Pete, I've spent some time trying to find who the heck is Old Man Greenaway - not everyone knows all the inhabitants of Avebury you know - and have managed to decuce that he was an elderly local farmer. He illustrates the problem with EH rather well. Understanding archaeology doesn't qualify people to make practical decisions. Their often repeated sentiment... it's very complicated, we must learn everything we can about the voids before we design a long term solution... shows they had zero understanding of what that solution would be and has caused delay and further damage. The public should understand the pitiful and ludicrous position we're in right now: the guardians of Silbury are persuing an academic quest to gain an understanding of the precise positions of ever-expanding bubbles of fresh air, whilst the original fabric of Silbury is being lost all the time in inverse proportion. It's unforgivable.

Someone on the Stones list said "it's worth knowing the load-bearing strength of the base and lower walls, the size of the shaft, the density of the material, and a whole load of other detail - unlike the attitude of the old local who suggested that EH "just pump chalk slurry up into't." No, they're wrong, he was right, and in the end they'll do precisely what he said. When the history of Silbury is written, EH will be identified as the people who fiddled whilst Silbury crumbled and archaeology was lost, whilst Old Man Greenaway will be recognised as the "old local" who would have prevented a lot of damage, if only the so-called experts hadn't been so arrogant and dismissive. I don't know if he's still with us but at the next protest meeting it would be nice if he was honoured in some way.