St Catherine's Hill - Christchurch Dorset

Today I decided to visit St Catherine's Hill in Christchurch. Although this is somewhere I have been in the past I have never explored it from a historical or energetic perspective. The hill is significant for a number of reasons and its natural beauty and panoramic views should not be ignored. As you would expect from this blog it is located on a UK Ley Line of extreme importance and interest.

The Hill features 11 mounds or Tumoil and evidence has been found that the site was in use as far back as 4000 years ago. These mounds are hard to find. Even though I found a few hidden in the beautiful thick new forest heather, I feel some serious exploration would be needed to find all of them.

I intend in this blog post to explore the significance of the site in terms of its position on the UK Ley Line, but also to show some of the magical history and mythology which surrounds it. Those of you who are familiar with the subject of Ley Lines will no doubt be aware of the reports of "paranormal" activity which is associated with Ley Lines and St Catherine's hill is no stranger to this kind of activity.

Whats in a name?

Over the last few years I started to pay attention to the names of places and consider what significance this could indicate to us. In my first blog post I talked about how Sir Alfred Watkins had not come up with the term Ley but that he had merely chosen to use it because he discovered that many of the settlements on the lines he was studying had the term ley, leigh or similar incorporated into their names. I have noticed that St Catherine's Hill is a common name for hills on Ley Lines and having researched into this a little I stumbled across some interesting perspectives. 

Many are familiar with St Catherine through the fire work named after her supposed death. This imagery could play a part in the reason for naming these hills after this particular saint. 

St Catherine was a woman of Nobel pagan birth who converted to Christianity in her early teens. In 1830 Catherine claimed to have seen an apparition of angel who lead her to "the beloved virgin". The beloved virgin is then said to have shown Catherine a medal and instructed her to replicate it and provide it as a healing tool, a design that is now known as the miraculous medal.

"The Two Glowing Wheels" Hamburg November 4th 1667"

Catherine later said she had seen Jesus who she claims to have wed and consummated the marriage with. I only mention this because some authors have drawn similarities between Catherine's experiences and other religious figures, such as Constantine, who are purported to have seen flying crosses in the sky or "miracles" of this nature, which some speculate are what we now call UFOs. I am unsure if St Catherine ever claimed to have seen a flying cross but I sure this can be explored more by the curious of you. Please let me know your finds!


St Catherine was eventually put to death. Her intellect and debating skills had converted many pagans to Christianity and eventually she was put to death. She was initially meant to have been killed  using a wheel based torture device but in what is described as a miracle she escaped this and was beheaded. It is this association with the wheel that we are lead to believe is why the firework is named after her. I have to wonder if this wheel based torture device was chosen to ridicule Catherine for her beliefs or accounts, in the same way that Jesus was put to death wearing a crown of thorns.

Some writers speculate that the association between Catherine and spinning circles of fire has led to hills with a high rate of UFO accounts historically to be named after her. I know that there was a Church on the hill called St Catherine's but of course this only begs the question as to why the church was named after her. This connection might seem tenuous but you only have to google "St Catherine's hill UFO" to see there seems to be some strong correlation between the two at sites all across the world.

Another interesting aspect to this could be a simile between the sites and Catherine herself. As I mentioned St Catherine was born of Pagan nobility and was much loved by many people. She converted to Christianity and eventually converted many more. 

St Catherine's hill's history is like this in many ways. Like most ancient sites in the UK through history they have been used by many people for many different things. Some as settlements and some as places of worship. It was common practice for an invading nation to use the original sites of worship for the new churches in order to encourage the population to convert religion. St Catherine was a pagan turned christian who converted pagans to Christianity. The archaeology of this site shows it has been used in this way over the years and a site named after a christian such as St Catherine loved by pagans would have been a great way to convert the locals. 

The Disappearing Stones

St Catherine's hill is part of a local folk story. The story goes that in 1094 after the destruction of the Christchurch Priory the local Bishop decided that he would move the church to St Catherine's hill. After moving all the materials to the hill they mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on the site that the priory is now built on. They were moved back, and again the same happened. Eventually the Bishop gave in and built the church on the site where the materials kept ending up at, namely the current day location of Christchurch Priory. 

This is not the only tale of this happening throughout history. The story is common and usually based around locations where pagan sites have been adapted for roman or christian use, the eventual location of the site usually ending up in the middle of a druid tree henge. The argument being that the locals wanted to continue to worship on the same site so they moved the stones and materials back overnight until eventually the new temple was built on the old pagan one.

This legend being applied to St Catherine's hill would suggest that the locals placed more significance on the site the church is now built on than they did St Catherine's Hill. As I will explain shortly these two sites are on the same Ley Lines, so maybe the current site was purely deemed more practical for worship than St Catherine's Hill or maybe the energy is more suitable for worship?

St Catherine's Hill on the UK Ley Line Grid

St Catherine's Hill is situated on an interesting point on the UK Leyline grid. It is on a leyline that seems for several reasons to be of significance. I intend to explore this ley line in more detail in later blogs but I would like to give you a quick overview now.

The hill is situated on a Ley Line which runs from Hengistbury Head Christchurch through St Catherine's Hill, Salisbury, Pewsey, Cleeves Hill and Stonehenge before reaching Avebury. The Line then continues its way up the spine of the UK before leaving British soil at John O'Groats, the most northern part of main land Britain.

This Leyline is significant in that it passes through two of the most important sites on the planet, Stonehenge and Avebury and from what I have found this seems to be the only Leyline which directly links these two points but it is not only this that makes this ley line stand out to me. This line has come up in research for a couple of other reasons.

To me it seems that the most mystical and powerful sites I have visited in the UK and the world are Stonehenge, Avebury and Glastonbury. Avebury and Glastonbury both being on the famous Michael Mary ley line. Now if you put these three sites on a map you will find that they form a perfect right angle triangle. Now this is interesting eh? Not done yet!

This leyline has been given a name. The Duke's leyline. It is named after Reverend Edward Dukes who came up with an interesting theory. Rev Duke proposed that this leyline and the sites on it represent a solarium with each site being geocentrically placed to represent the planets in our solar system. So the ratio between sites on this line is the same as the ratio between the planets and of course the sun. To go into the validity of this is something I intend to do in future blogs, it might take a few!

I know this is a bit of a cliff hanger but to really get to the bottom of this will take time. I am open to suggestions for my next blog articles. I hope you have enjoyed reading this. I would like to leave you with a few photos I took at St Catherine's Hill.  Well worth a visit if you are in the area.