Prebendal House

We set out to dowse All Saints churchyard to pick up the St Michael and St Mary (MM) line from our last visit and follow it into town. But as were walking to the church, something ‘called’ to us for no good reason and we suddenly found ourselves walking along Judge’s Lane instead! Well, okay then, lets go with the flow.

We came to the end where the gate leads into The Cedars School and we couldn’t help noticing two extremely tall, elegant gate pillars which Jackie mused might have belonged to the Prebendal House which had been knocked down a long time ago. We walked back along Judges Lane and noticed an old ivy-covered wall in the car park behind the beautiful Georgian offices. We dowsed and it was confirmed that it was part of the wall to the aforementioned Prebendal House. Ah Ha! Perhaps this was what we were meant to do instead.

Jackie said that Prebendal House had had a terraced Pleasure Garden and Sian vaguely remembered that the grounds belonging to Pulford School, behind the church, might have been terraced. We walked to the gate leading into the grounds, and sure enough there were definite terraces adjoining the boundary with the churchyard. So, next stop, to actually go inside the churchyard, where we followed the boundary wall above these terraces to the far corner. We looked over the wall to see a beautiful Cedar of Lebanon tree (see top) with box hedges and pathways round it. This must have been part of the Pleasure Gardens as well. We could just imagine ladies with full skirts and parasols strolling under the tree and along the paths and terraces.

Jackie dowsed to see if the Prebendal House had been part of the churchyard and yes, it had been. We were staggered to see the size of the gardens which seemed to stretch right down to the river, along past the church, and right up to Riverside.

We thought we had finished with Prebendal House and so decided to carry on with what we first came here to do; namely the MM line and we were able to pick the line up again very easily. It took us out of the churchyard through the front gate, past the Georgian Terrace and into (believe it or not) the Riverside car park! Riverside is by the Cedars School, which was built on the site of the Prebendal House. We now feel certain that the MM line runs through the gardens of the Prebendal House to the river.

And then, yet another of the amazing coincidences that the universe sends us, we met Ron, the site manager of Cedars school, who has extensive knowledge about the school, the grounds and its history. He knew about Prebendal House and told us that there is going to be an archaeology dig there shortly. He said that there was a temple, an ancient well and a dove house in the grounds and invited us to visit the grounds and dowse there. How exciting! We will most certainly take up his kind offer. Watch this blog!

Leading us up a new pathway

Denise, the Leighton Buzzard artist, who we keep bumping into, had invited us to her garden so that we could dowse for the Rowriddy Stone. Her garden backs on to a public open space Adam’s Bottom, through which flowed the Rowriddy stream. Please see previous blogs for full details.
Her garden is very long and the bottom of it had been left wild for wildlife. We dowsed for the stone and we both came to the same conclusion; that it had been sited two gardens along, about a third of the way up from the bottom.

Whilst we were dowsing we picked up some strong energies running along the bottom of her garden, a few feet from the boundary with Adam’s Bottom. It seemed to be about 8 feet wide and traversed the entire width of the garden.

Denise, very kindly, invited us in for a cup of tea after we had finished, to discuss our findings. To our astonishment and delight, it transpired that there used to be a right of way along the bottom of her, and her neighbours’, gardens. In fact, one house at the end of her road still had the right of way going through and was not allowed to disturb it. Obviously, this was the path of energies we had encountered at the bottom of her garden. Well – once again we had been proved to be correct.

We then got to speculating whether this path had led up to, or past the Rowriddy stone. Had it been a type of signpost, leading people on to somewhere else, or had it been a place of pilgrimage? And was it connected to the Mary line? Had this pathway been connected to Firs Path and did it join a path over the other side of Heath Road. We saw a few more exciting dowsing field trips ahead of us to solve the mystery.

After admiring Denise’s paintings, she told us that she was exhibiting some of her paintings in LB theatre and shortly in Cedars School. I’m sure her paintings and those of her fellow artists from Leighton Buzzard Art Society will be flying off the shelves. We thank you very much, Denise, for letting us into your garden and the invaluable information you have given us.

Loose Ends and Coincidences

We returned to the High Street, as Jackie had read on a website that there has been an archway to Leighton House by No 28. No 28 turned out to be the entire building of Wilkinsons plus Cancer Research and Wilkinsons used to be… The Co-op! The latter, of course, is where Leighton House and its grounds used to be. (I hope you are following this!) We have found out since our last entry that The Cistercian Monastry became Leighton House in 1823.

We did indeed find the remains of an archway over the top of Lauren’s café in High Street Mews, but it doesn’t seem to be very old. We kept going on down the mews and came out in a car park by the area we had been dowsing only the previous week, which was the garden of the Cistercian/Leighton House. We were definitely in the right place. In this car park is the famous Co-op sign and if we turn right we end up at Popes Corner, which is exactly where we started from! We also noticed that the upper wall of the cottages at Pope’s corner is made of old Leighton sandstone, which makes these cottages older than we had originally thought. We had now gone completely round the entire boundary of Leighton House.

We now feel the mystery of Leighton House is finished. Mission accomplished.

We then went to All Saints churchyard to take more photographs of the gated passage (see previous blog dated 9th October 2009)) to see if, this time, the farthest gate could be seen. As you can see from the photograph you can see the gate quite clearly. So this mysterious anomaly has not been solved.

We adjourned to Room No. 9 for a bowl of soup and a pot of tea, when, would you believe it, sitting on the next table was the lady we had met whilst dowsing for the Rowriddy Stone in Adams Bottom. Talk about a coincidence. And even more of a coincidence; her house backs on to Adams Bottom and is only next door but one from where we think the Rowriddy stone actually stood! We think that this was meant to be and no coincidence at all but the Universe showing us our next step. We found out that her name is Denise and she is a local artist, who’s work is being displayed at the moment in Room No. 9 and can be bought from there. She has very kindly agreed to let us dowse in her garden. So watch out for that another day.

All Saints Church

We have dowsed the churchyard before looking for the entrance to the underground tunnels without much success but we think we may have found where the victims of the plague were buried.

Each time we have been in the churchyard we have picked up extremely strong energies along the outer boundary wall path with Pulfords School. This path leads to a gate in the wall, which is locked. If you were able to walk this short, narrow tree lined path you would come to another locked gate, which comes out at the corner of Parsons Close. We came to the conclusion that this might be the private entrance for the Rothschild’s to come to church. (see previous blog for Leighton House).

Sian took photos of this path from both entrances and thought nothing of them until we looked at them on the computer. For some strange reason on the photo taken from the churchyard end the far gate had completely disappeared! Had we gone back in time to see this area as it was in Cistercian/Rothschild time???!!!! Of course, this might be fanciful thinking and that some may say it is burnout from sunlight, but please note that the sun is shining from the right and not straight ahead. This is an area that MUST be photographed for orbs.

While Sian was busy photographing, and she had forgotten her rods anyway (- that is usually Jackie's trick!), Jackie dowsed for leylines round the church. The normal East to West leyline was present, but interestingly there was a very strong wide leyline running through the church North to South. She was really taken aback and then without telling Sian what it was, she asked her to dowse round the church to see if she could find any leylines. And guess what! She found exactly the same wide strong leyline. Sian was compelled to ask if it was part of the MM line and the answer from the rods was "Yes". We need to investigate further as it seemed to flow in the direction of Grove and Ivinghoe Beacon, which is one of the most important points on the MM line.

Is this a Mary line, breaking off from the main Michael line to visit All Saints Church, which the Mary line often does? We are beginning to think that the MM line is all one flow but it seems to us, that the Mary line is like a tributary, visiting special sites, off the main river of Michael. Another intriguing thought is - does she continue on to St. Mary’s church and the Holy Well at Old Linslade?
　
　

Exploring Adam's Bottom

We thought we would thoroughly explore Adams Bottom. No – that doesn’t sound right! We thought Adams Bottom had a large stone in it – No, that’s not right either!

We had seen on several old maps, mention of the Rowriddy Stone. This seemed a really good, exciting thing to dowse for. Jackie knew that the Rowriddy stream ran through Adam’s Bottom, a recreation ground off Heath Road and was the obvious place to start. Ah! That’s a better way of putting it.

The first thing that hit us when we arrived at the recreation ground is an embankment (see photo above) on 2 sides of the area. We have no idea if this is a modern man-made feature or has been there for generations or even centuries. We asked our dowsing rods about the embankment and they said they were old but not ancient. Very intriguing. We will have to find out more. The bridge over the Rowriddy stream at the Heath Road end is extremely long and sturdy for such a tiny stream; indeed the actual opening is very small, not much bigger than a wide drainpipe.

Why is the bridge so big? By the side of the bridge is an entrance to the park leading to Heath Road and there is a pile of very old, large lumps of sandstones.

Why they are there, we do not know. Yet another unanswered question about this place.
Back to the Rowriddy stone! With our backs facing the bridge we asked our dowsing rods where the Rowriddy stone had been located. They pointed towards the right hand side boundary of the park. Walking back towards Plantation Road we encountered a lot of energies. We turned right into Plantation Road and happened to meet a lady who was interested in what we were doing and was informative about the area being on Saxon land. Again very, intriguing. Was the stone Saxon?

We walked further up Plantation Road continuously asking our rods where the Rowriddy stone had been, and they kept pointing to our right and led us up Hillside Road until we got to a house called Burnden House and the rods pointed directly to this property. We feel this may well be the site of , or very near, the Rowriddy stone.

　

Leighton House

Sian’s husband had found out, quite by chance, that the Rothschild family, before they moved to Wing, had lived in a place in the High Street called Leighton House and that it had stood where the Co-op had been (now Wilkinson’s). Leighton House, we subsequently discovered, had been built on an even earlier house, Cistercian House, which was thought to have a secret tunnel leading to All Saints Church. We thought that this might be a good place to dowse and see if we could pick up any energies.

Walking along Pulford Road to Church Avenue we come to Popes Corner. The road leading down to Pulford School was probably not here in the time of Leighton House and the boundary of the Cistercian house (the house before Leighton House) could have been the wall surrounding the church. Also possibly the gate at the end of the wall could have led directly from Leighton/Cistercian house directly into the churchyard. Standing on Pope’s Corner there is a modern arched concave wall but underneath there looks to be a very old wall. Was this part of Leighton House? On both sides of the driveway there are old walls. This was certainly the entrance I would have thought. As we walk down further down the driveway the energies suddenly hit us. When we were standing on the empty ground our rods did a full complete circle when we asked if these were the boundary walls of Leighton House.

Our rods pointed to a broken down old building with corrugated iron roof when Jackie asked the question "Is there anything of particular importance it wanted to point out" – so we decided to follow where it pointed. The only way we could follow it was by retracing our steps and go into Parsons Close. On our left was an old wall, which we followed so we were obviously on the right track. This took us to Ticklebelly Alley, which has the remains of a very old wall on the right. Carrying along Ticklebelly Alley we come to a car park with a wall to the left of us, the bottom third of it looks very old.

Turning into the car park there is an enormous expanse of wall ahead of us and right at the end we saw the dilapidated building which we could see from the grounds of Leighton House. So we were obviously the other side of the wall where our rods had been pointing. How exciting! We were standing on the site of the now disused cattle market. We climbed through the fence and our rods pointed to the left when Jackie asked her rod to point to the boundary and any original walls of Leighton House. Right at the end of this wall there was a very tiny alleyway, which Jackie didn’t know existed, even though she has lived in LB all her life. This alleyway has very, very old walls. We emerged from this in the High Street between The Chinese Acupuncture and Squares Estate Agents.
We are concluding that we walked all the way round the outside of the boundary of Leighton/ Cistercian House and that we have established where the house and grounds were and that it was quite a substantial property.

Windmill Path Revisited

After dowsing the monastry walls and discovering several instances of ghostly goings-on, we decided to concentrate on Windmill Path. Please see photo above left.

So on the evening of 14th April 2009 we re-traced our steps down the alley way along the White House into Windmill Path but with our cameras this time. We didn't feel we picked up very much dowsing, but were amazed when the photos were put on the computer and we were able to zoom in. Photo on the left is before enlargement and even though you can't see them all on this small screen, there was one large orb plus many smaller ones.

The picture top of the page right is a close up of the large green orb. We hope to publish more photos of this expedition at a later date.