SACRED GROVE

The fron Age Celts built a few shrines and rather more sacred enclosures, but they also made widespread use of natural features as holy places. This is a very ancient practice that goes right back to Minoan Crete in 2000 BC, when mountaintops were regularly the focus of religious ceremonies. The Minoans also designated certain trees as sacred. The Celts, on the other side of Europe, had a very similar approach.

The Celtic word nemeton means “sacred grove” and the word survives in some Roman-Celtic place-names, such as Drunemeton in Turkey, Nemetobriga in Galicia, Medionemeton in Scotland, and Aquae Amemetiae (Buxton) in England. The Irish equivalent to nemeton is fidnemed.

Roman commentators on the Celtic world mention sacred groves. Strabo mentions the reunification of three tribes in Galatia (Turkey) as being accomplished in a grove of sacred oak trees. The sacred location was chosen for the discussion of important administrative matters, perhaps for its neutrality and therefore safety for all parties attending, perhaps because the gods were expected to participate.

Tacitus describes the forest clearings on the island of Anglesey as the Druids’ last stronghold against the might of Rome. Dio Cassius describes a sacred wood where human sacrifices were offered to the war goddess Andraste. Lucan too describes sacred woods in the south of Gaul: woods that were spattered with human blood. Later commentators, explaining Lucan, said that the Druids worshiped their gods in woods without using temples, in other words explicitly saying that worship took place in the open air.

The names of deities were sometimes specifically related to a grove. At Altripp near Spier, the name Nemetona is found, “Goddess of the Grove,” and the tribe living in her territory were known as the Nemetes.

Sometimes a tribe identified itself with a particular tree species, probably the species growing in its sacred grove: the Eburones(Yew-tree People) and Lemovices (Elm-tree People). In Gaul, offerings were dedicated specifically to the beech tree. The very large posts raised as focal features in some of the sacred enclosures were probably symbolic of the tribe’s sacred tree.

SACRED LAKE

Offerings were frequently deposited in sacred lakes. A small bay at the east end of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland was a focus for this kind of ritual deposition. In a bed of peat off fhe shore of fhe lake a huge deposit of metalwork was found. It was put there in around 100 BC. People stood on a specially built timber platform, like a jetty and from there they threw their offerings out into the lake: 170 swords, 270 spears, 400 brooches, and 27 wooden shields.

At Port at the north-eastern end of Lake Biel in Switzerland there was another concentration of offerings, mainly of swords and spears.

In Britain, Llyn Fawr in South Glamorgan is now a spread of peat, but in 600 BC it was a lake. Buried in the peat at Llyn Fawr were some imported Hallstatt material —harness, fittings for wagons, socketed axes, sickles, and two cauldrous made of sheet bronze. It is thought that the Llyn Fawr hoard was all deposited on one occasion, but at a time when the cauldrons were already antiques.

Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey in Wales yielded a similar cache of metalwork, but seemingly from a longer period. Offerings were deposited there from the second century BC to the first century AD, so they may have been left, item by item, over the whole of that period, or collected elsewhere and then deposited in the lake all at once. Llyn Cerrig is a wild and awe-inspiring place. The metal objects all come from the edge of a bog deposit overlooked by a sheer rock cliff 11 feet (3m) high; this made a fine vantage point from which the worshipers could throw their offerings out into the lake. The metalwork was uncorroded, showing that it was thrown straight into water. The offerings are military and upmarket in character: trumpets, chariot fittings, harness, weapons, slavechains, iron-working tools, and cauldrons. Some of the objects are flawless apart from the deliberate damage done to them immediately before being deposited. This was to kill the objects, to enable them to travel across to the Otherworid.

Llyn Cerrig was probably in use for sacrificial offerings until the Romans attacked the sacred groves of the Druidic center on Anglesey in AD 60 (see Druids). Tacitus described the scenes on Anglesey that greeted the horrified eyes of the Roman troops: bloodstained groves, howling priests, and black-robed, screaming women brandishing firebrands. But perhaps Tacitus exaggerated; the Romans were keen to justify the suppression of opponents.

The most famous sacred lake was Lake Tolosa at Toulouse in south-west France. The local inhabitants, the Volcae Tectosages, worshiped Belenus. They honored him by throwing offerings of gold and silver into the lake. When the Roman consul L. Servilius Caepio conquered the territory in 106 BC, he could not resist the temptation; he had 110,000 pounds (50,000kg) of silver hauled out of the lake and almost as much again in gold.

SACRED SPRINGS

Sacred springs and holy wells are hard to separate. What often happened is that a natural spring that was venerated in the Iron Age was later Christianized—and dedicated to a named saint to make that clear. It was often embellished with masonry and the water guided by a duct to fill a small tank or pool. In this new form, it often became known as a well.

There is a line granite-built baptistry at Dupath Well, Callington, Cornwall. Other examples include St. Nun’s Well at Pelynt in Cornwall and St. Hilda’s Well at Hinderwell in Yorkshire.

At Cerne Abbas, immediately below the graveyard and the site of Ceme Abbey, is St. Augustine’s Well. This is a shady hollow beneath some trees, where a natural spring has been surrounded by paving. The water from the well is supposed to have all kinds of magical healing properties, though this is hard to square with the fact that it runs out of the graveyard.