Re: A clean slate? (or should that be granite?) | Forum

S

Sanctuary May 2, 2011 15:50:00

Replying to Resonox

Resonox wrote:

A lot is being made of the "hole"...one poster, in the other thread alluded to it being for the erection of a maypole(yes I know it was a tongue in cheek remark)...but it might not be that far off the mark....perhaps(and only perhaps) the hole was used as an aid to building....by inserting a sturdy lever-style piece of wood(this could explain what was described as a "squircle" too as this would give a good grip of a piece of timber) for aiding in raising the slab and moving it into and holding it in position until the wall structure was fully stabilised...has anyone considered a simplistic theory??

One of the theories put forward was that it was used to haul it up with ropes Resonox, but we just don't know do we. To me, as a pure guess, it was 'drilled'out afterwards as it is perpendicular to the slope of the Capstone. Of equal merit would be to say that ropes were tied to it then secured in the ground like a guy rope to prevent it slipping off. Let's face it, everybody who sees it can't believe that it actually stays there! We may never know now.
Of interest is that it is 'drilled' at rather a thin place. Now whether it was always thin there or the lower 'layer' of granite fell away as it was punched through is open to further question but you can see quite clearly where it has fallen away from.

S

stonefree May 2, 2011 16:47:08

Replying to Resonox

At this point I hope my colleague Dave Kane will step in and explain to you a very specific effect we have been experimenting with.

I'm sure you've all been told that one must never stare at the Sun for too long because it will either damage your eyes or send you mad!

Well, when you stand in the shadow of the capstone and look at the Sun through it, the effect is that the intense glare of the sky around it is almost completely removed, enabling one to look for longer periods, especially once your eyes have acclimatised. This then brings into play a phenomenon known as 'persistence of vision', whereby one can see a 'negative' image where the strong light has 'etched' an image onto the retina which persist for quite some time after. If you close your eyes just after doing this, you can effectively examine what you have been looking at with more detail than is possible otherwise. Interestingly, the shape of this aperture, when looked at with the Sun coming through it in the mid afternoon, is almost exactly like an eye!

Whether this is exactly what was intended, we may never know. ;)

p.s. Just to illustrate a point regarding the testing of our hypotheses (and that any of them being disproved is still an important lesson!), we initially theorised that perhaps the midday Sun at Summer Solstice would shine right down the aperture and move down stone 6. Well it doesn't, not by quite a bit. In fact the small beam of light doesn't come within a couple of feet of the nearest upright! So we learned a valuable lesson that day, but it's still quite possible that there could have been an area of white chalk all around the quoit with markings similar to a sundial?

S

stonefree May 5, 2011 21:00:07

Replying to Resonox

Resonox wrote:

A lot is being made of the "hole"...one poster, in the other thread alluded to it being for the erection of a maypole(yes I know it was a tongue in cheek remark)...but it might not be that far off the mark....perhaps(and only perhaps) the hole was used as an aid to building....by inserting a sturdy lever-style piece of wood(this could explain what was described as a "squircle" too as this would give a good grip of a piece of timber) for aiding in raising the slab and moving it into and holding it in position until the wall structure was fully stabilised...has anyone considered a simplistic theory??

Here's a link to my earlier post about this:
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/forum/?thread=62372&message=792944