The Dragon Line

Mystic Realms Lundy, Isle of Avalon

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Trans-England St. Michael Line

Trans-Europe St. Michael Line

Other St. Michael Lines

Trans- England St. Michael Line

A list of old churches within a band 550 yards wide either side of the main alignment prepared by Robert Forrest showed sixty- three between Lands End and the North Sea. Ten are or were dedicated to St. Michael or St. George and twenty- three. a third, were or are dedicated to St. Mary. They are remarkably similar to the sites on the trans- European alignment.

Legends of beacons and of St. Michael overthrowing the devil are connected with many of these sites.

The alignment of the line is that of the rising sun at the Celtic fire festival of Beltaine ( 1st May) when bonfires were lit to welcome in the Summer and encourage the Sun's warmth

St. Michael's Carn Brea.

St. Michael's Carn Brea, Penwith. The first, or last, in the Dragon line of sacred sites. Until the late nineteenth century a chapel to St. Michael stood on this prominent hilltop, surmounting a prehistoric chambered burial mound.

"Carn Brea [203:385280] a clump of barrows, on top of the largest, which was once a Neolithic tomb of some splendour, a chapel was built in 1300 AD and dedicated to St.Michael. It was connected with the priory at St.Michael's Mount, which decreed that a hermit should live on this western hill and keep a beacon alight to guide travellers by land and by sea." toulson, shirley----moors of the south - west

St. Michael's Mount, Mounts Bay, Cornwall.

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon - giant legend

A legend tells how St. Michael appeared to local fisherman in a vision in 495. Giant's Well on the Mount commemorates the Cornish legend of the giant Cormoran who apparently piled the rocks to form the original mount.

Beacon fires were lit in an iron basket set on top of an angle turret. On a rock beside the causeway there was a chapel dedicated to St. Katherine.

To the Celts St. Michael's Mount was 'Din Sul' which translates as to Latin as 'Mons Solis' - (translation Sun?).

Helston

Helston, in Cornwall, has as its patron saint the Archangel Michael. Local legend tells how when St Michael was carrying a stone to block the doorway to hell he was attacked by the devil and dropped the stone. Hence the name Helston. The stone was apparently incorporated into the wall of a church.

Chapel on Carn Brae, Camborne / Redruth

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon

St. Michael's Chapel, Roche Rock, nr. Bodmin

St. Michael's Chapel, Roche Rock, nr. Bodmin. Rising from Bodmin Moor, the rock on which the chapel / hermitage stands dominates the landscape. There is a holy well at the foot of the rock.

The Cheesewring, Bodmin Moor

St. Michael's, Brentor, Dartmoor

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon - moving legend

St. Michael's, Brentor, Dartmoor. ' A high rocky place on the top whereof stands a church, full bleak and weather beaten, all alone, as it were forsaken.' Written in the early sixteenth century, by Risdon in his 'Survey of Devon,' this description could equally be applied to all the hilltop sites dedicated to the Archangel Michael. From earliest times this site has been used as a beacon, serving to guide mariners into Plymouth. Local traditions tell how the foundations of the church were originally laid at the foot of the mount, but the devil moved the stones to the summit. When the church was dedicated to St. Michael, the Archangel himself appeared and hurled such a tremendous mass of rock upon the devil that he never reappeared there again. An inscription on the South wall of the church, referred to in the nineteenth century, read -'On this rock I will built my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it .' There are the remains of prehistoric, or iron age, walls surrounding the tor

St. Michael's, Burrowbridge

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon - giant legend

The church stands atop a conical hill which has traces of fortification round

St. Michael's, Othery

St. Michael's, Glastonbury Tor

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon

St. Michael's, Glastonbury Tor; One of the best known of St. Michael's chapels atop a solitary hill. The remains of surrounding fortifications, possibly iron age, were claimed to have been discovered by Phillip Rahtz after his excavations in 1964- 6.