John Dunn

A motorcycle excursion into the Cotswold Hills to see the Rollright Stones and Chastleton Barrow

Saturday, 25 May 2024 at 21:09

Soon to be published on my YouTube Channel

A motorcycle excursion into the Cotswold Hills to see the Rollright Stones and Chastleton Barrow

What follows is the draft spoken-word commentary to the short video. (It all serves to keep this home page fresh to Google searches!)

The video will be up and running soon, and the time will be announced first on this website.

Draft commentary

In the Cotswolds today, just about to cross a tributary of the River Evenlode, in a valley east of Little Rollright.

Hello, and welcome to the ride. As ever, it’s good to have you along.

Climbing out of the valley now, to a road running left and right, which broadly aligns with a prehistoric trackway known as the Jurassic Way (not to be confused with the new recreational footpath of the same name). The ancient trackway followed an escarpment of limestone, which stretches from the Humber Estuary all the way down to Wiltshire, and so to the stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge.

And here I am at that very ridge road, or ridgeway.

Straight on at this junction the land falls away quite steeply to the village of Long Compton.

When traffic allows however, I’m turning right along the ridgeway.

Given its prominent position his ridgeway has long been an historical demarcation line. Still today, it marks the boundary between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

Also on this ridgeway are landmarks of immense prehistorical importance.

And up ahead is where I pull in to take a look.

The Rollright Stones.

And of these, here is the stone circle known as the Kings Men.

This stone circle is late Neolithic, about 2,500 years BC. One of many stonecircles across Britain. It’s always presumed that they had some sort of religious significance, but no-one really knows for certain.

A stone circle on the way towards the bigger stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge might mean something.

The location affords tremendous views across the valley I’ve just crossed. And over there are more historic stones worth seeing.

It’s a short walk, about a quarter of a mile to a prehistoric burial chamber known as the Whispering Knights dolmen.

The oldest of the stones, this is early Neolithic, about 3,500 years BC, a thousand years older than the stone circle.

This burial chamber would originally have been covered with a mound of earth, long since worn and washed away.

Across the ridgeway road is the newest of the Rollrights, the King’s Stone, erected around 1,500 BC. Again the question is Why? No-one knows.

Back on the ridgeway road now, heading towards Stow-on-the-Wold.

Despite its significance since prehistoric times, it was never turnpiked, and even now remains unclassified.

Here is an old turnpike however, the Chapel on the Hill and Bourton on the Hill Turnpike of 1731, now the A44.

Sad to see the old Cross Hands pub closed there.

From this I turn on to the A436, once part of the Foss and Cross Turnpike of 1755.

Turning right now towards the village of Chastleton.

The name derives from the Old English ceastel meaning a cairn or boundary marker. Ceastelton, Chastleton

Still today this lane forms part of the boundary between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Looking for a track now to a farm on the right.

And here it is.

I’m heading for another prehistoric site that’s marked on the OS Map, but is rarely visited.

Those trees up ahead mark the earthworks of a round structure known as Chastleton Barrow. But barrow (normally a burial mound) it is not. It’s more likely a fort.

It's certainly a large enough landmark to have been a serious boundary itself marker over the centuries.

The land is on a prominent site, a high point on the same ridgeway as the Rollright Stones.

But this is nothing like as old as the Rollrights. The fort has been dated to the Early Iron Age, which in Britain was about 800 to 400 years BC.

What this place lacks in relative age compared to the Rollrights, it gains in relative scale.

It is fortified with a single bank built of oolitic limestone and earth that encloses an area of about 3.5 acres

Standing in the centre now.

That’s where I entered the circle.

You’ll make out the banked up earth relative to the height of those old sheds.

Scanning around the circle.

It’s difficult to capture on video the extent of the earthwork that I’m now standing in.

But take my word for it, the banked earth is there. You’ll just make out the raised earthwork, now topped by mature trees.

Obviously,worn down over hundreds of years. Nevertheless the earthworks can be seen rising up behind those old sheds there, and I pass through the fortifications as I leave. And only me here to see them,

Thanks for joining me on today’s ride into pre-history. As ever it’s good to have your company here in the Cotswold Hills.

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen, please like, subscribe, perhaps even share, I’ll then let you know when I’m next out and about.

For now, I’m done.

© John Dunn.

Our own image in the divine

Friday, 24 May 2024 at 22:42

Our image in the Divine as represented by John Flaxman

Our own image in the divine

Metaphors abound as Dante achieves the goal of his pilgrimage and sees the highest light, which in itself is the Truth. Language does not have the power to convey what he had seen. He struggles to hold the vision in his mind, as ‘the snow loses its shape in the sun’ or ‘the oracles of the Sibyl, on the light leaves, were lost in the wind’. He prays for the power to tell future generations of the glory he has seen. Leave me even‘a single spark of your glory’ he pleads, a gleam that will outshine the shadows of the cave that pass for truth on earth. The future will understand and see beyond appearances. That is Dante’s hope and, as if to make sure, he expands upon what he saw.

The light was adorned with ‘our image’. He sees our own image in the divine, not ‘my’ likeness, the common likeness.

© John Dunn.

Uniquely endowed

Thursday, 23 May 2024 at 22:28

Dante

Uniquely endowed

Recalling Purgatory XVII we remember that Dante asked - what moves the imagination when the senses offer nothing? ‘A light which takes its shape in heaven moves you’, he answers. With the imagination, man is of all animals uniquely endowed to imagine, look forward, contemplate new futures and, above all, hope. Dante had already made clear what was in store for those who lived less than fully human lives.

‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate’, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’

© John Dunn.

A 'Republick of Merchants'

Wednesday, 22 May 2024 at 22:23

A 'Republick of Merchants'

Post-1688 Britain might have been nominally a kingdom, but in reality it became a 'Republick of Merchants' and its head of state was not a king but, as Disraeli pointed out, really a doge. The sovereign might be allowed absolute power, as long as the economic interests of the ‘Whig Magnificoes’ were not interfered with. The Liberal system of government,economy, and social philosophy was the offspring of the oligarchy-ruled Venice of Sarpi’s time. The Venetian model had transferred to the two maritime powers best placed to exploit the trading opportunities in America and Asia - the Netherlands of Spinoza and the England of John Locke. The crucial feature of the Anglo-Dutch liberal model was the independence from national government, elected or otherwise, enjoyed by a privately controlled central banking system.

© John Dunn.

George III tried not to be a Doge

Tuesday, 21 May 2024 at 22:10

George III

George III tried not to be a Doge

Spinoza and Locke proceeded towards republican political theory based on equal natural rights. However, we must not think of these republican ideas as Utopias of universal suffrage. What Spinoza, followed by Locke, had theorised was Sarpi’s 'Republick of Merchants’. As in Sarpi’s Venice, the consensus of the community was that of a small clique of property-owning oligarchs. Their rejection of absolute monarchy was in fact a Counter-Renaissance opposition to any form of sovereign national rule over the economic sphere. The 1688 Dutch invasion of England, or Glorious Revolution as it was dubbed by the financial beneficiaries, established a Sarpian ‘Republick of Merchants’ on English soil, as Venetian and Dutch commercial and banking interests transferred to London. The Anglo-Dutch model of oligarchical rule was established, with the formerly centralising authority of the King transformed into the nominal authority of a Venetian-style Doge.

In his novel Coningsby,Disraeli wrote: ‘The great object of Whig leaders in England, from the first movement under Hampden to the last most successful one in 1688, was to establish in England a high aristocratic republic on the model of the Venetian....William the Third told ...Whig leaders, “I will not be a Doge” ...They brought in a new family on their own terms. George I was a Doge; George II was a Doge....George III tried not to be a Doge....He might try to get rid of the Whig Magnificoes, but he could not rid himself of the Venetian constitution.’

© John Dunn.

Collaborator

Monday, 20 May 2024 at 22:14

John Locke

Collaborator

During his exile in Amsterdam, Locke would have been receptive to the ‘Counter-Renaissance’ ideas of Spinoza. The philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein argues that during his five years in Holland, Locke chose his friends ‘from among the same freethinking members of dissenting Protestant groups as Spinoza's small group of loyal confidants’. Spinoza had died in 1677, but Locke almost certainly met men in Amsterdam who spoke of the author of the Ethics, whose ideas were compatible with the expansionist ambitions of a commercial oligarchy. Locke accompanied William of Orange's wife back to England in 1688, a high profile indication of his collaborationist role in the build-up to the invasion.

© John Dunn.

John Locke

Sunday, 19 May 2024 at 21:07

John Locke

Born in the same year as Spinoza (1632), John Locke was employed by Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who as a founder of the Whig movement exerted great influence on Locke's political ideas. Shaftesbury was a prominent conspirator in the failed Rye House plot, an assassination attempt upon Charles II and the future James II, which aimed to sweep away the barriers to an oligarchical takeover of government. Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683, under strong suspicion of involvement. It is highly likely that from this point on at least, Locke was one of the leading collaborators with the Dutch backers of the 1688 invasion.

© John Dunn.