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.

Trust your Dowsers!

Due to unfortunate circumstances (Jackie says due to my drunkenness - I deny this vehemently) Sian has had a fall and sustained a badly broken arm and so we have had to curtail our field trips and updating the blog. The latter being due to Jackie being hopeless and too lazy to do the typing.

On our last field trip before Sian's accident, whilst we were out following ley lines in deepest countryside, she lost her dowsing rods and bobber amongst high grasses and hedgerows. (No! I wasn't drunk or staggering - this is a vicious calumny). Jackie thought this a wonderful opportunity to dowse for the dowsers! I immediately found my bobber and very close by was one of the dowsing rods. But there was no sign of the other one.

After re-tracing our steps, Jackie asked her rods, and I asked my bobber, to show us where it might be. They all pointed in the same direction and when we asked the question "Where is the rod" they kept saying, over and over, it was ahead. But our logical minds kept thinking it was behind us. We followed our logical minds and kept walking back and forth to no avail. We were getting more and more convinced we were not going to find the missing rod. So we started making our way home.

Whilst we were walking back to the starting point of our walk we were asking our dowsers where the missing rod was and they kept saying - it was ahead of us. We didn't believe them. But they were insistent that the rod was ahead of us. We came to a turn in the path and Jackie decided to follow her rods away from the path and kept following her dowsers into some long grass. I became despondent and kept to the main path. We had became separated, when I heard a triumphant shout. "Here it is!!!!" And it was. My lost rod. Wow!!!!

If we had trusted the dowsers and not our logic we would have been in the pub much sooner.

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.