David P Gregg

The Overchurch Mystery David P Gregg

The Wirral peninsula in Cheshire, England is well known for its Roman and Viking past. Recently remains have been found from the Mesolithic period, nearly ten thousand years ago. In between there is little known except the stone carvings of Bidston Hill. Using new evidence Professor Gregg shows the probable presence of a huge stone circle surrounding the Saxon church site at Overchurch, Upton. It may be that Overchurch is a corruption of 'Ofer's Ring'. This circle is marked by several stones recorded on 19th century OS maps and more recent limited geophysical surveys. Even stranger there are obvious geometrical links between the circle and the Saxon-Norman church site which sits with its graveyard on a large raised platform. Early Christian churches were often sited on much earlier pagan sites and the professor demonstrates how the church position and scale are intimately defined by the platform geometry. Even more surprising the construction lines defining the platform design point to the rising and setting points of the Sun on the horizon at the solstices, equinoxes and pagan cross-quarter day festivals such as May Day and Halloween. The same markers survive in the positions of the great circle stones. The circle is 1176ft in diameter or 173 megalithic rods. This would make it 4X the size of Stonehenge and the largest stone circle in Britain. Over half the circle is now covered by roads and houses but half is still accessible. A full geophysical survey of the circle's path should be undertaken before all of this important listed site is lost. Gravestones from the abandoned Overchurch are still being taken for local garden rockeries. Remarkably Overchurch is not alone. A mile to the south Professor Gregg analyses a set of three giant circles at Arrowe Park: the largest is over 4000 ft across. As before the geometry is hexagon based and the 13 stones involved mark out several accurate lines to sun and moon events on the horizon. We also find the same cannon of proportions based on geometry familiar in English medieval cathedrals: the silver and golden sections and simple functions of pi and phi. The patterns are so clear that the author considered a Victorian hoax by an antiquarian land owner with knowledge of Euclid!However this would be a century before the first pioneers of calendrical landscape astronomy laid down the necessary mathematics. On balance these Wirral anomalies are probably ancient and indeed Neolithic in date. The geometry in these circles is familiar from Stonehenge and Avebury but the Arrowe big circle is 4X the diameter of the Avebury ring...if real it would be the largest geometrical figure on the planet...so f