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VenerableBottyBurp V
VenerableBottyBurp Jul 21, 2007 18:24:23
Replying to VenerableBottyBurp

VenerableBottyBurp wrote:
Littlestone wrote:
Any chance of some door closure ?
Yes, as long as it isn't closed, sealed and concealed in Silbury. Who's George Rafty? If he's not a FIIC I'm not interested ;-) And please answer my question re: Surely, VBB, the damage was done when the lintel was inserted and careful removal now would result in little (if any) further damage. I am not an archaeologist so please correct me if I am wrong here.

I'm in grouchy mood this evening, need feeding, and require some sense from the world :-)

Non-sense is my department as you well know.

What was the question ?

Oh right, well I am not an astronaut either. I asked a nice woamn on the phone a couple of weeks back and she told me it was being looked at again nearer the time (not 1968) to evaluate if it would do more harm than good. It was not being preserved at the site for historic value, but would be if it was removed.

She was a nice lady!

VBB :)

I'm going out with woamn tonight, whatever that is !

VBB :o)

N nigelswift
nigelswift Jul 21, 2007 19:31:39
Replying to VenerableBottyBurp

"she told me it was being looked at again nearer the time (not 1968) to evaluate if it would do more harm than good."

Well VBB, let me run this past you and the nice lady. Its close to the surface isn't it? So that means its not bearing a load, in fact its nor doing anything except forming part of an opening into which a door has been fitted. So when the jobs done, and the front of the tunnnel is packed tight with chalk, if the lintel is lifted up it will have no structural effect whatsoever and will simply leave the oblong hole that was dug in 1968 to accommodate it. The plan is to fill the slumped area up-slope from it with fresh chalk to reinstate the pre-1968 profile of the hill so adding a couple of bags of chalk into the lintel hole at the same time would seem sensible.

The whole process would be the exact reverse of the sequence in 1968, so it would be an actual and symbolic reversal of Atkinson's intervention, which is precisely what EH say their whole project is about. So it seems an obvious thing to do. In addition, I'm unable to think of how it could do physical harm. Could you ask the nice lady if she knows otherwise, and if so what the harm might be? Personally, I'd like to think there was no structures left that would make it easy to fit another door some time in the future, but that's just me I suppose.

I could Ask the Experts I suppose, but I'd much rather have an answer.