Using his profound knowledge of the countryside around Hereford, he was able to show by both map and fieldwork that a great number of objects or sites of objects of prehistoric antiquity, churches, so-called 'camps', castles, standing stones, clumps of trees, tell-tale place names, etc., all formed straight alignments across miles of countryside. these he called 'leys'. He interpreted them as 'old straight tracks', masterpieces of accurate surveying by men (traditionally held to be stone-axe wielding painted savages), designed to mark the ways by which the population of those days moved around the countryside. The fact that early churches appeared on these leys is accounted for by the instruction of Pope Gregory the Vth in the Sixth Century that Britain would be Christianised more easily if the new churches were to be built on sites of pagan religious significance.

In the development of his thesis, Watkins goes on to show that through these alignments there survive the ancient beliefs and religion of Britain. King Cole, celebrated in nursery rhyme as a "jolly old soul", and his daughter, Helen, of Romano-British date, give rise to place-names such as Coldharbour, Cole's Farm, Colchester and many others. Helen was none other than the mother of Constantine the Great, the Christianiser of the Roman Empire. (Editor's note: also Elen, goddess of trackways and communication!) Helen found the true cross in Jerusalem when her son won it back. We shall try to show that it was not a wooden cross she found, but a cross of ley-lines. 'Coel' would appear to have a Celtic origin. It meant omen or belief, hence Coel-bren, a piece of wood used in choosing or balloting; coelcerth, omen of danger, beacon, bonfire; coelfain, the stories of omen. Helen appears as Sam Helen, the causeway which traverses Wales. In the same way, Old King Cole became the king of the "Old Straight Track".

The Greek god, Hermes, is associated with the ley-system, taking it back much further in time. He was known for guiding wayfarers on unknown paths in this world and the next. Forward in time he became associated with, or progenitor of, the Roman god, Mercury, whose symbol was an upright stone. Backward in time, it is generally agreed, he was the Egyptian year-god, Thoth, and later we found him in the system. As Hermes, he is held to be the inspiration behind the establishment of hermitages and hermits, whose real function in life was " to help the traveller on his way" - in both a physical and a spiritual sense. As Thoth in another early representation, he was the moon god and, later by association, became god of reckoning and learning in general. He was held to be the inventor of writing, the founder of the social order, the creator of languages, scribe, interpreter and adviser of the gods. In the myth of Osiris, Thoth protected Isis during her pregnancy and healed the injury inflicted by Seth on her son, Horus. Thoth weighed the hearts of the dead and reported his findings to the chief of the gods, Osiris. He makes his appearance in the ley-system in names such as Tothill, Tooting, Totteridge, etc. Mounds with Tot-derivation abound in Britain. There is one in Hassocks, Sussex, unmarked on the Ordnance Survey Map. At the same time Thoth-Hermes was the father of the hermetic sciences, alchemy and astrology and the supposed author, u nder the name of Hermes-Tresmegistus, of the Kabbala.

Meticulously assembling his evidence, Watkins showed that the ley-system he discovered through his flash of inspiration had its origins in the mists before recorded history - that it existed before the construction of Stonehenge, itself incorporated on various leys. It was a thing of wonder and mystery, and was indeed so old that Watkins suggests that "civilisation destroyed it" - along with the coming of metal. All this is a splendid contribution, along with the work of Professors Thom and Hawkins, to a better and indeed awe-inspiring appreciation of the realities of the straight track society and megalithic man. Yet it leaves us with a puzzle. As Watkins himself says, if these lines were intended for travel, why did they pass over the peaks of mountains and through ponds and lakes? He discovered evidence of foundations laid through water - and over precipices. Having admitted this as an objection to his theory of tracks, he dismisses it effectively saying that it is not for Twentieth Century man to judge the travelling habits of his early ancestors, and he may have had his own very good reasons for not circumnavigating natural obstacles. But at the same time he gives us tantalising hints that his vision of 'glowing wires' was perhaps more meaningful than the superficiality of his straight track theory as a means of navigation. He describes it as a fairy chain across the country, and says "I feel that ley-man, astronomer-priest, druid, bard, wizard, witch, palmer and hermit were all more or less linked by one thread of ancient knowledge and power."

Watkins' work provided the pragmatic, measurable basis for the infant art. It is not yet, nor indeed ever likely to become, a 'science' in the current meaning of the word, because it is partly subjective - but none the less real for that. Watkins' son believes that his father was aware of the mysterious dimensions behind his discovery, but in his published work Watkins limited himself to what could be demonstrated through maps and conventional surveying techniques. Indeed, so restrained is his work that one is hard put to understand just why he created such venomous hostility among professional practitioners of archeology. It was another man, Guy Underwood, who was to take an allied concept a very significant stage further.

Underwood was born in 1883 and, after his schooling at Dulwich College, started out as a solicitor. This palled and he subsequently involved himself in such matters as researching genealogical trees, constructing electrical apparatus, water divining and archeology. In 1969, five years after his death, what appears to be his one and only work, 'The Pattern of the Past', was published. Notwithstanding its content, it is a book of charm and warmth. In the first chapter he explains how Reginald Allender Smith of the British Museum first suggested there might be some connection between the location of ancient monuments and the presence of underground water. Smith, Keeper of the British and Roman Antiquities Department of the British Museum and Director of the Society of Antiquities, was also a water diviner, although he kept quiet about it. In 1935 Underwood read a paper to the British Society of Dowsers, in which he said that at the centre of every prehistoric temple there would be found a spot from which a number of underground streams formed a radiating pattern. He called these spots 'blind springs', and said that they existed at Stonehenge, Avebury, Stanton Drew and all similar sites, as well as at every prehistoric barrow.

Underwood did not claim originality for this theory, for he points out that two French archeologists, Louis Merle and Charles Diot, published papers on the subject in 1933 and 1935. They said that all prehistoric burial places and similar stone structures in France were surrounded by underground streams, and that the famous stone avenue at Carnac is aligned upon underground streams running parallel with each other. And Reginald Smith points out that "the constant presence of underground water at the exact centres of these circles and earthworks is a significant feature easily verified by others. If this is allowed to be intentional, then the selection of sites by the Druids and their predecessors no longer appears arbitrary but dictated largely by geological conditions."

In the main body of the work Guy Underwood tells us of his findings by water divining at prehistoric sites, and how he came to see that these sites and medieval churches exhibited similar dowsing phenomena. He saw them as located by geomancers who determined the siting of sacred sites according to the geodetic formulae of particular places. He explains how he became a dowser by chance, after sceptically observing water diviners at work. He designed his own dowsing rod and refined the art almost to the point of a spring-loaded pen recording on the drum of a barograph. (I was not initially as sensitive as this.) It is not condescending to point out that rod dowsing in general had been the province of "country folk" until Guy Underwood refined it into a delicate art. His touch indicated much more than the professional reluctance or incoherence of the country dowser has ever revealed.

Underwood was no fantasist. He himself points out that "Sir Oliver Lodge has stressed the difficulties and dangers of research into new subjects as being far more formidable than those encountered when extending knowledge in some existent field, for there is usually one obvious line of work and also, of course, instruments which will assist the worker. "When water divining constitutes the prime method of research the hazards are greater. The sole media whereby the investigator may detect or measure any phenomenon are his own perceptions - and these can mislead him. "Auto-suggestion is his enemy, and preconceived ideas may blind him to important facts when these seem impossible or produce some chance and unrepresentative results. And while he is labouring to translate the intelligible, he may miss the plain facts or else subconsciously set them aside in fear that their emergence will compel him to scrap some body of previous work. He must also bear in mind that no manifestation can be accepted as valid until it has been repeated many times with identical results and has been observed on several occasions by chance at a time when it is unsought." - So true, as I was to find by bitter experience.

Underwood made archeological dowsing his life's work and, indeed, it was the first time dowsing was used for archeological purposes. He discovered and recognised new archeological sites, established by his dowsing techniques. He took dowsing and rationalised it into something approaching an exact science. I do not propose to recount his theories exactly. Effectively he was a more subtle dowser than I, but I was now experienced enough to put his theories to a field test.

The first dowsing expedition was in January 1975. A site I suspected to be of antiquity, but which was held to be a chalk-pit of recent date, was the object of the attention of a team consisting of myself, my brother David, a friend, Michael, his wife and a covey of assorted and bewildered children. David came equipped with wire, pendulum and coffee. Michael and I with wires and brandy. A January day on the South Downs requires prudence. Our purpose was to dowse the site and see if we could obtain results like Underwood's, thereby showing the site to be of antiquity. The venue was on the western side of Wolstenbury Hill, a strange plateau about the size of a football field, half hollowed out of the hillside and half dependent on chalk that had been excavated and pushed outwards and downwards, the whole covered in grass. Some yards from the foot was a long barrow, and access was by a series of parallel converging and diverging hollow ways from the valley through which the London-Brighton road passes. I had been intrigued by the site for some time, for it stands stark against the hill, and is plainly visible from the road. What on earth was this football field doing sticking out from the top of a Sussex Down, on the peak of which was a so-called hill fort? I had made a preliminary reconnaissance with my son, Nicholas, and the impression from ground level was confirmed - a 'football field' projecting from the hillside and clearly part of a system of earthworks. I had written to the Sussex Archeological Society to see if they recognised it as a site of antiquity and, after some preliminary sparring, in which they advanced the view that it must be a relatively modern chalk or marl-pit, they apparently wrote me off as tiresome, and the correspondence ceased.

So to dowse it. We met at 10. 00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and our motley crew wound its way up the hillside, an object of curiosity to ramblers observing this party of folk holding pendula and half coat-hangers. In the excavations at the bottom we dowsed Underwood's spirals without difficulty. the earthworks winding up the hillside revealed the triple-line which he called an 'aquastat'. We followed this round the side of the plateau - even more stark against the hill as we got nearer - on to the plateau itself. On the forward part there was nothing - but in the backward part excavated out of the hill various spirals were dowsed, and around the area of the excavations, smaller spirals. Within the hill-fort area we dowsed a variety of curved lines and an apparently straight line pointing to Clayton Windmills about a mile away.

On the return journey David announced a straight line down the middle, down the artificial slope and on down the natural hill. We tried to take a sighting but the heat haze on this warm winter's day made it impossible, although the view was commanding. At the time, although we had destroyed several one-inch Ordnance Survey Maps drawing straight lines all over the place, ley-lines were not foremost in our thoughts. Our main purpose then was the testing of Underwood's findings, which did not involve straight lines. And so we left for lunch, satisfied that we had some evidence to show that modern chalk-pits are not made at the top of a hill and that chalk-miners do not level off their site immaculately when they have finished. The long barrow revealed the spiral phenomena that Underwood indicates. Later I pondered on the straight line, how far it went, and wondered. Remembering a particular tree on the lower lip of the hill that appeared to be in line as a marker, the next time I passed along the road, I looked in the other direction - and saw a church, not visible from the top - Newtimber Church. It was one of those moments when one feels oneself to be on the brink of something. The following day I decided, as I drove to the office, to take one rod with me and attempt to dowse the potential line from a moving car. It worked!

Car dowsing was an extremely important discovery, on two counts. Firstly, by further dowsing on foot at Newtimber Church, I was able to establish that the line really did enter the church at the east end and, secondly, that car dowsing was a fact. this was later to enable me to start rapidly to build up the ley-map of the South downs, rather than spend a life-time wandering around on foot looking for starter points. I later established that the same reactions were obtainable from aircraft, whether a De Havilland Dart, flying at 400 m.p.h. to Manchester at 10,000 feet, or a Boeing 727 at 26,000 feet flying at 650 m.p.h. to Frankfurt. The latter experience showed that the ley-system not only existed on the other side of the Channel but in the Channel itself! I now felt that I had achieved a breakthrough, and set about building up enough data to confirm my initial findings. I further discovered that if you established yourself on a line and followed it, the rod ( for really only one is necessary) stayed crossed and only opened if you moved off it. Another helpful thing was that you could dowse a ley-line on the run, and as it has been my desire ( if not my recent wont) to go running in order to achieve some semblance of physical fitness, I was able to combine business with pleasure and dowse at the sprint, if necessary.

Having established car-dowsing as a fact for my own satisfaction, a whole new possibility opened up. Happily, I drove from my home in Brighton to my office in Crawley, 25 miles away, and back every day, and there are many minor diversions one can take without overtly extending the time taken. I was able rapidly to record dowsing responses over wide areas, noticed from the car. For entirely different reasons my car was examined by a policeman who, noticing the rods, enquired whether they might be lock-picking instruments. A practical demonstration of their function served, if not to convince him of dowsing, at least to persuade him that their purpose was innocent. It became clear, however, that helpful as the car experience was, actual leg-work was essential in following up the vast number of clues which the car-dowsing provided. I may say that it takes a little boldness to run the gauntlet of incredulous shoppers when you pass amongst them holding a rod with an intense look on your face, or to brave the suspicion of a vicar (or worse, his wife) who descends upon you whilst dowsing in the churchyard, enquiring as to what you might be doing. However, the English have traditionally the good manners to ignore the activities of the eccentric, and this story is marked more by the number who politely chose to ignore or assist this curious happening, than by those who subjected me to ridicule. It is also a tribute to the innate courtesy of many who, when approached for permission to dowse their property or churchyard, did not dismiss me out of hand, but listened, assisted, tolerated and encouraged, even though the subject was one at which the sceptic could easily jeer. I salute Mr. Henry Longhurst, of golfing fame, in this connection.

Following up Underwood, yet with the growing conviction that there was something more to discover, I dowsed Newtimber Church one Saturday afternoon. It was revealing. I dowsed my first triple line, which ran more or less the length of the east-west axis of the church. This was later to be recognised as a virtually universal feature of pre-Reformation churches and fonts. The triple line went in a flattened circle upon which the main line of the church ran. Further single lines revealed themselves as follows, on the south side a blocked-up window marked one, on the same side a blocked up door marked another. What was interesting was that this line left the churchyard by a stile. A single line appeared at each end of the east-west axis along the triple which later left the axis to form a circle. On the northern side a niche in the wall seemed to be the indicator of another line, making five in all.

All this seemed to be making fascinating sense. Some weekends later we drove to Alfriston, a delightful downland village, whose medieval church, cruciform and beautifully kept, is known as "The Cathedral of the Downs". I noticed on the north wall a Gothic arched doorway, blocked-up, but its white pillars clearly visible against the black Sussex flints that faced the church. These blocked-up doorways are known as Witches' or Devils' Doors. They were blocked up by tradition to deny the practitioners of Wicca (the witches' ancient religion) access to the church through the doorway that had always been for them. the Church, as it were, acknowledging its debt to earlier religions. A line came from this doorway. This I followed. It passed through the churchyard wall and thence into the water meadow, going along the Cuckmere River to the road-bridge, passing it just to the west and then crossing the river itself. It continued north to Milton Court Farm. I took the car and at the northern end of the farm from the road, I saw the long barrow - encircled by water and almost shimmering in a grove of fallen and curiously twisted trees. (Editor's note: This is known as Burlough Castle - no interment found) This was another moment where the breath suddenly becomes short and the body tingles.

I sought out the farmer's wife and begged permission to go on her land. I picked up the line smartly and followed it across the field to where an earthen bridge crossed the water surrounding the barrow. The line continued under a fallen tree, still alive but arched over the line. It disappeared into a myriad of spirals covering the barrow. It was a strange feeling on the barrow, for it was a truly magic place, a monument put there for his purpose by man of many millenia ago. I looked back over the water meadow to Alfriston Church in the grey, misty, early spring afternoon. I had found and walked the first straight line, and it had led to another significant site, which I did not know about when I started. It was not marked on the 1" Ordnance Survey Map. I was now convinced that the lines existed, and that they linked Christian and pre-Christian sites - the purpose or cause of which was a matter for the most extraordinary speculation and investigation. I felt that now I had found my first ley-line.

Over the next few months I dowsed some sites, modern as well as prehistoric, Christian as well as pagan, constructed as well as 'natural', accepting only repeatable phenomena, building up slowly a corpus of information that would serve as guide-lines. I lived and worked in Sussex and therefore Sussex provided the main locale for these early, hesitant explorations. Almost any other part of the country would, I suspect, provide similar discoveries. I was also fortunate in that Sussex is particularly rich in sites which are recognised by academics as being of enormous antiquity and many sites as yet unrecognised. Each of the dozens I visited provided yet another clue, another stepping stone to a still as yet unknown destination. But among those dozens, seven remain in my mind with particular vividness, either because they advanced my exploration by some significant degree or because of their ambience. These were: Alfriston Church, the Wolstenbury Complex, the Long Man of Wilmington, the Hamsey System, the 'earth temples' of Malling and, inevitably, Stonehenge.

ALFRISTON CHURCH - a beautiful cruciform church styled "The Cathedral of the Downs", built circa A.D. 1350. (Editor's note: on a circular pre-Christian mound.) Apart from the triple circle on the font, which is followed by the curving churchyard path to the main entrance, there are five straight lines. Only one enters the churchyard. This disappears in the centre of the nave and enters by a bricked-up door on the north side. This line goes to the long barrow in Milton Court Farm. Another goes north-west from the wall through the George Inn in Alfriston High Street, with its dragon sign, across the road to the Star. Both inns were pilgrim inns. The Star has an apparent megalith at one corner of an outer wall, and a wooden dragon-like figurehead behind it about four feet tall. According to a short history of Alfriston by Ronald M. Boyd and Frederick Snell, the Star Inn was built by the Abbot of Battle in 1530, and the dragon figure is the figurehead of a Dutch vessel wrecked off Cuckmere in the mid-Nineteenth Century. It was transported to Alfriston by smugglers and was placed in the nearby Smugglers Inn. It was later placed in its present position at the Star. The history then says, " We know that this figurehead succeeded another of a similar type." Strange that the Star Inn has many and varied wood carvings on the outside of ancient date. Apart from family crests, below the first floor window is a figure of St. George in combat with a wyvern, a form of dragon, and beneath the second window are two serpents with intertwined tails. The relevance of the widespread dragon mythology to the equally widespread ley-system I hope to make clear in later chapters. The George Inn, with its dragon associations, through which the line also passes is older than the Star.

(Large scale illustration of Alfriston)

Alfriston Church has many tales associated with it, principal amongst which is that the building of the present church was started about 1360. In the year 1396, it is recorded in the records of the Bishop of Chichester, that the Church of Alfriston was bestowed on the Abbey of Michelham. the Prior of Michelham then set to work to rebuild the church on a new site to the west of the village. Each night, after the blocks of stone had been conveyed to this place during the day, they were hurled back by " a supernatural agency" over houses on to the Tye. Each day they were taken back to the site, but each morning they were back at the Tye. At last, a wise man seeing four oxen lying in the Tye, then a raised field, with their rumps together, suggested that this was a sign that the builders should erect the Church here in a cruciform plan, and so they did. A story, I may say, which is repeated in other places in England and Europe.

THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON - This strange figure, some 231 feet high, facing north towards Wilmington, is undated, though generally held to be very old. It is said to be the largest representation of the human figure in the world. In recent times light coloured bricks have been placed to preserve the outline, rather than wage the constant battle against weeds overgrowing the white chalk. Whereas Underwood describes how the White Horse of Uffington and the Cerne Abbas Giant gave ample evidence of dowsing phenomena, in my visit to the Long man I found no reaction whatsoever. This was strange, as a line from Wilmington Church definitely goes in the direction of the Long Man. Its destination proved to be what is marked on the Ordnance Survey Map as a disused chalk-pit on the west side, some thirty yards away. It is a lesser version of the Wolstenbury Hill Chalk-Pit. It was not the first time I had encountered this particular type of excavation in the Downs. There are many of them listed as disused chalk-pits. They all have this particular configuration in common that a line or lines start (or finish) in them. Just before the line disappears into the back wall one or two spirals branch off to left and right and occasionally shoot off another spiral. The other two lines I did not follow. But this 'chalk-pit', an excavation with the spoil pushed forward to form a plateau, received or projected the Wilmington Church line.

(Illustration - Long Man)

The Long Man's origin is shrouded in obscurity, but he has stimulated much folklore, legend and speculation. Versions of his identity include Mercury, Mohammed, St. Paul, a Roman soldier or a Saxon haymaker. A local legend says that two giants lived on Windover Hill above the site of the Long Man, and at nearby Firle Beacon, and they quarrelled. Stones were thrown and the Windover giant was killed. He lies where he fell. Flinders Petrie saw him as the Hindu deity, Varuna, opening the gates of Heaven. Other archeologists suggested that the figure was of a Roman soldier in the classic pose of the coins of the Fourth Century A.D., holding a standard in either hand. Kate Bergamer in her book, 'Discovering Hill Figures', rightly points out that, whereas its present outline in brick dates from 1893 (when the Duke of Devonshire, the owner, paid for its restoration), the fact that so many chalk figures have been attributed to idle moments is astonishing, since the work of cutting them is gruelling to a degree and highly unsuitable as a pastime for the idle. "Recent resistivity tests are said to have shown that the Long Man held a rake in one hand and a scythe in the other, with a plume in his hair." I do not know what to make of this. In the neighbourhood, it is said that the figure of a cock was seen to the right of the figure until about 1870, which gave rise to the theories involving St. Paul and Mohammed, whose symbols included a cock. The Priory at Wilmington existed until 1414 and at one time the Long Man was considered to be the work of the monks, but the Sussex Archeological Trust feels that there is no connection between the figure and the Priory. Its earlier antiquity may be deduced by analogy of the Man with figures on the Sutton Hoo designs and on a gold buckle found in a Saxon cemetery at Finglesham in Kent.

I later acquired from the literary executors of Guy Underwood an unpublished map of the Long Man that he made after his visit. In the 'chalk pit' on the right hand side he records the three spirals - but no emanating straight lines. However, he never thought to look for them, as he was not exploring the ley theory but rather the connection between religious sites and underground water.

WOLSTENBURY HILL COMPLEX - I returned to Wolstenbury six months after the first expedition to investigate it afresh in the light of my newly gained knowledge. I particularly wanted to check the Sussex Archeological Society's statement that this site was considered to be a disused chalk pit. However, it seemed strange (a) that a chalk pit should be dug at the top of a hill (indeed there is a modern chalk-pit in operation at the foot) and (b) that when its exploiters abandoned it, they should leave it levelled with the same amount of excavated spoil pushed forward to form the forward half of the plateau, and to involve it in a complex series of associated and purposeful earthworks. The plateau is the size of a football field. I explained earlier how we found evidence of spirals and a central line emerging from the rear. We were learning then, and I did not know what we were looking for. It became evident that it was an important site within the South Downs ley-system. Along the northern foot of the hill was a cedar wood with a long E-W excavation with shoulders about thirty feet. This accommodated a straight triple, the first I had found. This excavation is hidden by large beech trees and gives way to a series of smaller excavations, facing northwards and emitting or receiving single lines. They are followed by a series of three short straight E-W earthworks of about twenty yards in length. At one end a line comes in from the north, turns at right-angles, follows the earthwork and turns again at a sharp angle southwards up the hill.

The approach to the top is by taking the lane behind Devonshire Villa, marked on the 1" Ordnance Survey Map, and a mysterious hollow way up the hillside. On the right hand side is a series of excavated hollows about forty feet in height in a clover-leaf form; each clover leaf has a ram's horn spiral of seven and emits a line; the three lines converge to emit a single line westwards. The main plateau again contains a clover-leaf excavation at the rear, with the left hand leaf more emphatic. Each clover leaf emits an individual line, but only the left hand and centre leaf have ram's horn spirals. There is a form of barrow at the foot which emits two lines with a ram's horn effect associated. Within the plateau and its complex are other smaller line triggers. At the foot of the plateau on the right hand side (I use left and right from the east facing point of view) are a number of fairly large excavations about four feet by two, and form one forward corner of each channel has been cut from which a line emerges. Around the forward edge of the main plateau are four more of these configurations, each emitting a line.

On the plateau, on the left side, are two slight horse shoe-shaped humps each of which emits a line, but inwards. The first joins the central line from the rear of the central plateau at an angle of 45 degrees. The second goes further back and joins the main line shortly before it disappears into the back wall, but at a point where there is a small rectangular pit about 2 x 2 x 1 feet from which a line also departs north-west of the complex. This pit is part of a series of three around a tumulus about six feet in diameter on the right of the line. In front of the tumulus are seven such pits in a line perpendicular to the main line, and the main line passes through the middle one. A south-westerly line is emitted by the tumulus. At the rear, the centre of the clover leaf, the main line has a ram's horn, the left leaf the same to the south-west, and the right, less pronounced, a single line also to the south-west. Behind the right hand side, at the top, are two or three more pits with channels which are linked together with lines. They are indistinct.

Behind this complex on the hilltop is the so-called fort, a roughly circular enclosure with a simple earthwork. It is full of pits. James Dyer in his 'Southern England - an Archaeological Guide' (which does not mention the plateau) refers to these pits as "damage caused by recent flint digging" and says that the fort has traces of Iron Age and Bronze Age features. All the pits are part of a complex pattern of lines which join them all together, and their various shapes are odd and not consistent with random digging. The fort emits two lines which I have traced. There are probably more. One goes to Clayton Windmills q. v. on the east and the other to a tumulus and associated earthworks to the south. The tumulus is circular with a hollow centre. It receives the triple line that crosses the complex to the west of the 'long barrow'. It emits a single line to Pyecombe Church q. v. and is part of a wider complex of pits, all of which are linked by lines and receive the line from the 'hill fort'. They emit two more on the north-east side, one in the direction of the eastern foot of Wolstenbury Hill and the other to Clayton Windmills.

Where I coincided with Underwood was over the so-called Slaughter Stone. Underwood points out that at one corner of the stone is a sort of elongated section with six small indentations which others have sought to describe as notches, abandoned in an attempt to split the stone by the wet wooden wedge technique. He dismisses this convincingly and indicates in a sketch that a sextuple line passes in a meander by these notches. I would certainly confirm that six lines start or finish there, but they are straight and go off in an alignment with Beacon Hill to the east. I followed them for about forty yards and on to the main road. It is like a multi-point power plug.

All the stones at Stonehenge dowsed. I encountered no spirals but in my experience one visit to a complex site is rarely enough. I did eventually return to Stonehenge and, as with my second visit to Wolstenbury, made a number of highly interesting discoveries which I deal with in connection with William Beckford. I also established that the six-bar line from the Slaughter Stone went to Woodhenge. But in the spring of 1975 I was still groping for a pattern. Over the past six months I had collected a mass of evidence, seemingly unrelated phenomena and descriptions of localities, which when collated seemed to be pointing towards a central fact, a central concept. But what was that concept? And my findings only coincided with Underwood in part. What in fact had I discovered?