Phil and I took a day trip out to Witham today to go to the dowsing day at Cressing Temple Barns – the oldest barns in the world.
We started off exploring Silver End, a complete 1930s village built by philathropist businessman Frank Crittall, for the workers (and their families) at his Crittall windows works, and then walked the mile or so to Cressing Temple Barns, built by the Templars in the 12th Century to store the harvest and grain seeds produced by the Cressing Estate given to them by Queen Mathilda.
Cressing Temple is a great site, with a lovely 16 century walled garden and lots of old farm buildings in a quiet green setting. The dowsing was led by one of the county archeologist, who favoured a scientific explanation as to why our coat hanger dowsing rods swivelled when we walked over buried things. We started off crossing mains water pipes that he knew existed, and where he could show us the route they ran underground, to dowsing an unexcavated part of the site, where they think the Elizabethan farm house once stood. Our dowsed outline matched the outlines generated by expert dowsers, and the geo-physical survey….
A lovely active summer day.
HAIRY MARY? I AM FACINATED BY BLOGS – AND YES — I WAS READING YOURS… CARE TO COMMUNICATE FURTHER? bOB
AGAIN?
Hello Mary. Did you notice that the online programme of events for Cressing Temple is for 2003 ? I did mention this to the people at Cressing T at the beginning of the season and they like everyone else were in despair at the Essex County Council web site which is to blame (it’s been contracted out and the contractors have got their hands on it for several more years to come, I believe).