ALIGNMENTS AT CHARLEY KNOLL
BY STEVE PYRAH
For some reason, back in the early part of the last century, Alfred Watkins looked for and found alignments of sacred sites on our English landscape. He called these alignments ‘ley lines’, and ever since then most everyone else with a metaphysical bent has looked for them too. Charles Holderness looked for them at the crop formation of Charley Knoll and found four alignments.
Charley Knoll's shape begs the investigator to follow its lines on a map to see where they point. Studying photos taken at the site I found that the top part of the shaft of the cross had a bearing of 65.5 degrees / 245.5 degrees, and I estimated the shaft’s lower part to be 67deg./ 247deg. The arm pointed 159deg. / 339deg., the 'key' was estimated at 192deg. pointing away from the hole at the top of C.K hill which was created by the quarrying of stone to build the farm houses in the early nineteenth century. Now surrounded by dead and dying trees the quarry hole regularly fills with rain water and is now a no-go area because it is the site of a microwave communications tower, there is a large notice tied to a tree warning people to stay out. Nearby is a natural spring that, so the ex-farmer told me, slowed down to a trickle when the M1 motorway was built.
Anyway back to Charles Holderness’ findings at Charley Knoll. Using the ordnance survey grid locations of these places and a bit of algebraic geometry the accuracy of these alignments can be worked out. The hills and Charnwood church on his list should be ignored for these alignment calculations because there is no such church and the hills are too large.
Starting from the North / South line and working clockwise.
Line 1. Diseworth church to Eastwell church has the bearing of 65.6deg. / 245.6deg. and the centre of the cross of Charley Knoll formation is offset 60.6 metres from this line.
Line 2. Grace Dieu church to Swithland church 113.4deg. / 239.4deg. offset is 35.9 metres.
Line 3. Belton church to Old John tower 140.7deg. / 320.7deg. offset = 50.8 metres.
Line 4. Diseworth church to Ulverscroft priory 158.1deg. / 338.2deg. offset. = 4 metres
Another line can be added, I discovered that Copt Oak church and the Temple of Venus aligned with the angle of the 'key' with an offset of just 22.9 metres.
Lining up with line 1 at 65.5 deg. is the top part of the main shaft of the formation Whilst line 4 lines up with the 159 o bearing of the formations arms.
The nearest offset is just 4 metres short of the centre of the formation, the furthest is 60.6 metres off. The diagram shows that all bar one of the alignments actually cut through the formation in perfect alignment. WHY?
