All land has history – many millions of years of it – all natural places have living beings who reside there or pass through; all places have a landscape, an altitude, weather and seasons as well as a relationship to the four elements and all buildings have, as well as history, an intention or purpose informing them. Places can hold great resonances of emotion and just by being there we participate in it. Some locations gather layer upon layer of meaning, for example churches are often built on land, or on top of sites that were always considered sacred, as a method of colonising local religions. These places are often high points in the landscape with significant features of water, geography and relationship to the local spirits. Churches themselves are often majestic structures, containing art work of great beauty, reverence for the divine, interred bodies, memorials and the thousands of rituals that have occurred within them. Perhaps they also retain the whispers or cries of those who lived and worshipped here before this current building was constructed, from lineages that might stretch back untold generations.
