TC Lethbridge | The Sons of TC-Lethbridge

Toot Hill

15th Mar 2006

“There is no need to go to the ends of the earth for interesting quests and excitement. It is here, anywhere in prosaic old England, at one's back door.”
T.C. Lethbridge ‘Gogmagog – The Buried Gods’ p.44

On 6th February 1924, Tom Lethbridge married his first wife Sylvia Robertson and the following summer, the couple moved into The Lodge on the Cambridge to Ely road in Waterbeach. By acquiring the property, Tom had not only found himself a matrimonial home, but a site worthy of investigation. The Lodge was situated on a section of the Car Dyke, an ancient waterway that had been established by Sir Cyril Fox as a Roman navigational canal. Within two years of moving into his new home, Tom had begun his own investigations in his own back yard. Local workmen whilst sinking a well into the grounds of The Lodge, had discovered the remains of an ancient boat. In the summer of 1926, Tom began an excavation and unearthed what appeared to be an Anglo-Saxon hut. He concluded that the homestead was constructed long after the Car Dyke had silted up.(1)

Further enquiries revealed that the site of The Lodge was also once an administrative centre in the fen. In a letter to Sir Cyril Fox, he informed his friend that; “The Toot Hill upon which this house stands is the famous Synods of Clovesoeas (heogh-heeg-how-haugh-hoe).”(2) It is clear that Tom believed The Lodge to be the former site of a fenland law hill, similar to Thingvellir in Iceland, a place where the settlers gathered for the meetings of the Althing, the National Assembly. The word Thing, or Ting recurres across the Viking Empire and appears in the Tingvold of Norway, the Dingwall of Ross-shire, the Tingwall of Hjalt-land and also in the Tynwalds of Dumfries and the Isle of Man.

Thingvellir was a place that would become familiar to Tom, for he would eventually visited the site with his friend Fred Tebbutt in 1939.

The West Country naturalist Vaughan Cornish believed that in England, the Thorn tree was also synonymous with such administrative centres and in Historic Thorn Trees of the British Isles he cites a number of places as examples. One site in particular, the intriguingly titled Circle Hill at Crowthorne, which was the meeting place of three parishes – Easthampstead, Sandhurst and Wokingham.(3) The site of the former Thorn is situated on the Roman road known as the Devil’s Highway and is not too far from The Golden Ball Covert were Tom and his mother experienced a ghoul in 1919.(4) Cornish also discusses the Salcombe Regis thorn at a place simply called Thorn. The site is again synonymous with Tom, for it is only a couple of miles west from Hole House, his final residence in nearby Branscombe. In view of Tom’s innate curiosity it is likely that he was aware of the thorn and its law-seat affinity.

In his letter to Fox, Tom makes reference to ’heogh-heeg-how-haugh-hoe’, for all are place-names and name endings identifiable with lofty places. However, It is clear that the site of The Lodge and Thingvellir for that matter, are not high-seats of administration, in fact, quite the contrary. In relation to the Salcombe Regis thornhill, Cornish points out, “In this connection it must be recalled that the ‘Hill’ in the dialect of West Somerset and East Devon is ‘the common’ in other parts of England.” It is apparent that open, or common ground was crucial to the establishment of law-seats and not necessarily their elevated nature. However, it is clear, like at the Tynwald on the Isle of Man, the construction of an artificial mound was often synonymous with the establishment of this administration.

Last summer, my friends Matt and Jackie Baldwin-Ives took me to Castle Carlton in the reclaimed marshland beyond the Lincolnshire Wolds.(5) The site is a Norman mott with a double bailey enclosed by ditches with an external bank. The mound is approximately 40 metres in diameter, 8 metres high with extremely steep sides and was reached with extreme difficulty through a myriad of stinging plants and nettles.

The mott is unusual in that it is at the centre of four strategically placed, well-established yew trees. Another yew, of a similar age, grows from the flat summit. The planting of the trees around the mound, several hundred years ago, suggests that it was considered to be of reverence to people or peoples unknown. The mound is part of a complex earthwork and it has been observed that the enormity of the workings, are out of proportion with equivalent sites of the Norman era. It has been suggested; that the original earthworks were once part of a much earlier administrative centre and were the possible location of the seat of the Anglo-Saxon bishops of Lindsey.

Two miles south/east of Castle Carlton we find another Toot Hill near to the hamlet of Tothill. It is clear that these raised mounds in the marsh were attributable not only to administrative centres, but also beacon sites that aided safe passage across the once treacherous landscape. It is known that the Castle Carlton site once home to a chapel dedicated to John the Baptist, but this was destroyed in 1409. By the 19th century, the site became known as Holy Cross and once hosted a fair held on Holy Cross Day – September 14th. It is likely that whoever planted the four yew trees around the Castle Carlton mound was aware of this affinity and chose to commemorate the site accordingly.(6)

With reference to the opening quotation, Tom is correct when he states; that one doesn’t have to go to ”the ends of the earth” to find places and items of fascination. A sharp eye over any map will reveal places of interest synonymous with our own study. Tom realised, at a fairly early age that the devil was in the detail and we should be thankful to him and others like him who exposed for us the delights and complexities of our beautiful land.

welbourn TEKH – Lincoln – March 2006

Notes:
1. Lethbridge T.C. (1927) ‘An Anglo-Saxon Hut on the Car Dyke, at Waterbeach’ Antiquaries Journal vii pp.141-6
2. T.C. Lethbridge letter to Sir Cyril Fox dated, 3rd March 1925.
3. OS Landranger Sheet 175: SU 844 643.
4. Site of Golden Ball Covert: OS Landranger Sheet 175: SU 849 697 Check it out on www.old-maps.co.uk Search for Popeswood and you'll find it.
5. Monument No: N6: 31629/Grid Ref: TF 38 SE/OS sheet TF 38 SE
6. The trees do not correspond with any of the cardinal points on the compass. Neither are they planted equidistant apart, although they were planted symmetrically.

NB. Click on the images for an enlarged view.

Further Reading:
Bevan-Jones R. (2002) ‘The Ancient Yew – A History of Taxus Baccata’ Windgather Press
Cornish V. (1941) ‘Historic Thorn Trees of the British Isles’ Country Life Ltd.
Cornish V. (1946) ‘The Churchyard Yew and Immortality’ Frederick Muller Ltd.
Kavenna J. (2005) ‘The Ice Museum’ Viking/Penguin Books. Thingvellir discussed pp.101-118
Lincolnshire History and Archaeology Vol 27 (1992) The Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology for Lincolnshire and South Humberside (pp.17-22)
Owen A.E.B. ‘The Medieval Lindsey Marsh’ Boydell Press