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Winchcombe’s Meteorite

July 15, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

With Your Permission

Sudeley Castle nestles in the town of Winchcombe, in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, England. Some of the most scenic English countryside, those green rolling hills, the idyllic historic town, built of stone and brick, hundreds of years old … the stuff of irresistible tourist pamphlets and movies about royalty.

Where were we?

Ah, yes, history of the perfect English countryside with all that history. Right.

Now, a full blown tourist attraction, with wide gardens and several exhibitions, even Sudeley Castle Cottages, the homes of people working and living on the property to care for the land, castle and people living in it – these cottages have been given charming names to enrich the experience of staying in them.

The history of the manor house of the 960’s BCE, which was increased and improved over the last thousand years or so, has been passed from hand to hand through grants and gifts from one Royal to another deserving soul, has been in decline and a state of restoration over all that long time to its current state of glory. It serves many purposes including the parts of it open to the public seasonally, places for private functions, like weddings and as a home to the family who owns it, namely (American born) Elizabeth, Lady Ashcombe and her family. 

The Ashcombes have owned the castle since the late 1970’s.

Ok, so, a lot of years ago my personal involvement with Sudeley Castle, once home to Catherine Parr and she is buried there, my small history with the castle is the year after we lived in Italy for a while, Ernest and I were invited by the same person, Adam Pollock, who owned the Convento di Batignano, asked us to help him prepare and install a historical exhibition he had designed for the castle.

We arrived to the charming village of Winchcombe to stay in a bed and breakfast establishment, a private house really, owned by a lady who could never imagine anyone eating anything that was apart from British cuisine.

Anyway, we painted black over the white wash of the stables and Ernest built what was required and all that and it was fun and very interesting to live there. One day, we were in the castle’s kitchen having a cup of tea, when an elegant lady came in to speak to the cook. 

She asked me if I knew where the cook had gone and I told her no but offered her cup of tea from a freshly made pot. She gave me a funny look and said, “No, thank you.” I later learned she was the castle’s owner.

So: with this passing association with a town one might not know well, what was my surprise to see it vaulted into fame just last week by virtue of a 4.5-Billion-year-old meteorite landing in the Wilcock family’s driveway there.

The first of such meteors to be found in Britain for 30 years but is considered to be the “most valuable space rock ever to land in the UK,” This “splatter” of rock crashed down on their driveway and, rather than simply sweeping it up, they called for help.

Scientists had been following the path of the rocks as they entered the earth’s atmosphere as fiery balls and realized that some of them must have landed in Gloucestershire. Not until they saw the photos of the Wilcocks’ specimen did they know how exciting the landing was. 

Planetary scientist, Richard Greenwood, said, “It was one of those moments when your legs start going wobbly. I saw this thing; … and it had all these rays coming off it; and I just thought – that is a meteorite. It was instantaneous,” according to the BBC news.

This truly offers many steps back in time and does offer evidence on the formation of earth.

Dr. Queenie Chan from Royal Holloway, University of London explained the specifics: “The teams preliminary analyses confirm that [the] Winchcombe [meteorite] contains a wide range of organic material! Studying the meteorite only weeks after the fall, before any significant terrestrial contamination, means that we really are peering back in time at the ingredients present at the birth of the solar system, and learning about how they came together to make planets like the Earth.”

The actual time lapse here is enough to wrap your head around and gives us another chance at perspective, when we can talk about a rock that pre-dates everything, landing on a family driveway. 

A rock that comes from before “all this” by billions of years shrinks our own small history to a pin head. What does that say about the pin’s head history that we have lived? Have we wasted all our chances to be remembered well by scientists in another world, analyzing this wasted planet hundreds of years from now? Will those future explorers happen upon this once perfect place and not be able to imagine… what sort of beings once lived here?

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