David Bridgeman-Sutton rattles a few chains with a ghostly encounter in a crypt

On another day, in 1916, Edith Olivier had been driving homewards after working at her wartime job organising the Women's Land Army in her native Wiltshire. It was a job that called for considerable abilities and great strength of mind: there was nothing woolly minded about Miss Olivier, as many of her eminent friends testified.

Her route took her along the avenue of standing stones to Avebury, then less well-known as a prehistoric site than it is now. She reached the village that had been built within the stones.

2. Avebury
Photo courtesy Diego Meozzi/Stone Pages

In her own words:-
"..On that particular night a village fair happened to be in progress...... the grand megaliths and humble cottages were.... fitfully lit by flares and torches from booths and shows. Some rather primitive swing-boats flew in and out of [the] dim circle of light; coconuts rolled hairily from the sticks on which they had been planted: bottles were shivered by gun-shots .... All this time the little casual crowds strayed with true Wiltshire indifference from one sight to another.... I stood on the bank for a short time watching the scene; and then I decided that too much rain was falling down the back of my neck, so I got in the car and drove away."

It was nine years later before Miss Olivier revisited Avebury or thought about that night again. She went with a friend, who gave her an odd look as she recalled the war-time fair. Later, over tea, the friend produced a guide book that showed that the annual Avebury fair, formerly held each October, had been discontinued after 1850. There had been no swing-boats or coconuts on that war-time night.

Some years later, visiting Land's End, Edith Olivier saw what she thought to be a pageant on one of the Scilly Isles with people in antique dress, flying pennants and signs of revelry. A Coastguard told her thet there was no land in that direction - but that a few - a very few - people had caught unexpected glimpses of King Arthur's Avalon at the same place.

In the late 1960s I was having tea with David Rutter at our London club: by then he had become Canon and Precentor of Lincoln cathedral. That evening we were going to a concert and then on to supper; both were activities guaranteed to drive other matters from his mind.
He turned pale, between two bites of a muffin. "There's something wrong at Lincoln," he said, "I must 'phone the cathedral."

3. Vision of Avalon? ~
mediaeval townscape (MSS).

Shortly he was back, even paler.
"The Dean collapsed and died earlier to-day".

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