CLOPHILL ECHOES
AVEBURY TRANSITION
AVEBURY MAGIC
ENIGMA OF STONES
MORDEN MYSTERY
MOUNTAIN LIGHT
STANMORE SUPRISE
RIVER LEA TIMEWALKING
CASTLERIGG
SOLSTICE 2005
MAIDEN BOWER1
 MAIDEN BOWER2 

Clophill Echoes

The small, well-kept Bedfordshire village of Clophill is little known beyond its local area.  At first sight there is nothing obvious to draw a visitor.  Driving past along the A6, the village offers two attractive and quite welcoming pubs - the Flying Horse and the Green Man.  There are a number of fine seventeenth and eighteenth century cottages.  Local organic fruit can be bought near the trees where it grew.  Some notoriety surrounds the old, now partly ruined St Mary’s church, atop the ominously named Deadman’s Hill.  Twice in the 1960’s graves were disturbed and bones from them ritually arranged, presumably in some “black mass” context.  But to most who skirt Clophill on the way to somewhere else, it has the air of an attractive but quickly passed (and probably forgotten) English village: nice enough to catch a glimpse of through the rear view mirror, then easily left behind.  The locals seem to like it that way.

Yet Clophill is host to a little known but haunting and evocative relic.  Maps identify it as either Castle Hill or Cainhoe Castle and it stands a short distance south east of the modern village. Visitors would see no tall medieval stone walls or towers.  Neither would they spot English Heritage signs, for none exist.  Few, in fact, would see anything beyond the usual.  To encounter Cainhoe Castle it is necessary to follow an easily missed footpath off the village high street and walk perhaps half a mile across a river bridge, through fields and past an expanse of open water.  And what are those slightly odd bumps on the rising hill ahead?  Perhaps the remains of old farm buildings?  Or cottages that have seen better times?  Walk closer and the bumps take on a clearer form.  Here once stood a late eleventh century Norman castle.  The motte (central mound) rises steeply and evenly above a natural rise in the landscape: a classic site for a defensive structure.  Around the large, high motte, unusually, are three baileys, providing lower peaks around the main one.  Linger a while and you may notice traces of less obvious earthworks for some distance around.  For all its apparent naturalness, much of the area has been modified and shaped by people, at least over centuries.

 Cainhoe castle, with its fringe of hawthorne trees, offers fine views across the fields to Clophill village and beyond.  Though few walk here now, this cluster of mounds was once an important centre of power and influence.  It was also a focus of murder and strangeness.  The castle was constructed under the command of Nigel d’Albini, a Norman knight, whose full title was Lord of the Honour of Cainhoe.  D’Albini married a descendent of Geoffrey de Montbray who had arrived in Britain with Duke William (“the Conqueror”) of Normandy and who, as reward, was granted almost three hundred English manors.  From this matrix derived d’Albini’s immense power, centred on Cainhoe castle.

 This bedrock of medieval politics and economics, however, soon blends into myth and legend, for the d’Albini/Mowbray (there are alternative spellings for both names) dynasty was deeply implicated in the world of the crusades and the  obsession of key European rulers with the christian conquest of Jerusalem.  D’Albini, morphed through marriage alliances and royal command into Montbray then de Mowbray, has been described as “one of the noblest” names of England.  By the mid-twelth century the de Mowbrays were renowned for their support of crusading campaigns, and this inclination toward violence only enhanced their mystique.  Nigel’s son, Roger d’Aubigny, took part in two crusader attacks, finally falling into the hands of Saladin, though he was eventually ransomed and released.

Here the influence of the Knights Templar becomes apparent.  Many splendid legends have been spun from the matrix of their astonishing wealth and power.  Extraordinary tales have grown up around these remarkable men, but some apparent facts can also be discerned.  While there are claims of older roots, the formal origin of the Knights lies in a pact of 1118 involving nine French knights.  They pledged to protect pilgrims to Palestine and, in the spirit of the times, to “defend” that land under a christian banner.

These warriors were unusual insofar as they also took monastic vows.  The French King of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, supported the “Poor Knights of Christ”.  Baldwin provided them with accommodation within his palace adjoining the site of the Temple of Solomon.  Hence the name Templars, or Knights of the Temple, as they were more precisely known.

 Much of a fanciful nature has been said and written of this Order. Tales of mystical, potentially earth-shattering discoveries by the Knights beneath the Temple have a large and eager audience in our own times, and no elaboration seems too fanciful.  Did they, or some of them, fall under the influence of the Ismaelite Assassin sect with their (accurate or otherwise) reputation for spreading murder, mayhem and a ruthless form of order through the middle east of the time?  Were they secret followers of Mohammed?  Was Sufism associated with their alleged heresies of thought and ritual?  Did they, in a physical sense, find the “holy grail” beneath the Temple Mount? Or was the grail something less tangible, perhaps a spiritual revelation concerning the origins of christianity?  Check your local bookshop, and probably your neighbourhood library, and you will find shelves of confident accounts of such matters.  Many of them doubtless offer a racy and, for those who need unambiguous answers, very plausible read.

 Little of this popular writing, however, acknowledges the sheer terror of the crusades. Honed stereotypes of brave but kindly defenders of truth and morality can be forgotten without loss.  Not only did these ruthless, self-obsessed men leave many dead among the ruined towns and villages along their way.  As they approached Palestine a vision of christian civilisation was imposed upon its occupants with savage contempt for human life.  The seizure of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, after more than four centuries of muslim rule, was accompanied by vast pogroms of both muslim and jewish inhabitants.  A new, militarised intolerance took hold as the self-defined warriors of Jesus assumed control.

 Incredibly, the brutality of the Knights finds a modern (if that is the word) response from the equally fanatical holy killers of Al-Qa’ida.  Osama bin Laden’s current campaign was launched specifically to expel American forces from the muslim Saudi heartland.  There is no doubt, however, that he and his associates are familiar with Templar history, including the reconquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187 and the later, more definitive rebuilding of its defences by Suleiman the Magnificent.  Those deeds, it seems likely, may well have comforted and inspired the Al-Qa’ida fighters while the bombs fell on Tora Bora.

 Such, then, is the realm of aggression within which the Templars built their immense worldly power.  Their wealth, arising from gifts and estate incomes in Europe as well as the fruits of crusading pillage, grew in tandem with their formidable reputation.  With papal protection and unrivalled economic privilege, the Templars became a major international force and presence.  Their castles commanded strategic routes in defence of their far-reaching and innovative trading, banking and supply networks.  They rapidly accumulated phenomenal wealth and did not hesitate to exercise the influence that went with it.  Predictably, Templar power became intimidating to more established secular and religious elites. Some among these were ready to strike when the opportunity came.

 The Knights were dismantled in the early fourteenth century and many of their cadres were physically liquidated.  Historians debate the relative contributions to their demise of King Philip the Fair of France and Pope Clement V, who issued the Bull which suppressed the Order.  Rumours persist of clandestine survivals, particularly in Scotland and Portugal, and of an unbroken line of underground organisation.  Some see deep Templar influence in the later emergence of freemasonry.  Roslyn chapel in Scotland is believed by many to somehow hold Templar secrets in its remarkable stone construction and to be of deep spiritual significance.  Heroic myth-making around the Knights is as intense as the scandalous allegations levelled at them in their own time by enemies of the movement.

Back in Clophill, among the mounds, neither point of view seems adequate or helpful.  Nigel d’Albini flickers in and out of Templar history like a character in a crumbling silent movie.  The d’Albini Barons of Cainhoe were the original owners of the manor of Millbrook.  There the Templars held land known as Nether Temple.  Roger, son of Nigel, made gift of the hamlet of Balsall to the Order, probably in the 1140's.  In time Balsall became Templar headquarters for the whole of Warwickshire.  Subsequently known as Temple Balsall, rents collected from the manor tenants were used to fund crusading adventures.  Closer to Clophill, in the mid-twelth century the Knights were granted land at an ancient crossroads where Baldock now stands.  Establishing a settlement there, they called it Baudach, or “Baghdad” in modern English.  Their collective hand is assumed to be behind the remarkable carvings in the Royston Cave - a long lost underground chamber beneath another crossroads formed by two ancient trackways.  Here, it seems, only a few miles from Clophill, Templar remnants held secret meetings subsequent to their suppression.

 Many such threads converge on Cainhoe castle, but their importance can be overstated.  More likely than not, the heart of the castle motte is a much older sacred mound.  Much as with  Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, climbing the flattened mound top means moving into a very distinctive type of space with remarkable visual properties.  From that vantage point the mound edge creates an inner horizon relative to the skyline, a space both elevated and more intimate than a purely open vista can provide.  The effects are enhanced when movement is involved.  Exploring the mound gives rise to lines of curvature which shift from moment to moment.  Perspective is in flux within a space of vast and seemingly limitless potential.

 It is difficult to shake off the suspicion that d’Albini and his armed gangs militarised and perhaps enlarged, rather than created, this mound.  Often post-Iron Age earthworks are found to have incorporated earlier structures, and the ridge that became Cainhoe castle would have drawn our neolithic forebears, as high land did elsewhere.

 It seems that the castle’s demise, and the related abandonment of a nearby village, occurred within the wider devastation brought by the Black Death epidemic of 1348-9.  That rat-carried blow to feudal power did much to undermine the rationale for Cainhoe-style lordship.  A new world of commerce and warring nations was being born and the legacy of Nigel d’Albini and his like had little obvious place within it, despite their contributions to its birth.

 The Knights had gone, but other kinds of warriors came in their wake.  Around three miles north east of Clophill stands Chicksands, an expansive military intelligence headquarters.  Parts of a thirteenth century monastery associated with the Gilbertine order survived the dissolution of the monasteries two centuries later. The surviving Priory and the land around it remained in private hands before coming under military control in the 1930’s.  Intelligence functions expanded over the following decades.  A period of American influence, from 1950 to 1995, saw Chicksands mushroom into a cutting edge, hi-tech evesdropping base closely linked to the better known Menwith Hill station in Yorkshire.  The US Air Force (and presumably the CIA) officially pulled out in 1995/6, leaving Chicksands in the hands of British military intelligence as a training and security policy development centre.  The Templars might recognise the activities of their more secularised kin through these events.

 Clophill mound seems to help us look beyond such games to a more cooperative and celebratory way of relating to the world.  Go there, take your instrument, drum a different beat to that of the marching bands, find ways to help banish the insecurities added to our lives by what is often called security.

 Dave Binns

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