The BBC News website has an interesting article about a new study of ancient sacred sites. The two examples highlighted are Alphamstone in Essex and Blick Mead in Wiltshire. The article can be read at Were these ice age rocks an ancient sacred place?
Alphamstone lies just to the south of the border of the county with Suffolk, and has a number of sarsen stones around the village, two of them in the churchyard and two more incorporated into the medieval church itself. This seeming continuity of worship from pagan belief to Christianity looks very similar to Stonor in Oxfordshire, Stanford Bishop in Herefordshire and the Rudston monolith in Yorkshire. In all four cases the historic church occupies and more or less incorporates the far more ancient standing stones. I was unaware of Alphamstone but the other three have definitely something of the numinous about them. The short, stub, Wikipedia article about the village does not mention the stones, but has some links to other websites can be seen at Alphamstone
Blick Mead is an early site where hunting and feasting occurred in the Stone Age. It lies very close to Stonehenge. The article links to a report about the excavations there in 2014. This can also be seen at Stonehenge dig finds 6,000-year-old encampment
One distinctive feature of the site is the fact that the water in the spring has the property of turning pieces of flint bright pink, which doubtless attracted the attention of early hunter-gatherers - possibly even more than that of the modern archaeologists.
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