Rocks!

For God's sake! Hello and welcome to For God's sake. I'm Edwin Council. I live in Lantritt Major on the South Wales coast and I'm trying to make some sense of life and the world at an uncertain time. This episode of my podcast is all about rocks for God's sake. We're going to visit my local beach, call into a late Stone Age burial site a few miles away and I'm going to be chatting to some of the people in this community for whom some lumps of rock that were carved 12 or 13 centuries ago have come to play a very special part in their lives and in their hearts today. So come on! Get your rocks on! Let's do this! [Music] I can't think of a better place to start than right here on my local beach in Lantritt Major. The Glamorgan Heritage Coast is renowned for its dramatic geology which showcases hundreds of millions of years of geological action taking us through the Carboniferous and the Jurassic periods. You know what? Oh, declare an interest. Sorry, I did geology when I was in school. Did O-Level. That's GCSE for old codgers like me. And those odd names from the sands of time. Well, those are the ways we can tease out the timeline of the high cliffs and the stone platforms that are cut by the waves here. And the different rock layers that often give up their remarkable cargo of fossils from distant time. The Carboniferous bits, well, they're really the old bed rocks. They're made of the calcium and the shells of tiny sea creatures that have been compressed over 350 million years. I'm actually walking on a Carboniferous limestone bed at the moment. It's got an almost brownish hue to it. The Jurassic limestone is newer. Oh, it's a mere 200 or so million years old. And you can spot it because it's got an almost bluish change that makes it stand out. And the Jurassic limestone forms the spectacular vertical cliffs here where it's sandwiched layer upon layer with shale. That's a rock made from compacted mud. You know, the coast here is constantly shaped by the power of nature and the Bristol Channel with this massive 10 meter tidal range twice a day. And it's high energy storm waves. The power of the sea, well, we all know how destructive it can be. But it's also creative. Caves and sea stacks and the great expanse of rocks of every size and shape and colour. Well, they're all spread out before me in their little stacks and piles where the sea has deposited them. They stretch out as far as I can see right down to the water's edge. God, you know, this place is absolutely awesome. [Music] Despite my fascination with geology, I still find it really hard to grasp the sheer antiquity of the rocks on my local beach. So let me take you back to much more recent Neolithic times. Oh, that's barely 6,000 years ago. But to a massive piece of limestone and a place of real significance. It's a burial site where archaeologists discovered the remains of 50 or so men, women and children. It's a stone age cemetery. Mind you to do that. We'll need to get in the car. Come on. [Music] I'm a mile or so from the village of St. Nicholas in the Vale of Lukeley Morgan at Tinkinswood Burial Chamber. Now, this is a remarkable feat of prehistoric engineering. It's Neolithic. That actually means a new stone age. So they're the most recent bit of the stone age. So they've dated it at around 4,000 BC. Now, that's 1,000 years before Stonehenge was built, just to put it in a little bit of wider context. And this is what's called a dolman. Now, that means it's a capstone supported by smaller stones underneath. And the size of this capstone is remarkable. I'm actually walking around it. I'm told in what I've read about it. It's seven metres from one end to the other, and about four and a half metres wider than its widest point. And so just to imagine how in Earth this was brought here, it's hard to get your head around it. Now, those who are better at doing these calculations than me reckon it would have taken 200 people to carry it and put it in place. It's more helpful, the person who said it's probably about the same weight as a modern articulated lorry. Yeah, a big old piece of kit. At Tinkinswood, a great hunk of limestone takes on a much deeper significance. It looks like the 4010 capstone was quarried close by. That's just as well for those who have to carry it. But I'm really struck by the care that an ancient community gave to its loved ones who'd passed away. And I can't help thinking about those adverts on TV that tell us we don't need all the fuss of a funeral when a loved one dies. Save your money and just raise a glass to them. Maybe we've got a thing or two to learn from our stone age predecessors. When we lose the people we love, honouring them and their memory is massive. And 6,000 years later, we can still see a rock that was placed here gently and in tribute to the people of that time who were loved and cherished and remembered. Now, of course, there are some super legends here as well. There's a group of boulders just to one side of the monument here and they reckon those were a group of women who would turn to stone for dancing on the Sabbath. And would you believe there's also a legend that if you spend the night at Tinkinswood, either on May Day, on the eve of the feast of the birth of St John the Baptist actually, the night of the 23rd, 24th of June, or on midwinter day, the winter solstice, well, one of three things would happen. You'd either drop dead on the spot, you'd either go mad, or you'd become a poet. Oh, God protect us all from becoming poets. Back in Lanswick Major, Saint Estates Church, is at the heart of the parish community that I serve as a priest? And it houses a remarkable collection of Celtic standing stones that attracts pilgrims and visitors from across the world. I'm outside the Galilee Chapel, which houses the Celtic standing stones here at St Estates Church. This far end of the church was in ruins, probably since the Reformation back in the 16th century. We know that John Wesley visited the church in July of 1777, and he remarked about the beauty of the place, even though the far end was in disrepair, even then. Well, as I go inside... Oh, my goodness me! I'm confronted by an array of stone crosses and pillars that date back to around about 9th century, possibly a little bit earlier. And there are three main stones, and they are incredible. The word I hear most people say when they see them for the first time is just, "Wow, I come into this place pretty much every day of my life. It's where I work." I still have that same sense of absolute privilege to experience these remarkable stones every day. Right in the middle here is the Huelt Cross. It's a proper Celtic cross with a stone pillar and a big roundel on the top. It was a memorial. It was commissioned by a man named Howell in memory of his father. Gosh, it's a couple of metres tall, and it's everything you'd expect to see in a traditional Celtic cross. Or to the side of it there's the Huelt Cross or the Samson Cross. It's more of a pillar because the roundel on the top, well, that's got lost in the mists of time. And at what time the back of it? Let's see Huelt's name. It's scratched into the stone here. And you think, "Oh, my goodness me!" Even a couple of hundred years after his death, they were still bearing witness to him. And then just a few paces across to the Samson pillar. Nearly two and a half metres tall, it was repeated to be the first oldest inscribed pillar in the whole of the United Kingdom. But this is no museum. This is a living, thriving church where people come each day to gather, to pause, to pray. And I've been asking some of the people here, just what these stones mean to them? A lot of history and the people that have gone before us. But I think it's rather nice to touch the stones as well. And as your hand warms up on the stone, they seem to come alive. I know that sounds ridiculous, but when you're here in the Galilee Chapel, particularly by yourself, and it's nice and quiet, you can sit and you can almost feel waves coming off the stones. It's an experience which I wish more people could have. They mean regeneration to me, because I'm old enough to remember when they weren't upright and lit in this beautiful space, but they were lying on their sides in the West Church, looking rather for lawn and lonely. And to see them back as they were intended, as whoever carved them wanted them to look like is a great symbol of energy and rebirth to me. So I'm very excited every time I come in here to see them looking so glorious and somewhere close to how they should have looked many hundreds of years ago. These stones mean to me a family connection. I am a Lantonian, born and bred, and for me, looking at these stones, it's a look into the past of all the people that have ever stepped into St Tiltish Church and the grounds. And the work that's gone into them and the skills and the ancestors that we've once seen before, it's a reflection on them and a look upon them of how they have carved the footsteps that we now stand in. I think they give a sense of presence, which has been here for centuries. So there's a feeling when you're here that these stones have seen a great deal and they've been part of this landscape and community for so long, and we're just the next bit of that. And I love the way they've been put and they stand as almost presences with us, standing in for all the other worshipers, if you like, who've stood around in this place and sung and prayed and just watched. So there is a feeling almost that they watch over the place. But also this idea that there were real people here. This isn't the stuff of myth, this is reality. Well, it's a connection with the past, I think. Yes, they've got a real charisma about them. Yes, it's principally that. They invite to be touched, in my opinion, and a connection with days of old. They mean to me the history of this area. Obviously they go back a long, long way, and I think it establishes this church as a really fundamental part of the community, going back centuries. Not only that, but the ability to walk up to the stones, to touch them, to feel them, to feel the carving that's been done a long, long time ago, I think it's just absolutely amazing. And the fact that they've been recited here within this beautiful Galilee Chapel just adds to the cultural life and the history of Lantwick Major. These stones are just absolutely phenomenal to me. And the bit that means most to me is that I can touch them, because I was talking to somebody, gosh, last week, the week before last, and we were talking about Saint Ninien, and the settlement up in Scotland, and they've got their Celtic crosses, and they're not allowed to touch them. I mean, this just links you back. You think you can't, but you're just filled with whatever it was that filled the people who carved these, and what they were living through at the time, and what this church has witnessed throughout the centuries. It's just mind-blowing. [Music] Did you notice how many of those people spoke about reaching out and touching the stones about a tactile experience and encounter with them? Oh, those comments tell a bigger story, and it's always a human story just under the surface in these places. I think about the stone mason of the 9th century who carved that Celtic cross. I'd like to imagine him walking up and down the foreshore, down on the beach, until he found just the right piece of stone, and then a group of however many locals helping to carry or push or roll the raw material of the cross up the hill to the site of the workshop. Trouble is, the limestone around here isn't very good for carving. It's too hard, too many faults, too many cracks. Oh, you can build with it, that's fine, and it's fantastic for finding fossils. But to carve the fine detail of a Celtic standing stone, you need to go 20 or so miles north of here, to the sandstone bed you'll find in the South Wales coal measures. And the coal measure sandstone in this part of the world, it's a softer and more malleable rock, and it can cope with being chiseled and shaped. And that's where the stone mason would, I guess, have done their reconnaissance beforehand, walking and searching until they spotted an outcrop of just the right size and shape, just like an artist who can frame a scene in the mind's eye and know just what the finished article would look like. Mind you, the journey of bringing that great hunk of stone to the tantric major, that was a remarkable feat in itself. But let's go back to the church. One final visit. I wanted to come back into the church just for a final few thoughts. I'm standing in front of the Huell Cross, and I find in this cross, especially in that round cross emblem at the top, something of the purpose and the focus of this place. The cross is the intersection of God and humanity. The round on the top surrounded by a circle that represents God's love in its fullness. The beginning, no end. And in the segments between the arms of the cross, there are little areas of what are called knotwork. In other words, fine carving that looks a bit like rope, wound together so it looks like it would take an age to untangle. In that is everything, of human life and existence, of family and work, community and friendships. Oh, that relationship that's gone wrong, all that row and nothing that's kept us apart for so long. All of those things are surrounded and encased within the love of God, as we try to reconcile them, living our lives in joy and sadness in hope and in despair. There's a line in Scripture that speaks about living stones, and I get a real sense that these are absolutely living stones. Don't get me wrong, they're not magical, not full of strange powers or anything like that. Now, they've born witness to the generations who've lived and loved and cried and got on with life in this place for the 12 or 13 centuries that they've been around. And the standing stones have been part of that witness, and they continue to bear witness to everything that we're doing in this generation. I started this podcast gazing in wonder at the enormous slabs of rock on the beach a mile away from here, formed by time and shaped by the weather and the tides and then piled in their rough-heeled heaps of rocky debris on the beach. And it seems right to finish with my hand, placed on an ancient carved cross that has been comfort and consolation to countless people over time. And it's my reminder that what we're doing in this place today is all about the living stones, the people we welcome and uphold here in all that we do, for God's sake. Advice and life-saving technical help from Richard at Waffle Audio. The music track was by Tiger Gang and licensed from Soundstrike. You can leave me a review if you want, or sign up to get future podcasts in this series. Go on, do it! For God's sake! [Music]