Brooklyn Sketchbook Library

Time is racing by and our Swindon Urban Sketchers entry is due to be posted within the next couple or so weeks.  We still have a few pages to fill and I have added a 4th sketch which can be glued into the book if contributions are still short.

Wayland's Smithy, on the Ridgeway Long Distance Path
Watercolour, gouache, pen and white crayon on Hahnemuhle grey paper

The Ridgeway is a prehistoric travellers' route, stretching 87 miles from West Kennet in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire and is very popular with leisure walkers to this day.  

Wayland's Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow situated on the path a few miles from the Wiltshire border.  There are many legends about the site, dating back over a thousand years, and this was recorded in 1738 by the antiquary, Francis Wise: -
'At this place lived formerly an Invisible Smith, and if a traveller's Horse had lost a Shoe upon the road, he had no more to do than to bring the Horse to this place with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the Horse new shod'.