Brentor

Brentor / Brent Tor, near Lydford in Devon, is a conical hill, thought to be of volcanic origin, which is visible for many miles around.

Visible from far out at sea, it is said that a mariner in trouble at sea in stormy weather invoked the intercession of St Michael, the saint of high points, and built the church as a votive offering.

A church is known to have existed here since around 1130.

Crossing's Guide to Dartmoor tells us that according to another legend the church was to have been built at the foot of the hill, but the devil moved the stones each night to the top of the mount to make the church less accessible. eventually the builders tired of moving the stones again each day, and built the church at the site chosen by the devil.

Brentor is a key point on the St Michael alignment of sacred sites and places of power as dowsed and described by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst in The Sun and the Serpent, being the site of one of the major node points which they discovered, and which subsequently was discovered to be a meeting point of the male / Michael line and the female / Mary line.

This celebrated ley follows the Beltain / May day sunrise alignment from the far south western tip of England to the east coast, visiting many megalithic sites as well as chapels and hills dedicated to our ancestors' favourite saint - St Michael - en route.

The St Michael ley alignment gained recognition after John Michel referred to it in his seminal work The View over Atlantis, followed-up by Hamish Miller's comprehensive dowsing of the alignment as described in detail in The Sun and the Serpent - the wonderfully evocative text of Paul Broadhurst bringing the alighnment alive in the mind's eye