Map coordinates: Ordnance Survey Explorer Map OL24 (The Peak District: White Peak Area), locator horizontal 56, vertical 10; Google world map home page (with satellite option): enter search terms "Wetton Mill Farm, Wetton, Ashbourne, Derbyshire".

Route: There are two candidates for the Green Chapel. The less likely, Ludchurch, is within 30 minutes' walk of Swythamley at the same map coordinates. The more likely, Wetton Mill, is several miles to the south. To get to Ludchurch, we followed the footpath along the north side of Swythamley; signs point the way to Ludchurch. To get to Wetton Mill, we had to drive to the village of Wetton Mill, along the River Manifold, then ask permission from the farmer on whose property the cave lies.

Log: We continued along the stone wall at Swythamley to a house called Paddock, whose owner whetted our interest in Ludchurch with wry allusions to the neo-pagan ceremonies held there, while at the same time scolding us for crossing his property--even though he admitted that the public footpath went right through it. The footpath follows a ridge above a steep valley, and the path grows narrower and rockier, the valley below you ever steeper, as you approach Ludchurch.

The entrance to Ludchurch is obscured by trees, but it has the aura of liminality that reminds one of Gawain's observation (2187-88) that "here might the devil recite his matins at midnight." Ludchurch is a split in an outcropping of rock which although open to the sky allows little daylight in, and that at angles (below). Mosses and ferns (it was July) in a variety of shades of green protrude from the walls everywhere. If you walk thorough, you come out the other side to a dead-end in the footpath. The temperature inside is fully 15 or more degrees cooler than on the footpath, so cool in fact that we could see our breaths.

The remoteness of the site is ideal, but since it is open to the sky at the top and has no stream nearby, it doesn't fit the poet's account of what Gawain saw when he arrived at the Green Chapel. It is also too close to Swythamley, and there is no cave beyond the brook or stream from which the Green Knight could emerge.

Wetton Mill fits the poet's description of the place much better than Ludchurch.

Wetton Mill is east of Leek, which in the 14th century housed a cell of Poulton Abbey called Dieulacres. The Swythamley Grange site was hunting grounds for the monks and abbots of Dieulacres (Elliott 1984, 63-70). By a series of one-lane roads, one comes to the River Manifold--more like a stream or a creek, really--and arrives at the Wetton Mill Tea Room (at Wetton Mill Farm), above which in a cow pasture sits the cave (below). Like the Green Chapel, it lies above a stream, projecting above the surrounding terrain (2171-74), it is open at both ends and overgrown on top (2180-84). Standing at the entrance of Wetton Mill Cave and looking across the Manifold valley, one can see Thor's Cave (below; earlier name: Thurse Cave ‘giant’s cave’) and easily imagine the Green Knight sharpening his axe there (2199-2200).