Littleton is more a hamlet than a village, with Tudor cottages dating to the time of the construction of the nearby Loseley House.
Littleton Church is very small and is attached to Church Cottage on the north side. A large half-timbered house, Long Meadow, is only a few feet from the south side. Although in good repair, the church appears to be disused and has a date plate on the west wall of 1843. There is no view to the origin of the alignment at St Martha’s Church because of tree cover, but by moving a short way south down the lane, there is a clear sightline, as seen in the photograph below.
I now discover that it was built in 1843 as a school by the More-Molyneux family, owners of Loseley Estate. It became redundant with the beginning of state education and was converted into a church dedicated to St Francis in 1904.
This church was one of the first points to feature on my alignments, and it is surprising to me that it is so perfectly on the Artington Line, considering that it would appear to have no ancient origins whatsoever. Littleton Lane runs north-south past the church and, at nearly 500 metres to the north, meets the Pilgrim’s Way historic trackway at a point referred to as Littleton Cross, a deeply entrenched crossing of ancient paths set in old woodland which is believed by some to have been the site of an ancient shrine.
The above Ordnance Survey extract shows the site’s accuracy upon the alignment. The church is precisely one Druid Mile from the moated site at Artington, also a highly dubious site that makes the coincidences, although very intriguing, no more than coincidence.
