click here for: DOWNLOADABLE GOOGLE EARTH FILE OF ST MICHAEL LINE WITH BIG RINGS PLACE-MARKER
Left: Old Aerial Photo of the Big-Rings Henge, Dorchester-on-Thames.
A site right on Michel's original St Michael Alignment, though he was not aware of this.
Right: Lake the was caused by the gravel extraction that destoryed the Big Rings henge. Comparison with the roads course, which
have remained the same, makes its position clear. Though somehoe no-one seems to have ntoiced, Big Rings is on the St Michael's Line. Download the Google Earth line above to verify the accuracy of this.
Although my Angleland scheme uses a variant of the St Michael Line rather than the one originally proposed by John Michel, I have become convinced tha both lines are genuine ancient surveyed lines. One (Michel's) is defined as a straight line on the land that goes through West Point (Land’s End) and Glastonbury Tor, and the other (mine) as a straight line on the land that goes through East Point (Ness Point, Lowestoft) and Glastonbury Tor, and becomes the basis for a conceptual 2 by 1 rectangle, and thus further developments.
My reason for returning to look again at Michel's riginal line is that, counter to my expectation, looking at the alignment on Google Earth lead to my becoming more impressed by its accuracy, rather than less so.
John Michel never mentioned, and must not have been aware, that the St Michael Line as a straight alignment went right through the site of the Big Rings just north of Dorchester. Big Rings was destroyed by gravel extraction but it’s location is clear from an old aerial photo, since the same roads were in existence then, visible in the photo, with characteristic turns, and because the lake left by the gravel extraction still exists. I’ve created a straight line on Google Earth which, I’m quite surprised to say, goes right through Burrowbridge Mump, Glastonbury Tor, Avebury Henge and the Big Rings henge of Dorchester. I, like many, had begun to think the line in much more vague terms than this, but actually it’s very accurate indeed. This is also the line that Michel noted follows the course of the Icknield Way in some of its eastern parts. It finishes where Michel said it did, at Hopton, a few miles north of Lowestoft. We have to forget about St Michael’s Mount – it’s doesn’t go there. It does go close indeed to Land’s End though. It amazes me that Michel’s line attracted interest even without the knowledge that it goes right through Big Rings...but it does. Big Rings was another great henge from the same period as Avebury, through which it also goes. After generating this line on Google Earth, I then found that David Furlong (Keys to the Temple) on his website gives a downloadable Google Earth St Michael’s Line, so I had a look at that and it is precisely the same line that I generated (he notes that it has to be bent at the end if it is to go through St Michael's Mount). The two – his and mine - follow exactly the same course, overlapping on the screen. I emailed David and he was very interested – he hadn’t noticed that the line goes through Big Rings. I’ve placed the St Michael’s Line as a downloadable file on my website along with place markers for the Mump, Tor, and the Avebury and Dorchester henges, and with the old aerial photo of Big Rings.
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