Aerial Investigation and Mapping Report - English Heritage

this earthwork may have suggested its name, ‘The Bible’ is a later re-naming andpresumably a reaction to its original title ‘The Devil’s Book’.In 1835 Thomas Horsfield not only claimed that this earthwork was notable as the ‘largestand deepest’ example of the ‘numerous trenches of a square and right-angled form’ foundacross this part of the South Downs (Horsfield 1835 vol I, 344), but also that it was ‘wellknown’ as the Devil’s Book - before adding that the ‘place is certainly one of solitude andseclusion. Meet for earnest meditation and grave designs’ (Horsfield 1835, vol I, 344).The Devil’s Book is typical of the type of names given to archaeological monuments whichinvoke the supernatural and Sussex (East & West) includes a Devil’s Ditch, Devil’s Dykes,Devil’s Humps and Devils Jumps (Grinsell 1976, 125). Examples of these were collectedtogether by the archaeologist Leslie Grinsell as part of his study of the folklore, myths andlegends of prehistoric monuments (Grinsell 1976). These include references to KingArthur, fairies, giants, Grim, Woden and the Devil. Grinsell carried out his survey of placenames in the 1930s with the idea (then widely held) that this information could providesome understanding of the original beliefs associated with the archaeological sites, thoughthis concept was eventually rejected (Hutton 2009, 19). Jeremy Harte’s paper on thefolklore of prehistoric sites (Harte 2009) offers a further example of the disconnectionbetween prehistoric monuments and their folklore in highlighting a number of instanceswhere a monument’s name has been changed in the post medieval period. Finally, as theexample of The Devil’s Book shows, not all supernatural names were given tomonuments from the prehistoric period.The use of the name Devil appears to be a post medieval phenomenon. The Devil’s Dykein Cambridgeshire was first recorded with that name in 1574 (Harte 2009, 26) while theGrim’s Ditch between Wiltshire and Berkshire, known as such from the middle ages to atleast the 17th century was by the 19th century known to locals as The Devil’s Ditch (ibid,25). Features are not only renamed, but, during this period, the Devil’s name wasinvariably given to ‘outstanding landmarks of the countryside’ (ibid 27); Devil names, it isargued, were given ‘not in an age of faith and superstition, but in the last two or threecenturies – a time when devils were found mostly in pantomimes and picture books’ (ibid26).The Devil has not always been seen as such an unthreatening figure, particularly in theearlier part of the period in question. The medieval concept of a personal Devil whocould cause storms or snatch sinners away was strengthened by the Reformation(Thomas 1971, 560). It was also from the late 16th century that the belief was establishedin Britain that witches owed their power to a pact with the Devil which made witchcraft aform of devil worship (Thomas 1971, 521, 523). This was also a period when witchcraftwas made a statutory offence with acts passed in 1542, 1563 and 1604 (finally repealed1736) (Thomas 1971, 525). Some of these offences carried the death penalty and it hasbeen estimated that around 1000 people may have been executed under witchcraftstatutes (ibid 535).© ENGLISH HERITAGE 31 22 - 2013