On the high limestone plateau above the village of Colerne in north Wiltshire, something remarkable used to happen.

What is the strange beast carved over the door of a tiny south Wiltshire church? In the 1660s, mathematician and clergyman Lancelot Morehouse — friend of John Aubrey — set out to find the answer. He ruled out the obvious. He was right. But he was also wrong.

Did John Aubrey — writing in the 1680s — come closer to the truth about Salisbury Plain than anyone had realised? In his Natural History of Wiltshire he asked a question: was this vast open landscape not ancient and natural, but made by human hands?

John Aubrey suspected elm trees were not native to England and travelled to Durham to prove it. He was right.

In the buttery of Stourton House (now rebuilt) once hung a ‘monstrous bone’ that had belonged to a giant.

John Aubrey was not a witchfinder, not a demonologist, and not a sceptic; but he was someone who brought to witchcraft the same empirical habits of mind he applied to moles on a downland or frost crystals in a window.

Before conservation had a name, John Aubrey was bearing witness. In my latest blog I explore how he recorded the loss of forests — and the cost to humans and animals that followed.

In my second blog on Ledbury for Herefordshire VCH: the town's forgotten connection to the King James Bible.

John Aubrey's radical vision of earth history, four hundred years on 'a direct path to the right understanding of the primitive world'

In my latest blog on Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire I explore his extraordinary network of knowledge — from the saltpetre men to the founders of the Royal Society; from the Moroccan Ambassador and his cure for gout to Mistress Hatchman and her metheglin. From sympathetic magic to indoor beehives.

John Aubrey's minerals chapter contains a remarkable story about a 17th-century cure for urinary stones involving powdered lead ore, a mysterious Frenchman, and a pewterer's improvised prescription. But before you read on: lead is highly toxic. Do not attempt any remedies discussed here. If you have urinary stones, consult a medical practitioner.

In 17th-century Hampshire a beggar woman knew the cure for breast cancer. It involved a cow's footprint, boggy water and a stick. John Aubrey recorded this remedy alongside chemical tests of well water, observations of petrifying springs, and deductions about the location of iron deposits in his chapter on water in his Natural History.

I never met my grandfather, Herbert Ryland, and am not a family historian, but stories of Herbert’s chequered life have been a part of the family story for as long as I can remember and are just too good not to retell.

Are dragons real? The question crossed the mind of John Aubrey. A founding fellow of the Royal Society, he was an exponent of astrology, curious by the supernatural but seemingly sceptical about the existence of wyverns, a two-legged dragon. So in the Natural History he set out to find the truth.

What did it mean in 1685 for a species to be 'lost'? John Aubrey's Dinton shells challenged theological certainties 170 years before Darwin. In my second blog in the run-up to the publication of Aubrey’s Natural History I consider extinction before Darwin.

I have a new contract for the Victoria County History (VCH) in Herefordshire on Ledbury & have decided to write an occasional blog to chronicle our research journey and the work of Herefordshire VCH more broadly.

First in a series of blogs drawn from my forthcoming book on John Aubrey’s Natural History, here I explore Aubrey’s ideas about environmental determinism.

A goose was once (allegedly) put into a medieval tunnel under Bradenstoke priory. It emerged several miles away, featherless.

In about 1671, parson Symonds, who was then serving at All Saints church, Garsdon near Malmesbury, was riding home late when a ghostly spectre leapt up behind him on his horse.

This month, Maidstone Borough Council leader Stuart Jeffery wrote to the Home Secretary asking for the pardon of women executed as witches at Penenden Heath, Maidstone, in 1652 and for all those historically convicted of witchcraft.