Wandlebury Enigma

The Wandlebury Enigma refers to a number of suggested theories about the purpose, function and decoration of Wandlebury Hill.

The first is the suggestion that an ancient hill figure, the Wandlbury Giant had once been carved into the side of Wandlebury Hill, similar to the Cerne Abbas Giant. This was thought to have been overgrown or effaced in the 18th century. The figure was first recorded by Bishop Joseph Hall in 1605 and later by others including William Cole and John Layer. Investigation was carried out in 1954 by Tom Lethbridge, Director of excavations at the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. He found small lumps of chalk to the South of the hill and proceeded to survey the area with a sounding bar, probing areas of soft ground and disturbed chalk. By placing markers he was able to draw out the pattern of what he claimed were 3 hill figures picturing ancient British deities - A horse Goddess (Magog or Epona), a Sun God (Gog, Bel, Belinus or Lucifer) and a warrior figure with sword and shield. The Times reported on Lethbridge's discovery as a "previously lost, three thousand-year-old hill-figure". A later article about Lethbridge's efforts was written by W.A. Clark in 1997. This enigma was dismissed off-handedly by Professor Glyn Daniel who commented that Lethbridge had not found any real antiquities.

Another Wandlebury Enigma dismissed by Glyn Daniel that has appeared in the substantial, mainstream, U.K. press is the Line A Loxodrome or Cam Valley Loxodrome, a series of hand-carved, stone monolith markers placed 1,430 metres apart between Wandlebury Earthworks and Portingbury Hills Mound at Hatfield Broad Oak, in Hatfield Forest. Eleven of the original twenty-six markers are still in situ, with several of the other distinctive stones lying nearby. Local records indicate that at least one was moved due to it impeding modern agriculture.

The names suggested for the stones featured include The Wandlebury Stone, Great Chesterfield Stone, Bordeaux Stone, Wendens Ambow Stone, Shortgrove Monolith, Newport Stone (also known as The Leper Stone ), Springfield Stone, and The Priory Stone.

The line forms a perfect rhumb line, so that wherever an observer stands on the line between Wandlebury and Portingbury, the North Star is always at the same oblique angle. Based upon this alignment, the theory states that the line's builders possessed knowledge that the Earth was round, and also of its approximate circumference. It was theorised in 1975 by retired geologist Christian O'Brien to have been created in the Bronze Age, and was notable in the field of archaeoastronomy due to some brief coverage in the major press.

O'Brien was following up a theory put forward by Alfred Watkins that the Wandlebury bank had astronomical purposes. From the exact centre, dents point to the North Star, the midsummer sunrise and the lunar summer maximum. By factoring in the Earth's drift, O'Brien placed the date of its construction around 2,500 BC.

Despite the extremely small chance of the markers being in the correct location for these observations by pure chance, O'Brien's theory met with mixed reviews from astronomers and archaeologists. Glyn Daniel, Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University dismissed the paper as "nonsense" and could find nothing in it to revise the documented view of Wandlebury primarily as an Iron Age Hill Fort. However, Archie Roy, Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University commented that "in the absence of a more convincing explanation, this conclusion also has to be taken very seriously.”

Papers

• O'Brien, C.A.E., 1975, The Wandlebury-Hatfield Heath Astronomical Complex, Thaxted.