An absorbing study of how early man imposed order on the landscape.

This book explores mankind's urge to impose order and meaning on the landscape in which we live. Through careful and reasonable argument, with the help of many illustrations and diagrams, Dr David Ride shows the countryside of Wessex to contain a series of related man-made structures, surveyed with astonishing precision and of great symbolic significance. The remarkable pattern is based on the heavens and depicts its stars, its fundamental reference points, and celestial mythology. It also conforms to the Vitruvian principle that temples should reflect the proportions of the human body. But how did it get there? The geometry and numerology of its design suggest that it belongs to the esoteric school of Pythagoras and was laid out in late Roman times. The focus of the pattern is the Rufus Stone in the New Forest, which symbolically marks the spot where William II was killed. It shares a similar significance with the 'navel stone' at Delphi in ancient Greece and provides the starting point for unearthing the secrets of the surrounding terrain. Dr Ride also discovers and interprets other notable features that are written across Wessex, including a huge representation of the constellation of Orion, the mythical River Eridanus, and the Milky Way. He is further able to argue that Stonehenge was precisely sited and constructed as an image of the pole star in the Neolithic Period or the Bronze Age, long before such accuracy was thought possible.