Re: News report on Penhallow's lecture



On 26 Jan, 20:26, Doug Weller <dwel...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
http://www.newportdailynews.com/articles/2007/01/26/news/news1.txt
He said there are about two dozen alignments that he has documented in the
tower. He began publicizing this information in 1992.

"All these alignments show ingenuity in their design and skill in their
placement," he wrote in an article for the New England Antiquities
Research Association's publication called "The Newport Tower" that was
published last year.

"Such an undertaking requires a knowledge of 3-D astronomy and a suitable
instrument to lay them out," he said. "We are dealing here with more than
just horizon astronomy."


Ah, hello Coincidence, my old friend.

Let me tell you a story...

More years ago than I care to remember I was entranced (who wouldn't
be?) by the idea of ley-lines. I got out the excellent 1:25000 scale
Ordnance Survey maps of my local area and turned them black with
graphite as I linked up ancient sites (including a few that I knew
existed but weren't marked on the map). I found lots of lovely
alignments stretching for miles across what looks superficially like a
fairly modern industrialised landscape (I come from just outside
Liverpool). One of my best alignments took in an ancient beacon hill,
a couple of early crossroads, a holy well and three hilltop mediaeval
churches, all in circular churchyards indicative of an early, possibly
pre-christian site, at Huyton, Prescot and Childwall, and doubtless
(if I had checked) aligned to the rising or setting sun on one day or
other. Imagine my delight when I discovered (in, IIRC, John Heywood's
"Lancashire Legends", 1882), *after* finding the "ley", a rhyme,
popular in the district in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
which ran -

"Huyton and Prescot and merry Childo
Three parish churches all in a row
Prescot for mugs, Huyton for ploydes
Childo for singing and ringing besides"

(Prescot was noted as a centre for pottery manufacture, "ploydes"
apparently means cheerful greetings)

Confirmation if ever there was of the folk-memory of an ancient
alignment!

Then I thought I'd better do a "control" experiment. So I drew rings
round all the schools marked on the map, none of which dates from
before 1800, and most of which are on twentieth-century sites. They
produced better alignments than any of my "ancient" leys, one
stretching through twelve sites across fifteen miles.

I have to allow the possibility that the county education department
was a front for a pagan cult. But I am more convinced that the
alignments, though impressive, were coincidental. If they were for the
modern schools, why shouldn't they be coincidental for all the other
sites I had enthusiastically linked? The fact that the three churches
line up wasn't, in itself, all that remarkable - just interesting
enough to be noticed and turned into a rhyme by someone with too much
time on their hands in about 1750.

Unless the Newport Tower alleged alignments all work, simultaneously,
from a single observer's realistic (ie not up a stepladder) viewpoint,
and all relate to demonstrably important dates or events, then they
are worthless as "proof" of any significant astronomical purpose for
the Tower.

If there are half-a-dozen reasonably significant alignments that work
from a single viewpoint, then the matter is nothing more than
coincidence and belongs in the "face on Mars" category.

Gareth

.

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