Megalithic Marvels - Mysteries of Stonehenge & Ancient England / Hugh Newman

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

In this exclusive interview I am joined by researcher, explorer & author Hugh Newman to discuss the many highlights from our "Mysteries of England tour" that took place in early July 2024. In this episode, we discuss the various ancient sites & artifacts that we saw, which included: stone circles, standing stones, burial chambers, neolithic henges, earth-works, giant geoglyphs, museums, strange elongated skulls & more. Hugh also shares various ancient legends & oral traditions related to these ancient sites & that of these mysterious builders. Enjoy 4k video and drone footage of all these sites that we discuss in this interview (if you are watching on a platform that allows video)

Stargate Voyager. Well, I am joined by author, explorer, many other things, Hugh Newman in this episode. And in this episode, we are going to recap our amazing Mysteries of England tour that happened just a couple weeks ago. We had an amazing group of about 25 plus or so people. And we traveled all over the landscape of ancient England. And so I'm excited to have Hugh here to recap. this hugh how are you doing i'm very good how are you doing i'm great it looks like you just came in from uh crop circle exploring you found another one huh yeah they keep coming yeah they're like relentless

they don't quit so uh there's there's not many this year but um yeah we went to one didn't we went to two actually uh you went to you came to so uh yeah yeah it's it's just this remarkable weird phenomena um that just keeps on going yeah i can't wait to get into asking you about crop circles more in depth here in a minute but man i i survived my first england tour it was epic um you know i learned a lot about england i'd never been there other than the airport before so uh it was it was uh quite an experience enjoying a proper english breakfast every morning i had breakfast with you once or twice uh it's weird eating beans for breakfast but I guess that's what you guys do.

I also became quite a black tea fan. You know, I never thought of myself as a tea drinker. I'm a coffee snub from Seattle, but because your coffee expertise over there was lacking, and once I tasted that English breakfast tea with a little cream, it was amazing. You threw me for a curveball, though, Hugh, making me drive the bus. you know um yeah there was if you're watching on video he was just drinking some proper english tea

it looked like in a mug is that what that was yeah megalithomania mug look at that so yeah i got i got to i got to say this you threw me for a curveball a couple weeks before the tour he asked me hey can you drive one of the tour buses and i say sure why not i'm all about helping the team taking one for the team um but little did i realize that this bus was a stick shift i haven't driven a stick shift for like 20 years. Every car in the U.S. is an automatic. Over there, every vehicle is a stick shift. And so I'm driving this bus that's like 17 passenger bus in a stick shift sitting in the right side of the bus, the wrong side. On the left lane of traffic, the wrong lane, on the smallest roads in the world where there's literally no shoulder. And Hugh drives like a bad

out of hell. And so I was trying to keep up with him, keep these people safe. Let's just say there was some stress there, but I survived. You said I did okay, right? Yeah, you did great. I was quite impressed, actually. Yeah, I know there took a lot of, yeah, I did try and warn you beforehand, the tiny roads, you have to go down. That's why we can't have one big bus, because you just can't get anywhere. You have to have two mini buses. And yeah, no, D, you did really well, I think you're going to be, you could become a professional taxi driver in rural England now without fail. And I think you'd be epic at it, yeah. Yeah, I can have a fallback career option if all things go south here. I'm just going to move there and be a professional taxi driver.

Well, we had an epic tour. Let's talk about this. I came a couple days early. So before the official tour started with a group, one day you and I, went out and did some crop circle hunting and we found one and later on during the tour we found another one so let's just start out talking the crazy stuff of crop circles um tell us a little bit about this phenomenon and why you are take a keen interest in it yeah i'm fascinated by it actually it's um the thing is that what makes it so interesting is that it's an ancient phenomenon it's not just a modern thing. Nowadays, clearly people make

them, you know, this is a genuine thing, but this is art, this is art in the landscape. So these are like Banksy style artists who are kind of not giving away who they are or what they do. So there's a lot of that going on, but there is a genuine kind of weird phenomenon

associated with it as well, which inspired these people to create them in the first place. And so it goes way back. I mean, there's like, goes back, there's reports from the 1600s or something called the Mowing Devil. strange lights and other flattened crop were found you have the fairy rings of island and things like this which are often in in wheat and corn and yeah there's a whole kind of history there's UFO nests from australia that go way way back and yeah and it's known you know like i say there's a

kind of there's kind of two factions there's the the kind of crop circle makers who quietly do their business and then there's the kind of believers who believe like it's kind of like a spiritual phenomenon. And, you know, I used to be very into it. And then it kind of occurred to me that there's actually some really artistic kind of work going on. It's beautiful geometry, beautiful kind of layout, location, and things like this. So I've got high respect for the work that goes into them, even though it is also a genuine, or it was a genuine phenomenon.

It's crazy that you say crop circles go all the way back to even reports in the 1600s. Man, that that fascinates me. So yeah, the crop circles are just fascinating. I mean, whoever, whatever makes them, to be honest with you, I don't care anymore. I just appreciate in the summer we have this beautiful geometric artworks like Banksy style, you know, where no one knows who does them, where they come from, whether they're like aliens doing it, or whether they're, you know, some people call them pranksters, but actually these are high-level

geometric artists in my opinion you know you know this is very complicated it's almost like when you start fascinated by the geometry of stone circles like many of we visited on the tour as well but some of them are intricate very sophisticated different types of geometry and they had to lay them out and then build the stones around them and place everything and orient them

measure everything perfectly and so it really harks back to like the stone circle building kind of principles that are now with the crop circles in us. There is a strange connection and they're often located near them. I mean, we saw some near stonehenge. It's actually two near stonehenge now. There's a square one, funnily enough, so a crop square. And there's some beautiful, huge geometric one occurred next to Badbury Rings, which is ancient Iron Age hillfort at Dorset. So they do occur just randomly, it seems. and they're well worth checking out.

I mean, it's just something about fields being like a canvas, you know, for art, you know, and then they disappear by the end of the summer because they harvested away. And so it's like temporary, you know, it's like a temporary, what some people call temporary temples. It's temporarily there. People get all excited by them, you know. So there's a big kind of debate, you know, who are what makes. And clearly people make them nowadays, have done for a long time, actually, some of the most famous ones. But there is a genuine phenomena that came before that with, you know, strange lights.

And even now, I've actually filmed balls of light moving through crop circles after they've been, you know, created. And, you know, when I was flying my kind of drone there. So, yeah, so it's one of those really cool mysteries that we get a lot of in Britain, but it does occur all around the world and in America. So on our first full day with the tour group, and these were just an amazing bunch of people, So if any of you guys are listening, Hugh and I just want to thank you for coming on the tour. You guys were so awesome. It was so cool getting the know thrill seekers and history lovers from all over the globe, really.

We had people from the U.S., we had someone from Italy. We had some others from around the world. So it was just an awesome time. But on our first full day, our first stop was to the CERN giant. And this was near Dorset, I believe. And this is this gigantic hill figure that has many legends and stories attached to it. And it's really one of the only remaining depictions of giants in Britain. So Hugh, if you can just talk to us about the CERN Giant real quick,

tell us what it is, why it's important, and how it relates to all these legends of ancient giants. The Cern Giant is located near the village of San. Abbas in Dorset. It's 180 odd feet tall and so it's massive. It's on the sloping hill. And what it is, it's like a chalk hill with grass on it. So they just carved away the grass and the turf and I say the shape occurs. You could say it's almost like a crop circle in it in some respects. And he's got, holding a club up in one arm. He's got, he's kind of, you know, undressed, shall we say. And very excited, shall we say. And this is called something.

controversy, people faint often when they see it up close. But he's got his kind of part, kind of out in all its glory. But this is part of the kind of symbolism of it, which is like linked to fertility, people believe. And people still go up. They have done for hundreds of years potentially to like kind of consecrate marriages and partnerships and also to, you know, soak up the fertilizing energy to help people get pregnant or fertile and things like this. On the top of the hill you have something called the Trendle Earthworks. It's like a big square kind of earthwork kind of hens almost. And there used to be May Day activities like Beltane activities, which is related to fertility.

And they go up there with the Maypole, people would dance around it with these ribbons. And that would be another symbol of the phallus, you know, up on the hill there. And so it has all these connotations, but it's also like, you know, some people, the archaeologies there so it's only a couple of few hundred years old. Other people said, no, actually it's been there much longer, but it got grown it, it got grass grew over it, so he couldn't see it for a long time. And it could be super ancient, and it could represent the old giants of Britain, myself and Jim Vieer have written a whole book about.

So we think it's probably quite ancient, and it's been kind of resurfaced, reclaimed up regularly so people could eventually see it. But it is a sight to behold. but what it is, what's interesting about it, it's like the crop circles, it's best if you see it from the air. So when you're up high, if you're flying, if you've got a drone, if you go on a hot air balloon, that's how you see it best. It's really hard to see it from the ground anywhere. So again, it's almost like the NASCAR lines, the NASCAR effigies in Peru. It's not designed.

It's almost like a sort of message to the gods or a kind of reverence to the gods or something like this. Yeah, it was fascinating. to see and again it harkens back to all the legends of ancient Britain that's chuck full of giants and we'll get more into that in a little bit the next stop we made on our first full day the tour was to the Kingston Lacey house which is this beautiful mansion out in the countryside but guess what's there a cache of ancient Egyptian artifacts that were taken from Egypt in the 1800s Hugh, tell us about how these artifacts got from Egypt to this house and who this guy was. Yeah, this is the work of William John Banks.

He was an explorer. He was a bit of a kind of controversial fellow, actually. And he acquired many artifacts, even an obelisk from the Temple of ISIS on Philae Island and transported it basically back to Dorset, England. And so, you know, me and JJ just, you know, we were fascinated by obelisks that have been transported to other places. Anything like that that's been transported. So we went there like a couple of years ago. Hang on. This is really interesting.

There's psychophagus there in the gardens. There's other obelisks, which are sort of fake, more modern ones. But there's a genuine obelisk, you know, it takes back, you know, a couple of thousand years of that sort of Ptolemaic times. And it's got descriptions on it and everything. And there's got a whole cache of art. artifacts in the kind of on-site museum in the snooker room of the mansion, I should add. And so the snooker table has actually been used for placing objects and artifacts. There's a few really interesting pieces in there.

Maybe we'll show a few images here. But yeah, this is like the problem. This is like a problem because this is like the British Empire doing its thing. Getting all these engineers, architects and things like that and moving stuff from where it should be. But paying for it, buying it off people they think own the site, but they probably don't. And it ends up in Britain and other countries. So this is what's happened with the British Museum and other areas. So it is a problem.

But it's there now. And it's like, you know, you can actually go to this National Trust property. You have to pay to go in. They've got a cafe. You can actually just go there and enjoy, you know, spend an afternoon there checking it all out and getting this whole vibe from the ancient Egyptians in rural Dorset, England, of all places. Yeah, it was very fascinating. Having been to Egypt in Philae Island, ISIS Temple, so I've been there and I've seen where the spot where this obelisk was taken from and then to come to England and see it

brought to its new home in England. It's just weird to see an Egyptian obelisk, an ancient one in England. And then, yeah, he's got a fascinating sarcophagus and just a cachet of artifacts in the basement. That was something to see. We ended the day going to a place called Nolton Henge, I believe it was, where there's this medieval church built on top of this ancient henge. Tell us really quickly about that before he moved today the next day. Yeah, for sure. This is, again, this is just the northern part of Dorset. This is almost in Wiltshire, really. This is like a huge hinge. It's like a sort of stonehenge type

henge, you know, but ditch and bank in a sort of circle, which is massive. There's loads of stones in this sort of Norman church, which is built there, you know, the 1,200s or so, which is ruined now. And they built it right in the middle of this ancient site, which may have been a stone circle.

Because you see all these megaliths built into the walls and things like that. It's pretty strange. And there's a whole series of other hinges, other constructions, burial mouths, There's a seven mile long cursus that stretches through the whole area. There's one of the three quarter mile cursors at Stonehenge,

but this one's a seven mile one. That's like parallel banks and ditches stretching across the landscape. No one really knows what they were for. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff there that's kind of been ruin now. But this church is fascinating because it's ruined. It's even ruined. Half of it's missing. It kind of held it together somehow.

And now, and it just shows you this. tradition in Britain and in other places where the Christian churches and chapels and buildings will be built on early and Neolithic in Bronze Age what they classed as pagan sites and so you have that have that a lot in England so you find a lot of churches if you actually check them out you find out they were originally megalithic sites and often they use the stones in the basement of the kind of a part of the construction of the churches so if you actually find some of the megalists in the lower levels as well.

So they were kind of incorporating it and kind of using the power of them to then attract people to this new religion that was coming in at the time. The second full day of our tour, we went to one of my favorite spots on the whole tour. This was Avebury, which is the largest stone circle in the world, right? Oh, yeah, but yes, massive. And we met a special guest, Maria Wheatley,

who really took us in depth into, the energy that emanates from some of these stones and she had her dowsing rods out there and it was fascinating. These stones are, you know, massive, right? So they're really tall. And every three feet, the dowsing rods would spin. And she was breaking down how at every three feet, there was, you know, like a band in there that had a magnetic anomaly. And there's so many ancient legends, how the ancients would come, to even receive healing around these stones. So tell us a little bit, Hugh, about Avebury and why it's one of the most amazing ancient places to see in Britain. Yeah, a lot of people kind of think Stonehenge is the biggest, the most impressive stone circle in Britain.

And Avebury really is 20, 30 times bigger, you know, than Stonehenge. It is insane. It's so big. they built an entire village and crossroads main highway kind of passing through it and it would have originally had about 99 or 100 stones

in its main perimeter and each of these stones is like 40, 50, 60 tons it's pretty incredible and then they have avenues of stones coming off in two directions that go on for over two miles some of them and it's like what the hell

and even within the big stone circle there's two smaller stone circles which would be each one of those is impressive in its own right um each of these is as big as stonehenge you know so and so you have to kind of realize this was a major engineering landscape kind of operation that took place and this is before stonehenge this goes back to at least 3 000 bc at least because you also got west kennet longbarrow um which is up or which is part of the greater complex which is older that goes to like 3,650 bc but yes it's pretty amazing

I mean, even the henge around, you have this huge ditch and bank henge around Avery, like he gets stonage, but absolutely massive. I mean, millions of tons of earth and stone were moved in the construction of this site. And it's, you know, the main stone circles, what, 1,000 feet across 320 or meter, something like this. It's massive. So it's hard to kind of gauge. I mean, it's like when you go to Karnak in Brittany, everything there is supersized, all the megalists there, the average. You get the kind of, you know, the whole Karnak region, and plume, and other places. And this is like that.

It's almost like the same builders who did that, did this in Britain. Some of these stones, again, they're huge. They weigh 40 tons. So many of the stones at Avebury, for those that really research this site, have names and special things attributed to them. Tell us about one of the more one or two famous stones at Avebury. Yeah, you've got like the throne stone that caught you sitting on, got a few photos which is like, that's the area that kind of

where the main stone circle joins one of the avenues and they've got these giant stones on either side. And then you've got the Adam and Eve stones. They're located actually at the end of the other avenue towards the west. And yeah, and there's the Cove as well, which is in the northern part of the stone circle, which is like we get a stand to Drew as well.

You get almost like a separate, like three stones originally, kind of making this little alcove area where the name comes from, but there's two, I think, stones still remaining there. And so, yeah, you have all these different parts of the site, you have the sanctuary as well, which at the end of the main Kennet Avenue, which used to be a stone circle, like a concentric stone circle. And yeah, you have a whole bunch of,

you have a few random spots as well where the energy is really strong you can really feel it and i think um there's even a stone we played like an instrument remember we went up to that stone in like one of the quadrants and uh it's got all these holes in it which naturally occur in this sandstone or sarsen it's called a certain type of sandstone and my friend steve alex ali is also an author and an acoustic engineer he actually played the stone originally years ago and actually managed to get the whole song, tubular bells out of it by Mike O'Field, because all the different notes were there. He actually presented that and did a whole version of that on Megalithomania conference some years ago.

And so, yeah, there's many different elements of this whole landscape because it's not just one site, it's a landscape temple. It's like multiple sites. We went to see some of them, like Silbury Hill and West Kennet, but there's Windmill Hill, there's the sanctuary, there's the Devil's Den, which is like a dolment. which you have to walk about a mile and a half to get to. That was originally a long barrow, I think.

And yeah, so there's missing stone circles. There's other missing megaliths that are now vanished from that whole area. So, yeah, that is a really, really important part of the megalithic history of Britain. And it was handy to have Hugh's books with us on the trip. Let me zoom in so you can see this. Hugh, that had to feel good at most of the bookstores around these. sites, your books were hanging out there for people to buy. And so this is a handy book. I'll plug some of Hughes other books. If you're interested in this topic of ancient Britain,

Hughes written some of the best. This one's called Megalithic Studies in Stone, and it breaks down all these sites like Avebury like we were just talking about. So one of the thing about Avebury was there was this little side museum there. And somebody in our group tipped me off, hey, have you seen the story? skulls in there. And so my eyes perked up when I hear strange skulls. And so I think it was like $6 to go in. And sure enough, they had some skeletons and skulls, but two were fascinating. And if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, you're going to see these schools I'm talking about. But these are, according to Maria Wheatley, again, author and researcher that was with us,

These strange, small-looking skulls are hybrids similar to what you'd see in Paracas, Peru, shaped differently. If you look close, they've got skinny faces and an elongated skull that protrudes backwards. And according to her, these are part of the ancients who had something to do with these sites. Hugh, anything you want to share about what Maria was saying about these skulls? Yeah, no, quite a few elongated skulls have been found. I mean, Maria's written a whole book on it about the elongated skulls of Stonehenge. And she's really the kind of expert on this, especially the British ones that have been found. But there's ones in Avebury, there's ones at West Kennet that were kind of strange to elongated, even with Drapanning in them as well.

But there's numerous other examples as well. We find upon the different islands around Scotland, like the Outer Hebride. and some of the other islands, they found evidence of cranial deformation up there. And they have in a few other spots as well. Definitely, Trapanning is a thing that would seem to be a worldwide phenomenon. But traditionally, if you go back and look at the types of

different sort of styles of human, if you like. Going back to the Neolithic, we have the kind of slightly longer-headed, shorter kind of indigenous folk who were kind of here in England. And then when the beaker people came in, what they've been called, that they came in from kind of Europe around 2,500 BC onwards. And they were larger, more broad, rounder heads, and more robust and powerful kind of people who kind of eventually kind of bred their way into the kind of culture here and kind of became

the dominant culture. So the earlier folk, they're the ones that had the longer heads. And this is something, this is what Maria focuses on in her work. So there are still some examples. Keep coming out. and she found this one near Stonehenge and this really long burial mound this very long long barrow

and that was what she focused her book on she believed it was some kind of priestly kind of queen almost if you like of the Stonehenge area there may have been a matriarchal kind of lineage that was being held held together back then and this was the evidence of that

so yeah certainly we do get this phenomena in the archaeology of Britain as well So after Avebury, we went and saw Silbury Hill, I believe it's pronounced. That was cool. It's like an ancient mound right there in England. But I know we're running out of time and I want to get to all these other statues we saw. So tell us about West Kennet Long Barrow, this 5,600-year-old burial chamber.

It was just amazing to me where this was located. It was so remote. You hiked way up this hill. it felt like in the middle of nowhere and on the top of this hill is this ancient burial chamber and it was probably the most fantastic of all that we went into.

Tell us about West Kennet Longbarrow. Yeah, this goes way back. I mean, it's one of the earliest structures in Britain actually. So it's, and you can still go inside it. So basically used to be about something like, you know, 300 feet long or something crazy like this. But really

only about 50, 60 feet is the actual construction. The rest of it was just kind of the extension of it. And this would have been a burial place, but also it would have been used because it's aligned perfectly east. It would have been used to make, because you're on top of a hill here as well. You've got astronomical alignments. There'd be the energy in there's crazy.

You kind of really pick up on it. There's acoustics. It's been designed acoustically. People have done experiments in there and going into like crazy altered states and things like this. And even when it was closed up, I think the beaker people, when they come in, they come in and bought a giant stone. a blocking stone on the front of it and even buried their dead in it as well you know interred

in there as well and they found about 30 or 40 skeletons in there some of these appear to be elongated and these were the older neolithic folk and yeah and as you when you're up there you look and you can see silbury hill which is this gigantic um mound the biggest in europe that would have originally it looks like a mound now but it would have originally been a chalk step pyramid but a circular one, you know, and so it would have had no grass on it. So it would have been like something you see in ancient Mexico or Egypt. And all around it, they kind of built, they kind of carved out the landscape. So water would flood into it as well.

So it would have been this amazing, amazing part of the landscape. And this is all near Avebury. It's all connected with Avebury. Yeah, you just get the sense, man, it felt so ancient inside this tomb. and it was so deep inside and multi-chambered inside. And then if you see the drone shots and just walk around the outside, it's so long going back. So, boy, that was such an experience to have.

And then to see Silbury Hill in the distance, and you just get the sense of how all of this is aligned. It's incredible to think about these ancient cultures. So the next day, we get up and we go after a nice, English breakfast, eating my beans. We drove to Stanton Drew about 40 minutes north of Glastonbury. And this was another fascinating stone circle that was larger than I would have imagined. Tell us about Stanton Drew and why it was important enough to be included in this tour.

Yeah, well, basically, it's the second or third largest stone circle in the British Isles. you know you weren't the only one that's anywhere close that is long mag up in cumbria or the ring of broadguard in orkney obviously apris the biggest and so this is like a perfectly circular this i mean there's actually three stone circles there of three different sizes and they're all perfectly circular with about 30 stones in the big one but even that they found later that it used to have this concentric post holes they found which would have had these giant wooden posts like hundreds of them and no one really knows what that was used for, but had a big henge around it as well. And this is a fascinating.

So it's actually called the Weddings of Stanton Drew. That's the name of it, because the tradition is the legend states that it was a wedding party were dancing on the Saturday before midnight. And then this fiddler got tired, so he went away. And then this other amazing fiddler came in, started playing, kept them all dancing. But he was the devil.

And when it reached midnight and went into the Sabbath, Sunday they all got turned to stone and this is what you see at the Stanton Drew they say it's the dancers the revelers the bride and groom were actually at this other part of the site called the cove and so this is the tradition that they state what created Stanton Drew but there's alignments perfect north-south alignments as astronomical alignments to the solstices to the extreme points of the moon or other such things built into the design of this particular site And it's funny to see, you know, you're just out there basically in a cowfield. Cow is walking around.

I think I met the friendliest cow in the world there at the Stanton Drew Stone Circles. But it was quite the experience. After Stanton Drew, we went to, I believe it's called the Druid Arms Pub. And you're thinking, why are you going to a pub? Well, to get a drink. Well, actually, there was something to see in the garden of the pub is one of the coolest-looking. giant standing stones I've seen. Tell us about the megaliths in the garden of the Druid

Druid Arms Pub. Yeah, this is part of Stanton and Drew. It's like a kind of outlier stones, really. And it's called the Cove. Again, we've got three stones that would have created this alcove, if you like. People think it could have been a long barrow or something before that. But these are gigantic. One of the stones actually like a T-shape almost or half a T-shape.

And this is older than Stanton Drew. So this would have been the first. part of the site. And naturally the pub, the public house, which is very ancient, it's been hundreds of years, got named the Druid's Arms, which I think is a perfect name for a pub. And it would have been more appropriate to call the one in Avebury that, but they call it the Red Lion. So yes, this is again, this is part of the greater landscape around Stanton Drew. And that giant standing stone in that garden, to me, had the most pronounced cut in the bottom of it, which I thought was fascinating because it literally looked like a cut where you could

have seen a toolmark. Do you think that was original or did somebody do that later? It's hard to know. It's hard to know because there's a strange type of stones like a conglomerate type of stone. So people have been messing with these stones for a very long time. But there was certainly a shape. There's a shape on it, isn't there? Like the T shape. It's almost like half a T shape. I think that that's original. And some people have even suggested it may have joined up with another part of the stone which is maybe missing or buried, that would have been like a porthole, you know, kind of facing outwards from this alcove or this long barrow.

Yeah, and it was just at that site specifically, it was so interesting. You know, you see these ancient Neolithic stones, and then in the distance you see a medieval castle overshadowing you. So it made for some great photos. After that, we went to Glastonbury, I believe, to explore the legendary Isle of Avalon, where we went to Glastonbury Abbey. Give us a little breakdown of why we were at this site, and who is supposedly buried there and how it relates to giants.

Yeah, this is it. This is, I mean, the Glastonbury Abbey, I mean, I lived in Glastonbury for many years. That's actually right where we do our conference every year in May, the town hall, which goes into the Abbey Grounds version. and this is a really incredible abbey if you're into that kind of stuff it's in grotes ruins it's the oldest largest abbey in britain and they preserved what they can it was destroyed by king henry the eighth dissolution of the monasteries and all this kind of stuff but there's been structures there

since the two or three hundred a d so and and so they see circular structures even a legend that Joseph or Arimathea would come over with the baby Jesus when Joseph was mining for tin up on the Mendip hills nearby. But it's an amazing kind of series of ruins. And it's as old as some of the Mayan pyramids in Mexico. It actually looks a bit like that. I think I pointed it out to you. It feels like you're in a kind of ancient Maya site because there's all grassland.

There's like trees everywhere. And it's just the way the ruins look. It just reminds me of being in Mexico, even though the weather's probably quite different there. But one of the areas and one of the stories, this is from way back in 1191, there was this rumor that all the kind of monks at the Abbey heard that King Arthur was buried at this place called St. Dunstanis,

which is the original name of the Abbey area. And even the royal family knew something about this. So they ended up digging, and they found these giant, the story goes they had this vision that they would find it between two pyramids of all things but actually these were like almost obelisk shaped structures of the pointy top probably 20 feet tall partly buried that went back to the kind of iron age or early Christian era and they dug down into the ground in a certain part of the abbey got a certain way down they found this lead cross about

this big this cross say when in Latin on it had he realized the burial of King Arthur and Gwynavir in Latin and they were like, whoa, so they carried on digging down and they found this giant oak log coffin. It's almost like a sarcophagus with this nine and a nine plus foot skeleton in it. And a second skeleton in some stories, a female and was holding a blonde plate of hair in her hand, suggesting it was Gwynnevere and King Arthur. But the fact that it was nine over nine feet tall, and this was reported. recorded loads of people visited it it became the sensation but everyone they wanted it to be king arthur because he was the big hero in all the stories from about the sixth century onwards

but actually it probably wasn't it was probably like an earlier group of giants who were called the kangik giants who were known to exist in this area there's also you know from a book from the 1600s and they were said to have built stonehenge as well funnily enough and um and so there's this whole kind of drama occurred than about 100 years later they decided to in this big pomp and ceremony with the royal family involved and everything else they moved the burial to another area in the abbey in the central kind of high altar part of the abbey with this giant black sarcophagus and then re-buried it with all this

big drama and ceremony and everything else associated with it and then when the dissolution of the monastery has happened all got destroyed anyway so it kind of vanished from existence But the fact is, you know, the skeleton, the skull was so large that the discoverer could put his fist through the eye socket of the skull. And so this is what we're talking about here. This is one of dozens of accounts we find in Somerset, we find across the West Country. And we cover, you know, me and Jim Vieira in our book. Yeah, it was quite interesting to stand on the spot where this legendary giant was apparently unearthed. And if you want them to learn more about giants, Get Hughes book, The Giants of Stonehenge and Ancient Britain, great book.

And I think you talk about this account in that book, correct? Yeah, we analyze it in great detail, actually. We look into all the old records. We worked with another author who's done some research on it, Yuri Leach, and he gave us permission to use his artwork in it as well. And yeah, I mean, it's a genuine thing. It's not like, you know, the dozens or so people who saw this are going to just make this up. This is like what we find with many of the giant accounts in Britain. There's lots of scholars, famous people, people of the clergy and other such things.

And so, yeah, it's a compelling, compelling story. Something else to hit on real quick when we were at this site. There was what was called the Chalice Wellver. And while we were there, I mean, it was such an amazing. garden-esque scene at this garden. It was so beautiful. It was literally like an enchanted garden. But you were telling me that you actually believe this well as very ancient and even

possibly megalific in the sense where it's dressed deep inside with, you know, cut stones and it's not just some hole in the ground. Tell us about this well real quick. Yeah. Yeah, this is the chalice well. It's a modern name they've given to it pretty much. last hundred years or so and um this is there's two springs in glastonbury there's the red spring and the white spring now people get confused about that because they come out of the ground lots

of different places but they come out the ground they both appear at the base of the tour glastonbury tour which is right next to the chel as well and the white spring is like calcium rich water which comes from the tour and then we have the red spring which is iron rich water which comes from mendip hills but they meet and come out the ground in the same place So this became a very sacred area for the people at this time, even for the people in the abbey as well. So it became all these legends associated with it, like the red and the white, the male, the female, all this kind of stuff.

And the chalice well itself, eventually there's evidence. You can actually see it if you actually look deep into the world. You can actually see quite megalithic blocks creating quite a neat and tidy kind of well. so the water could be collected quite easily by those who needed it. And so this is ancient. This isn't like a modern thing. And so that I find really intriguing that they were kind of like the people of the area, long before the abbey, probably the giants, the megalith builders of this whole region,

you know, people who made Stanton drew and everything else. This is what they were doing there. We saw several other cool ancient sites and another museum. which we don't have time to talk about. I want to close with the time we have left talking about the final two big sites we saw. And the first one was Wayland Smithy, I believe is what it's called. And this was one of my favorite sites that we saw. I've always wanted to see this.

It was on my bucket list. I can now say it's checked off. But this Wayland Smithy, where it was located seemed so remote. again it was way up a top of hill it felt like in the middle of nowhere and it was just so peaceful up there the birds were chirping

there was a gentle breeze and then when most of the group started to hike back to the buses I kind of camped out by myself and it was just so peaceful tell us about Wayland Smithy and the legend that you shared in how it got its name

yeah this is a beautiful Long Barrow that goes back to the same era as West Kennet Long Barrow and this is along the Ridgeway this ancient trackway and it's also right next to Uffington Dragon or White Horse which is another hill figure in the area and this is in Oxfordshire so it's further north than Avebury and this is remarkable siteway in the smithy it's you know it's megalithic it used to be a wooden construction with giant kind of logs at the entrance at the back of it and it got transformed into this megalithic burial chamber.

It's now in this kind of copse of trees. And this, yeah, it goes away better. There's the giant Wade is associated with it. He's from a kind of Scandinavian tradition. Who could fly and he was related to Cygnus and everything else. But his son, Wayland, was supposed to be the builder of Wayland Smithy in tradition. And what happens is if you take your horse and you leave a coin overnight, wayland will fix the hoofs and the horseshoes of that of your particular kind of mare and actually

the money would disappear and it would be fixed and you're going to collect the horse in the morning but the thing is these were actual giants like wade was a giant and whalen his son was supposed to be a giant as well so you have these stories even though these are later traditions than the neolithic bronze age it do seem to kind of have this connection and just the location of it's fascinating because you've got dragon hill nearby you've got uffington white horse you've got uffington hill fort as well next to it and we went and this is all in the same area this is all along the ridgeway remember so this is an ancient trackway that goes all the way across southern england connects with the icneiled way as you go further to the east to the slightly northeast this is actually the path of the michael line as well

the alignment, the main axis across southern England that was discovered by John Michelle as well. So it's a very important area, you know, for lots of people move through these areas. And Whalen Smithy is one of those places. You just get it to yourself. You can have it to yourself for hours on end. And it's got this magical, magical quality about it. The Grandaddy of all ancient stone circles, and that is Stonehenge. And I did a post about Stonehenge, my visit there on Instagram and elsewhere.

And I shared how, you know, having visited so many other ancient epic sites like the Great Pyramid and Machu Picchu, I wondered what it would actually be like to visit this place. And to be honest, I wondered if I might be let down, you know, how would it compare to Machu Picchu or the Great Pyramid? And so I had these thoughts in my mind. And the morning that we woke up to go to see it, unfortunately, there was this steady rain pouring down from dark clouds in the sky in July. In Britain, it was like it was spring there. It was pretty dark the whole trip and gray and often rainy.

And so that was a bummer. But about the exact moment that we arrived to go into the private visit, of Stonehenge. It was like the clouds parted and the rain stopped. And there was Stonehenge and all her glory. And it was it was larger. It was grander than I had imagined. It felt primordial. It felt mysterious. And just immediately, I'm thinking, how did the ancients, 5,000 plus years ago, transport these massive stones that are 20 plus feet high, 40 plus tons and weight. How did they transport them over 30 miles away? And how did they come to have such advanced astronomical knowledge that enabled them to

align these stones, this stone circle with the summer solstice sunrise and stuff like that? So tell us about Stonehenge. You've written a lot about it. blow our minds with everything you know about Stonehenge in the next five minutes. For sure. No, Stonehenge is pretty much the ultimate megalithic site in Britain. It's utterly unique as well. People don't realize this, but it's unique. There's no other stone circle like this. There's over a thousand reported stone circles in the British Isles.

And there's nothing like this. It's a shaped, carved stones, perfectly circular arrangement, with lintels on top, which is slightly curved. There's sturdy of those as well. they have mortis and tenon joints like in carpentry like a nub two nubs on top of each stone than with cut marks place on as well so this is really advanced engineering uh when you come to it and then inside that you've got these five trillathons these gigantic like two stones up one across the top lintels again and they get bigger the further you go to the back of the site then you have like the altar stone which they now think comes from orkney an actual block like a big rectangular

block they think now comes from Orkney this is now being published there's a whole paper on this coming out so there's this Alkney connection which is well which is mind-blown let's the earliest megaliths come from that area and then we have the four station stones as well which create this rectangle which are just sitting inside the outer hinge and these four station stones actually if you divide them they create these two Pythagorean triangles and they're five 1213 Pythagorean whole number triangles, perfectly megalithic yard, distance, distances and everything else. And so it's pretty epic. And then when you start looking into the invisible aspects of it as well, you realize that just

this, these huge sort of double triangle, this rectangle, the alignments on each side of it mark the different extreme moon rises and sets over the 18.6 year cycle, which is actually happening this summer. We actually were there when it was happening. And so, and they only work at this latitude as well. This latitude is extremely important. So you get this perfect rectangle, but the moon extremes are recorded within it. If you were to go 10, 20 miles north, the rectangle would become like this kind of weird shape.

So everything was based around this latitude. It's really important. Also, this works with the summer solstice alignment as well, which is what, when you stand at the back of the stones, and you look through this gap, you know, of this trillathon, then there's a, something called the hill stone and before that the slaughter stone heading down a huge earthen avenue which stretches for a mile or two and changes direction that is all carved out to mark the summer solstice sunrise which thousands of people celebrate every year they go there they can actually go in the stones there's actually a druid organization that makes sure people still can have

access but the opposite direction perfectly this again only works at this latitude is the winter solstice sunsets. It's exactly opposite the summer solstice sunrise. Now again, you have to be at specific latitudes for all of this to work and this is where it works. So whoever chose the location of Stonehenge

knew what they were doing. And also, if you go back even further, because we know Stonehans is around 5,000 or just under 5,000 years old. If you go back double that time to 10,000 years ago, there used to be these giant

wooden post holes which were like three feet wide each up to 30 feet to possibly totem poles and three or possibly five of them they now think was placed at the location of stonehenge 10,000 years ago marking this latitude so they were they were doing stuff even that far back so we're talking like in the mesolithic era and so it's pretty amazing when you start thinking about you know how long people have been in this area I mean where I live very close to Stone Edge, as you know, I live within this zone. And so I'm living in, this is the oldest continually inhabited part of Britain. This has been continually inhabited for 10,000 years.

Where you stayed in the Antrobus Hotel, which is, as you probably realize, is haunted. And they did a whole ghost tour for some of the guests there, which makes it more interesting. And this whole area is ancient. Even in Amesbury itself, the end of the avenue curves, to an area next to the river Avon and there there used to be a stone circle and these were made of the blue stones which you also find in stone here so you find this inner ring of blue stones now what are the blue stones these are stones that have been transported 130 miles from the priscilla mountains of Wales so they were bringing stones 130 miles from away probably 20 or 30 maybe even 50 of these stones which weigh up to four tons each and these are the smaller ones in the site but they're still pretty epic and this is like what's known as spotted dollarite

so when you polish it up it looks like the night sky dark blue night sky with specks on it and even like little areas where the kind of specs increase it looks like the milky way on it and things like this and in tradition this blue stone as stated by Merlin

this is all the old stories we go back to the 11th 12th century They said this was a healing stone. When you poured water in it and collected the water, it would be you have healing properties. And so you have this whole thing. And lastly, you must remember that the original name of Stonehenge is called the Giants Dance or in Welsh, quiet gigantum.

So this is really intriguing. And because basically that is what it was known about until Saxon times when they changed the name of it to the hanging stones or Stonehenge. So there's this whole kind of tradition there that the stones, you know, if you look at these 12th century texts, the history of the Kings of Britain. They talk about giants bringing the stones over from the deepest recesses of Africa, bringing them to a place in Ireland called Killarousse and then Merlin transporting them over here. And then we have all these giant skeletons we're found in the area in the 1500s. There was a 14-foot 10-inch skeleton found in near Salisbury, a place called Ivy Church Priory, which is observed. by many very famous people and also in the 1719 a 9-foot-4-inch skeleton was found in a mound

called the giant's grave of all things again near Solisbury this is all in the greatest stonehenge landscape so there's much more going on at stonehenge and what i'm telling you here but i think that gives you a good summary of some of the things we were looking into plus oh i've got to mention the scoop marks which i showed you remember those yeah on the stones it looks like the stones being softened Like you get at Machu Picchu and Wiente Tambo and Azwon Quari. So they scooped the stones. There's two or three really important stones there, which suggests they had a stone softening technique that no one really knows about.

So yeah, there's a lot more stonehenge than meets the eye. Yeah, that was so awesome to see up close, these scoop markings that you were pointing out. And then the nubs on top of the one trilophon and elsewhere. it's one thing to see photos. It's another thing to be there and walk really literally right through the center of the stones. So another book for Hugh L. Plug is his book Stone Circles. And it's a cool little book, and it hits on all these sites we've talked about and gives you all the stuff you really want to know.

So Hugh, thank you again for partnering with me on this tour and all the hard work that went into making it happen. It was a lot of fun And we all learned so much And so thanks again And before we close Tell everybody your latest projects How they can follow you And join your upcoming tours

And for sure, yeah They can just search for Hugh Newman Or megalithomania.com.com. Yeah, we've got a whole bunch of research We're working on My t-shirt, Carahan Tepe, Quebec Leitepe at the moment. Me and JJ, I've got a small book out on that as well.

Would a book. And yeah, we're focusing on that for the next six months to a year. But yeah, we do, as you know, we do conferences and tours. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one. And yeah, we do the England tour. As you know, every July. Tours out to Quebec.

Tepe in other places. You know, there's tons. There's a whole megalithic world to explore. It was great, man. thanks for doing this interview to everybody watching. Please subscribe to this podcast, whether it's YouTube, Spotify, and give me a five-star rating if you can. That helps me bust through the algorithms and climb the charts.

So Hugh, thanks again, and best of luck on your next adventures. Thanks so much, Dee. It was great exploring with you, and your driving skills really came to the fore. Thank you.