72 THE ESSEX NATURALIST
I want at this stage to depart from the strictly impartial
atmosphere in which my enquiry opened, and to ask, with
the doubters, "What is one to make of such an alignment
archaeologically?". Surely, pre-historic man would not
evaporate salt at, say, Steeple Stone on the Blackwater and
transport it to Tilbury, when presumably salt could be got
from the Red Hill sites on Canvey Island, if not nearer still?
And what other product of pre-historic industry could con-
ceivably need transport from one river estuary across country
to another? Yet here is an alignment which seems artificial
and deliberate beyond reasonable mathematical doubt,
unless, of course, after very careful plotting on large-scale
maps, it could be shown that even one of the sites mentioned
was not "on" the alignment which, when thus degraded
to a "five-spot alignment" , would become less remarkable.
I should add that the bearing of this alignment from St.
Chad's Well is N. 51° E., which is approximately the mid-
summer day sunrise bearing in these latitudes, and appears
to be the same within a degree as that of the so-called '' heel
stone" from the centre of Stonehenge. I do not care to
insist on this agreement, because the search for raisons d'etre
of this nature can quickly lead to fantastic explanations and
unproved hypotheses of the "Pyramid Prophecy" kind.
Nevertheless, I am driven by such coincidences (if they be
no more than that) to suppose that a few of the alignments
of ancient sites in Essex may be intentional. Among sites
which have been intentionally aligned, if there be any, and
others not so arranged, there would be, of course, the
expectation of some additional alignments due to chance.
The indication of human intention is therefore the excess
of the total number of alignments found over the number
to be expected from random arrangement, after allowance
for statistical variation. I feel sure, from the results
obtained, that the number of Essex alignments which are
fortuitous is far greater than Mr. Watkins would have
thought possible; also, that his over-enthusiastic followers
should not spend their time exulting over such discoveries
as, for instance, that Great Wakering, Little Wakering,
Hawkswell, Hockley and Rettendon Churches all lie within
a few yards of a straight line twelve miles long. However
astonishing such alignments may seem, they can still be