Sorry to upset you so much. And your totally right, I'd hate to be kicked out of my home on someone elses whim. I wasn't condoning what happened to the village/ houses, i was just stating that he did a pretty good job of reconstruction (after all holes in the chalk bedrock seem to give an obvious indication of something being there). You may be right about Stonehenge not looking like it did 2500 years ago, but lets be honest, we'll never really know how it really looked or functioned (unless some genius builds a time machine...and that's pretty unlikely).
And as to tree felling, I'm with you totally. But let's not forget it was our 'forward thinking' tree hugging, momma loving, in harmony with nature (alledged) ancestors who cleared most of the UK tree's way back in the Neolithic (you've only gotta see the Highlands to appreciate what a vast amount of destruction our forbears were capable of).
I've never been to Avebury, and have only been to a couple of 'festies' at Stonehenge where no one was allowed near the stones.
World Heritage 'show piece' sites are not the big draw for me, i prefer the small, personal and mundane (well for some).
Again sorry to piss you off, guess i didn't explain myself well enough.

ethnic cleansing is the newsspeak word for genocide isn't it? subtle or not.
Historical perspective.
Rural communities throughout the land were being decimated by the advent of mechanisation, tractors and harvesters meant that ploughmen, stable lads, blacksmiths or farm labourers were no longer required in great numbers.
In other words farming became drastically less labour intensive and the men and women who relied on agriculture had to move to the towns and cities to find work.
The second point is that our grandparents fought for the right to have decent, afordable, hygienic housing instead of slums and rachman landlords.
The villagers of Avebury were moved up the road a little, but no-one died or was injured because of this. The work that keiler and the National Trust offered enabled people to remain within their community, the depopulation of these communities was happening throughout the British Isles, at the same time.
I think the comparison between Keiler and toad of toad hall is a fair one, but subtle genocide ?????

I pissed my sides when the lovely old dear said with slight disgust:

"It was very sad when they blow the trees up, some had been there for hundreds of years. It was VERY exciting though!"

The stones were thousands of years old! I have voiced my concerns over Newbury etc, but I didn't think anyone actually went to protect a TREE par se? Trees are fucking trees. Tree history? Surely thats a clock that is repeatedly started by every playschool in the land. The importance here is surely the restoration of a unique monument. Fuck the trees and the residents, who weren't really treated badly at all, unless I missed something? Surely the whole thing is relative?