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"It is like finding out the people who lived here when the land was young," said Wilfrid, his eyes very bright. "And there were also the men who made the dewponds," mused Master Gay. "And there were those Druids of whom my father told me," said Josian wonderingly. "This is like a fairy tale, Al-an. Is York the same?"
Dewponds, earthworks and "hut circles" cover the hills in all directions. At Martinsell, the camp-crowned hill to the east of the high road, until recent days a festival was held, the beginnings of which may have been in Neolithic times. On Palm Sunday young men and maidens would ascend the hill carrying boughs of hazel.
The numerous brooks in the Vale of Evesham supply ample water for the stock, but in more elevated parts, especially on the chalk Downs of Sussex, Hants, Wilts, and Dorset, provision is made for an artificial water supply by what are called "dewponds."
And father was actually giving orders to the men to dig up the garden and see what lay under it. There is a mysterious immovable setness about the Sussex Downs. What is there seems to have been there always. The oldest man cannot say when the great white hollows were first scooped out of the chalk, or the dewponds made on the heights.
In a dry time the sheep can always reach the water, the pond having no banks, by the shelving formation of the bottom. Sometimes a few trees are allowed to grow round it; they also act as condensers, and their drip helps to fill the pond. It is only in an abnormal drought that these dewponds really fail, and a thunderstorm, followed by ordinary weather, will soon refill them.
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