Edlesborough

On the same beautiful spring day as we visited Billington church (see blog post dated 17th May 2010) we also went to St Mary the Virgin Church at Edlesborough. It is a beautiful church, set up high on a hill and with yet another panoramic view over Dunstable Downs and Ivinghoe Beacon.

As we looked out over Ivinghoe Beacon we could see an old footpath going straight from the side of the church to the top of the Beacon, but the authorities have built a electricity pylon right on this path. (See 1st pic above) This raises the question – does this lower the energies on the leyline and did someone “in the know” do this deliberately? Anyone who has read the book “PowerPoints” by Robin Heath might be suspicious! Whatever the reason, it really spoils the view, unfortunately.

Back to the dowsing. We found 2 leylines, one going east to west, which is the normal one we find in a church and the other South West to North East and is direct line with the Beacon. The latter resonated mostly yellow, on our colour chart, with a lot of blue and Jackie also picked up a bit of red. Yellow and red being MM line and blue is our local leyline which we found at Grove and Billington. So these places are all connected.

We also found a narrow leyline going down the side of the church, which resonated gray on our colour chart and is particular to that church but has no bearing on our research, but is still of interest if you wanted to dowse there yourselves.

Standing in the grounds looking towards Billington which we had visited earlier in the day, it is interesting to note that Leighton Buzzard’s spire is right behind it although hidden. This is extremely interesting because this means that you could draw a straight line through all 3 churches. Fascinating.

A couple of observations: Although we found 2 main leylines here the energies at this church are nowhere near as strong as at Billington and the lines were stranded today. Perhaps, as it was a really warm day, the lines metaphorically took off their winter coats and spread themselves out to sunbathe in the warmth! Perhaps when it is cold, the strands huddle together to keep warm! A whimsical thought, but we feel it needs more research all the same. We intend to keep a weather/stranding note in future.

Billington

It was a lovely sunny day when we arrived at St. Michaels Church, Billington. Please see pics at top of post We first of all stopped to look at the stunning view by the gate overlooking the valley and towards Grove.

Please see the movie above to get an idea of what it looked like.

In the far distance you can make out the spire of

All Saints Church in Leighton Buzzard

and the

lock-keepers cottage at Grove.

We moved into the churchyard and started to dowse by the east-west end of the church looking towards Grove, where we picked up a leyline, which was stranded at the edges, but the main bulk of it was the exact width of the church. We dowsed the line to the colour chart independently of each other and we both found the line resonated to blue and yellow. We were really pleased because that meant it was definitely connected to the ‘blue’ leyline we had found at Grove (please see blog dated May 1st 2010) – and also proving they were both part of the Mary (MM) line. This leyline also physically pointed towards Grove.

We moved to the main church door overlooking Dunstable Downs and our rods pointed exactly straight to Ivinghoe Beacon which is the main Michael Mary line.

Our conclusions: Billington Church is connected directly to Ivinghoe and Grove. So, we have a local leyline which resonates to blue and we think it is a tributary coming off the MM line (yellow) and paying us a visit from Ivinghoe Beacon.

2nd Visit to Grove

On Monday 19 April we once again set out to dowse the area around Grove. Although it was slightly hazy from the Icelandic Volcano ash cloud, the sun was getting through and we felt warm as we walked along the canal path. We climbed over the stile and went across the field, full of sheep with their lambs and it really felt like spring at last!

We crossed the footbridge and were soon on the site of the old monastery fish ponds. We had been here before (please see entry 1st July 2008 for the details). We both felt our chests tighten as the energies of the area flowed around us. We dowsed for ley lines and picked up three but only two were important. We were interested in finding out if we were near a node point. Unfortunately, because this field is enclosed with fencing and barbed wire, we were unable to follow the main leyline directly, instead, guided by our rods, followed a marked path across the field, over another very small bridge, continued along the path about 200yds and came out by the quarry.

Last year this ground had been churned up by the heavy plant vehicles and was very muddy but today it was now dry and covered with the seedy heads of coltsfoot and other ground plants and a Skylark was singing above us, and, to make it perfect, ahead of us was our beautiful old Oak tree. It was lovely to see it again and we were very pleased when we discovered that Jackie’s crystal offering that we had made last year was still there. Although old and many branches now dead there were still signs of this year's new growth.

The energies in this area are, literally, breathtaking. Reading the history of Grove (Jackie’s specialist subject!) this area was well known for its meeting point of several ley lines. These 'node' points hold the energies of all the crossing ley lines. Sian did a “helicopter” dowsing and the rods pointed to Ivinghoe Beacon, Billington Church, St Michael’s Church Grove and All Saints’ Church. We again picked up our two major ley lines. One ran across from All Saints to Ivinghoe Beacon and resonated to the colour Yellow; the other ran from Billington Church to St Michaels Church at Grove and resonated to blue. The latter possibly went on to the tree circle (See our entry dated 5th Nov 2008). Jackie was rather disappointed to find that the All Saints to Ivinghoe Beacon resonated to yellow as this signified it was part of the Mary Line as she felt this was part of the St Michael Line, as this has resonated to Red in the past. (But do the ley lines resonant with different colours on different days depending on weather, strength of the energy etc. Something we may need to check each time we go dowsing.) We felt this meeting point (node point might have been very near the site of the old hamlet of Grovebury and Grovebury Priory.

Sian took a panoramic photo from where we stood.She started facing the magnificent spire of All Saints, in Leighton. She moved around across thenew buildings of the housing estates and up to Billington, where we could see St Michaels Church on the top of the hill. Then on to see the outline of the Downs in the distance, on to the Beacon, with the tower of St Mary's Church at Edlesborough in the fore ground. Then round to St Michael's church Grove and in the distance Wing Hill, then back to All Saints. The hills surrounded us and we were standing in the flat valley bottom that covers several miles. The ancient energies of Ivinghoe Beacon seem to sweep down and wash the whole area. What a special area this is, and we wondered what the magnificent oak tree had seen over the years. Perhaps Nuns and monks had sat under its branches.

We plan to visit Billington, Edlesborough, Ivinghoe, Stanbridge, Tilsworth and Eggington churches to see if the blue leyline and also the other we picked up flow through them and confirm what we had found today. We were now starting to feel hungry and decided to go back for lunch. This however was delayed as Sian, AGAIN, lost her rods (again please see entry for 5th November 2008). Rather wearily, we made our way back to the oak tree, and Jackie's rods once again came to the rescue and found Sian’s rods on the ground. I do wish she would look after her things!! Sian here – I’m soo sorry Jackie – What a complete idiot I am. But at least it shows how utterly brilliant you are finding lost things with your dowsers. Is that enough grovelling?!!!

2nd Visit to Holy well

Looking through a book on the history of Leighton Buzzard we noticed an article on the Old Linslade Holy Well, complete with a hand-drawn map by Frederick Gurney in 1915 showing the place where he thought the Holy Well was sited. Our interest was piqued because we had previously dowsed there before and we were pretty sure that we had found the site to our satisfaction, but Mr Gurney’s site, according to his map, was very different to ours. (Please see our previous blog dated 18.6.08 for details of that field trip.) His site was on opposite side of the Grand Union Canal and the bridge.

We were very intrigued though, so off we went on a beautiful spring morning to follow in Mr Gurney’s footsteps and re-dowse the area to see if we could agree with his findings. We were careful at all times to keep an open mind and not to prejudice our findings in favour of ourselves. Mr Gurney, as far as we know, was not a dowser, but at a certain spot he had found an Edward III coin (12th Century) and assumed that this had been the site of the Holy Well.

We easily found the spot from his directions on the map. It was very like a pirate treasure map – 40 paces here – 80 paces there etc. The area hadn’t really changed that much but, unfortunately, our dowsing found absolutely nothing. We continued to dowse in different directions but our rods continually pointed back to our original site in the reed beds north of Old Linslade church, the other side of the bridge

The photo at the top of the page (please click to see enlarged photo) shows how far we were from St Mary’s Church, Old Linslade. We are not saying Mr Gurney was wrong, but by using our dowsing rods we think we may bring a more scientific approach to this conundrum. Just because he found an old coin in a certain spot doesn’t mean that the Holy Well must have been there. Old Linslade in the Middle Ages was a thriving community and the coin could have been dropped anywhere.

We still say that we were correct on our first visit (and we are usually right!!).

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!

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.

The Trail to Grove Mill

Using a 1790 map we noticed footpaths and a footbridge leading to the possible site. A promising start. We deduced from a modern map the footbridge was likely to be near the Grove church and could be accessed from the modern day Grand Union Canal towpath. Once again our intrepid duo took out dowsers and set off to find the footpaths and bridge. Much to our amazment it was very simple and we crossed over the bridge. Following the energies from our dowsing rods we came to a raised area which looked like earthworks. Had there been a building here? We both felt very strongly that this area had been inhabited at some time. We noticed a small pond and Jackie had one of her psychic flashes of insight and had a strong feeling that these were ancient ponds and that had been used for fish farming, possibly for the priory. Our later research showed that there had been a Chapel of St. John of Grava 1227 on this site, which had possibly been part of the Grove Priory. The research also stated that the site and shape of fish ponds could still be seen when the stream was in flood. Well done Jackie. Amazing.

Subsequently, Sian was talking to her father-in-law who, as a boy knew this area really well, and called this raised area "The Haunted House" and he remembers a house being on that site. He also remembers the footbridge being called the One Plank Bridge. The haunting needs further investigation.

We hadn't found Grove Mill but we definitely were on the right track. We both were drawn to a beautiful big oak tree and our dowsers were showing us that we were in the correct area for the Mill. Standing by this oak tree we were in sight of Grove Church and our research told us the Mill was less than 400 yards from the church and 200 yards from the Priory. So we must have been pretty close.

Whilst we were standing there we noticed that not only could we see Grove Church, but also Billington Church, All Saints Church and Ivinghoe Beacon. The latter is well known as being on a ley-line and the start of the path to Avebury. We were overwhelmed with energies and we concluded we were standing at a conjunction of many ley-lines and would have been a perfect spot for the Priory.

On our way back to the car we passed the pond and lo and behold in it were three carp. Jackie couldn't believe her eyes - her prediction was correct. However it wasn't a proper pond but had been floodwater from the river. She went back a few days later as she was concerned that they had been trapped there but unfortunately the water had dried up and they were dead.

Coincidences

We feel that coincidences don't just happen, they are signposts or pointers. We had been in the library and Sian chose a book at random and it opened at a page about ley-lines. We are both interested in this phenomena so thought perhaps that this could be our next dowsing project. Walking home from the library we found ourselves in All Saint's Churchyard. Jackie was drawn to a gravestone; it turned out to be Flemons's, the owner of Leighton Buzzard windmill - was this a sign that perhaps we should still be investigating mills? Grovebury Mill, having links with Leighton seemed the obvious choice. On further research Jackie discovered that Grove was a very important area, as it is at a conjunction of several ley-lines, as well as having an important Priory used by royalty through the ages. We now knew what we had to investigate next!

Now what do we do next!

Our curiosity piqued by our last outing, after lots of research in our local library of historical books and records and very old maps, we discovered that Leighton Buzzard had another windmill at Grove. Apparently, the Leighton Buzzard windmill had been built because the local townspeople found it too far to walk to Grove. We also found in our research that there was another abbey or priory at Grove as well. This was fascinating and we were amazed that, from one tentative outing as a bit of a laugh, we were in a full blown search to find not one but two priories and, what's more, two windmills to boot. We could see a whole summer of adventures ahead.

Sian's husband had worked at the council offices in The White House and vaguely remembered a small hidden path that led nowhere in the grounds. One of the old maps showed this path. So that is where we opted to go next.

We weren't sure whether we were allowed in the grounds but discovered that houses had been built on the site and it was open to the public; so in we walked.

We didn't need our dowsing tools. There, right at the back of the grounds, was a path and it was precisely parallel to the old walls. And even more excitingly, the path came to a stop at secret gate set into the old walls. This was probably where the monks walked. The gate was in a direct line to the town centre so perhaps they used this gate to leave and enter the monastery. We then walked back outside to see if we could see where the secret door was and found that it had been concreted in and no-one could possibly have guessed it was there.

We took our dowsing tools once again down Windmill Path. Not so nervously this time and asked them to show us where the Windmill had been. Quite independently from each other, we were directed to spot at the far end, near to Beaudesert and set a little way in, on the right, from the path. We were to be vindicated in our conclusions - but that is for another entry on another day!

So, to finish for this part of the town, we came to the conclusion that the entitites that people had been seeing were probably the energies left behind from the townspeople going to and from the windmill and monks going into town and back again from the monastery.