The Enigma Of Arrival - pg. 51

THE CHURCH stood on an old site. I could believe that. Beyond the churchyard, and more or less hidden by the church itself, the old flint churchyard wall, and trees on the other side, were the sheds and buildings of the dairy. Did they also stand on an old site? I had no trouble believing that they did. Because the world -- in places like this -- is never absolutely new; there is always something that has gone before. Shrine or sacred place before church, farm before farm, on the site of an old fort set in a wood, first 'walden', then 'shaw', then Waldenshaw. A hamlet between the water meadows and the flinty downs; a hamlet, one of many, on the river-highway.