A new book from Nicholas Mann is always a treat - and this one, co-authored with his partner Philippa Glasson, is well up to the standard of his previous work.

    Glastonbury's Windmill Hill has long been the poor relation among the sacred hills which characterise the Isle of Avalon - including Chalice, Wearyall, Stonedown, Bride's Mound, and of course Glastonbury Tor.  But now Windmill Hill's Neolithic function may have been identified, as the observatory from which key calendrical events could be observed, plotted and predicted by the ancient sky-watchers.

 

    The odd earth mound which tops the hill, almost certainly an artificial creation, was previously identified as having been placed there in the last two hundred years as a basis for the windmill which once stood on the hill.  But now Mann and Glasson's research and experimentation have identified it as a viewing platform, 'naturally aligning not only with the rising and setting of Sirius on the Winter Solstice alignments, but also with the other extremes of Sun and Moon - including the Summer Solstice alignment from Wearyall Hill, the Equinoxes and the nineteen-year Lunar Standstill cycle'.   

    The authors' arguments are impressively persuasive, and nowhere more so than in relation to the most dramatic event viewable from the mound - at dawn in Midwinter, when the disk of the rising sun glides up the side of the Tor before launching itself into the sky. 

 

    The book is comprehensive in its coverage of the many areas which might hold clues as to our ancestors' worldview and understanding of the solar, stellar and lunar events they witnessed from their observatory; from the metaphorical meaning of legendary Celtic figures to the significance of particular constellations.  Photographs, diagrams, star-charts, maps, etchings and paintings are all used to demonstrate clearly the points made in the text, and helpful reference, bibliography and index sections at the end make it easy to find particular sections and to refer back to key points.

    If, like me, you have a shelf or two devoted to 'Glastonbury books', then this one is a vital reference book to add to your collection.

 

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Reviewed by:  Kate Gooch for:
AVALON Magazine

PO Box 3314

GLASTONBURY 

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