Hallowed Ground 2000

Introduction

As we approach the millennium, places that were marked as special by our Ancestors - neolithic long barrows, Bronze Age stone circles and standing stones, Iron Age fogous, holy wells and sacred groves - are being visited by increasing numbers of people for whom these places have a spiritual significance. Hallowed Ground 2000 has been set up to record this spiritual and cultural relationship between people and the Sacred Landscape of Britain.

Hallowed Ground 2000 will be a definitive contemporary record of British ancient Sacred Sites

still in use today, an atlas of living folklore and spiritual belief, and a Domesday record of places which are still hallowed at the millennium.

This will not be an archaeological record but a cultural one - an account of the role of these special places in social and spiritual life, arts, custom, religion and landscape.

The information is being gathered from those who love these places and visit them. People from all over Britain will be encouraged to record and celebrate the cultural and spiritual dimension of their own special places, to send in their memories and anecdotes, observations and local knowledge to Hallowed Ground 2000.

Hallowed Ground 2000 is intended to be a testimony to the continuing relationship between people and ancient Sacred Sites, a celebration of their use throughout the seasons and a recognition that such hallowed places, constructed millennia ago, are still an important part of our culture now and for millennia to come.

It is intended that this project will create a baseline record of the state of our ancient Sacred Sites. It will recognise the valuable guardianship work already being done and encourage more people to take an active role in caring for their local sites, and help everyone concerned with these places, from archaeologists to ordinary people, to work together for their conservation and protection as living sites which continue to be hallowed ground.

Who is responsible for caring for Sacred Sites?

Is it English Heritage or the National Trust, who own and manage many of them? Is it the County Archaeologist, who, if she had a 24 hour working day, might be able to visit all her sites in a year? Is it the map-reading earth mystery man who recognises the relationship of the sites to our wider landscape, or the robed and incense-shrouded Priestess who works with the history and atmosphere of holy Motherland? Should it be the tourist industry, who depend on Sacred Sites for much of their revenue, or should it be the farmers and other landowners, who use the land on which these stones and groves stand?

In practice, while most Sacred Sites are the responsibility of some official group or other, there is no way in which they can all benefit from the same care as, say, Avebury and other larger sites, there are simply too many. Sadly, although the spiritual community maintains that it loves Sacred Sites, the evidence suggests that this love is often expressed as unintentional destruction - fires, graffiti, offerings that cause damage - and the way many organisations react to this is to restrict access to a site, effectively to remove it.

Somewhere in the middle of these extremes are ordinary people who, sometimes for years, care for a site. They sweep up rubbish, wash graffiti away, and simply add their love to a place. If they know that there is such a thing as a County Archaeologist (and I didn't until a couple of years ago) they may report damage, but most would just do their best to put the damage right and go on caring.

As our population increases, as construction projects now reach into areas that were once considered remote, as spiritual tourism becomes increasingly popular, no one person or group can care effectively for our Sacred Sites on their own. Partnerships between ordinary people and government-funded bodies, between the ivory-towered and direct-action groups, need to be created.

How will Hallowed Ground 2000 achieve this?

We aim;

to take a snapshot of the condition of ancient sites across the British Isles.
to create a baseline record, establishing the physical state of such sites so that future developments can be monitored.
to involve the owners and managers of the sites and the County Archaeologists in monitoring the sites.
to acknowledge the valuable voluntary work already being done at sites and to encourage further responsible guardianship.
to explore what is considered sacred at the millennium.

A pilot scheme is already enthusiastically under way in Cornwall so that we can refine our methods and make the national project as efficient as possible.

This is how it works...

Any person who wants to contribute their knowledge of a Sacred Site to the project writes to us, telling us the name and location of the site and asking for a questionnaire. (Please enclose an SAE).

If that site has already been chosen by another person, we write back suggesting other sites in their area.

The questionnaire is completed and returned to us. We send a copy to the relevant County Archaeologist and keep the original for our records, inputting it to a database.

If a site seems to be particularly under threat, we will ask the respondent to complete another questionnaire within 3 or 6 months, and send other respondents another questionnaire after 12 months.

How can you get involved?

We expect to have analysed the Cornish results and perfected our method by early February. We will have a national launch in February 1998, when you can write to us and we will send you a questionnaire (SAE please). We expect our strategy to remain much as it is above.

Depending on the result of the second questionnaire that you receive we may well close the Project, or it may be appropriate to continue. Whatever happens, we aim to limit the scheme to a maximum of 5 years with an option of doing it again after a further five years or decade.

We have created a method that can be repeated by other countries, indeed by other people in Britain long after 2000, and hope that it will become one major way to care for Sacred Sites.

The Begging Bit

We are giving up the greater part of our current jobs in order to concentrate on Hallowed Ground 2000. Both of us are already on very low incomes and cannot fund this project ourselves. Rather than ask for small donations, we are requesting one or two large contributions. We need a minimum of £15,000 to purchase computers, stamps, envelopes and a photocopier, to pay our phone and travel bills, and to feed our families.

If you would like to offer serious funding, please contact us at;

Hallowed Ground 2000,

The Cottage,

Crowan,

Praze,

Camborne,

Cornwall,

TR14 9NB.

email - clarep@mistral.co.uk

Out of this work, we aim to create a scientific and spiritual benchmark for the coming thousand years. Perhaps the biggest mystery of all, and one which causes the greatest friction, is how Sacred Sites were used by the people who constructed them. Although we will never know what happened 4000 years ago, we can document what happens at the stones at the end of the twentieth century so that our descendants can learn how what is today a relatively new trend, blossomed into responsible traditions. And the evolving history of harmony between the science and spirituality of Sacred Sites, between the committed individual and overstretched administration who both care for such sites, will be recorded for the next millennium.

Who are Hallowed Ground 2000?

Andy Norfolk is a founder of the Cornish Earth Mysteries Group (CEMG) and has been researching earth mysteries for 27 years. He is chair of the new Cornish Sacred Sites Protection Network which has brought together representatives from the National Trust, English Heritage, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, local landowners, the Pagan Federation, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and of course CEMG. Andy is also part of a national Sacred Sites networking initiative. He is a chartered landscape architect and ecologist with many years of experience of landscape design and management in the countryside.

Clare Prout is the co-ordinator of the Voyager Trust, a voluntary organisation that brings holistic and unique care to the dying, the dead and their families. She also co-ordinates Save Our Sacred Sites, which is a forum for finding responsible ways of living with Sacred Sites. Clare is also part of a national Sacred Sites networking initiative and brokered the first official Guardianship schemes with the National Trust. Clare is a mother and a Pagan, a trained nurse and midwife, and is a member of a group which creates Druidic camps.

Feel free to republish or otherwise pass this page on to other interested parties, attributing the copyright to Hallowed Ground 2000.