What is the monetary value of Stonehenge?

nigelswift Jan 28, 2007 10:05:28

A proposal to place actual values on all heritage items
http://www.ftd.de/karriere_management/business_english/154612.html

Could have huge implications - but too late for Thornborough.

They say it may be impossible to do it for places like Stonehenge and they may simply capitalise the annual takings from tourists.

But Thornborough is owned byTarmac, who don't advertise its presence and don't charge an entry fee, so its value would be zero. But we knew that already.

Littlestone Jan 28, 2007 22:25:38

Replying to nigelswift

The following may not actually be the words of Chief Seattle but the sentiments, at least, are good and true and say it all (whether applied to our heritage, its material products, or to the forests, seas and sky).

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?... This shining water that moves in the streams and the rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells the events and memories of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

Take note Tarmac... and your ilk.

slumpystones Jan 30, 2007 18:15:39

Replying to nigelswift

nigelswift wrote:

They say it may be impossible to do it for places like Stonehenge and they may simply capitalise the annual takings from tourists.

Ludicrous. How many people benefit from the financial knock-on of their visits to the area? Bus/Coach companies, local shops, Durrington parking meters [okay I joke a little].

If they spent more time trying to close that bloody road and less time looking at balance sheets we'd all be a little happier.

StoneLifter Feb 1, 2007 19:11:03

Replying to nigelswift

About the same as the Houses of Parliament ...

Littlestone Feb 12, 2007 20:22:30

Replying to nigelswift

"Stonehenge came up for sale by auction on 21 September 1915, when the last private owner, Sir Edmund Antrobus, died in active service in World War I. The last attempt to buy the monument to preserve it had been made a few years earlier, when American philanthropist John Jacob Astor tried to buy it from Sir Edmund for £25,000, intending to gift it to the British Museum. Perhaps because of the economic downturn caused by the war, when it actually went under the hammer (not for the first time ;-)* it sold for just under £6,000, and was purchased by Mr Cecil Chubb, a local landowner."**

Sad innit - 90 odd years ago we could have bought Stonehenge for less than a second-hand Skoda, and we'd now be running an ice-cream stall there and planning for better things.

* Italics mine.
** The Stonehenge Companion by James McClintock. ISBN 1-90562-408-5, page 21.