Much has already been written about the St. Michael’s diagonal, which crosses England from west to east and allowed travelers to orient themselves and move along the shortest possible route. Rather than presenting in detail the sites that line this historic axis, we will situate it in relation to the megalithic site of Stonehenge, France’s Mont-Saint-Michel, and Ireland’s Skellig Michael.
Visualization in Google Earth
You are invited to download the attached .kmz file below to better visualize the alignments and points of interest it contains. For best results, first disable the generic borders and place names provided by Google Earth, then enable the markers included in the file.
St. Michael Leylines.kmzThree Sacred Mounts
The St. Michael alignments can be seen as a form of prehistoric triangulation—a kind of ancient positioning system whose origins stretch back thousands of years. At the heart of this geographical framework lies Avebury Henge, an impressive circular site made up of an earthen embankment and lines of standing stones, in the county of Wiltshire.
In many ways, Avebury Henge functions as the geographical center of England, forming the apex of an imaginary triangle. The base of this triangle (shown in white on the map) is defined by three rocky islets dedicated to St. Michael. The first is Skellig Michael, off the west coast of Ireland, where Catholic monks settled in the 7th century. The second is St. Michael’s Mount, just offshore from Penzance in Cornwall, at the far southwestern tip of England. This islet closely resembles Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, by far the most famous of the three.
The line linking these three mounts passes through Watch Croft, the highest point in Cornwall, rising 252 meters above sea level. With such an evocative name, it is easy to imagine Celtic watchmen stationed there, scanning the horizon for Nordic, Roman, or Basque vessels approaching the English coast—whether for trade or for war.
All the Way to the Middle East?
Several websites and this Wikipedia page refer to an axis dedicated to St. Michael, linking the three mounts mentioned above to other major centers of Christianity, including the Abbey of Cluny, the Sacra di San Michele (Piedmont), and Monte Sant’Angelo sul Gargano (Apulia). This axis is said to extend all the way to Mount Carmel in Israel. Far be it from me to dismiss this kind of research, but the idea of a straight alignment does not really hold up when drawn on a world map. In reality, such a straight line would appear more like an arc when projected onto the curved surface of the Earth.
The Main Axis
As mentioned earlier, Avebury Henge is unquestionably the central point of the long diagonal crossing England, from St. Michael’s Mount to the Norfolk region. Glastonbury Tor—topped by the solitary tower of a church now in ruins—is another key site along this line. Seen from a distance, the hill naturally brings to mind an island crowned with a lighthouse. On either side of this straight line, no more than a few kilometers away, a multitude of religious sites and megaliths form a kind of serpentine or caduceus-like pattern. Some refer to this winding line as St. Mary’s Line.
The main axis ends at St Margaret’s Church in Hopton-on-Sea, on the shores of the North Sea. This ruined church lies 6.8 kilometers from Ness Point, the easternmost point of the British Isles. Some researchers claim that the St Michael line is oriented toward the rising sun on May 1st, the festival of Beltane.
Secondary Axes
The other two sides of the triangle are the result of my own experiments in Google Earth. On one hand, I chose to connect Avebury Henge to another famous Neolithic site: Stonehenge. Extending this axis southward brings us to Christchurch Priory, whose origins date back to the 9th century. Crossing the English Channel, the line passes through Cherbourg, and a slight shift of about one kilometer carries it through the Abbey of Notre-Dame du Vœu, now in ruins. From there, the line continues until it reaches Mont-Saint-Michel, passing along the way through the castles of Pirou and Regnéville.
Applying the same approach to connect Avebury with Bath Abbey leads us to St. Nicholas Church in Uphill, perched atop a seaside cliff. Finally, linking Avebury Henge to the nearby giant burial mound of Silbury Hill produces yet another straight line, taking us close to the English Channel and the ruins of Corfe Castle.
The Transverse Axis
I set out to identify an alignment that would allow the triangulation of the territory to be extended, using the most significant point within the main triangle as a reference—namely, Glastonbury Tor. This led to the discovery of a perfectly straight line connecting five noteworthy sites. The starting point is Watermouth Castle, a Victorian-era pseudo-medieval folly located on the Devon coast. After passing through Glastonbury Abbey and the foot of the hill, the line crosses the ancient Neolithic and medieval settlement known as Old Sarum (now abandoned) before coming to rest at Winchester Cathedral.
Finally, at the eastern edge of the Winchester urban area, the line reaches a curious forest planted in the shape of an equilateral triangle. A look at the “Places” layer in Google Earth reveals, just a few dozen meters away, a pyramid-shaped science center as well as the Winchester Masonic Temple.
Notes
- Topography is most likely the reason behind all these alignments. Finding a straight line from summit to summit was a valid alternative to observing the stars when traveling and navigating.
- According to David Furlong, the main axis would be aligned with the rising sun on May 1st, or more likely with the setting of the star Mintaka, part of the constellation Orion, around 2800 BCE.
- Christian places of worship were often built on the ruins of Celtic or Roman sites to better establish the new religion's hold. With the exception of the Neolithic sites of Avebury Henge, Silbury Hill, and Stonehenge, almost all the points aligned in this document date from the Anglo-Norman period.
- The alignments always include a reference point on the edge of or a few kilometers from the coast.
- Alignments consisting of as few as three points may be the result of chance, given the large number of churches, castles, and other antiquities scattered throughout the British Isles. However, when a church is paired with a watchtower, their relative positioning indicates the presence of a deliberate alignment.