Coin Trees

A new ‘tradition’, or a new artefact? Members of the NEReaders subscribers’ e-group in 2005 discussed what appears to be an increasingly ubiquitous feature of country parks, especially along paths near rivers. The topic – ‘coin trees’, or, more accurately, ‘coin logs’ – involves what seems to be an example of evolving folklore – or […]

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Fox Haunting

North Yorkshire’s West Witton, home to the quasi-sacrificial ‘Burning Bartle’ ceremony every August 24, is certainly an atmospheric village, as Jan Reese recalls   In the late 1960s, when I was in my teens, I spent most of my holidays at a hotel in Wensleydale. My aunt, Renee Stansfield, was landlady of the Fox and

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The Kirk Stone

Gabriel Blamires suggests Cumbria’s Kirk Stone is a key link in a route system to the peaks of the Langdale Pikes  The Langdale Pikes, in the Lake District, were the site of a Neolithic axe factory whose products were prized all over Europe. Its remote location raises a number of questions, among which is how

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A Sacred Site in Romania

John Palmer introduces a sacred site in an unfamiliar territory to NE readers Perhaps the best-known ancient sacred site in Romania is the circular temple observatory and quadrangular sanctuary (one of seven, two of which are circular) of Sarmizegetusa Regia in Thrace – this was known in Roman times as Dacia, the ‘capital’ of Dacia

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