Walking myth into place: The damned landscape zodiac

The terrestrial or landscape zodiac is one of the more outré concepts to emerge from the 20th century discussions of ‘earth mysteries’, and unsurprisingly has not fared well in the more materialistic  intellectual climate of the 21st century. However, NE editor John Billingsley thinks the concept should not be dismissed outright, as it provides food […]

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Journeys of the Soul: Vernacular funeral paths in Upper Calderdale

Funeral paths, popularly known as corpseways, became a familiar topic in neo-antiquarian research in the 1980s when they entered discussions about leys as spirit roads. The association with leys faded, but they are still recognised as spirit paths of a kind, and often interact with hauntings and other supernatural encounters. In this book, John Billingsley

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Rushbearing & Ancient Measures books available again!

To tie in with the Sowerby Bridge Rushbearing Festival on the first weekend of September, we are pleased to be able to offer again Garry Stringfellow’s brief history of rushbearing customs in Sowerby Bridge and N England. https://northernearth.co.uk/books/ Also available by courtesy of the publishers is Peter Harris and Thomas Gough’s revised and heavily illustrated

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Treacle Mines

Eileen Roche dives into a folklore trope, and recommends ‘suspend disbelief here’   The subject of Treacle Mines has a long and interesting history, which I suspect will be of interest to some NE readers. I first became aware of their existence when some friends took me for a walk one hot summer’s day on

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An Intriguing Find: Geomythography from Scarba and Jura

Stuart McHardy introduces the idea of geomythography, with an example of the insights to which this process may lead.   Geomythography is a process of analysing landscape and society over time through evidence from oral tradition, archaeology, place-names, ritual and belief and the landscape itself. Significantly shaped hills – ‘paps’ – in various parts of

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The View from the Henge Bank: Northern Earth or Northern Chorography?

Bob Trubshaw unearths a more time-honoured terminology for earth mysteries research   Should readers of Northern Earth be referred to as ‘earth mysterians’? Or as ‘neo-antiquarians’? Or what? Like ‎Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme, who discovers rather late in life that he has been speaking prose all along, it seems we have always been chorographers. No, not

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