Re: Liars and Vandals. | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Liars and Vandals.

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fitzcoraldo Jan 25, 2007 14:13:20

Replying to slumpystones

slumpystones wrote:

nigelswift wrote:

I've never been to Thornboro

You should. It's a boster. Its the sheer ruddy size that stuns. It doesn't show up in the photos, which is the problem. That, and the fact not that many people HAVE visited it. And particularly not many from the chattering classes. If it had been in Oxon, Bucks or Surrey I guarrantee it wouldn't have been touched.

Too right - commuter-belters would be driving the 4WDs to Downing Street in minutes, while poor neglected Yorkshire has no political power - let's face it, ultimately that is what it comes down to.

I assume the local MP is not on the Tarmac board etc ?

Slumpy
The Henges themselves are not currently under threat so you and your children will be hopefully be able to visit them. The campaign was launched to stop extensions to gravel extraction of the local landscape, a landscape which contains a wealth of prehistroic archaeological remains.
As for " If it had been in Oxon, Bucks or Surrey I guarrantee it wouldn't have been touched"
I'm not so sure. Given the price of land and the hunger for housing in that part of the country, I would imagine that untold archaeological sites have been disappearing, unreported, under developers shovels for decades.
One of the beautiful things about the Thornborough campaign is that people are fighting to preserve something that they cannot really see, flint scatters, post settings, pits, stuff that only shows up as a subtle change in the colour of the subsoil.

I guess one small comfort we can take from this whole mess is that the levy placed on the aggregates industries has funded some wonderful projects throughout Britain to the tune of some 7 million quid since it started.

cheers fitz

StoneLifter Jan 25, 2007 14:27:16

Replying to fitzcoraldo

No - (the Aggregates Levy is a load of nonsense).

slumpystones Jan 25, 2007 15:16:22

Replying to fitzcoraldo

fitzcoraldo wrote:

The Henges themselves are not currently under threat...

Do I detect a sense of fatalism here Fitz?

This crime is just the first of many small steps, eventually it will be a formality to move or eradicate any monument deemed unnecessary.

I remember getting an archaeological survey report when they were building the M40 up to Banbury, it was quite frightening reading.

BrigantesNation Jan 25, 2007 15:45:52

Replying to fitzcoraldo

Mr Fitz is part right. There is some significant quarrying proposed for Benson in Oxfordshire, site of numerous cursuses, close to Dorchester ex-henge. But in that case (I may need correcting) all of the parish councils banded together, becayse they represented the people and demanded the quarrying go elsewhere. In reality the government asimply dropped the gravel quota for the area.

In North Yorks, despite the campaigning, we decided to increase our gravel quota, at a time when demand is falling, so that other counties could reduce their quotas and import from us. In this new order, 50% of the gravel taken from Thornborough will not even get to North Yorkshire, instead it will go to West Yorks and humberside.

Did I mention Thornborough Festival is on 13-15th July?

BrigantesNation Jan 26, 2007 08:35:04

Replying to fitzcoraldo

Many of them include paying for the recording of archaeology that the poor quarry company could not "afford" to pay. Strang that really don't you think? We inflict a penalty aimed at increasing costs in an attempt to discourage the industry from quarrying in fragile places, then use it to pay the quarry companies when they quarry in fragile places. I'm thinking Millfield here and others.