As odd as it may seem we came to realise that Megalithic geometry, and therefore also the Megalithic Yard, was applicable not only to the Earth, but also to the Moon and the Sun. That's what led to our second book together, a work with the deliberately provocative title, 'Who Built the Moon'. It proved to be very popular.
Peculiar Henges
Shortly after we published 'Who Built the Moon' we had a great stroke of luck. We started to look at structures that were even older than the standing stone circles, in fact something that went right back to 3,500 BC. These were called henges. Henges are circular structures with banks and ditches. Some of them are absolutely huge - in fact big enough to fit St Paul's Cathedral inside them with room to spare. Some of the biggest henges in Britain are in our own home county of Yorkshire. When we carefully measured these henges we discovered, to our delight, that they conformed absolutely to what we would have expected. They had been constructed in units of 366 Megalithic Yards, in other words in units that were 1 second of arc of the polar circumference of the Earth!
We also realised that the three most perfect henges, near a village called Thornborough, were arranged in such a way that they were a perfect copy of a constellation of stars known as Orion's Belt. As a result, we were able to demonstrate how these giant henges had been used as astronomical observatories, and we were also able to show that one particular star, Sirius, had been of crucial importance to our ancient ancestors in Britain. This in turn lead us to the work of writer and researcher Robert Bauval, who had been working on other structures, far from Britain. Robert had proposed, some years ago now, that the three major pyramids on the Giza Plateau in Egypt were also a copy of Orion's Belt.
We knew how the henges at Thornborough had been planned, using observations of the sky, together with the ubiquitous pendulums that seem to have been so essential to our ancient ancestors. And we were also able to demonstrate that the same methods had been used to plan the final position of the three pyramids on the Giza Plateau. But what was most remarkable was that we could also demonstrate that the GIza Pyramids had not been intially planned in Egypt, but at Thornborough, which was 1,000 years older than the pyramids.
We now felt ready to write our third book in this series and we decided to call it 'Before the Pyramids'.
But as we were working on this book, we became aware that in one place at least the most meaningful units of Megalithic measure, i.e. the Megalithic Yard and the Megalithic second of arc of the Polar circumference of the Earth, had not been forgotten as we had originally thought. We found that they had been used again in England - a staggering 5,000 years after they had been used to construct the ancient henges.
The City of Bath
Bath is a beautiful city in the South of England. It was almost entirely created in the 18th century and much of its start is owed to a man by the name of John Wood. Wood was an architect, but he was much more because he was also a Freemason and a member of the Ancient Order of Druids. John Wood was deeply interested in standing stone circles, the purpose of which was not at all understood in his era. So obsessed was he, in particular with Stonehenge, that he decided to base at least one of his buildings in Bath upon it. The structure in question is known as 'The Kings Circus'. It is a green, grassed circle, surrounded by wonderful, elegant terraces of stately houses.
Freemasons and Measurements
The amazing thing about King's Circus is that when measured from above it can be seen that the circumference of the circle formed by the houses is 366 Megalithic Yards. (303.6 metres). It is therefore an exact copy of the size of the henge that gave Stonehenge its name. What we didn't know was whether John Wood was aware of the Megalithic Yard, or whether he had simply copied the dimensions of the henge below Stonehenge. But we did know he was deeply obsessed with Freemasonry, a subject we also know a great deal about. Chris has written extensively about Freemasonry, and so hve I, and indeed we wrote a book together about the Craft. It is entitled 'The Hiram Key Revisited'.
Half a World Away from Bath
We thought that a good way to try and discover whether at least some Freemasons still knew about the Megalithic measuring system was to see if we could find Masonically inspired buildings elsewhere that conformed in the way the King's Circus in Bath did. So we cast around the world for purpose-built cities or structures that were built or at least planned in the 18th century and where we knew that Freemasons had been involved. We didn't have to look far. We already knew that Washington DC fitted the bill perfectly on all counts. We didn't really expect it to throw up any evidence for our theories, because after all it was thousands of miles from Britain. How wrong we were.