On the Winter Solstice of 2020 a group of Radical Stroud walkers paid a visit to this local “Trig Point” with a view to commemoration, celebration, and a desire to discover new lore and new myths concerning these ubiquitous and enigmatic structures.
When faced with this distinctive and lonely pillar, all agreed that the official explanation for trig points (mapping, trigonometry, theodolites and so on) seemed like a rather unlikely cover story. What is the real reason for the six and a half thousand trig points that dot the British landscape?
Libations were poured and a toast in good ale was drunk to the spirit of the pillar.
Robin Treefellow made the following speech in honour of Mars Olludius, a Romano British deity depicted in a carved relief figure, discovered in the valley below the trig point.
IN PRAISE OF MARS OLLUDIUS
By Robin Treefellow
At the hilltop where woods of ash, oak and beech clung, stood the crannies and bends of the valley below. Built in the roman fashion with local bricks and roofed with diamond shaped tiles, the rural shrine had a single homely portico giving into the room beyond with its painted walls where the deities of the land had their sacred stone carved reliefs in niches along the back: here day light touched them warming the smooth outlines of the god’s faces. People came from the farms scattered on the plateau of land beyond the shrine to give their devotions to those deities in what way they could; offerings of strong ale spilled on the stone altar pillar, and at end of harvest the sacrifice of a goat or old ram outside with its offal burnt and flesh ceremonially divided up, roasted and consumed.
The names of those deities dwelling in their modest shrine were that of Mars Olludius and Romulus. In the Brythonic tongue Olludius meant ‘the god of the great tree’ and for the many tenant farmers around he was one of their gods who protected and kept vitality in their crops, livestock and even their tools they depended on. Romulus as everyone knew was the founder of Rome the greatest civilization under Jupiter’s heaven, and his brother had been Remus: their father was Mars.
A man named Gulioepius who had a fairly prosperous farm not far from the shrine had originally paid a notable craftsman, Iuventius for the stone reliefs to be made. Before that there had been an older stone carving of simpler execution, though evoking more of the old native feeling for Olludius It is believed that Olludius is a spirit who lives in the oldest trees and has a nature equally wild and yet friendly to those who appease him correctly. He is spoken of as bringing fruitfulness, but also disease. Not far from the shrine in the valleys lie deeper woods where Olludius is said to haunt, and every farm has to pass on its warning to every generation to not disturb such uncultivated outland for Olludius rules them with a numinous tyranny.
Photography: Deborah Roberts
