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--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
· Intro
0:01 · so this map it's causing me a bit of a headache every so often when you're searching through some
0:07 · old maps a little nugget of curiosity comes up and slaps you in the face and before you know
0:11 · it you're looking through some old books you're looking through some more old maps
0:14 · and modern maps that curiosity has turned into this wonderful rabbit hole and it's now yours
0:19 · to dive and delve into and that's exactly what has just happened here so this one had
0:24 · something on it that bothered me so much that I thought well I'm going to visit this in person
0:29 · this is the very gorgeous New Forest National Park and we're kind of on the south coast of
0:34 · uh England now if I show you a quick map of this particular part of the New Forest this
0:39 · heathland here right here well you can see there are no other features other than Elkhams Grave
0:44 · there's no roads there's no crossroads there's no bridal ways nothing else in the landscape other
0:50 · than this Heathland every time I've come across one of these graves before well they're outside
0:55 · of a parish they're on a crossroads they're on a main route they're on a parish boundary and
0:59 · that's for very good reason i'll come to that shortly so why Elkhams grave this is not what
1:04 · it seems let me explain why [Music] okay this is what's referred to as a crossroad grave doesn't
· Sawyer
1:14 · look like much it's in the middle of nowhere and it is a very old crossroad the route used to join
1:19 · Newbury to Basingstoke used to come across here but now it's just some old tracks some old farm
1:25 · tracks in the middle of nowhere and if we look at the 1880s maps we see that route has moved
1:29 · a bit further north now but our crossroad still remains with that old route it actually crosses
1:34 · perpendicular to a Roman road and that forms our crossroads but if we zoom in a bit more we see
1:40 · something else really curious sawyer's grave add to that we're also on a parish boundary okay so
1:47 · you might be thinking by this point what exactly is a crossroad grave so here's your context
1:52 · crossroad Grave is that burial place of a particular type of criminal that had committed a
1:56 · crime against him or herself positioned here away from the parish on the boundary unable to move on
2:04 · okay so this is the site of Sawyer's grave and really frustratingly the research on this comes
2:10 · to a dead end almost straight away we just have word that this was a crossroad grave we have no
2:16 · stories passed on no folklore absolutely nothing to give us any tangible sense of what happened
2:22 · here or to Sawyer him or herself so I guess now the big question is well how do we know
2:27 · this is a crossroad grave we just have this random marking on a map what exactly does all this mean
· Oram
2:36 · so we have a site that's just up ahead so this route here I'm on now is an old sort of coaching
2:42 · road i think it connected Salisbury with Devizes and there's probably some old milestones along
2:46 · here sort of 1700s so a main road this was back in the day and what I'm looking for just up ahead
2:52 · is something that crosses this perpendicular a parish boundary now unlike Sawyers and Orams we
3:00 · have nothing marked on the modern OS maps but if we flip back to the late 1800s and right up
3:05 · until the 1930s where we do have this one marked on those maps this is Oram's grave now it didn't
3:13 · take a huge amount of research to find out we have a man called James Orum who on the
3:17 · 25th of July 1768 committed a crime which would end his life we have a record of the Wilshire
3:24 · Coroner's bill suggesting what he charged for the 12mi journey he made okay so this
3:30 · is the very spot this is a crossroads we've got the uh the main old coaching route going
3:35 · this way right through where I'm standing perpendicular to this we've got the parish
3:39 · boundary the furthest point you could be outside of that parish on that crossroads now this wasn't
3:45 · the last crossroad grave to be placed right here at this spot there are more records so
3:51 · it seemed like it was quite a common practice but we do have a bit of an issue with this it
3:56 · would be over 100red years until we see the name Oram on the maps the 1880s OS maps detail Oram
4:04 · and when we look a bit closely well we find well we find that Orum's grave that's right here on
4:10 · this very spot that we can evidence and we can see in actual records has now become confused
4:17 · on those 1880 maps with a prehistoric barrerow the barrerow was presumably I think on top of
4:23 · that hill there maybe 100 200 yards away well the practice that of the crossroad graves here is now
4:31 · been conflated completely tied up with something that happened in prehistory they've become one
· Kitts
4:44 · So on the travels I'm often accused of not looking or taking folklore seriously enough
4:49 · and I'm looking at the sort of the archeological and the science i brought with me today Jenna from
4:53 · the channel Cross and Combe now Jenna touches on folklore a bit more than I do is that fair
4:59 · to say i think yeah I think that's probably fair to say and why why could folklore be useful to
5:05 · us why do you enjoy it well I I absolutely find folklore quite fascinating because when you're
5:11 · reading the stories of folklore now some of them are so completely offthe-wall and
5:15 · you kind of find yourself thinking I'm not sure there's much truth in that but some of them you
5:19 · think you know what is there a nugget of truth in this and it it gets me excited because then
5:24 · I want to try and find out what that truth is so I tend to use folklore as a way of bringing
5:30 · a place to life when I when I do a video so with that in mind let's tackle Kit's grave we
5:35 · have traveled to Martin down in Hampshire just southwest of Ssbury now if we start
5:40 · researching this we come across some wonderful sites and straight away we have some confusion
5:45 · about finding Kit's grave in fact the modern anti aquarium website suggest that Kit's grave
5:51 · is cotles bur or cotlesburg a barrerow basically mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter in fact two
5:59 · Anglo-Saxon charters and they locate that bur that hill that barrerow as right here there are
6:06 · indeed some extremely knowledgeable blogs which even themselves state that Kit's grave is in
6:11 · fact a very indistinct long barrerow so likely Neolithic or Bronze Age so this dear viewer is
6:18 · a long barrow this is not Kit's grave and let me explain exactly why I think that is the case
6:25 · so as Jenna and I walk this direction away from the long barrow we want to try and do is have a
6:30 · look at the evidence for that long barrerow being a red herring so first of all if we have a look at
6:35 · the OS maps where we see something we absolutely love we see three counties coming together on one
6:40 · point just up ahead of us we also have parish boundaries we have a border and we have quite
6:46 · a significant routeway all to the west of that long barrel we also then can flip to the early
6:52 · OS maps the late 1800s and we have a much better understanding of where Kitt's grave was just take
6:58 · a look at this now Kitt's grave is here right on the crossroads and the Long Barrow well that's way
7:02 · over here and here is that crossroads we've got a route that goes this way sort of north southish
7:10 · we've got the point where three counties meet Wiltshire Hampshire and Dorset and we've also
7:14 · got a parish boundary as far as we're concerned this is the spot of Kit's grave not the long
7:19 · barrow just back there but how exactly does this help us solve the Alchem's grave mystery
· Woots
7:31 · okay slight confession to make i made a spreadsheet so when I first started doing
7:35 · this research I went through every single local uh crossroad grave I could find cuz I wanted to
7:40 · see if they had anything in common so I made this spreadsheet detailed every aspect what maps were
7:44 · they on and current ones the old ones and when I looked at some of the older maps well I found
7:49 · two really old ones on the 1759 Taylor's maps and we have Woots and Moth's Grave we're talking 1759
7:59 · the Taylor's map 1759 and here we are Moth's Grave and if I flip to some others I've managed to print
8:06 · off well we've got Beas and Woots on these really old maps but that's it they don't appear any later
8:12 · on the 1880s maps they're gone on the modern maps they're gone and the problem we've got with these
8:18 · maps is well it's just planted right there it could be within a 5m radius of the text on the
8:24 · map okay so a little bit of research and we have something that might help william Moff of Sherborn
8:30 · St john died 24th of August 1738 and we have a very tangible link there with a crossroad it's
8:38 · on the very old map so is this it is this the the crime committed against oneself and the placement
8:44 · of the body on that crossroad grave job done however William Moff died an extremely wealthy
8:51 · man worth over £30,000 in the 1700s now here's a curious thing he ordered his cops to be laid
8:59 · in a grave about 6 ft deep in a public field which he purchased near Rook's Downtown and
9:06 · gave his tenant £50 that it should never be dug up or plowed up again so are we seeing maybe the
9:12 · 1880s OS maps with the traditional crossroad grave and maybe these earlier ones the 1759 ones well
9:19 · maybe those were for the rich and the famous well that's what I thought until I found this now this
9:26 · here details Moff and his demise and it suggests that when he was found well he was found with no
9:33 · money albeit his will left land what he was soon to be said to be relying on the parish to keep him
9:39 · going had he lived any longer he was buried with no funeral service either way though wow how does
9:46 · this though tie in and help us more importantly with Alcam's grave back in the New Forest
· Elkham
9:54 · now we're now as I say here in the heart of the New Forest trying to find Elkhams grave no idea
10:00 · exactly what we're looking for as such so I guess the question is Jen how can folklore help us find
10:08 · what we're looking for because I'm often very quick to rule it out and that's probably not a
10:11 · good trait of mine well the first thing would be to find out if there are any stories about
10:16 · what Elkhams grave is and maybe that can help help us understand what we're actually looking
10:21 · for however in this instance we haven't really been able to find any stories at all um so in
10:27 · terms of being related to crossroad graves it's entirely possible that a long time ago there may
10:33 · well have been something of a crossroad in this area that has since disappeared and maybe whoever
10:40 · put the early map completely missed it yeah and um when they then put the OS maps together they
10:48 · spoke to the locals and this name has existed in the folk memory of the of the people even though
10:53 · that crossroad has since disappeared so it might be that actually Elkhams grave is not here it's
11:01 · somewhere else and it's just been completely lost now when we first came here we had no clue what
11:05 · we were looking for other than Elams on the map but after all the other associations with the
11:11 · long barrerows and the barrerows could this one be the same well lidar gave us that clue we just now
11:17 · seem to be associated with the barrerow and we're going to try and find that barrerow right now we
11:21 · are going to try and find it right we think we're we're kind of at the right location here in terms
11:28 · of we've just looked on the lidar and we found a big lump in the ground and we think this is this
11:33 · is roughly where it is now we've just had a bit of a like a look around in this area and we can't
11:38 · find anything it's on the liar and yet looking in these trees in front of us i mean if we have
11:43 · a look in this hedge here there's no mound at all there's no mound but either either way we can't
11:50 · seem to find I mean this is this is where you'd think looking on the LidAR kind of right here but
11:55 · we've just got like as flat as can possibly seem it said on like mealic portal it's raised a couple
12:01 · of feet off the ground but absolutely nothing we can't see any Paris boundaries we can't see any
12:05 · sort of roots that we know of this Elkhams grave doesn't add up at the moment for us it's possible
12:11 · that you know if it did exist if there was a crossroad grave originally that actually over time
12:16 · it's become associated with something prominent in the landscape which may itself now have been
12:22 · has been disappearing so now all we're left with is the name Elkhams Grave and no one's a mystery
12:29 · one of history's many mysteries yeah so either way the conclusion because you lot love a conclusion
12:35 · and an opinion well I've got one on this for a change so these were as we know graves of a
· Jenna
12:41 · particular type a crossroad a boundary somewhere outside of the parish or the community and in some
12:48 · cases the name didn't always pass on to that particular spot what translated into a feature
12:54 · on the landscape a barrow a long barrerow or in some cases like this one here Elkhams perhaps a
12:59 · whole chunk of the landscape a hill so I've been Paul this has been Jenna jenna is doing a video
13:05 · on crossroad graves too but with a slightly different twist yes yes i'm actually going to
13:09 · be looking at the beliefs behind why people were buried at the crossroads um the superstitions some
13:16 · of the stories and I'm also going to be visiting a few other location well probably two locations
13:21 · cool um that are quite famous actually in the UK so brilliant right go subscribe to
13:25 · Jen's channel link here link below link in the pin comment etc see you this time next week
13:32 · [Music]

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
	·	Intro
0:01	·	so this map it's causing me a bit of a headache every so often when you're searching through some
0:07	·	old maps a little nugget of curiosity comes up and slaps you in the face and before you know
0:11	·	it you're looking through some old books you're looking through some more old maps
0:14	·	and modern maps that curiosity has turned into this wonderful rabbit hole and it's now yours
0:19	·	to dive and delve into and that's exactly what has just happened here so this one had
0:24	·	something on it that bothered me so much that I thought well I'm going to visit this in person
0:29	·	this is the very gorgeous New Forest National Park and we're kind of on the south coast of
0:34	·	uh England now if I show you a quick map of this particular part of the New Forest this
0:39	·	heathland here right here well you can see there are no other features other than Elkhams Grave
0:44	·	there's no roads there's no crossroads there's no bridal ways nothing else in the landscape other
0:50	·	than this Heathland every time I've come across one of these graves before well they're outside
0:55	·	of a parish they're on a crossroads they're on a main route they're on a parish boundary and
0:59	·	that's for very good reason i'll come to that shortly so why Elkhams grave this is not what
1:04	·	it seems let me explain why [Music] okay this is what's referred to as a crossroad grave doesn't
	·	Sawyer
1:14	·	look like much it's in the middle of nowhere and it is a very old crossroad the route used to join
1:19	·	Newbury to Basingstoke used to come across here but now it's just some old tracks some old farm
1:25	·	tracks in the middle of nowhere and if we look at the 1880s maps we see that route has moved
1:29	·	a bit further north now but our crossroad still remains with that old route it actually crosses
1:34	·	perpendicular to a Roman road and that forms our crossroads but if we zoom in a bit more we see
1:40	·	something else really curious sawyer's grave add to that we're also on a parish boundary okay so
1:47	·	you might be thinking by this point what exactly is a crossroad grave so here's your context
1:52	·	crossroad Grave is that burial place of a particular type of criminal that had committed a
1:56	·	crime against him or herself positioned here away from the parish on the boundary unable to move on
2:04	·	okay so this is the site of Sawyer's grave and really frustratingly the research on this comes
2:10	·	to a dead end almost straight away we just have word that this was a crossroad grave we have no
2:16	·	stories passed on no folklore absolutely nothing to give us any tangible sense of what happened
2:22	·	here or to Sawyer him or herself so I guess now the big question is well how do we know
2:27	·	this is a crossroad grave we just have this random marking on a map what exactly does all this mean
	·	Oram
2:36	·	so we have a site that's just up ahead so this route here I'm on now is an old sort of coaching
2:42	·	road i think it connected Salisbury with Devizes and there's probably some old milestones along
2:46	·	here sort of 1700s so a main road this was back in the day and what I'm looking for just up ahead
2:52	·	is something that crosses this perpendicular a parish boundary now unlike Sawyers and Orams we
3:00	·	have nothing marked on the modern OS maps but if we flip back to the late 1800s and right up
3:05	·	until the 1930s where we do have this one marked on those maps this is Oram's grave now it didn't
3:13	·	take a huge amount of research to find out we have a man called James Orum who on the
3:17	·	25th of July 1768 committed a crime which would end his life we have a record of the Wilshire
3:24	·	Coroner's bill suggesting what he charged for the 12mi journey he made okay so this
3:30	·	is the very spot this is a crossroads we've got the uh the main old coaching route going
3:35	·	this way right through where I'm standing perpendicular to this we've got the parish
3:39	·	boundary the furthest point you could be outside of that parish on that crossroads now this wasn't
3:45	·	the last crossroad grave to be placed right here at this spot there are more records so
3:51	·	it seemed like it was quite a common practice but we do have a bit of an issue with this it
3:56	·	would be over 100red years until we see the name Oram on the maps the 1880s OS maps detail Oram
4:04	·	and when we look a bit closely well we find well we find that Orum's grave that's right here on
4:10	·	this very spot that we can evidence and we can see in actual records has now become confused
4:17	·	on those 1880 maps with a prehistoric barrerow the barrerow was presumably I think on top of
4:23	·	that hill there maybe 100 200 yards away well the practice that of the crossroad graves here is now
4:31	·	been conflated completely tied up with something that happened in prehistory they've become one
	·	Kitts
4:44	·	So on the travels I'm often accused of not looking or taking folklore seriously enough
4:49	·	and I'm looking at the sort of the archeological and the science i brought with me today Jenna from
4:53	·	the channel Cross and Combe now Jenna touches on folklore a bit more than I do is that fair
4:59	·	to say i think yeah I think that's probably fair to say and why why could folklore be useful to
5:05	·	us why do you enjoy it well I I absolutely find folklore quite fascinating because when you're
5:11	·	reading the stories of folklore now some of them are so completely offthe-wall and
5:15	·	you kind of find yourself thinking I'm not sure there's much truth in that but some of them you
5:19	·	think you know what is there a nugget of truth in this and it it gets me excited because then
5:24	·	I want to try and find out what that truth is so I tend to use folklore as a way of bringing
5:30	·	a place to life when I when I do a video so with that in mind let's tackle Kit's grave we
5:35	·	have traveled to Martin down in Hampshire just southwest of Ssbury now if we start
5:40	·	researching this we come across some wonderful sites and straight away we have some confusion
5:45	·	about finding Kit's grave in fact the modern anti aquarium website suggest that Kit's grave
5:51	·	is cotles bur or cotlesburg a barrerow basically mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter in fact two
5:59	·	Anglo-Saxon charters and they locate that bur that hill that barrerow as right here there are
6:06	·	indeed some extremely knowledgeable blogs which even themselves state that Kit's grave is in
6:11	·	fact a very indistinct long barrerow so likely Neolithic or Bronze Age so this dear viewer is
6:18	·	a long barrow this is not Kit's grave and let me explain exactly why I think that is the case
6:25	·	so as Jenna and I walk this direction away from the long barrow we want to try and do is have a
6:30	·	look at the evidence for that long barrerow being a red herring so first of all if we have a look at
6:35	·	the OS maps where we see something we absolutely love we see three counties coming together on one
6:40	·	point just up ahead of us we also have parish boundaries we have a border and we have quite
6:46	·	a significant routeway all to the west of that long barrel we also then can flip to the early
6:52	·	OS maps the late 1800s and we have a much better understanding of where Kitt's grave was just take
6:58	·	a look at this now Kitt's grave is here right on the crossroads and the Long Barrow well that's way
7:02	·	over here and here is that crossroads we've got a route that goes this way sort of north southish
7:10	·	we've got the point where three counties meet Wiltshire Hampshire and Dorset and we've also
7:14	·	got a parish boundary as far as we're concerned this is the spot of Kit's grave not the long
7:19	·	barrow just back there but how exactly does this help us solve the Alchem's grave mystery
	·	Woots
7:31	·	okay slight confession to make i made a spreadsheet so when I first started doing
7:35	·	this research I went through every single local uh crossroad grave I could find cuz I wanted to
7:40	·	see if they had anything in common so I made this spreadsheet detailed every aspect what maps were
7:44	·	they on and current ones the old ones and when I looked at some of the older maps well I found
7:49	·	two really old ones on the 1759 Taylor's maps and we have Woots and Moth's Grave we're talking 1759
7:59	·	the Taylor's map 1759 and here we are Moth's Grave and if I flip to some others I've managed to print
8:06	·	off well we've got Beas and Woots on these really old maps but that's it they don't appear any later
8:12	·	on the 1880s maps they're gone on the modern maps they're gone and the problem we've got with these
8:18	·	maps is well it's just planted right there it could be within a 5m radius of the text on the
8:24	·	map okay so a little bit of research and we have something that might help william Moff of Sherborn
8:30	·	St john died 24th of August 1738 and we have a very tangible link there with a crossroad it's
8:38	·	on the very old map so is this it is this the the crime committed against oneself and the placement
8:44	·	of the body on that crossroad grave job done however William Moff died an extremely wealthy
8:51	·	man worth over £30,000 in the 1700s now here's a curious thing he ordered his cops to be laid
8:59	·	in a grave about 6 ft deep in a public field which he purchased near Rook's Downtown and
9:06	·	gave his tenant £50 that it should never be dug up or plowed up again so are we seeing maybe the
9:12	·	1880s OS maps with the traditional crossroad grave and maybe these earlier ones the 1759 ones well
9:19	·	maybe those were for the rich and the famous well that's what I thought until I found this now this
9:26	·	here details Moff and his demise and it suggests that when he was found well he was found with no
9:33	·	money albeit his will left land what he was soon to be said to be relying on the parish to keep him
9:39	·	going had he lived any longer he was buried with no funeral service either way though wow how does
9:46	·	this though tie in and help us more importantly with Alcam's grave back in the New Forest
	·	Elkham
9:54	·	now we're now as I say here in the heart of the New Forest trying to find Elkhams grave no idea
10:00	·	exactly what we're looking for as such so I guess the question is Jen how can folklore help us find
10:08	·	what we're looking for because I'm often very quick to rule it out and that's probably not a
10:11	·	good trait of mine well the first thing would be to find out if there are any stories about
10:16	·	what Elkhams grave is and maybe that can help help us understand what we're actually looking
10:21	·	for however in this instance we haven't really been able to find any stories at all um so in
10:27	·	terms of being related to crossroad graves it's entirely possible that a long time ago there may
10:33	·	well have been something of a crossroad in this area that has since disappeared and maybe whoever
10:40	·	put the early map completely missed it yeah and um when they then put the OS maps together they
10:48	·	spoke to the locals and this name has existed in the folk memory of the of the people even though
10:53	·	that crossroad has since disappeared so it might be that actually Elkhams grave is not here it's
11:01	·	somewhere else and it's just been completely lost now when we first came here we had no clue what
11:05	·	we were looking for other than Elams on the map but after all the other associations with the
11:11	·	long barrerows and the barrerows could this one be the same well lidar gave us that clue we just now
11:17	·	seem to be associated with the barrerow and we're going to try and find that barrerow right now we
11:21	·	are going to try and find it right we think we're we're kind of at the right location here in terms
11:28	·	of we've just looked on the lidar and we found a big lump in the ground and we think this is this
11:33	·	is roughly where it is now we've just had a bit of a like a look around in this area and we can't
11:38	·	find anything it's on the liar and yet looking in these trees in front of us i mean if we have
11:43	·	a look in this hedge here there's no mound at all there's no mound but either either way we can't
11:50	·	seem to find I mean this is this is where you'd think looking on the LidAR kind of right here but
11:55	·	we've just got like as flat as can possibly seem it said on like mealic portal it's raised a couple
12:01	·	of feet off the ground but absolutely nothing we can't see any Paris boundaries we can't see any
12:05	·	sort of roots that we know of this Elkhams grave doesn't add up at the moment for us it's possible
12:11	·	that you know if it did exist if there was a crossroad grave originally that actually over time
12:16	·	it's become associated with something prominent in the landscape which may itself now have been
12:22	·	has been disappearing so now all we're left with is the name Elkhams Grave and no one's a mystery
12:29	·	one of history's many mysteries yeah so either way the conclusion because you lot love a conclusion
12:35	·	and an opinion well I've got one on this for a change so these were as we know graves of a
	·	Jenna
12:41	·	particular type a crossroad a boundary somewhere outside of the parish or the community and in some
12:48	·	cases the name didn't always pass on to that particular spot what translated into a feature
12:54	·	on the landscape a barrow a long barrerow or in some cases like this one here Elkhams perhaps a
12:59	·	whole chunk of the landscape a hill so I've been Paul this has been Jenna jenna is doing a video
13:05	·	on crossroad graves too but with a slightly different twist yes yes i'm actually going to
13:09	·	be looking at the beliefs behind why people were buried at the crossroads um the superstitions some
13:16	·	of the stories and I'm also going to be visiting a few other location well probably two locations
13:21	·	cool um that are quite famous actually in the UK so brilliant right go subscribe to
13:25	·	Jen's channel link here link below link in the pin comment etc see you this time next week
13:32	·	[Music]