Suzanne, David and Margret's Mimesis of Gothvos at Dinnever

 Stannon Down excavations in the 1960s revealed eight unenclosed round house sites suggesting a settlement of over twenty, approximately 6 metres to 8 metres in diameter covering an area of approximately 150 metres x 100 metres with fields and rectangular enclosures tentatively identified as corrals or used for stock showing that the area could have been close to mixed oak woodlands and oaks would have grown in the area.  Houses were constructed of posts, supporting thatched roofs, partitioned with wood with paved or compressed earth floors, incorporating drainage and furniture. Pottery, flint tools were discovered along with a whetstone that suggested the possibility of metal blades. The settlement was estimated to have a population of around one hundred people and dated to the Middle Bronze Age, a later date than suggested for the circle itself. 

When standing in the supposed centre of Stannon Circle, a point between twenty-two and twenty-eight degrees north from east is marked by Rough Tor,  Matthew Gregory Lewis found a relation of these monuments to the neighbouring hills which suggested that they were designed with special consideration of the position of the sunrise at certain times of year.  Andy M. Jones reviews studies of the area and called Stannon a ceremonial complex.
Stannon is named from the nearby farm and is sited between two streams on the slopes of Dinnever Hill, two and a half miles southeast of Camelford. Overlooked on one side by the china clay works that now blights the landscape. The circle's remoteness should be a fertile atmosphere in which the lonely stone may languish, visited only by the wild animals and solitary walkers or Claymen of the moor to be encountered and contemplated. The Gothvos Stone was placed by Suzanne Pearce and Margret Michell and photographed by Dave Thomas in late August 2017.

Geoff the Alchemist and his Mutus Liber

Geoff Reynolds; community artist in Caerdydd

I met up again with artist and cinema curator Geoff Reynolds in a field above the splendid striations of Mylor Slate at Porthenhalls a matter of two miles from my home stone down Relubbus Lane, I last saw Geoff some thirty odd years back when we both were gainfully employed by the Welsh National Opera in their incredible Scenic Facility in Cardiff. Geoff was holidaying at Porthenhalls on this occasion and upon returning to Wales set down his Gothvos stone in a purposeful and intentional manner, setting it into a hedge in his garden.

The Gothvos Stone is cemented in my garden wall. I live in the Roath area of Cardiff, in South Wales. I have chosen this location for the stone because I want to see it everyday and touch it.  I have fixed it into my wall, because I don't want to lose it. I now pass it everyday to go to my studio, at the end of my garden. My studio has a sofa, facilities to play vinyl and CDs and a fridge for cold beer storage. It has an electric supply, so I can be there late at night. I am a painter. 

The wall of my studio is often used as a screen for showing films. All my friends and neighbours enjoy the out door cinema. I like sharing silent film experiences with them, films they used to show on the TV but never do now.

The studio is also the home for The Actual History Museum of Roath, which is visited by 400 people over two days each year. 

My hope is that various people will look at the stone and wonder.

Pink Granite sump K20 Kunst Sammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

From Kernow with love

Painted found and placed contrivances, ornament and decorated theatre objects are subdued but prominent features of a drift into Altstein's allee and busy junctures of Düsseldorf. We're here primarily to work and to to see Federico Herrero's Language Melody at Sies + Hoek Galerie where a chrome yellow floor warmly enfolds the weary feet off the street, where the joins between each patch of colour make segway's of conjoined words and harmonics between colours, it is the joints and the borders that create a chiming melody, each patch of colour is an affront to the neighbouring one and the scale of the patch defies the perspective of the colour, especially the perspective of the colour's wavelength - I could be referencing colour theory here or the innate sense of harmonics we think of as personal aesthetics. Isolated blocks of colour could be considered a modern phenomena, we're perhaps less excited by the sheer vibrancy of a large steel vehicle painted glossy primary colours in the street than a child, there are so many cars, they cluster in the streets and block the pavements, they create pollution but as toys or images they conjure an exuberance that stimulates a potential adventure at many levels. Federico Herrero's paintings are softened by the amorphous shapes and flavours created by their combinations, they adorn the canvas with a pride that reflects the activities of a painted shed in a busy street, lifting the ordinary out of the humdrum and into the theatres double.

Sies + Höke Galerie Federico Herrero Language Melody

 In the least compressed layers of Düsseldorf's townscape ornament ( ornament is among our most positive means of communicating objectively ) now at a point blind to the colour fields and piebald meanderings, herding cobblestones and flocking alleyways drifting from historic and  ephemeral to random and discarded objets, styles of architecture and applied interventions. The town seemed cradled inside a knot of channels: motorways and rivers, the Rhein is the river in the room leaving us to the kernel of the pedestrianised and tramway bits, some layers are foxed and mouldy like pages that have been rewritten with fresh ink over the old, ornate friendly bars with a sense of an ordinary urban fellowship that sits and sips in altbier with a little gritty dust from the grating angle-grinders buzzing.

 Still very impressed by well orchestrated chaos no matter how contrived or in which methodology, if when stalked the living creature bolts convincingly then there is the perfection of authenticity in such fleeting but intense moment, even I do not expect chaos to be protractively sustainable no matter how well received no matter the depth of the rapture, it is one of the functions of perception to permanently appreciate the phenomena of spectacle and to distribute the appreciation to each known receptor, the memory of the spectacle will be far more frequently experienced than the actual event.

Robert Schumann bust by unknown Sculptor

In the trope of the sculpture trail there's a range of works posited circumnavigably to encounter or destroy the impressions of poetic semblance, more difficult for me to articulate is my interest in German romantic poetry, I was curious about any possibly connections with Heinrich Heine and Fred Hölderlin because Heine was born and lived in Düsseldorf, the streets and features in the townscape are named after Heine and I knew so little about Heine's work, the fabulously named Heine Haus of Müller & Böhm Literaturhandlung in Bolkerstrasse 53 Dusseldorf is a bookshop, a museum an events location and a source of great stimulation. I have enjoyed the liede of Robert Schumann without knowing that Heinrich Heine was the creator of those fine lyrics. Some beautiful objects and words in that store plus two beautiful greyhound dogs kept at the back of the library.

A pair of exceptional beauties

Uncertain of its origins walking from the airport I saw plenty of Pink Granite used on steps around UBahn stations on on contemporary upgrades etc, I wondered if it was Aberdonian, or from the Channel Islands I placed a greenstone "axe" on a water outlet of a massive pink granite sump, a water feature of the Kunst Sammlung Nordrheine-Westfalen Galerie, an act that created a the most nuanced ripple of interest in my sculpture trail days of Düsseldorfing.

A Pink Granite sump/water feature on the threshold of the Kunst Sammlung Nordrhein Westfalen Galerie.

A walk in the Parked time Capsule Ham Hill

I recently re read Peter Handke's Slow Homecoming, in fact Im still reading it again, quite a book, it really affected me then and now its reawakening some dormant feelings.

I may need some coffee soon although I do have a bottle of water, this is the third library I've been to today, they are all quite busy with young students swatting for the school holidays. This is Croydon library, I wonder if I would ever feel intimidated by other people in such environments, if life were different. If I was alone, I am here alone but I think my confidence is not too dented today despite feeling slightly punch drunk in my over sensitive way which I have very little control over.I can easily imagine prevaricating just inside or insight of such a place. Today Croydon library is a little like a massive comprehensive school run by help centre staff, there's no disruption but the slight whiff of chaos, informality and dare I say anarchy helps me feel totally at ease. I have to join before entering, more a process than a ritual but a touch of the Groucho rule book that appeals. 
Being in Croydon is a balance between the glaringly urbane and the neutered rural, the sort of feral neutered rural that wanders aimlessly unless gainfully employed and even then, carrying the schedule around from place to place anticipating losing all track of time and winding up late for whatever it is that underpins such an existence.I don't work for anyone on a full time basis but I do depend on working around other people's schedules, I lack the god given right to demand, I look for pockets of doubt, I seek vacuums of stale air that I can refresh and claim for myself, I walk towards darkened doors that are poorly hinged and disheveled I look for asylum in spaces I might occupy without displacing others and I have been doing this all my working life and of course I can tell you with confidence that by assuming presence in a space one is inviting two, two either fuse or repel, I have latterly been repelled. Frequently. 

Ham Hill at Night

I returned to another century when I was repelled and infused into, what was quite literally a golden landscape, either by my own naivety and indiscretion I jettisoned myself of constraints and imposed order into a realm of sand coloured roads, hillside fields, hollow ways and because it was new to me I found it to be liberating, it was almost a decision, it was almost a decisive act, now that I can look back at it, it appears justifiable and efficient, a direct consequence of my own will being manifest but I was simply reacting to everyone else's demands, even then I understood that a cup of water cannot exist without the cup. The cup is filled, it is not the watery filling that seeks the cup in order to exist. 

And yet here I am on another road, I don't hitch hike for lifts anymore, I gave lifts at odd times but more recently there have been no requests, the thumb is now masked as though it is capable of more than it's physical attributes, it seems too direct to ask a total stranger for a lift in their personalised car or their even more personalised lorry, the curtains may not match my mood, they could have a little dog with them and I would distract them from their CD collection and texting between glimpses at the satnav, the microwave and inevitably the road. There's no going back but I'm taking you back to Ham Hill and West Chinock, to a moment among a dozen cats. A walnut tree and two folk musicians and their friends that came and went to Eastall Farmhouse. After my cup and water analogy I wish to offer an Egg Analogy, I was a shell less egg that got poured from Redruth to Yeovil along the A30 I sort of didn't hatch because I had no shell, I just absorbed everything as if I had hatched but I hadn't hatched. 
I took generosity and kindness for granted, I had always been given plenty unconditionally but I really should have waited to hatch before being so presumptious. 

I was reflecting on the condition of the today I now occupy, or at least part of me occupies, how my mood got distorted by influences beyond my control, mostly a dull, soft grey blanketed light that teetered on tearfulness but restrained outward emotion and concealed all articulation from open discourse, I politely asked the whereabouts of the lavatories, he removed his spectacles... the”loo” then,... “the what?” …”oh, the toilet”, I was smiley, co operative, he went back to his newspaper the Asian Post, I smiled inwardly and realised that this may not count. The weather was still pink and grey outside, such conditions allow clarity of vision but oh! the heavy load, what to do with the heavy load. I suppose I'm asking the gods to lead me across the fields as they did in west Chinock, away from the mutations of domesticity and creativity at Eastall Farm House and in beneath the Chiselborough hills of East Fields Farm, comparable independence, a moored caravan beside a little stream, a full time job pulling up Oxford Ragwort, counting sheep, lifting potatoes, silaging with tractor and trailer, friends came to fruit pick at nearby Norton Sub Hamdon, they picked blackcurrents until the money just didn't stack up then farewell back to Falmouth. John came through I was cruel, Rich came too, Scott and I lost a trailer load of spuds bobbing into a stream of suds. 

Ham Hill looking at the Blackdown Hills in the west with West Chinock slightly off frame on the extreme left.

Alone then in the crepuscular summer evening, weary from harvesting, dust clung skin begging to be bathed fresh, letters from home, Dads called Jim, where am I ? The guy I work with is very steady, his name is John, he's from Crewkerne, I like Crewkerne it feels Cornish, like Lostwithiel. John tells stories of his youth, he has a wife and children and an amazing Ford Anglia he used to have a Triumph motorcycle he says that he thinks I'm a modern gypsey. I learned something brilliant from John, we were to shift some straw bales from the trailer to the stack, he said that I should place a bale on the elevator each time he took one off the other end and if we did that as he described we would finish at twelve “dinner time”, it was Saturday morning and we only worked the morning, anyway his guidance included giving him time to "tie" each bale in place before reaching for another, I got completely carried away with the placing of bales on the elevator, he signalled me a couple of times, I thought he was signalling “great work” sort of a signal, I plonked the last bale onto the elevator, johns face was like thunder. “We beat the clock” says I, “at my expense” says John, it was now ten to twelve and we would not go early just because I got carried away. I should have listened to his wise words, he took his job seriously and knew exactly what to do, I was a passenger getting misty eyed at the sight of badgers and buzzards and the sun going down on the Blackdown hills, always so evocative but debilitatingly sad as I would watch between the A303 and the A30, I was in a no mans land looking at the sun setting in the west and it made me consider how far I had come, if anywhere. 

Walking to East Coker from East Chinock one Sunday, I met the women who work on the potato lifter, they find me funny, they are lewd I'm fascinated to hear them talk about Lobsang Rampa and evidence of rock paintings referring to Jesus, they live in the village but I do not have their multi dimensional aptitude for confidence, it's Sunday and there's still a semblance of ritual around the church, then as perhaps now I'm too naïve to appreciate T S Elliot's poetry but now it's become entangled in my memory, a sense of misplace in the name Burnt Norton as if I now relegate my memory of this period as very inward looking even though outwardly I innocently relied upon my invisible egg shell to hold me up, I cared little and knew little but I outwardly ripened like a green Brambley until my knee came a cropper with a Fordson tractor and a railway sleeper ending up in Yeovil General Hospital. 

Ham Hill Memorial

As I now stand in the Weald of Kent looking across the M25 and the maroon tinted haze rising from Brighton and Gatwick, I'm no longer an egg, so what the hell am I ? by this time I'm surely a fried egg, half baked, boiled no shell required, not being led by my tadpoles anymore, is that what romance is? Romance is not so one dimensional, I read science fiction then, Philip k dick, Ursula le guin, lots of sham-shamen, Carlos Castaneda then, I was very impressionable especially where kurt Vonnegut is concerned, later I would wholly embrace and reject Hemingway after accepting the technique of a direct quality, of his story telling, later on more Americans.
Now my life is truly pagan, officially the earth is my church, like all good churches, mine is cold and empty, facing closure, slightly damp and not really part of mainstream society. Everyone in this church is here for themselves, their heads are full of history, they use the history like fan heaters in cold offices, aimed at the cold part of the body, there's no collective urge for communal warmth, there's no coming together in order to load the haystack. Euphemistically, walking across the M25, southbound to the pagan sun, the M25 is a circular road. It really isn't a road it's a noose, you either slip your noose or you prepare for the inevitable, today is different. Yesterday's cloudy pink is replaced by crackling sunshine and cool, Cool shadows where the winter still haunts and the buds remain unconvinced. Croydon library where the youths do play, they read and write between the earphones, swotting, flirting, having fun while the escalators run and run, they help each other and they’ll break away, one day they will break away.

West Chinock - If you find a Gothvos Greenstone feel welcome to place it somewhere of your choosing - leave it in position, photograph it and send words and photo to jonathan_polkest@hotmail.com

Convergences on the river Thames with Liberty Rowley

I left my Gothvos stone on the Thames foreshore under Vauxhall Bridge, as a place where offerings to the gods have been given by Londoners before London existed. This was an exciting spot on the walk where I first met (you jp) and Phil Smith (Mythogeography, The Crab Man:http://www.mythogeography.com) and really felt part of the movement of Walking Artists. I regularly cross Vauxhall Bridge on foot, while walking to and from work, and always think of The Ancestors smelting and sacrificing bronze swords to the same river, and feel connected to the flow of human history.

future mudlarking cache located by Liberty Rowley

Liberty Rowley Gothvos stone placed in the Thames with the granite stanchions of the Vauxhall Bridge in the background.http://fourfeetfilms.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

Liberty places her Gothvos stone on the Vauxhall foreshore In 13th century Falkes de Breauté built a manor house in the marshlands of South Lambeth,In 1223–24, de Breauté and others revolted against Henry III; following a failed attempt to seize the Tower of London, de Breauté was exiled, The lands surrounding his Lambeth manor house continued to be known as Falkes' Hall, later Vauxhall. Currently the location of several thresholds and convergences including the MI5.

I intend to write further on this area jp.