in top of stone. Edge of book is 24 cm parallel to cut.

Another view of saw cut.

The photograph below shows (rather badly) a cup like mark on the stone. Has the appearance of having been scooped out.

Cup like mark on upper surface of stone. About 1cm deep.

Looking down on north plane face of stone.

According to Mr Morris, over the years various people have come to the visit the stone and comment on it.Some have said that it was a stone left behind whilst transporting the "Bluestones" to stonehenge. By man or by ice?

The stone was listed, but is now no longer so, but there is no intention to remove it. It is Mr Morris's belief that it gives the name to the farm - Loveston(e).

Comments and thoughts very welcome!

Sir Patrick Moore

Newswhip.com

Sunday

The sad news today was that Sir Patrick Moore, of "The Sky at Night" fame, died.

See:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10525469

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/09/sir-patrick-moore



He was a larger than life figure and I once had the great pleasure of attending a lecture he gave at Queen Mary College London.



The lecture, in the late 1970's (the site was less expansive than that shown above) was ostensibly part of an undergraduate Astronomy course. However, the word that Patrick Moore would be giving a lecture to the course, was widely known. The lecture had been scheduled to be put on in the largest lecture theatre in the college - by chance I believe - but even this huge room was not big enough to cater for the 1000+ students who turned up, skipping their normal lectures just to hear the legendary man!! This included me!

Determined that all who wanted to hear his talk would not be denied, he decided to move to the main college hall - an ex-theatre on Mile End Road. With assistance from an eager band of astronomy student helpers, everyone trooped over to the new venue. Then, horror of horrors, when setting up the projector he dropped his carousel of slides!!!

Un-phased, he gave us all the choice of abandoning the talk, going ahead without visual aids, or waiting for him to re-sort his slides. The vote was overwhelming - everyone wanted to wait while he set things up again properly.

The talk was fantastic and afterwards he remained in the hall for ages answering questions and cultivating the latent enthusiasm for astronomy in the audience. 

He will be missed.

The Green One

Across Pembrokeshire

This post has taken a while to publish - as it necessitated a trip into the loft to recover some old maps and charts. Still cannot find the chart I was looking for, so I expect we will return to this topic in the future!

"The Green 1"

When I was in the "top" class of my infants school, I have a clear recollection one clear, bright and blue afternoon, noticing the white needle flight of high flying contrailing aircraft heading west towards the sea. This was in the early 1960s, so I suppose these were Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s, or other first generation transatlantic jet airliners.


My dad told me that this was airway Green 1. I was bemused by this - where were the white lines? How did the pilots know how to follow the "road"? Where was the "road"?

Airways within the UK at that time were identified by by a colour and number combination. The airway Green 1 (separated into Green 1 Upper and Green 1 Lower), ran from a reporting point and "radio range" south east of Frankfurt (Rhein-Main), to the west coast of Ireland, near Shannon. The charts below show the airway's route over the UK in 1960. The top picture shows the Lower Airway (up to 25000 ft) and the second chart the Upper Airway. The two charts shown here were issued by the RAF and so some of the detail, such as the code numbers for danger areas, differed from the civilian versions of the charts. The danger area UK-609, marked on the coast of South Pembrokeshire and showing the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Range at Manorbier, was depicted on civilian maps at the time as UK-W9.



Over Wales, in 1960, Green 1 ran between a beacon at Chepstow (GJP 363) and one at Strumble (MWL 249). These two positions were also compulsory reporting points, where aircraft had to report their position to Air Traffic Control (ATC). The letters and figures in the boxes with the name of each beacon were the three letter morse identifier for the beacon and the frequency it operated on in kilohertz (kHz).

Of course, Airway Green 1 had been born may years before 1960. Immediately after the Second World War it was realised that communication by air was important, but it would have to be controlled to ensure the safe passage of both freight and people. Civilian passenger flights had continued over the course of the war, and indeed Pembroke Dock was used as a terminal for civilian flying boat flights between Britain and neutral countries in other parts of Europe, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. The extract from the chart below shows the route of Green 1 across the UK in 1957.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-directional_beacon

The next series of charts show the airway a few years earlier. The naming of the route "Green 1" can probably be traced back to the latter years of the war when the US Army Air Force Air Transport Command designated particular routes that transport aircraft flying to and from the UK were expected to follow.

 The chart above shows the radio facilities available to the civilian pilot on 1 October 1949. The chart is taken from the "Air Pilot" of that month. the "Air Pilot" was the operating "bible" for pilots and was a weighty tome that gave navigational information for the UK. There were no designated airways, but Green 1 would make an appearance in less than twelve months time.

 January 1951 from AP3192E. The introduction of the airways system into the UK began on 1 August 1950. For a contemporary account of the plan, see:

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1950/1950%20-%201432.html?search=airway%20green%20one

The introduction of the airways system was phased in three stages, so that by the end of 1952 it was fully in place, as shown in the next chart.

 January 1952 from AP3192E.

Minor changes in the organisation of UK airspace occurred monthly, so that the facilities available to pilots to help than navigate safely, in a sky that was becoming ever more crowded,  evolved gradually over time.

December 1953 from AP3192E.

December 1971 from RAF En-route High Altitude Chart.

This chart shows the growing number of airways. West of Strumble, the airways fan out to accommodate the burgeoning numbers of aircraft crossing the Atlantic, as well as the more local traffic within the British Isles. By this time Green 1, as with other airways has lost its colour and is now known officially as Airway G1 or UG1 (Upper G1). 

Also seen on this chart is the airway UR37, brought into play to provide a route down the Bristol Channel for Concorde to accelerate to supersonic speed on its way to New York. The mid-evening winter double window rattle was a reassuring reminder of British technical prowess for the people of Pembrokeshire until the (probably) most beautiful aircraft ever built was retired.

Airway L9 from RAF Flight Information Publication (FLIP) En Route Low Altitude 28 August 2008

Alas, "The Green One" is no-more. The route is now known as L9 and UL9 following more recent redesignation of airways across Europe, and indeed the world. Nowadays commercial air traffic is less constrained, and does not need to adhere to the ten mile wide virtual roadway marked out by a variety of fixed radio aids. Inertial navigation systems (INS), which allow aircraft to fix their positions by sensing the way they have accelerated and decelerated, reduced the need for airliners to leapfrog from beacon to beacon. Satellite navigation systems provide even greater accuracy and certainty of position. Modern Flight Management Systems (FMS) make much of the navigation demands placed on pilots both safe and reliable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_management_system). The result is that aircraft now roam more widely over the Pembrokeshire skies and there is less need for them to follow the old route of Green 1. 

Why "The Green 1"?

© Copyright Pauline Eccles and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The title of this posting is "The Green One". My mum always called the airway "The Green One" after seeing a notice at the roadside marking the track that led to the VOR beacon on top of the hill at Pencaer. Many visitors thought the beacon was called "Green 1", and attached the name, like my mum, to this windswept spot in west Wales. However......

© Copyright ceridwen and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

.....Green 1 was the highway to Belgium for the European traveller and the aerial roadway to the Atlantic for the western venturer.

Today it is the more prosaic Lima 9. To me it will always be Green 1.

Thanks to the following forums for advice and information!

• http://www.pprune.org/atc-issues-18/

• http://www.airfieldinformationexchange.org/community/forumdisplay.php?35-General-Airfield-Discussion

• http://forum.keypublishing.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4

Weasel's Snout

I promised, a few posts ago, that my next offering would be on "The Green One", but other diversions have cropped up! "The Green One" is on its way, I promise. In the meantime......

Having had a piece of ground at the bottom of the garden de-turfed in preparation to plant a wild flower mix, I was intrigued to find this little plant growing up from the bare soil. It has been in flower for about two months and is like a small snapdragon. The wild flower key showed me that it might be Weasel's Snout - a plant whose range is dropping dramatically and it is becoming scarce. I had never seen the plant before.

I e-mailed some photos to Martin Sandford at the Suffolk Biological Records Centre (see below), and he was able to confirm the find! 

Weasel's Snout is an archaeophyte...... in other words this:

"Any plant which was introduced to an area by humans (or arrived naturally, but from an area in which it was present as a human introduction) and became naturalised before 1500 CE (but especially in prehistoric times)"

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/archaeophyte

Martin Sanford

Suffolk Biological Records Centre

Ipswich Museum

High Street

Ipswich

SuffolkIP1 3QH

Tel: 01473 433547

Fax: 01473 433558

E-mail martin.sanford@suffolk.gov.uk

Why is it called Weasel's Snout? Anyone know?

The links below give more info about the plant in Suffolk and its distribution elsewhere in the UK

List of Rare Plants in Suffolk:

http://www.suffolkbrc.org.uk/public_html/sites/default/files/rpr.PDF

Flyer for "A Flora of Suffolk":

http://www.suffolkbrc.org.uk/public_html/sites/default/files/A%20Flora%20of%20Suffolk%20flyer.pdf

The distribution of Weasel's Snout in UK:

http://plantnetwork.org/projects/datasheets/misooron.pdf

Anita Spitzova

On 14 November 2012 our local High School was visited by a holocaust survivor. Hearing about this, made me think (again) of a promise I made during a visit to the Israel over twenty years ago.

I had timed my participation in an archaeological dig in Israel to perfection! As I awoke early on 2 August 1990 to catch an El Al flight to Tel Aviv, so the news bulletins were full of the announcement that the Iraqi Army had walked into the neighbouring Gulf State of Kuwait.

Israel bristled with weapons - on the trains, on the buses and in taxis. Taking a seat on a bus next to a good looking khaki clad young girl, I asked:

" Could you please move your assault rifle?"

She was most apologetic!



I found Israel a place of huge contradictions and contrast.. The beaches of Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Caesarea and Dor were wonderful, yet the patrol boats off-shore gave warning of potential menace. Affluent modern Jewish suburbs and ramshackle Arabic homes amidst ancient architecture. The grace and good manners of the Bedouin camp in the Sinai where our group shared coffee and the criminality and anger of a dodgy hotel behind the seafront in Tel Aviv, where I was robbed in my sleep.

The visit to Israel was also very emotional. One weekend I made the bus journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where I visited Yad Vashem. (https://www.yadvashem.org/)

------------------------

"And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (a "yad vashem")... that shall not be cut off."

(Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 5)

As the Jewish people’s living memorial to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem safeguards the memory of the past and imparts its meaning for future generations. Established in 1953, as the world centre for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem is today a dynamic and vital place of intergenerational and international encounter.

------------------------------------

In many places it was a tearful visit, the silence and reverence of the place was overpowering and brought home the enormity of the Holocaust with painful force and the overwhelming need to try and understand "Why?"

In one of the galleries there was an exhibition of art work produce under the tutelage of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in the Terezin/Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, in what is now the Czech Republic. This camp was the "showpiece ghetto" to show the world how "well" the Nazis were treating the Jews. 

Most of the work on display had been produced by children. I struggled to think of a way in which I could commemorate, in my own small way, these innocent youngsters who would see such terrible things before their almost inevitable death. I was looking at a picture drawn by Anita Spitzova. "Dance on a Meadow".

I promised Anita I would never forget her name.

A drawing by Anita Spitzova entitled "Dance on a Meadow".

Anita,10, won a contest in the Terezin  Ghetto with this drawing

and died in Auschwitz the next year.

Anita Spitzova

"Anita Spitzova was born in 1933. During the war she was deported with Transport L from Praha,Praha Hlavni Mesto,Bohemia,Czechoslovakia to Theresienstadt Ghetto,Czechoslovakia on 10 December 1941. Deported with transport En from Theresienstadt,Ghetto,Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau,Camp on 04/10/1944. Anita was murdered in the Shoah."

The following weekend I visited Jerusalem again, this time wandering through the ancient alleys of the Arabic quarter. Many of the shops and stalls were closed because of the Intifada.

On returning to the hotel in Tel Aviv that night, I was having the ritual beer in the bar, and discussing my adventures with the young bar keeper. As I left to get something to eat, he commented,

"The only good Arab is a dead Arab, you know!"

Sadly I said nothing - I was a guest in this land - but I immediately thought that some lessons are not easily learnt. 

I remembered Anita Spitzova.

Lieutenant John Murray Harding, 13/18 Hussars, Royal Armoured Corps

Badge of 79th Armoured Division

In the late summer and early autumn of 1943, the 79th Armoured Division moved en masse to the ranges at Castlemartin. The Division had been given the specialised role of developing tactics and the use of secret devices for the assault on the continent of Europe, otherwise known as Operation Overlord.

Local people around the range will recall that for most of this period a curfew was in force in the area to limit the chances of prying eyes seeing the secret, potentially battle winning, devices that were being tested.

Badge of 13/18 Hussars

AS part of the training, the tank regiments and battalions assigned to the 79th came in turn to Castlemartin. Some were billeted at Merrion camp, some at Trenorgan and some at Stackpole Court. When the 13/18 Hussars came to the area they were allocated accommodation at the former Royal Armoured Corps recruit camp at Newton, just to the south of  Bosherston village.



The regiment had just de-trained at Pembroke Station, and was making its way in convoy to Newton Camp.

Sherman Tank of 13/18 Hussars

The account in the Western Telegraph for 2 September 1943 described how the tank of Lt John Murray Harding, aged 21, skidded on the hill, crashed through a low wall, turned completely over and ended up on its side. The young lieutenant never stood a chance, being crushed as he stood in the open hatch of the turret. He was killed instantly. He was later buried at the military cemetery in Pembroke Dock with full military honours. Peter "Cosy" Comfort of the regiment recalled the episode thus:

A high was Linney Head, Pembrokeshire, a firing range; the water-lilies; the boulders, raw, forgotten in the surf. White bread and eggs in rural Wales; the Welsh loved their table, as did Buckshot Smith, the regimental butcher and poacher extraordinaire; soup and stew, feathers bones and all, I have never tasted better.

Grave Stone of Lt Harding in Pembroke Dock Military Cemetary

The low of Linney Head, an upturned tank, the officer crushed.

'You and you and you, to the Squadron office. Funeral firing party.'

RSM Duffy was kind and sympathetic;

'Now, now. That won't do on the day, lads. Let's get it right. Reverse arms again.  Present arms; prepare; fire; again fire; reload; fire.'

We  were right on the day and his parents stood silent by the graveside. The regiment always looked after its own.







Entry from Commonwealth War Graves Commision website at:

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2965720/HARDING,%20JOHN%20MURRAY

HARDING, JOHN MURRAY

Rank:

Lieutenant

Service No:

245689

Date of Death:

29/08/1943

Age:

21

Regiment/Service:

Royal Armoured Corps

 

13th/18th Royal Hussars

Grave Reference

Sec. D. Grave 16.

Cemetery

PEMBROKE DOCK MILITARY CEMETERY

Additional Information:

Son of Brigadier Geoffrey Parker Harding and Catherine Mary Harding. of Lyndhurst Hampshire.

Bronze age with a computer, Love in Loveston farmyard and the the burial of William Poyer (again).

Friday

Last time I explained how sunset at the summer solstice did not appear to take place behind St Twynnells church, or over the Devils Quits, as observed form the Harold Stone. If all this is incomprehensible to you, then you have not read the previous episodes. You will also recall how I had learned that due to variations in the earths motion around the sun, the angle of the sunset would have been different in the Bronze age. The problem for me was to find out where you would see the sun set from the Harold Stone several thousand years ago. The answer was with a computer and a piece of software called Sky Map Pro.

http://www.skymap.com/

Skymap allows you to visualise the night  sky (and the day sky come to that) at any time in the future or past. But what time period should I be looking for?

Luckily, the Dyfed Archaeological Trust carried out an extensive excavation on the Devils Quoit on Stackpole Warren in between 1977 and 1979, and this was reported on in Current Archaeology No. 82, in May 1982. Carbon dates from the excavation ranged from 1390 BC to 160 BC, so I decided to go for 1200 BC, which seemed to be the fairest Bronze age date to take from the evidence of the dig. The first surprise to me (a novice in these matters) was that using our modern dating system, the solstice was not on 21 June in 1200 BC. It was on 3 July, with the sun setting at 2038GMT. The bearing of the sun at the time of setting, relative to the Harold Stone was just over 312 degrees (312 degs 1 min 15 secs to be precise). 

I eagerly plotted this on the map only to find that this placed the sun just to the right of the church on the horizon, but precisely in line with the Devils Quoit. In truth I had hoped that the sun would set behind the church as I felt tempted to believe that the church was, somehow, part of a grander scheme of alignments, and its location on the horizon, more or less in line with the two standing stones was more than just a coincidence. This was not to be! The sun, in the Bronze age, set to the right of the church, over the roof of the much later cottage abutting the east of the churchyard. You can see the cottage in question in a photo in an earlier post, showing the view eastward from the top of St Twynnells church tower.

I had to be content with the Harold Stone and the Devils Quoit being aligned on the summer solstice sunset, but whether by chance or design was arguable.

As part of my researches into the history of St Twynnells parish, I was keen to have a look at the remains of Lay, which was a very derelict house in a copse on the land belonging to Loveston Farm, which sits about half a mile south of St Twynnells church. I duly made arrangements with the farmer, Mr Morris, to gain access to the site, and whilst walking through the farmyard at Loveston stopped to look at the Loving Stone, that had sat in the yard seemingly for ever. 

The stones under discussion are shown in the Google Earth extract below.

Google Earth file can be downloaded here, and this will give you then bigger picture!

http://sdrv.ms/SJ8c4h (This link broken at the moment! I am on to it!)

The Loving Stone has several stories attached to it, the main gist of them all being that it was customary for local lads and lasses to "pledge their troth" to one another at the stone, just like at the church alter........Hmmmnnnn.... Also, there is the suggestion that if it is ever moved, the farm will fall on hard times. It is not a "local" stone, but seems to be an igneous erratic from further north in the county.

Loveston farm, from the tower of St Twynnells church.

This is where William Poyer's particular wishes for his burial shed much light on the origins of the stone in Loveston farmyard. Here is part of his will:

He asks........ for my body to be buried in the east [en]d of the the churchyard of the parish church of St Twynnells by the Long Stone which does there stand


As I have suggested before, if, in 1200 BC, you were sitting with your back against the face of the Harold Stone, and were looking northwest at the setting sun on the day of the summer solstice, you would see it drop below the horizon over the Long Stone mentioned in William Poyer's will. Did William know this? Is it coincidence? Is the alignment by design? Where is the Long Stone now?

The last question is perhaps the easiest to answer. It is in the farmyard at Loveston. It was probably dragged down the hill from the church yard, sometime after William Poyers death. Why move it? Did its pagan associations cause affront to a puritanical congregation? We will probably never know, but the clue to the Loving Stones original place is the tradition that local lovers "pledged their troth" at the stone. Of course, they probably did this on their wedding day at the church and the tradition moved, through half-heard tales, when the stone was dragged to Loveston.

What do you think?

Next Time: The Green One and going solo.

Helpful Parents, Standing Stones and the Burial of William Poyer

Friday - late!

Harold Stone, Stackpole viewed from appx south west 

In the last post I promised I would talk about the things parents do for you. On this occasion my mum and dad were given an investigative task in the field of archaeo-astronomy. You will hopefully recall me explaining about the "Dancing Stones of Stackpole" and in particular the viewshed from the Harold Stone. To get up to speed with this, then have a look back at my last post.


My previous post is here.
I mentioned that my interests had moved away from studying various megalithic sites in the UK and Europe (this was sometime in the 1980s), and I was now researching the local history of two small parishes in South Pembrokeshire - Warren and St. Twynnells. The link below will allow you to download a Google Earth file for the parishes that shows their extent as a coloured overlay.

St Twynnells Parish: http://sdrv.ms/SpxnK9

Warren Parish: http://sdrv.ms/Yg4uRg

Harold Stone, Stackpole, viewed from north-west

It was 1992 and the summer solstice was about a week away when I remembered that I had always planned to see the mid-summer sunset from the Harold Stone, just to see if the sun really did set over the Devils Quoit. But, working in Suffolk, and unable to get away, I decided to ask my parents to do the job for me - and take photographic evidence!


It was a strange request and I am sure that my dad thought I was barmy - but he was the photographer so he had to go! I asked them to get there well before sunset, and described, over the phone, where the Harold Stone was and the importance of taking the photograph with their backs to the stone and so on. So, on 21 June, they both duly clambered over the gate into the field (Horestone Park, by the way) and took the pictures needed. It was a beautiful evening and they both enjoyed the adventure, but mum was a bit wary of the cattle. The bonus was that they managed to find some mushrooms too!

A week or so later, the photos arrived in the post (no email or Picasa then)

Mid-Summer Solstice sunset take from the Harold Stone, Stackpole, by my mum and dad, 21 June 1992

The picture above shows the sun about 10 minutes before it sets. The path of the sun whilst setting, at this time of year, continues to move northwards across the horizon as well as down towards it. The question was, does the sun set (disappear from view behind St Twynnells church? This is in a direct line with the Devils Quoit, which though visible at the time, is hidden in the dark foreground of the photograph. To me it seemed unlikely given the evidence of my dad's photograph.

A few weeks later, I was at a talk on Pembrokeshire Archaeology, put on by the National Park Authority. Someone in the audience, asked the speaker about the alignments of prehistoric monuments. In part of his answer, the speaker revealed that the direction of sunset and sunrise were different in prehistory, due to the "precession", or wobble of the Earth. Aha! perhaps, in the Bronze age, the sun DID set behind St Twynnells Church and over the Devils Quoit! Of course, the church was not there then, but its neat alignment provided a modern marker for the event.

But....how do you find out the direction of mid-summer sunset in Pembrokeshire in the Bronze Age?!!?

I waited a few years, but the answer was - with a computer!

In the meantime, I was continuing to research the local history of Warren and St Twynnells. One standard technique I used was to read and analyse all the wills I could track down for people who had lived ( and died) in the two parishes. Often these wills had an inventory of all the deceased's property appended to them, for probate purposes, and where these made mention of the names of rooms within the dead person's house, you could get an insight into what their houses might have been like. 

Poyer is a well known name from South Pembrokeshire, particularly famous (or infamous) in the seventeenth century. Amongst the surviving wills for St Twynnells Parish, is that of William Poyer. He was not a wealthy man.The inventory of his possessions was quite meagre:

It consisted of an old cow and two heifers, one colt, old brass items and so on. The inventory was made in 1671. No rooms are mentioned and we have no idea as to where in the parish he lived. However, his will is very useful to us in our quest to understand the standing stones of Stackpole. Of all the wills I have read it is the one that has given me the most excitement!

The excitement comes from the fact that he was very particular about where he wished to be buried. 


More about this later! What a cliff hanger!


Next time: Stepping back into the Bronze age with a computer, pledging your troth in Loveston farmyard and the the burial of William Poyer.