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The Cambridge 7-Church Ley

Nigel Pennick & Michael Behrend

Source:​ ​Journal of Geomancy​ Vol. 3 No. 2, January 1979, pp. 31-38.


Since the rediscovery of aligned sites by William H. Black and the
formulation of a coherent theory of alignments by Alfred Watkins, the bane
of ley research has been accuracy. Mathematicians can put forward
randomness tests and discern the likelihood of an alignment being chance or
designed, but, owing to the large scales involved, it is rarely possible to state
with a great degree of accuracy the exact position which a ley line passes
through any building placed upon it. This difficulty is of course most
pronounced in long alignments in country districts where large-scale plans
are difficult to obtain, if indeed they actually exist. In cities, however, the
Ordnance Survey have been busy, and extremely accurate maps and even
plans have been made of them. Cambridge is one such city, and it possesses
a remarkable {​ 32}​ ley comprising no fewer than seven pre-reformation (and
some pre-conquest) sites, the site of one of the gates of the medieval city and
several other ‘pointers’. This ley was first noticed by Nigel Pennick in 1967,
and was first mentioned in Cambridge Voice series 2 number 4, 1970, on a
front cover feature. Its shortness (3000 feet) and existence in a single town
makes it an admirable ley for close study, and this report is the result of
detailed work both in the field and on maps up to 1:500 scale (OS circa
1886). The ley is of special interest because of its connexion with the Holy
Sepulchre church, one of the few remaining round churches of the Knights
Templar. The ley starts exactly at the centre of the rotunda of the Holy
Sepulchre, at the point where the altar would have stood in Templar days,
making the line a radial. The church is one of those based on the octagon,
but the ley does not pass through the centre of one of the eight pillars,
though it does pass through the more westerly of the two southern pillars.
Passing through a wall, not a window, the ley crosses the graveyard towards
Bridge Street, and cuts through the corner of a secular building, probably an
ancient boundary, as the shops which now exist there are reconstructions of
buildings dating back to at least the seventeenth century and maybe earlier.
Across Bridge Street, it passes through several buildings including the Flying
Stag, at present the home of Glyn Daniel, Disney Professor of Archaeology at
Cambridge University and staunch opponent of geomancy.
For several hundred yards the line crosses through various buildings and
cuts All Saints Passage, Green Street and Rose Crescent. Beyond the
crossing with Rose Crescent is St. Michael’s church, the only church on this
line which no longer has regular Sunday services. The nave of the church
was turned into a hall over ten years ago, and is totally desacralized, being
used for jumble sales, Open University events and other profane
happenings. The eastern end is still retained for worship, and the ley runs
across the eastern end, outside the wall, through the buttresses. The east
wall is exactly parallel with the line, which must have therefore determined
the orientation of the whole church. Lines parallel with walls have an
archaeologically-determined precedent – the Governor’s Palace at Uxmal,
Yucatan, Mexico, where a star-alignment is sighted along the outside of a
wall (Horst Hartung, Die Zeremonialzentren der Maya, Graz, 1971). The
church building is linked into the ley through the buttresses, so there is
actual contact. From the centre of the round church to the axis of St.
Michael’s is 886·5 English feet, 806·8 Saxon feet. The latter measure will be
quoted throughout, as it appears to be significant in the laying-out of the
line. From St. Michael’s (illustration 2 shows the east end in Caius College),
the ley crosses through W.H. Smith’s book and magazine shop, across St.
Marys’s Street, and into the church of Great St. Mary’s. This church is the
so-called University Church, the place where official services for the
University are held. It is the largest church on this alignment, and a circle
cut in the southern buttress of the door at the west end (not on this line) is
taken as the centre of the city of Cambridge, the point from which all
distances from Cambridge are measured. Add to this the uncanny elevation
of its incumbents to the status of Bishop, and the importance of the site may
be gauged.

The line enters Great St. Mary’s along the edge of a small priest’s door on the
north side of the St. Andrew’s Chapel. This is now blocked, and the site of an
aumbry which, from the light burning above it, holds the reserved
sacrament. This chapel is the venue for evening prayers each night at 6 pm.
From the centre of the Holy Sepulchre church to the priest’s station before
the altar of the St. Andrew’s chapel is 1002 Saxon feet – surely a significant
distance, as further evidence will prove. The ley touches a pillar’s edge on
leaving the St. Andrew’s chapel, crosses the chancel, the south chapel, and
passes out of the church by means of a window. The ley then crosses the
southern part of the churchyard, St. Mary’s Passage, and various buildings
before entering the churchyard of St. Edward, King and Martyr. The ley
penetrates the corner of the west end of St. Edward’s, travels through the
staircase of the turret and leaves for the next site on its path – Bene’t’s.
Before reaching St. Bene’t’s (St. Benedict’s to be precise), the ley touches the
corner of the medieval Friar’s House, now a fancy goods shop, at the
entrance to Free School Lane.
St. Bene’t’s is the oldest church in the city, having a Saxon tower dated to c.
1020. The ley enters through <a> wall and leaves just cutting the edge of a
window. It misses the central pillars of the church. After St. Bene’t’s, the ley
crosses Corpus Christi college before entering St. Botolph’s, which it enters
by a window, passing through {​ 33}​ the central panel of the three-panelled
window. In the nave it crosses the radius of the landscape geometry
heptagon (see Landscape Geometry of Southern Britain, IGR). The distance
of this crossing from the Holy Sepulchre centre is 2162·8 English feet,
1968·3 Saxon feet. The ley then cuts directly through the centre of a pillar on
the south side of the nave, cuts the edge of the wall at the entrance to the
Holy Trinity chapel, and crosses in front of the altar of that chapel. Again,
just as in the St. Andrew’s chapel of Great St. Mary’s, the line exactly passes
in front of the altar, directly over the priest’s station at the position in which
he would celebrate the Mass. The distance from the centre of the Holy
Sepulchre is 1998 Saxon Feet. With an error of 0.2%, the centre of the round
church is thus 1000 Saxon feet from the St. Andrew’s Chapel and 2000 feet
from the priest’s station in the Holy Trinity chapel. Such a periodicity on an
alignment is surely an indication of some important, if lost, practice,
perhaps of activating the line by saying mass (or some other ritual formula)
at fixed distances along it simultaneously. The ley leaves St. Botolph’s by a
window, crosses Botolph Lane and goes through some buildings before
emerging exactly through the corner of what is now the Penguin Bookshop.
At this point, the ley traverses the junction of King’s Parade, Trumpington
Street and Pembroke Street, the site of the erstwhile Trumpington Gate of
the medieval city of Cambridge, the point where the artificial watercourse
known as the King’s Ditch formerly crossed the road – an important point in
the geomancy of any city, being the access point of spiritual as well as
secular and military friends and foes alike. After the Trumpington Gate site,
ley enters relatively modern buildings before passing through a Victorian
church – the Emmanuel {​ 34}​ United Reformed Church (formerly
Congregational). The significance of nineteenth-century churches on ley
lines remains enigmatic, but just a little further south is the medieval church
of St. Mary the Less (formerly dedicated to St. Peter, the same dedication as
a small, now redundant, church on the other side of the river in the Borough
– the old Roman town). The ley entered St. Mary’s by a door, now blocked,
and left by a window in the west end of the church. It was rebuilt drastically
during the last century, and the whole of the west end now bears little
resemblance to the former layout. However, the reconstructors saw fit to
insert fragments of a pre-conquest stone cross in the wall at the point where
the ley leaves the southern side of the church.

From St. Mary’s the line has been traced as far as the south coast. It passes
20 metres to the east of the former Trumpington mound, which has since
been erased from both reality and the Ordnance Survey maps. It also misses
the Thriplow tumulus by 25 m, this time, to the west.

The most important site which the ley traverses is the Palace of the Bishops
of London at Much Hadham. The Bishops were bequeathed the manor in
950, so the present 16th century building may well be on the site of the
former Saxon manor. The Saxon connexion is continued!

The ley crosses nothing else of any significance between Much Hadham and
the south coast.

ANALYSIS
The ley is characterized by the following: Mainly within the precincts of the
old City of Cambridge, it passes exactly through the centre of the round nave
of the Holy Sepulchre Church. The east wall of St. Michael’s Church is
exactly parallel to the line. It passes through two side chapels, both of which
are still in use, crossing the priest’s station at each one. The separation of
the centre of the round church and the two priests’ stations is 1000 Saxon
Feet. There are 7 pre-reformation churches in the line, 1 post-reformation
church, 3 corners of buildings, 2 road junctions, and the site of a city gate, all
within 3000 English feet. Carried southwards, the line crosses no other
significant pre-reformation site except the Palace of the Bishops of London.

The above points indicate a high degree of deliberation in the layout of this
ley. Its azimuth, 4.31° east of true north, precludes any solar or lunar
orientation, and foils any attempt to date it on astroarchaeological evidence.

It is often stated, sometimes on flimsy evidence, that leys tend to pass


through walls by means of windows, doors, squints and other apertures. In
this ley, we are able to analyze precisely (ie. correct to within 1 foot; 30 cm)
the entry-points of the ley into the churches. Of potential ‘walls’, the line
penetrates 6 whilst passing through 9 apertures. Of potential ‘pillars’ within
churches, it hits 2 and misses 3.

The dating of the ley by astronomical evidence, which is the usual procedure
for astroarchaeologists working on American or megalithic sites, is not
possible.

The Saxon metrology (table below), points to a Saxon origin of the churches
on the ley, yet the history of the city shows that it was not only Saxon but
also Danish until the 11th century. In 875, the Danish navy wintered at
Grantabrycge (as Cambridge was then called), and three years later it passed
into the hands of the Danelaw officially under the provisions of the Treaty of
Wedmore. It remained a Danish town – an important seaport, as the river
was navigable from the Wash – with its dock area around the Holm, an area
where St. Clement’s church now stands, just to the north of the Holy
Sepulchre. In the year 1010, the town was burnt down, and the oldest
surviving building, St.Bene’t, dates from the rebuilding of Cambridge at that
period. Because of the destruction of 1010, nothing predating this exists.
{35}

However, we have the problem of the Saxon feet. This is not so much a
problem when it is remembered that the English foot was not instituted until
an edict of king Edward I in 1305. Even then, he did not alter land measure,
which remains to this day (barring metrication) based upon the Saxon foot.
The fundamental measure was the Rod, which equalled 15 Saxon feet.
Edward made the now English foot fit the Rod – 16½ of them. Thus the
mile remained the same, being 5280 English feet instead of 4800 Saxon feet.
As the Saxon foot was in current use until at least 1305, it tallies with the
official estimate that the churches of Cambridge were all built by 1280,
mostly in the 12th and early part of the 13th century.

The origin-point of the ley, the Holy Sepulchre, dates from between 1114 and
1130. It was built upon a pre-existing sacred site, the Churchyard of St.
George. As a dragon-slaying saint, St. George is admirable as a dedication
for an omphalos, as the Holy Sepulchre is a microcosm of the world, the
centre of its rotunda being the omphalos about which rotates the flat circular
earth (in medieval cosmology).

In Saxon feet, the ley analyzes as follows:


The ley ties in with the landscape geometry of the city (see diagram on
right), which links the city churches and chapels with the rest of the country.
The 7-church ley, and the 6-church ley, both of which have 5 churches in
common, have a precise relationship to the heptagon, which defines the
orientation of King’s College Chapel with relation to the Whiteleaved Oak, an
important geomantic centre at the junctions of the counties of Hereford,
Worcester and Gloucester (now officially abolished for bureaucratic
reasons). Parliament Hill, an ancient holy site associated by some writers
with ancient Druidic rites, and the Gogmagog Hill Figures are on projections
of various alignments in the city of Cambridge, inferring that either the
alignments are part of a very ancient survey system whose knowledge was
perpetuated into mediaeval times, or that they are part of some earth energy
system, naturally divined by those who had need to use it.
The use of pre-Edwardian measure in the ley, but post-megalithic
dimensions infers a date around the millennium for the completed system.
As most of the churches are later, it could be taken as evidence for a twelfth
or thirteenth-century alignment. The laying-out of Salisbury Cathedral may
indicate the survival of a former science {​ 36}​ of surveying whose accuracy has
been underestimated by modern historians. When the activities of the
military garrison at Old Sarum became too troublesome for the clergy of the
cathedral which also occupied the ancient earthwork, they decided to move
the cathedral to a new site. Legend recounts how an arrow was shot from
the ramparts and the cathedral’s new site was defined by the place of the
arrow’s fall. However, the cathedral of Salisbury (or New Sarum) is on the
alignment from Stonehenge to Clearbury Ring, which is surely of far more
ancient provenance than the 1220 cathedral. The reference to the arrow may
provide the key. In the late middle ages, the ​baculum​ or Jacob’s Staff was
often called the ‘crossbow’ because of its superficial resemblance to that
weapon. The untutored townspeople, observing the surveyors’ visit to Old
Sarum in late 1219, may have mistaken the instruments for the weapon and
given rise to the folk-tale. The alternative idea of chance, so gaily trotted out
by the orthodox, is untenable in the face of the evidence. In the early 13th
century, the system of measurement would have been in subdivisions of
miles – furlongs, rods and saxon feet, the measure used in the 7 church ley
in Cambridge.
In the book Megalithic Software I, the Borsts list Cambridge as a ‘triangular
town’. The diagram below is redrawn from the Borsts’ on p. 106. The small
scale of their plan makes it difficult to reproduce accurately, but it appears
that their hypotenuse line is parallel with the 7 church ley. The thesis of
Megalithic Software is that the remains of former megalithic-period layout
still underlies many cathedrals and cities in Britain. Cambridge is supposed
to show in its general layout a number of 3,4,5 Pythagorean triangles, with
moduli of 40, 70, 100, 140,and 200 Megalithic Yards. The apex of this
triangle is between the Holy Sepulchre and St. Clement’s church, at
approximately the position of the Mitre public house. The bases of the
triangles form Green Street, Market Street, Bene’t Street and
Downing/Pembroke Street. The hypotenuse appears to be parallel with the
7-church ley, so why did the Borsts choose a line to the west of this –
perhaps because it coincides with part of St. John’s Street, and makes the
triangles integral in megalithic yards. The Borsts admit that the geometry is
probably not megalithic in age as a much more ingenious pattern of triangles
would be expected.
Finally, the 7-church ley’s extension to Much Hadham crosses an extension
of the southeast side of the Cambridge Vesica at a point equal in length from
the apex of the vesica to the side = 63x units.
..................................................

TEXT BY NIGEL PENNICK: CALCULATIONS BY MICHAEL BEHREND


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References:
Behrend, M: The Landscape Geometry of Southern Britain. IGR
Occasional Paper No. 1 (1975, repr.1976,1978).
Behrend, M: The Geometry of Cambridge in The Geomancy of
Cambridge(Pennick ed.), IGR (1977).

Borst, L.B., & Borst, H.M.: Megalithic Software I, New York,


(1975).

Hartung,H.: Die Zeremonialzentren der Maya, Graz (1971)

Pennick, N.: The Cambridge 7-church Ley, Arcana 5 (1973)

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