John Michell lecture

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tiompan T
tiompan May 6, 2016 17:22:25
Replying to Andy Norfolk

Andy Norfolk wrote:
I've said elsewhere here that John Michell's work in West Penwith was a lot more accurate than some her have claimed, because they have (possible willfully) misinterpreted how he did it.
Not wilfully misrepresented at all .The data has been given ,if it is wrong it can be refuted .
To reiterate ,apart from the huge problems mentioned decades ago ,which have mostl ybeen ignore , a quick recent look showed that he regularly got grid refs wrong , in one case out by over a 1,000 yards . That in itself was not the point of the Men an tol "alignment" problem . His description , based on lockyers earlier cross quarter day observation , is wrong .Men an Tol is not aligned to the boundary stone at 66.5 degrees as he suggested.
Lockyer doidn't make that mistake .
The numerous problems about the TOSOLE in particualr or " Leys " in general can be covered if you wish .
I was simply mentioning something new .

A Andy Norfolk
Andy Norfolk May 6, 2016 20:10:27
Replying to tiompan

You are willfully ignoring my repeatedly pointing out that the fact that John Michell got a few grid refs wrong does not matter because he did not use them to work out his alignments. The alignment he gives to that boundary stone is at about 66.5 degrees.

Lockyer wrote in the caption to figure 56 on page 283 of Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments that the Men an Tol was “an apparatus for observing the sunrise in May and August in one direction and the sunset in February and November in the other. Sun’s declination 16° N or S.” The plan of Men an Tol that he shows is inaccurate because he shows the stones in a more or less straight line which they are not.

I calculated that allowing for the height of the horizon the May Day sunrise would be at an azimuth of about 69.36° - I could have been wrong. The azimuth I calculated was for the point at which the horizon bisected the sun.

So Michells' guesstimate wasn't too bad and is probably correct for the azimuth at which the sun first shows above the horizon. He was right that the boundary stone, that does exist at the grid ref I gave earlier and is shown in the correct location in the map on page 79 of the 1979 edition of TOSOLE, is in the direction of May Day sunrise.

This line from the Men an Tol does not rely solely on it and the boundary stones of course.