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Strange Fate
Wetton Mill Cave in northern Staffordshire where Jodi and Graham found the Heart of the Rose.
The Heart of the Rose
The two angels on the Mary Heath monument. One of the clues that led to the location of the lost relic.
As an adult, Mary Heath eventually became the leader of the Meonia group, and after she died in 1872, a memorial was erected for her in the local church. Jodi and Graham discovered that it held clues to a landmark called the Angels, two rock formations in the valley of Dovedale in the Staffordshire moorlands that had been considered sacred by the Meonia group. A painting of Meonia group’s last leader, Jane Morris, dating from 1904, not only alluded to this same valley but a second painting by a member of the Meonia group revealed what they considered the most important and sacred site in Dovedale: Wetton Mill Cave, an ancient Celtic shrine and the location of the Green Chapel in the Arthurian story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This, it seemed, was where the Heart of the Rose had been hidden.
Eventually, this is where Jodi and Graham discovered what they believe to be the Heart of the Rose after an impossible thunderstorm and tornado erupted above them, and the torrential rainwater gushing from a hole in the carven roof washed it down from a crevice high up in the cave wall. It seemed beyond coincidence that this should happen on their first visit to the place, which they discovered was precisely 150 years to the day since the death of Mary Heath, the remarkable little girl who found the relic and began the extraordinary story of the Meonia group.
The Angels as they were in the nineteenth century. These two towering rock pillars formed the gateway to the valley of Dovedale where the relic was found.
The rose-quartz heart stone found by Jodi and Graham at Wetton Mill Cave, possibly the Heart of the Rose relic hidden by the Meonia group around 1900.