Suffolk author James Canton's quest to seek out sacred spaces where we can rediscover our connection to the natural world
The cold was intense – almost unbearable. But there, within the bare stone walls of an 800 year-old long-disused chapel on a freezing February day was where it began.
Immersing himself in the earthy stillness of the ancient building in the heart of Suffolk led James Canton on a quest to seek out the peace and the power of what he calls sacred spaces.
It took him through England in search of stone circles, churches, and sites where prehistoric people who worshipped the sun, the moon and the natural elements left offerings to their gods or buried their dead.
Many of the places he visited – some venerated by mankind for millennia – are in Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk.
Following the footsteps of those who walked the earth thousands of years ago helped him see the landscape through ancient eyes, reinforcing his connection with the natural world on a primal level.
And it made him see even more clearly that humanity needs to rediscover its place in nature and its sense of wonder at the world we live in.
His moving account of that pilgrimage can be found in his recently-published book Grounded: A Journey into the Landscapes of Our Ancestors.
The odyssey was also in part a deeply personal one as he sought to come to terms with the death of his father, to whom the book is dedicated, some 20 years before.
It was inspired by a visit on an icy cold day to St James’s Chapel, Lindsey – a tiny 13th century church near Hadleigh now cared for by English Heritage.
“I was reminded of Philip Larkin and his poem Church Going, where he talks about this ‘tense musty unignorable silence’,” he says.
And he writes of feeling a calm he had not known for months. “I feel earthed. I feel grounded. In that stark simplicity all fears fade.
“I was driven by a keen curiosity to seek out those places where there was a sense of calm that seemed to seep from the earth or from the buildings that had been built upon that ground.
“Everyone has times in their life when they wish to peer more deeply into the profound reality of what we are as living individual beings, what life is all about.
“It seemed to me that the easiest route was to look to those who had gone before, to see how others in times past had made sense of the world.”
James says we are blessed in Suffolk with a remarkable amount of sacred spaces of all kinds where you can experience those feelings.
His connection to the county is through his mother, Margaret, who came from Hadleigh and now lives in Cambridge.
He was born in London but has lived for more than 20 years in a 500 year-old former farmworkers’ cottage on the border of Suffolk and Essex.
Behind the cottage lies an ancient trackway known as a green lane, where he discovered a Roman coin, and behind that a two acre field which he is rewilding.
It fits perfectly with his love of nature and the landscape. He is director of wild writing - a subject that includes literature, landscapes and the environment - at Essex University.
His masters degree students study books on the natural world and learn to write, or improve their writing about it.
“We’ve had that course since 2009 and get people from all around the world,” says James who lives in Little Maplestead near Sudbury.
His previous books include The Oak Papers, a study of humanity’s relationship with oak trees, which was chosen to be read on air as BBC Radio Four’s book of the week.
“My next book which I’ve pretty much finished is all about rewilding. Again a sense of connection with the natural world and landscape.”
So often sites sacred to humans survive through the ages, adopted and adapted by successive generations.
The medieval churches so prominent in our landscapes today were frequently built where people worshipped hundreds or thousands of years before.
James says the word ‘numinous’ , meaning a deity dwells here, perfectly describes the feeling of such places.
“It captures really nicely the feeling you get whether or not you are religious. I’m not a Christian but I like churches.
“I’m not a pagan either but I have a love of the countryside, which is what the word pagan originally meant ... of the countryside as opposed to the people of the city.
“Churches are often on the most beautiful raised high ground - there’s no surprise in that.
“Often those early Christians were very careful to include the processes and ways of the past people.”
St Barnabas Church at Alphamstone - just a few miles from James’s home and dating from the 12th century - is a good example.
Said to be built over a bronze age barrow, or burial site, it is also surrounded by ancient sarsen stones, boulders dropped by retreating glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.
“At Alphamstone you have 10 sarsen stones which have been gathered at the site where the church is now,” said James.
“Those stones were probably gathered 5,000 years ago. Some believe they were part of a stone circle. Two of them were used in the foundations of the original church, incorporating the past.”
The area around the church in his home village is also special to James. It is where he feels closest to his late father. “I think it’s a very grounding practice, a ritual,” he says.
He also tells of visiting graveyards, and ancient burial sites like West Kennet Long Barrow in Wiltshire - places where we can remember the dead and connect with past generations.
“I think that’s healthy, not macabre in any way, and it’s where we revere the dead, connecting with the ancestors.
“That doesn’t just mean the recent dead, like going to see you grandfather’s grave, although I feel that’s a very healthy thing to do.”
Prehistoric people would leave their dead in places like West Kennet Long Barrow, but they would also go in, and sometimes move the bodies, he says.
And some would also have kept relics of family members. “The early farmers would have had maybe a piece of bone - not that I’m suggesting we should do that.
“Now we have things like memorial benches. I love that idea, and it encourages people to pause and look on lovely landscapes.
“For my grandfather I have a spoon with his initials marked on it, and my children have eaten their Shreddies with that spoon and I will say to them that’s your great grandfather’s spoon.”
Significant places James visited on his “Grounded” journey include the shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk.
He also spent time at a Suffolk site with a gruesome history - Aldham Common near Hadleigh where the Protestant priest Rowland Taylor was martyred in 1555.
Taylor was condemned to be burnt at the stake for heresy by followers of the Catholic Queen Mary.
But before the flames could consume him one of the crowd ran forward and dashed out his brains with an axe, sparing him the agony of death by fire.
James also sought out relics that held spiritual or religious meaning for our ancestors.
One was the intriguing Garboldisham Macehead found at a crossing point between Hopton and Garboldisham on the Norfolk Suffolk border when the River Little Ouse was dredged.
The iconic prehistoric carving - now kept at West Stow Anglo Saxon village near Bury - is made from a red deer antler and decorated with spiral patterns.
“It seems to have been placed as a votive offering in the river,” he says. “They are often put in these watery places. I loved the idea that these ancient people placed that deliberately.”
He is also intrigued to know what might lie buried in the primeval depths of Wormingford Mere - an ice age feature alongside the River Stour where the mud is so deep no exploration has yet reached the bottom.
Such a deep, dark body of water is the kind of place neolithic people might have felt held divine power but for now whatever secrets it keeps will remain hidden,
James has always loved the outdoors but believes many people have forgotten that humanity is part of nature.
“Being human we are all part of the natural world. This is something I was reminded of when going out in to the landscape and seeing all these places.
“It’s only in the last couple of hundred years we have started to see ourselves as separate.
“But now as we are starting to see climate change we have to remember we are all part of the natural world, even if we stick ourselves away in offices.
“You have to hope that we can alter our mindset.”
Grounded: A Journey into the Landsacpes of Our Ancestors, with illustrations by Suffolk artist Lara Kinsey, is published by Canongate and is available from bookstores and online.
