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Without a City Wall
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clue to this may lie in the former name for Richmond Hill. On a map drawn in 1628 the hill is called ‘Standing Hill’. Standing what? A standing stone possibly?
I suggest that it is reasonably clear that this area was acknowledged as especially sacred - and sacred to the Goddess at that.
Did a standing stone or stones stand where a cross appeared on this green hill?
© Ellis Taylor 2007
(1) Alternatively spelt 'Chiselhampton'. I'm told that Chislehampton means 'a settlement on gravel land within the bend of a river'. Apparently, the 'Chisle' bit, which is said to refer to 'gravel', (from OE ceosel, cisel meaning 'gravel, shingle') came later; though in 1147 the name is recorded as Chiselentona.
(2) Eventually the intrepid aviator Steve Alexander flew this formation. I don’t know how much longer afterwards it was but in between times scruffy straight tracks had been flattened between the larger circle and each of the smaller ones and one circle had sprouted some pathetic growths. The best view of this little formation was had from the top floor window of a tiny three-storey cottage in Stadhampton. View arial shot here.
(4) www.greatdreams.com/death/deathstar2.htm
(5) Later the Order took on a second patron, ‘St. Elizabeth of Hungary’.
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Without a City Wall
There's a beautiful little village in south Oxfordshire called Chislehampton. I often used to walk the two or three miles there with my dog just to lark by the river; do a spot of fishing maybe. The roads were much quieter than they are now. (We're talking late 50s -early 60s.) Sometimes I'd go with a bunch of
mates; we'd cycle it if the mood took us. Quite a hike it was but days lasted longer then.
I always preferred to go on my own though; well, just me and Tim, my dog. I felt very connected to Chislehampton, at home. It has a very dreamy atmosphere, magical. Even as a kid of 8 or 9 or 10, I always felt safe there - cosseted, wrapped tightly in the arms of an ephemeral beauty, a Fairy Godmother perhaps. Sometimes, on hot days, I'd just lay by the little spirit river, the River Thame, and fall sound asleep. If it weren't for buzzing bumblebees or chattering birds I'd have been late home many a time. If it rained I'd slip under the arches of the ancient bridge and hunt for crayfish or just sit and watch the rain spattering the river and fields - and the cows, backs to the wind. I loved the thunderstorms. Even sunny days had rainbows.
Occasionally I’ll wander down that way again. Even when I popped up from Mystery in the nether regions of the Underworld I’d drop by to say G’Day! That reminds me…In Oz I had a nightmare
once where I cycled straight into a pond in Chislehampton. Down, down, down, I went; deeper than any pond I ever knew. The bike weighted me like an anchor. No matter how I struggled to reach the surface I couldn’t…and then I woke up.
I must have called out because I woke my partner and she asked me what was wrong. I told her all about it. “Never mind,” said she, “You’re all right now. Get some sleep love.” She rolled over, fell straight back to sleep …and I got abducted!
Where was I? Oh yes. In June of 1997, on the 24th it was, I went
...and I got abducted
to visit an acquaintance, who is a laser scientist, in Stadhampton, a village across the river from Chislehampton. He’d not long been in his ancient, tiny but three-storey stone cottage and he was keen to show me around. “We’ll start at the top. There’s a brilliant view from there,” he said eagerly beckoning me to lead the way up the steep and narrow little staircase. “Don’t mind the mess,” he said, “I’ve piled all the stuff in there that I haven’t sorted out yet.”
When I reached the third floor there were some boxes in the way of the window so I shifted them over and as I stood up I could see right across to Chislehampton - and there, right on the side of a hill, and looking magnificent, was a crop circle! “There’s a crop circle!” I blurted out. It was the first time I’d ever seen one in the field. “Where?” shouts Ally scrambling for a squizz out of the window. “So it is!” I’ll have to go and look at it later. That was the second strange thing Ally had encountered in my company. His scientific dog was in danger of walking.
Not long prior to this I’d made the acquaintance of Geoff Ambler who was the president of the Oxford – based, Contact International UFO Research Group. (The group incidentally, that the late Graham Birdsall, much-missed editor of the very successful UFO Magazine, began his UFO career with.) Geoff is also a keen crop circle enthusiast and is very involved with the Oxfordshire Centre for Crop Circle Studies (OCCCS). When I got back to where I was staying (I was on holiday from Australia) I rang Geoff expecting him to already know about the crop circle. He didn’t, and no one else had reported it either. Geoff and I arranged to meet up later that day to visit the formation in order to survey and photograph it - which we did, after gaining the farmer’s permission to go into his crop. He was very helpful. A nice guy. He reckoned he knew who had made it – some local likely lads on the way home from the pub.
The ground was very muddy, sticky, and the crop was wet and blown every-which-way. The weather had been horribly windy and wet for several days and nights. At the time I knew sweet FA about crop circles and, as I said, this was to be my very first time inside one. I was excited, not knowing what to expect. I’d heard that some people could hear strange sounds inside them. Others reported severe headaches; occasionally it was the very opposite; they were healed, they said.
It was impossible to get to the formation without traipsing through thick and cloggey wet clay soil and by the time we arrived we were both 6 inches taller than when we started. I wondered why there weren’t any great sods of mud on the wheat (besides us) if this was a prank by some local blathered yahoos - like the farmer had suggested to us. Another thing that puzzled me as we walked in was that none of the stems of wheat were damaged or broken as far as I could see.
Geoff had brought his surveying gear – a long tape measure, a camera, pen and paper, and his pendulum. We set to and began measuring out the circles. There were 5 of them. One large central circle surrounded by four smaller ones. Geoff said this design was known as a ‘Celtic Cross’, ‘a rather old-fashioned type,’ he said mournfully. My heart sank a little because it might have been run-of-the-mill to him but it was magical to me. But he didn't mean it the way I took it. I can’t say that I felt anything but grace and wonder in that formation. How, for instance, did they manage to get from circle to circle without damaging the wheat. It was one heck of a jump. ‘Perhaps they pole-vaulted,’ I mused. No footprints or scuffs on the clay, no lumps of mud on the pristine wheat, no holes in the centres of the circles, no damaged stems and…the circles were not circles. They
Geoff Ambler's diagram of the crop formation. Please click picture for the report.
were expertly shaped and positioned, so that when viewed from the air the impressions in the green wheat, on this curvy hillside, looked perfectly round. How do drunks, in the hissing rain and howling wind, in the middle of the night, an arrow’s flight from the farmhouse, and Tiny Rowland’s ‘Chislehampton House’ (you read that right) construct such magnificent geometry – and why? I considered that perhaps a swirling energy force had been exerted either from above or below. Perhaps that would account for the astonishing projected symmetry. (2)
Chislehampton church and manor house (Chiselhampton House) from Richmond Hill
The crop circle was located in a field on what is known as Richmond Hill. I’m pretty sure that there has never been another crop in that field since. The hill, which is topped by a small wood, looks down on the pretty, but top-heavy, little blue and white Georgian church of St Katherine to the east. To the south is Chislehampton Bridge over the Thame, strategically vital during the siege of Oxford in the civil war and the scene of fierce clashes before and aft the Battle of Chalgrove Field - as well as between many a small boy and a battling barbel. In fact, the most famous casualty of this battle was the parliamentarian John Hampden who died from his wounds on (would you Adam and Eve it) the 24th June (1643).
Yet again the hordes of Saturn descended on a Goddess domain. They battled over Bridge(t) in what was Mary’s lands (The adjoining area to the village is, to this day, called ‘Marylands’). Ordinance Survey states that a nunnery stood here, where Camoys Court Farm is now, long before. And her church, that once graced Thame-side, but 200 yards east from the present church (that is dedicated to the decapitated divine, St Katherine) was pulled down by the Lord of the Manor, Charles Peers on the pretence that it was ‘ruinous and decayed’. (3)
And Richmond Hill? What say we of this? A ‘rich hill’ (rich-mound); rich world (Rich-monde); rich protector (in German ‘rich-mund’)?
Chislehampton Bridge
Rich in what? Protector? Against what?
Strange that the hugely doshed-up 'Tiny Rowland', born Roland Walter Fuhrhop (in India) to a German father and Anglo-Dutch mother came to live here.
Fuhrhop (later Rowland) had been in the Hitler youth and was always suspected of having Nazi leanings. "...an ardent supporter of Hitler and an arrogant, nasty piece of work to boot" said a class-mate of his. (4)
Rowland, it is said, financed several attempted and assorted successful coups and hostilities around the world, as well as in this country. He was also rumoured to be one of the conspirators (with Louis Battenberg [Mountbatten] allegedly - but believable) that almost pulled off a military coup in Britain to topple Harold Wilson’s government in 1974. He was a member of several clandestine groups like the 1001 Club and the Bilderbergers - these, together with his strong links to Britain’s MI6 and the flagrant mutual animosity between Rowland and Mohamed Al-Fayed have fuelled suspicions that he was involved in the murders of Princess Diana, Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul. Despite Rowland’s rampant looting of Africa Mandela pinned South Africa’s highest honour, ‘the Order of No Hope’ on him – sorry that’s what Africans got. I meant the Order of Good Hope.
I’ve written in earlier articles on how this innately sensual region of the Isles is steeped in Templar, and later, Hospitaller history. Does the ‘Rich Protector’ refer to these knights? It fits their tradition and who’s to say that the crop circle is not a cross pattée rather than a ‘Celtic Cross’. The formation did, after all, arrive on their hero St John the Baptist’s Eve, the 23rd/24th June. And, is it only a coincidence that the village church, at the bottom of the hill is dedicated to a feminine version of St John?
But then perhaps, under the circumstances,
we might consider the presence of Tiny Rowland at the scene. Rowland's membership of the SS’s Hitler Youth, and in turn, their own fascination with the Teutonic Knights, is established. Did his martial attitude betray a continuing beguilment throughout his life? The Teutonic Knights too used the cross pattée.
St Katherine's Church front and rear. Note the Celtic Cross monument to a one-time Lady of the Manor Dora (Adore) Patience Peers.
The "Order of the German House of St. Mary in Jerusalem" began as an off-shoot of the Knights Hospitaller so, at least originally, their patron was St John the Baptist. Later they claimed devotion to St Mary the Virgin. Is it the eternal lot of Beauty to attract the Beast? (5)
Let us not forget either the curious synchronicities with John Hampden, a member of the Inner Temple fatally wounded in a battle with troops led by a German prince - Prince Rupert of the Rhine in a battle close by.
But then, maybe it is a ‘Celtic Cross’, even, as well. A possible
Two versions of the cross pattée. Colour is important. The one on the right was the design for the Teutonic Knights' (and later Nazi's) 'Iron Cross'.
They are both, as well, St John's crosses.
Camoise (or Camoys) Court Farm named after Sir Thomas de Camoys famously commanded the left wing of the English Army at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415
The excellent Coach & Horses Inn and Public House. The name probably derives from its long coaching inn associations, which continue to this day - there's a bus stop right outside. As well, like very many public houses, it may be named after something more esoteric. In this case 'The Plough' constellation which was also imagined, by our ancestors to be a wagon pulled by horses. The Norse called it 'Wodan's Wagon'. Another name a public houses secretly announce the ancient ways of the location if alluding to 'the Plough' is to call the hostelry 'The Seven Stars'. In Marsh Baldon, about 2 miles away they have done just that.
The Seven Stars,
Marsh Baldon. Notice the sign is even designed in the shape of 'the Plough' constellation.
Charles I bolted through Marsh Baldon when he legged it from Oxford.
Hover your mouse to see the sign in close up.
St Katherine's church south-side with Richmond Hill in the background.
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