Definition: ‘thin place’ - a place of energy. A Celtic term for a place where the veil between this world and the eternal or other worlds is thin. Places of emotional residue and revelation, places of ineffable moments.

Mother goddess votive relief, found in Ashcroft, Cirencester, April 1899

I spent some time for my residency working in the library at Corinium Museum in March, turning the uncut pages of the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 1899, looking for references to the mother goddess cult of Corinium and the digs that took place around Ashcroft and the old Police Station where votive reliefs had been found.

Emma Stuart, the lovely L&D Manager, brought me the sketchbooks of Helen A. Cripps (‘Mrs Wilfred Cripps’) who lived in Cirencester from the 1890s until her death in 1931. I didn’t ask for these specifically – my mind was on reaching back to ritual and custom in Roman Britain and the hybrid forms of Romano Celt worship that took place on the banks of the local rivers I know so well. But I did know the name of Cripps already – the family famously had a bank on the road I grew up on, Coxwell Street. My interest was piqued.

I unfolded the tissue paper protecting the sketchbooks that show a talented artist working in pencil and watercolour. The smell of lead and old, dry paper drifted up as I turned the pages, recognising many of the places Helen Cripps had drawn, giving me an uncanny feeling of nostalgia. Her sketches were mostly of buildings – why the fascination with architecture and stone, I wondered? I pictured her in the gardens of these houses, painting and sketching while her husband saw to business inside – or perhaps she had travelled alone especially to work on her paintings. One painting was of the view from her bedroom window on The Mead, just at the end of Coxwell Street, looking out towards the church clock tower. It was almost the same view as I had from my own bedroom as a child, just at a slightly different angle, drawing me ever closer to Helen.

Helen Cripps sketch ‘from bedroom window’

Nostalgia. From New Latin nostalgia, coined from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos, “returning home”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”), translating German Heimweh. A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.. A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness. Reminiscence of the speaker's childhood or younger years.

Tucked away at the back of one book were the only sketches of people - the beginnings of a very simple pencil line drawing of a man’s face and another of a woman turning away, as if to leave a room. Was this her husband, Wilfred Cripps, perhaps and a self-portrait? They had no children together. I followed the turning woman.

The more I found out about Helen, the more I was fascinated by her. Prior to marrying Wilfred, she was the Countess Bismarck, daughter of a venerable German family. Born Helen Augusta Wilhelmina Bismarck in July 1851 in Wiesbaden, Darmstadt-Hesse, Germany, Helen was eventually ‘naturalised’ in Cirencester according to the census records.

My research led me a on merry dance far, far away from mother goddesses, through Wilfred’s speaking tours around Prussia where I fancy they must have met, returning to marry in England on 2nd December 1884. Sadly, Wilfred died at an early age. Helen survived him by more than 30 years, keeping up his interest in church plate and archaeology. From 1918, when women of property over 30 were permitted to vote, Helen appears on the electoral roll every subsequent year until her death.

Eventually, my research came back around to where I started. The Cripps had a museum, the collection from which was merged with the Bathurst collection to eventually form what is now the Corinium Museum. Wilfred had a keen interest in archaeology, as did Helen, and both were party to the discovery in April 1899 of the three mother goddesses votive relief (also known as Deae Matres or Sulevaie) found in Ashcroft, almost perfectly preserved.

Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 1899.

In July of the same year, Helen sketched the goddesses, a near perfect likeness and to an exact scale. Looking at the dates, I realised she and I were / are the exact same age at the point we both began to discover and explore the mother goddesses. I wonder what they meant to her, if anything, beyond an interesting archaeological find. As I looked out of the window on the top floor of the museum among the archives on that March morning, I saw again the same view of the church clock tower over the rooftops as that drawn by Helen and gazed at for hours by me from my bedroom window as a child. The church, a sacred site for centuries - Roman before Christian, Celtic before Roman? Place of sanctuary and reflection. I was in a thin place, as if the veil of time and circumstance between myself, Helen and the goddesses was lifting and falling in a gentle breeze. With the strangest, strongest feelings of coincidence and nostalgia, I put my pen to paper and begun to feel my way towards writing about all of this…

Thin Places