nigelswift wrote:
Now we're getting to thew nitty gritty.
"Ruskin stated that restoration was 'a Lie from beginning to end'"
BUT all but dry purists are grateful to Keiller for his big lies.... BUT he did enough. It's the second best WHS on the planet, it impresses, it gives at least an approximation of it's true self. More lies (with the risk of mistakes, loss of info and future regrets) are simply not needed. "Avebury Complete" would not be a better Avebury yet it WOULD be a bigger lie.
Fair enough. What Ruskin said:
‘Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place.’
