Thornborough Archaeology Group

Midsummer, the peak of the spiritual year, has passed, and the North Yorkshire landscape lies passive as the summer storms roll in. Dramatic, threatening and gaudy, the sunlight firing barrages of light down on the defenceless fields.

And everywhere these arrows of light fall they create a poppy, each one a tiny scarlet wound, each one nodding towards the sunset in the gentle summer breeze.

And in the foreground the ghost of the great Neolithic temple of Cana Barn Henge shows up as a faint circle. Perhaps the henge remembers the time when the grass was stained red not by the poppies but by sacrifice and feasting, slaughter and bloodshed as our ancient ancestors celebrated the time of plenty, knowing the cruel winter will come again, whilst the sinking sun drags the curtain of night down over the sleeping landscape.