Creative Challenge 239 - My Thingamajig!

Marci's Visit - Trip to Stonehenge Wiltshire England

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in the English county of Wiltshire, about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Amesbury and 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones set within earthworks. It is in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.
Archaeologists believe it was built anywhere from 3000 BC to 2000 BC, as described in the chronology below. Radiocarbon dating in 2008 suggested that the first stones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC,whilst another theory suggests that bluestones may have been raised at the site as early as 3000 BC.
The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury Henge. It is a national legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.
Archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 indicates that Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. The dating of cremated remains found on the site indicate that deposits contain human bone from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug. Such deposits continued at Stonehenge for at least another 500 years. The site is a place of religious significance and pilgrimage in Neo-Druidry.


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A Spring Morning at Moors Lake Dorset England

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Damerham - The church of Saint George Snowdrop Grave Yard

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Damerham is a village and civil parish in Hampshire, England, located near to Fordingbridge. As well as being the location of notable Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, Damerham was an important Anglo-Saxon manor mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great. By the time of the Domesday Book of 1086, Damerham was a major settlement in the possession of Glastonbury Abbey. Today Damerham is a rural village on the River Allen.

Situated north west of Fordingbridge and close to the Dorset border, Damerham is located on the River Allen. Damerham contains a mixture of cottages, with a riverside mill and a Norman church. Settled since Saxon times, Damerham is said to be the birthplace of Æthelflæd, wife of Edmund I.
Adam of Damerham (13th century), the author of Historia de Rebus gestis Glastoniensibus, was a native of Damerham. Damerham was once in Wiltshire, but was transferred in 1895 to Hampshire.
The village gave its name to a Ham class minesweeper, HMS Damerham.

Damerham is the site of a prehistoric complex including two 6,000-year-old tombs representing some of the earliest monuments built in Britain. It was discovered by a team led by Dr. Helen Wickstead, a Kingston University archaeologist. These were previously undiscovered Neolithic tombs known as long barrows.

Another earthwork, Soldiers Ring, situated on a crest in an area of Celtic fields, is thought to be a Romano-British cattle enclosure.
Damerham was an ancient demesne of the Saxon kings and was mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great, who desired that his men of Damerham should be free.

In 940–6 Edmund I granted a hundred mansae at Damerham with Martin and Pentridge to his queen, Æthelflæd. Damerham may have been the birthplace of Æthelflæd. Æthelflæd bequeathed Damerham to Glastonbury Abbey when she died in the late 10th century.
In the time of the Domesday Book, 1086, Damerham was a large settlement of 80 households. Glastonbury Abbey still held the manor, which remained with the abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It then passed to the Crown, and in 1540 Henry VIII leased part of the demesne land and certain farms belonging to the manor for 21 years to Richard Snell - these premises were in 1608 granted to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, and remained with his descendants.  

In 1544 Henry VIII granted the manor of Damerham to his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, but it passed back to the Crown on her death in 1548. In 1575 Elizabeth I granted it to the Bishop of Salisbury, and, except for the temporary sale by Parliament to William Lytton in 1649, it remained in the possession of successive bishops until 1863.


Another important manor was the manor of Little Damerham which was owned by Glastonbury Abbey. Glastonbury Abbey also held lands in the manors of Hyde and Stapleham. Some of these lands were also held by Cranborne Priory, and Tewkesbury Abbey, to which Cranborne Priory was a cell. The hide at Lopshill (Lopushale) is mentioned as within the boundaries of the manor of Damerham in 940–6; it is now Lopshill Farm, in the south of the parish.
The Domesday Book records four mills at Damerham. 

One was given to Geoffrey Fitz-Ellis by John, Abbot of Glastonbury (1274–90). In 1326 Henry Dotenel released to the Abbot of Glastonbury all his claim in a water-mill called Weremulle in Damerham. In the survey of the manor taken in 1518 a water-mill called Lytellmyle is mentioned. This mill probably stood near Littlemill Bridge at North End, but it has now disappeared. In 1608 "all the water-mills of Damerham" were granted to Robert Earl of Salisbury. The only mill now in existence in the parish is Damerham Mill in the village on the River Allen.

Damerham Park is mentioned in 1226–7 and in 1283, and at the latter date it contained deer. In 1518 the park, which contained 125 acres of wood, was divided into three coppices, Edmundshay, Middle Coppis, and Drakenorth Coppis. It was apparently disparked before 1540.

The church of Saint George dates from the Norman period. The earliest parts are the lower part of the tower and the north aisle (12th century). In the 13th century the chancel was seemingly rebuilt and a south aisle added to the nave. The tower was nearly rebuilt around this time. The 12th-century north aisle and transept were probably pulled down in the 15th century and the existing aisle substituted. The church has some rare features, including scratch dials and a relief of Saint George.The churchyard is particularly recommended for the snowdrops in the spring which are in abundance in the Church grounds.

In 1830 the manor-house (West Park House) was attacked by the rioters against the introduction of machinery (Swing Riots) and several people were captured and sent to Winchester. One quarter of the village burned down in the "Great Fire" of 1863, but the damage was soon repaired owing to the exertions of the vicar William Owen.

Images And Words 198 ~ Our Feathered Friends

Spring Has Sprung!!!!!!

Good Morning. Have a great day

Valentine - If there were no words;)

Marcis Visit 2012/2013 Oxford Weekend set 2

Creative Challenge 238 - Harmony

Images And Words Week 197 - Ingenious Inventions - Photography

I took a slightly "out of the box" view of this weeks theme LOL. Here is my contribution.

The Blue Ridge Mountains Virginia USA.

Marcis Visit 2012/2013 Oxford Weekend set 1

Hi all I am slowly getting around to sorting out the shots from Marcis visit, hereis the first set of shots from our long weekend in Oxford as we made our first explorations of the City.

Hi All

Hi all, I have not been on very much lately, I had so much work to catch up on after that long bout  of Bronchitis and Marcis Visit, I seem to finally be back on schedule, all the work in the garden that should have been done before Christmas is now completed I just have a huge pile of shrub cuttings to put through the shredder.

So now I am going to try and catch up on some blogging!

I still have hundreds of shots still not converted from RAW that I took during Marcis Visit.


Here are a few from the day we visited the New Forest

Images & Words #196 - Statues

Hi all sorry this is late had a bit of a busy weekend;)

Dusk Ocean Side

Hi all a bit of a stressful week!

We had a bit of an upset here on Thursday Mon had a bad Angina attack, so bad I had to call the Paramedic who as usual was here in well under 10 minutes. Moms Angina has been under-control for years and this was the first attack since she moved in here with me.

It was very severe and to be honest she was exhibiting many of the symptoms of a heart attack, hence my 999 call. The paramedic was concerned because Moms blood pressure was through the roof and her O2 reading reading at only 76% so he called the ambulance who again amazingly were here in 5 minutes.

I followed on to the hospital, thankfully Mom started to stabilize on the way to the hospital and the pain in her chest was gone when we got there, they decided to keep her in over night for a whole raft of tests especially 2 blood tests for enzymes to confirm she had not had a blood clot  or a minor heart attack, both showed negative and they called me Friday lunch time and told me I could collect her as soon as I could get there.

The only change they made to Moms meds was to put here on a new Angina medication that is more effective than the old one.

Moms resting up today but already eager to get out and test out her new walking boots that arrived in the post this morning LOL.

Have a wonderful weekend and be safe my friends;)