Issue 83

July/August

Contents

news

Welsh cauldron finds offer rare insights

Broch builders house-proud, not warlike

Reindeer hunter preceded Canary fans

Rock art find in rare context

New light on Prittlewell "prince" grave

In Brief

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From Universal Bond to Public Free-For-All
100 years at stonehenge: They may not have built it, but Druids ruled the last century

When Rome invaded: Gerald Grainge considers the Channel crossing

Freedom Fighter - or Tale for Romans?
The real Boudica: Richard Hingley looks for the native terrorist leader

Finding the Way
In Hadrian's footsteps: English Heritage report on the threat to the Roman wall

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ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

features

From Universal Bond to Public Free-For-All

It is 100 years since the first recorded Druid ceremony at Stonehenge. Opening this special section on Stonehenge in the 20th century, Ronald Hutton finds that as modern groups step back from the summer solstice, ancient Druids may yet find their place

Until last year, very little information existed on the relationship between modern Druids and Stonehenge. Some was provided by Chris Chippindale's book, and edited collection, on the cultural history and status of the monument, and more in a pamphlet by Leslie Grinsell; but these pioneering works (see end note) could do no more than prepare the way for sustained research. The latter has now been provided, by Andy Worthington's history of the Stonehenge festival, and Adam Stout's remarkable Lampeter PhD thesis. What follows is a digest of their discoveries, amplified by material and opinions of my own.

The midsummer sunrise first began to attract large crowds to Stonehenge in the 1870s. This was a spontaneous movement of ordinary people, produced partly by a growing scholarly interest in astronomical associations at the site, and partly by inventions such as the bicycle and the charabanc. In 1905 Druidry made its first recorded appearance, when one of the nation's foremost convivial and charitable societies, the Ancient Order of Druids, held a ceremony among the stones.

During the following decades such respectable national bodies, bearing the Druid name, occasionally staged similar ad-hoc events. These were, however, rare enough to provide a mere footnote in the monument's history. The close, regular and controversial association between Druids and Stonehenge was the work of a body of a very different hue: the Church of the Universal Bond.

This was small – with a core group of around 50 – with a radical ideology and confrontational behaviour. It was led by George W MacGregor Reid, a socialist revolutionary who encouraged workers to strike and native peoples in Africa to resist imperialist expansion, and preached a religion that attempted to reconcile the main traditional creeds of the world within a framework of sun-worship. Initially Reid regarded Zoroastrianism as the core faith of his church, and his attraction to Stonehenge, and specifically to the summer solstice gatherings there, was because of its growing reputation as his nation's greatest ancient solar temple.

He and his group are first recorded there in June 1912. During the succeeding two summers they clashed with the owner and the police, because of their wish to hold rites in the circle and their disinclination to pay the recently imposed admission fee. In 1915 the site was acquired by Cecil Chubb, who seems to have allowed the Universal Bond to stage their midsummer ceremonies there through the war years; and his benevolence caused the difficulties to melt away. It was in this period that Reid and his Church rejected Zoroastrianism for Druidry as the core image of their universalist faith. When Chubb presented the monument to the nation in 1918, and the Office of Works became its new proprietor, they made a working relationship with that in turn.

What disrupted this was the intervention of the fledgling discipline of archaeology, as the government invited the Society of Antiquaries to commence excavations at the site from 1919. This gave archaeologists a sense of vested interest in Stonehenge, even as scholarly acceptance that the monument was a work of the neolithic and bronze age made them into the definitive experts responsible for its interpretation. They rapidly came to view the Universal Bond both asphysical interlopers and as residual propagators of the earlier scholarly orthodoxy, an attribution of Stonehenge to the ancient Druids.

An opportunity for intervention was provided in 1924, when the Office of Works agreed to an application from the Universal Bond to scatter small portions of the ashes of cremated former members at the monument. In an impressive display of unity, the Society of Antiquaries, the Wiltshire Archaeological Society, the Royal Archaeological Institute and prominent archaeologist OGS Crawford all joined forces in the national press to have the permission withdrawn. Misinformation formed a part of this, including allegations that the ashes – or even whole bodies – were to be buried within the circle. The resulting outcry by some newspapers caused the first commissioner of works to back down.

This victory was followed by further propaganda measures. Sir Thomas Kendrick of the British Museum produced a book, and a member of the county archaeological society an official guidebook to the monument, emphasising that Druids had no claims to a special relationship with Stonehenge. Under the impact of these developments, dealings between the Universal Bond and the government became sour, and in 1932 Reid and his Druids formally withdrew from celebrating the solstice at the monument. They intended at first to build a replica midst ancient barrows on the land of a sympathetic owner at nearby Normanton Gorse, but a further campaign by the archaeological society made the landowner refuse permission for this in turn.

The Universal Bond, however, showed remarkable tenacity. For the remainder of the 1930s its members continued to hold services either at Stonehenge or Normanton Gorse, but in July rather than at midsummer. After world war two they resumed the solstice ceremonies at the monument under the leadership of Reid's son and successor as chief, Robert. The latter was less of a warrior and more of a diplomat than his father, and led rites that emphasised international cultural contacts rather than radical politics. This may explain the measure of acceptance and affection that his Druids now achieved, in the eyes of the government and the press, so that their services became the accepted centrepieces of the solstice gatherings at Stonehenge throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

This was despite the new generation of leading archaeologists, personified by Glyn Daniel, Stuart Piggott, Richard Atkinson and the Ancient Monuments Board, who made various efforts to emphasise the "bogus" nature of modern Druidry and the lack of any historic association between Druids and Stonehenge, and to get the Universal Bond banned from the monument. Daniel was reduced to commenting bitterly on the fact that neither the state nor the public now seemed willing to listen.

What changed the government's mind was a new development: the appearance of a festival alongside the Druid rites at Stonehenge each midsummer from the mid 1970s. In 1985 English Heritage took the unprecedented decision to exclude all members of the public from the stones at midsummer, including the Druids, as part of a package of measures to kill the festival. When the ban was finally lifted, in 2000, the cultural context had changed dramatically.

The Universal Bond had faded into near-obscurity, its place as the most public face of modern Druidry taken by new orders, some descended from it and others which had crystallised out of the festival itself. The animosity of professional archaeologists towards Druids had largely evaporated in the atmosphere of post-processual, polyvocal interpretation. Most important, and ironic, was the decision of English Heritage to reopen the stones as a public free-for-all, a onenight festival, in which Druids were given no privileged place. They have, accordingly, blended into the background of the revels; and their special relationship with the site, which spans the 20th century, may now be at an end.

This story has an obvious relevance to the understanding of modern cultural history, but also a deeper implication for attitudes to Stonehenge. In building their case against modern Druidry, Kendrick, Piggott, Atkinson and Daniel all made great play with the fact that ancient Druids could no longer be definitely credited either with building the monument or with officiating within it. They were, however, scrupulous enough to recognise two difficulties. The first was that prehistorians have been unable to determine how far continuities of religious tradition and practice did or did not exist through the periods between the neolithic and the iron age. The second was that there is some evidence for activity in and around Stonehenge during the iron age itself, in the form of scattered pot sherds. It may be that, whether or not modern Druids ever make a significant reappearance at the site, ancient Druids could yet be fated to do so.

C Chippindale 2004 Stonehenge Complete, 3rd ed (Thames & Hudson); C Chippindale, P Devereux, P Fowler, R Jones & T Sebastian 1990 Who Owns Stonehenge? (Batsford); L Grinsell 1978 The Druids & Stonehenge: the Story of a Myth (Toucan Press); A Stout 2004 Choosing a Past: the Politics of Prehistory in Pre-War Britain (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter); A Worthington 2004 Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion (Alternative Albion). Ronald Hutton is professor of history at Bristol University

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