Wayland The Smith Cave

I was born and brought up within the Vale of the White Horse, and I grew up listening to stories about the area from parents, grandparents, family friends, and so on. I eagerly latched on to these stories – especially those about Wayland the Smith, within the parish of Ashbury.

As a child, parents would drive up to Wayland’s Smithy Cave with their children and a picnic. Pa would sprinkle a few silver thruppenny bits or sixpenny coins among the stones, and the children would be told to go and find Wayland’s treasure. Mum and Dad could then have some “quiet time.” Courting couples often used this location too – the site was, and still is, very evocative. I have so many pleasant memories from that time to this.

One can no longer drive along the Ridgeway, as bollards have blocked the way – and in hindsight, it was a good idea, as “green wheelers” had churned up the track beyond walking use. The Ridgeway has since been repaired in many places, making the half-mile walk to the site much cleaner and easier.

In 1962, Atkinson and his team came down from Bristol University to excavate this huge jumble of rocks. Atkinson was there for a whole year, turning over turf and stone, post holes, etc., and taking copious notes along the way. The following year, the team left Wayland’s Smithy Cave, having renamed it a two-chambered Neolithic (New Stone Age) long barrow.

The site now looks nothing like how I remembered it back then. Instead of a huge jumble of rock (sarsen stone), there now lies a manufactured, two-chambered Neolithic long barrow. I have no idea how Atkinson developed this idea, as the site – as I already said – looked as though a farmer, while ploughing the field, had hauled out the rocks and simply piled them at the edge.

I’ll just mention here that the word sarsen is a derivative of Saracen, meaning stranger. I say “stranger” because the landscape is made of chalk/clay limestone – a very soft material – while the scattered sarsen stones are extremely hard and very difficult to cut, even with 21st-century technology.

Unfortunately for Atkinson, when he stepped off the train at Bristol, he forgot to pick up all his notes from the arduous excavation – they were left behind on the train and lost forever. When he returned to the station to check the lost property office, no one had a clue what he was talking about. Atkinson then had to rewrite his notes from memory.

My thinking now is: if Atkinson forgot to pick up his notes from the train, how much information about this prestigious site was forgotten or omitted in the rewrite? Atkinson wasn’t working alone – he had a team behind him – so I would imagine the whole team had input. But still, I would say some information may well have been lost.

Was Wayland just a story? You decide. Whatever you decide – you will be correct.

Kit Andrews