Explore the real-world places that appear in Ferney by James Long. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Ferney Hill, The Old Cottage, St. Michael's Church, Pen Selwood, Brewham Forest, Stourhead and 5 more.
Pen Selwood — The central location of the novel
Ferney Hill is the heart of the novel — the ancient landscape where the old man Ferney has lived and died and been reborn countless times over two thousand years. When Gally and Mike arrive in Somerset and Gally first glimpses the hill, she is overwhelmed by a sense of profound recognition and belonging that she cannot explain rationally. It is from this hill that the whole mystery of her past-life connection to Ferney unfolds, and it is here that their deepest conversations take place, layered with centuries of shared memory.
Pen Selwood is a village in Somerset near the Dorset border. The surrounding hills and ancient woodland have been inhabited since pre-Roman times, and the area sits near the boundaries of ancient kingdoms. Alfred the Great is said to have rallied his forces nearby before the Battle of Edington.
Pen Selwood remains a small, quiet rural village in Somerset. The hills and woodland around it are accessible on foot and retain much of the timeless pastoral quality that James Long drew on for the novel.
Visit: Pen Selwood Village and Surrounding Countryside (landmark)
Pen Selwood — Gally and Mike's home
Gally and Mike move into a derelict old cottage near Ferney Hill, and it is here that Gally's inexplicable sense of homecoming becomes overwhelming. She knows instinctively where things should go, how rooms should be arranged, where paths once ran — knowledge she could not possibly possess as a newcomer. The cottage becomes the domestic stage for the unfolding tension between her present life with Mike and her ancient bond with Ferney, who lives nearby and draws her back through two millennia of shared existence.
Pen Selwood and its surrounding farmland contain numerous old stone cottages and farmsteads dating back several centuries. Many were built using local limestone and have been continuously inhabited or altered over generations.
The cottage in the novel is fictional but closely based on the real rural character of dwellings in and around Pen Selwood. Similar old stone cottages exist throughout this part of Somerset near the Wiltshire and Dorset borders.
Pen Selwood — Parish church with deep historical roots
The church and its graveyard appear in the novel as a repository of Ferney's long history in the village. Ferney has watched this church exist across many lifetimes, and its churchyard holds echoes of people he has known and lost. For Gally, walking among the old graves provokes flashes of buried memory — names and faces from lives she cannot consciously remember but whose emotions remain lodged deep inside her.
St. Michael's Church in Pen Selwood is a medieval parish church with origins dating to the Norman period or earlier. The village itself has great historical significance — it was near here that King Alfred assembled his forces before defeating the Danes at the Battle of Edington in 878 AD.
St. Michael's Church still stands in Pen Selwood and serves the local parish. It is a listed historic building and can be visited by the public. The churchyard contains old grave markers spanning many centuries.
Visit: St. Michael's Church, Pen Selwood (historic site)
Near Pen Selwood — Ancient woodland
The ancient woodland near Pen Selwood features in the novel as a landscape that Ferney knows intimately across his many reincarnations. He leads Gally through it at times, pointing out features of the land that have barely changed over centuries — old trackways, ancient field boundaries, and trees whose predecessors he remembers from lifetimes past. The forest embodies the deep, slow time of the novel, unchanged while generations of humans are born and die around it.
Brewham Forest and the woodland around Pen Selwood are remnants of a much larger ancient forest that once covered much of this part of Somerset. The area has been managed woodland for centuries and contains historical earthworks and trackways.
The woodland around Pen Selwood and Brewham remains largely intact and is accessible via public footpaths. It is a quiet, atmospheric landscape popular with walkers and those interested in natural history.
Visit: Brewham Forest and Footpaths (park)
Stourton, Wiltshire — Nearby landscape garden
The landscape around Stourhead — its lakes, temples, and designed views — forms part of the wider geographical world of the novel. The timeless, almost mythological quality of the Stourhead landscape resonates with the novel's themes of cyclical time and the persistence of place across human lives. Ferney, who has witnessed this landscape through many incarnations, understands it as something that outlasts the individual human lifetimes that wash through it.
Stourhead is one of England's finest landscape gardens, created by Henry Hoare II from the 1740s onwards. It was designed to evoke the classical landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Virgil's Aeneid, with a lake, temples, grottos, and a famous Palladian mansion at its centre. It was given to the National Trust in 1946.
Stourhead is managed by the National Trust and is one of the most visited historic gardens in England. It is open to the public year-round and the house, gardens, and parkland are fully accessible.
Visit: Stourhead (National Trust) (historic site)
Somerset market town — Nearest significant town to Pen Selwood
Wincanton serves as the nearby market town in the novel — the place where Gally and Mike would go for practical necessities and where the modern world intrudes on the timeless atmosphere of Pen Selwood. It represents the ordinary contemporary life that pulls against Gally's deepening immersion in her past-life memories and her bond with Ferney. The contrast between busy, mundane Wincanton and the charged stillness of the hill underscores one of the novel's central tensions.
Wincanton is an ancient Somerset market town mentioned in the Domesday Book. It grew as a coaching town on the road between London and Exeter and has a long history as a local commercial centre. Its racecourse, opened in 1927, is one of the west of England's most important.
Wincanton remains an active small market town with shops, services, and a well-known National Hunt racecourse. It is the nearest town of any size to Pen Selwood.
Visit: Wincanton Town Centre (landmark)
Stourton, Somerset — Folly marking Alfred's rallying point
Alfred's Tower stands near Pen Selwood and carries deep resonance in the novel's treatment of deep time and the layering of history. Ferney, having lived through so many centuries, is aware of the historical weight of this landscape — the ancient battles fought nearby, the kingdom-making events that happened in the very fields he has tended across his many lifetimes. The tower is a visible marker of the kind of long historical memory that Ferney himself embodies on a personal level.
Alfred's Tower is an 18th-century triangular folly built in 1772 by Henry Hoare II of Stourhead to commemorate the spot where King Alfred the Great is said to have raised his standard against the Danes in 878 AD before the decisive Battle of Edington. It stands 49 metres tall.
Alfred's Tower is managed by the National Trust as part of the Stourhead estate. It is open to visitors who can climb the internal staircase to reach a viewing platform with panoramic views across Somerset, Wiltshire, and Dorset.
Visit: Alfred's Tower (National Trust) (monument)
South Cadbury, Somerset — Iron Age hillfort
Cadbury Castle — the great Iron Age hillfort long associated with the legend of Camelot — sits within the geographical world of the novel. Ferney's impossibly long life stretches back to ages when such hillforts were living centres of power, and his accumulated memories of the landscape carry traces of those ancient times. For Gally, places like Cadbury Castle resonate with the kind of deep, pre-rational memory that she is struggling to understand and integrate into her present life.
Cadbury Castle is a large Iron Age hillfort in Somerset with a long history of occupation stretching from the Neolithic period through to the post-Roman era. It has been identified since at least the 16th century with the legendary Camelot of Arthurian tradition. Archaeological excavations in the 1960s revealed evidence of significant 5th and 6th century AD activity.
Cadbury Castle is accessible via public footpaths and is a scheduled ancient monument. The earthwork ramparts are well-preserved and the summit offers commanding views across the Somerset Levels toward Glastonbury Tor. It is a popular destination for walkers and history enthusiasts.
Visit: Cadbury Castle Hillfort (historic site)
Glastonbury, Somerset — Ancient mystical hill
Glastonbury Tor lies within the wider spiritual landscape of the novel. The region's deep association with myth, ancient religion, and the idea of a land that holds memory within its very soil resonates powerfully with James Long's themes. Ferney's cyclical existence — dying and being reborn into the same landscape — belongs to the same tradition of sacred Somerset geography that Glastonbury embodies, and the Tor's visibility across the levels makes it a presence in the landscape Ferney has always known.
Glastonbury Tor is one of Britain's most iconic and spiritually significant landmarks, associated with Arthurian legend, early Celtic Christianity, and pre-Christian sacred landscape. St. Michael's Tower on its summit is a 14th-century remnant of a medieval church. The Tor has been a place of pilgrimage for many centuries.
Glastonbury Tor is managed by the National Trust and is open to visitors year-round. The climb to the summit is a popular walk and on clear days the views extend across much of Somerset. The nearby town of Glastonbury maintains a strong spiritual and alternative culture.
Visit: Glastonbury Tor (National Trust) (historic site)
Pen Selwood ridge — Old road through the village
The ancient ridge road and trackways through and around Pen Selwood are woven into the fabric of the novel. Ferney knows every turn of these paths from dozens of lifetimes of walking them, and he speaks of changes to the landscape — a hedge removed, a field divided, a pond filled — with the casual authority of someone who was there when each alteration happened. Walking the old trackway with Gally, he helps unlock her buried memories by naming the landscape as it has been across centuries.
Pen Selwood sits on a ridge that has been a significant route through this part of Somerset and the border with Dorset and Wiltshire since ancient times. The village's name derives from the Celtic 'penn' meaning headland or hill, and 'Selwood' from the great Saxon forest of Selwood that once dominated this region.
Public footpaths and bridleways cross the Pen Selwood ridge and the surrounding farmland, much of it following ancient routes. The landscape is quiet and rural, largely unchanged in character from the setting James Long describes in the novel.
Visit: Pen Selwood Footpath Network (park)
More by James Long: All James Long books
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