TEMS member Bob Brown has long taken a keen interest in the mysteries of the British landscape. Having had his interest sparked by reading the work of Alfred Watkins, he has maintained that interest over many years and recently brought Watkins’ work and that of later writers to bear on a mystery he has discovered almost on his own doorstep. Ably accompanied by Eileen Grimshaw and her Amazing Powerpoint Presentation Capability, Bob recently talked to members about his discovery.

Bob regularly journeys from his home in Lancing, West Sussex, to Hampton to attend TEMS meetings, but it was in his home area, near to Shoreham by Sea, that he came upon the mystery of Sele. His talk concerned an enigmatic configuration of ancient churches centering on the site of a medieval priory known as Sele in the valley of the River Adur.

Having spent an "early misspent youth" in policing, Bob went on to work in local government estate management. The past has always held a fascination for him and he is a founder member of his local history society. A parallel interest in earth mysteries has meant that, at times, he has found himself in conflict with those at the ‘fogy’ end of the ‘loony/fogy gullibility resistance’ scale (on which he would place himself roughly in the middle!).

It was in the late sixties, whilst studying for his surveying exams, that Bob was "obliquely introduced" to Alfred Watkins and his Old Straight Track. He read the book and studied the maps, but the straightness of his career prevented him doing much more than that until some years later when he had more time on his hands. Watkins, whose book was first published in 1925, observed that many fixed geographical and man-made features on the ground followed laser straight lines across the landscape. He noted the lines joining hill-forts, stone circles, mounds, beacons, churches and many other man-made features and referred to these as ‘leys’. After Watkins’ death, little more was heard about ‘leys’ until the publication of John Michell’s The View Over Atlantis in 1969. Now a whole new interpretation was overlaid onto Watkins’ observations, with his alignments becoming ‘ley-lines’ which were seen as lines of energy, spiralling around the planet.

One evening, with the work of Watkins in mind, Bob was gazing at a local OS map, loofor circles, pentagrams, hexagrams ("or any kind of polygram at all!") using a straight edge and a pair of compasses when he noticed that several local churches seemed to be equidistant. Widening his search, he found more and more churches fitting a regular geometrical pattern. The centre of this formation was at Upper Beeding, ten metres above sea level, on the east bank of the River Adur, between spurs in the South Downs, North-East of Bramber Castle. This location was once used as a Benedictine Priory known as Sele Priory and today provides a home for the parish church of St Peter, its churchyard and an adjacent private residential building. According to the church guide-book, there was a pre-Norman Christian presence here, with the original Saxon building having been built some time after St Wilfred (King Alfred’s father) entered Sussex in AD 681. It seems likely, says Bob, that this spot has been used for sacred purposes since earliest times.

Centred on the spot that used to be Sele Priory is a web of landscape lines, linking the sites or buildings of 23 churches (27 if you include all those which fall within the pattern) covering an area of ten miles. Most of these churches are Norman or earlier, and most of the shapes formed between them (especially an isosceles triangle with angles at Ashurst and Henfield) are ‘mirrored’ (can be folded over each other). The distances between the churches are equal within a tolerance, suggests Bob, that seems unlikely to have occurred by coincidence, and he and Eileen have spent a considerable amount of time undertaking fieldwork, with Eileen putting her dowsing abilities to excellent use.

The ‘enigma’ of Sele springs from the original choice of this unique site. In earliest times, says Bob, sea and river levels would almost certainly have been much higher, resulting in a much larger flood plane. Even in medieval times the river level was many feet higher than today, with the villages of Steyning, Bramber and Beeding all navigable by boat. Sele would then have been a small island or peninsula, and other options for building in the area would have been strictly limited. Nothing too puzzling here, perhaps, says Bob. What is puzzling is the subsequent focus on this tiny site by later developments, mainly the site’s relationship with neighbouring ancient churches.

Possible clues to the enigma include an East/West Roman road which crossed the river nearby, a reputed ‘heretical’ interest in geometry among former inhabitants of the Priory, seals showing the Priory with its three towers and strange tree icons, and the fact that the vicarage which once occupied the site challenges the church in scale and "evokes a parallel to Saunier at Rennes".

Having presented his ‘Web of Sele’ Bob went on to ask the all-important question: is this just a random dispersion of building sites coincidentally giving rise to a regular (or very near regular) pattern, or should we seek an alternative hypothesis? From the sceptics has come a list of reasons why Bob should accept coincidence, including demands that he "get it statistically proved by someone" and arguments that "geology can throw up some jolly strange reasons for siting". From the other end of his ‘loony-fogy’ spectrum have come comments that his approach is far too analytical and that he needs to look at the phenomenon in a more spiritual way.

Preferring to at least consider the alternatives, Bob went on to present a wide-ranging list of possible explanations. Might the web represent a system of triangulation imposed on the landscape by unknown surveyors, prior to or contemporaneously with the construction of the churches? Could it be a system of ancient trackways, or a system of sacred landscape lines or features? Perhaps the web is a physical representation on the ground of detectable (or once detectable) energy currents, an aid to astronomical observation, a system of funeral paths, or some sort of physical representation on earth of the heavens? At a more abstract level, Eileen suggested in her short report on the dowsing exercise within the web that we consider how an understanding of Fibonacci numbers, fractals and central place theory might help us to interpret the secret held within this area of beautiful Sussex countryside.

A very big thank you to Bob and Eileen for a superb presentation. We hope Bob will publish his findings in due course!

Ann Hopkins © eTEMSNews 2004

Bob provides more information at: http://secretofsele.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/