Terry Welbourn - T C Lethbridge

First published by O-Books, 2011

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Text copyright: Terry Welbourn 2010

ISBN: 978 1 84694 500 7

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Having been inspired by T.C. Lethbridge after reading my best-seller Mysteries (Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), Terry Welbourn took up the mantle and has revealed that there were more strings to Lethbridges bow than we could ever have imagined. His investigations into psychical research sit comfortably alongside his Arctic adventures, archaeological discoveries and his love of the ocean; for after all his enquiring mind knew no boundaries.

Colin Wilson

In his role as Honorary Keeper of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities, T.C. Lethbridge substantially contributed to the development of the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Artefacts from Lethbridges archaeological excavations in the Fens, the Western Isles and from his Arctic expeditions alongside Sir James Wordie are still displayed in the museum today. He is remembered as a congenial, well-informed lecturer and a fine artist. Terry Welbourns well-researched biography sheds light on the life of this controversial yet crucial figure in the history of twentieth-century British archaeology.

Professor Thurstan Shaw

In 1973 I took curator care of a very substantial collection of T.C. Lethbridges notebooks, artwork and associated correspondence. In spring 2007 I was contacted by Terry Welbourn who had become aware of my collection through his ongoing research into Lethbridges life. Through the forthcoming years, I had pleasure in assisting Terry with his research which enabled him to add further meat to the bones of his splendid biography, T.C. Lethbridge: The Man Who Saw the Future. My archive, The Gadd Collection is now housed in the University Library, Cambridge.

John Gadd

An engaging and well researched account of one of the most extraordinary and at times inspiring people who have pursued the pattern of superstition and story-telling in the Hebrides.

Adam Nicolson

Simon Brighton; Wendy Brown and the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge; Elizabeth Clark; W.A. Clark, former Head Warden of Wandlebury Estate; Julian Cope; Janet Cornish, Properties Manager/Secretary at Cambridge Past, Present and Future; Jacqueline Cox at the Cambridge University Archives; Andrew and Jackie David; Jo Erskine-Collins & Patric Nestcher; Hilary Everitt; Dr. Steven Roger Fischer; John & Barbara Gadd; Peter Gathercole; Dave Goudsward; Robert Halliday; Barbara Heath; Emma Higginbotham; Bill Holcomb; Lesa Holcombe; Dr. Matthias Alfred Jaren; Joy Kiddle; Nicholas & Barbara Leadbitter; Susan Lee; Mairi MacGregor; Daniel Martin; Chris McGrail; Neil Mortimer; Paul Newman; Mike Pitts, Jonathan Rhys-Lewis; Mary Rose Rogers; Dr. Pamela Jane Smith; Peter Swete; Jeff Pathe; Jeffrey Simmons; Michael Smith; Michael Turner; Mark Walford; Geoff Ward; Colin & Joy Wilson and Peter and Alice Wordie.

On the morning of Thursday 19 November 1987, I found myself on Newark Station about to board an Inter City train destined for London Kings Cross. The journey would have been typical of any grey, autumnal commute had it not been for an unfolding drama at the scene of my destination. The previous evening, a fire had swept through the underground section of Kings Cross Station, causing massive devastation and resulting in the death of 31 passengers. As my train neared its destination, the atmosphere on board became tense and restless and an apprehensive silence overwhelmed the carriage. Disembarking onto the platform, I met with a sombre scene: the normal clatter and chatter of the busy station had been replaced by a respectful orderliness. Smoke still shrouded the canopies of the terminal and a pungent smell of burning permeated the morning air. Travellers diligently exited the busy thoroughfare, silently bypassing the cordoned underground entrance and onto the busy streets and patiently began making alternative arrangements for their onward journeys.

The experience of that fateful morning, if not significant enough for me already, had further implications in store. I had taken the opportunity of the journey to begin reading Colin Wilsons Mysteries, a weighty, intriguing tome that had been recommended to me by my friend, the author and photographer Simon Brighton. During my two-hour journey, I had become engrossed with Wilsons masterwork and on arrival at Kings Cross I carefully marked my page and closed the book. I was unaware that the previous two hours of reading were destined to change my life. My train of thought was briefly interrupted by the mundane nature of my working day, but the return journey home to Lincoln provided me with another opportunity to continue my literary indulgence.

Published in 1978, Mysteries is a tantalising sequel to Wilsons previous study The Occult in which he attempts to provide the Principia of psychic science by exploring a whole variety of occult phenomena including hauntings, demonic possession and precognition. However, the underlying theme focuses on mankinds own ability to utilise and harness its own untapped and neglected potential. Mysteries is split into three parts, but it was the first section that had intrigued me, for it was almost entirely dedicated to the ideas and investigations of a remarkable man called Thomas Charles Lethbridge.

Perhaps it would be an overstatement to say that Mysteries changed my life, but it did provide for me a portal into another world a parallel universe. The following year, I would stumble upon the magnificent stone circle of Avebury, a chance visitation that would lead to an ongoing preoccupation with prehistoric culture. As I progressed around the megalithic sites of Britain, Wilsons mind-expanding theories became even more pertinent to my own researches, but it was the ideas and pragmatic approach of T.C. Lethbridge that proved to be the most resounding and relevant to my own undertakings.

I acquired my first T.C. Lethbridge book from a secondhand bookshop in Winchester whilst visiting the West Country over the August Bank Holiday weekend of 1988. The Essential T.C. Lethbridge edited by Tom Graves and Janet Hoult, is an assemblage of Lethbridges later works and contains a foreword written by Wilson. The significance of this find was further enhanced by the fact that I began reading the volume while sitting in a deckchair overlooking the sea on the Devonshire cliffs. I had paid no attention to the place I had chosen to camp until I began reading Lethbridges encounter with ghoul phenomena at a place near his Branscombe home called Ladram Bay. The place name immediately rang alarm bells as I glanced up at the parking sticker affixed to my car windscreen that read: Ladram Bay Campsite. The synchronicity of this encounter further enhanced the mystery of this enigmatic writer.