I was talking family matters yesterday on the phone with my cousin in Jersey until eventually we got into stones. This led to her asking me what my favourite sites were leaving anything in Jersey out. Without hesitation I replied Avebury, Callinish, Stenness, Brodgar and Scara Brae.
What no Stonehenge she asked? You know I hadn't even consider it, how odd is that, or is it?
I stopped and thought about it later in the day and yes, I really don't have an interest in it any more. Does anyone else feel like that?
I suppose it's because of the restrictions now and what seems to me to be the continual changing of ideas and the bottom line for me...just the continual hearing and reporting about the place as though nothing else matters. Am I alone here?
What no Stonehenge she asked? You know I hadn't even consider it, how odd is that, or is it?
I stopped and thought about it later in the day and yes, I really don't have an interest in it any more. Does anyone else feel like that?
I suppose it's because of the restrictions now and what seems to me to be the continual changing of ideas and the bottom line for me...just the continual hearing and reporting about the place as though nothing else matters. Am I alone here?
I've been once and i'll never return, the place just doesn't move me.
Me neither. I have never been in but have wandered the area around looking at the different Cairns, many times, which I found a lot more interesting.
Lubin
Yeah me too, I feel I have to keep telling myself it is amazing. I should be enjoying this more. I think it's a victim of over exposure and over hyped. The old addage of under promise over perform and the feeling that less well known sites are more personal and people discover them for themselves rather than being told. If you forget about it and then revisit with an open mind and just experience it as a new thing without the preconceptions I think it's still possible to be moved.
It's unfashionable in our circles to get enthused about it but you have to keep reminding yourself of the significance and achievement of it's construction, also who are we to pick and choose which of our ancestors acheievements we appreciate, it meant a lot to them. It's part of the culture we all love. The fact that it's presented in such an abhorrent way (70's potrakabin, subway) doesn't help with the atmosphere. I'd love to do an after hours visit and get inside the stones.
I understand where you are coming from re. its over exposure and overt commercialism re. tourism, but if I look behind all that I soon remember why love the old Stones so much. They have a wonderful quiet dignity and awesome majesty that seems quite separate from all the snapping away and jabbering.
I do prefer isolated spots in general, though.
Depends how you define "favourite". In terms of sites that I find evocative, beautiful, enigmatic, moving.... no, Stonehenge doesn't even get a look-in. As a unique site of incredible importance, it's probably top of the list. But on a personal level, I'm just not that interested. I can't divorce the experience from the roads, the crowds, the fence, the commercialisation. Lift it up and dump it on Dartmoor and I'll review my opinion!
I had visited Stonehenge a couple of times in the distant past and felt the same as many do i.e. that it is a soulless monument made worse by the security, the fence, the crowds and the poor excuse for a visitors centre. I just took a few photos ticked the ‘been there’ box and never when back….until a few years ago.
I had found out that you can pay some extra dosh and not only visit the stones but walk among them either one hour before or one hour after normal opening hours. There were various do’s and don’ts attached to this but it allowed you to visit with only a couple of dozen others present.
My son and I visited one cold and frosted morning in early December. The skies were near clear with just enough cloud to give a spectacular sunrise and inside the monument the stones feel much bigger as they tower over you. Despite the rules you could touch the stones and the whole place took on a very special atmosphere in those circumstances. There were probably only about 20 of us in total and most of them only stayed half an hour so we almost had the place to ourselves. The security guys stayed present but outside the circle so you could easily just ignore them.
Ideally Stonehenge would be totally free access but before you dismiss this place for the normal reasons as stated here give the place a second chance and do what we did by visiting outside normal hours. It was worth every penny by a long way and if it wasn’t for the fact that it is not totally free access would be in my top 3.
:o)
Scubi
It's strange but we have a kind of "blind spot" for Stonehenge too.
We guess that for us, it's the whole Look But Do Not Touch bit, we did enquire about the out of hours visits, but the restrictions effectively prevent any serious photography ( a big interest of ours). A normal "tourist time" visit left us feeling really depressed.
There's the bit when folk find out you have an interest in prehistoric monuments, you're just waiting to see how early SH is mentioned, and if you can surpress the wince reflex.
Then there's the whole hype and insanity package attached to it, such as the madcap time when EH tried to claim copyright of any and all images of SH however produced.
It's odd though, if SH was in some remote location, such as one of the Orkney islands only reachable by coracle, you'd probably have to beat us off with sticks......
nah' man agreed. I guess my thing was reading TMA with Julian saying that Stonehenge was the culmination of thousands of years of temple building. that it was built using all that accumulated knowledge.
didn't particularly make me think less of the place but stone circles of a much older vintage float my boat i guess.
seeing the little toothy lumps of the Merrivale stones on a desolate windswept day in Autumn is something special.
went to Stonehenge on the way home from a break on Dartmoor funnily enough. had spent the week in a beautiful old cottage with no phone reception heading out into the green to find places listed in TMA, anyway, coming back home we saw the temple all huddled together from the A Road and I suggested we nip in for a look to see what a change several millenia can make. We rolled into the car park, rolling into a queue. eventually we got to the attendant guy who said that it would cost us 8.3 million pounds to park up and go for a look (honest, 8.3 million). I said to him 'how do you guys sleep at night' and pointed out that fucking Avebury the goddamn mecca was only up the road and was free and had a fucking pub in the middle of it too.
he didn't give a fuck, just moved us on and we rolled out of the car park.
I looked in the rear view at one of the most famous ancient monuments on our planet and it stood there all bunched up as if pulling away from the tourists and the flash photograpers. Sad really because, because, because if there were more stonehenge's about the place then no one would give a monkeys and we could walk up to it and it would in turn spread it's beautiful energy back over us and we could sit in her shadow and imagine the world as it was then and just be as fucking amazed at her power as we all are Avebury's.
What no Stonehenge she asked? You know I hadn't even consider it, how odd is that, or is it?
I stopped and thought about it later in the day and yes, I really don't have an interest in it any more. Does anyone else feel like that?
I suppose it's because of the restrictions now and what seems to me to be the continual changing of ideas and the bottom line for me...just the continual hearing and reporting about the place as though nothing else matters. Am I alone here?
Stonehenge is a really special place, as there is nothing like it in the whole World.
However, the masses of people who are roaming around, most of them taken there, rather than choosing to be there, and the ones that do choose to be there are there because their "guide to the British Isles" tells them they should see it, put me off completely. You cannot see the site in daylight without crowds, or traffic for that matter.
Avebury, on the other hand, even when busy, still provides quiet spaces to wander, giving a totally different atmosphere.
If Stonehenge was quiet, it'd be interesting to experience which was best.
It'll never happen, though, will it?
So, Stonehenge, for me at least, isn't in my top 10. However, the surrounding landscape is, with its many barrow cemeteries, cursus, and other monuments.
Regards,
TE.
I think its beautiful and impressive and really sad. I have beed reading lots about it recently (Thom. Hawkins, Aveni) and find it more and more impressive, yet, I still cant bring myself to PAY to see something I should just be allowed to see and touch whenever I want. I felt much the same when I was living in India. I refused to pay the stupid "white person" rate to see anything, so I went all the way there but didnt see the Taj!
We sometimes drive down to SH at night (just for the drive really) and bother the secuity guard to light up the stones. They look so beautiful and lonely its almost heartbreaking. Yet it still wouldnt fall into my top 5 circles. Which is silly really because its so HUGE and has taken so much time and effort and its mesurements are so precise, really, credit where credits due. I guess its just the fence and the charge Im not interested in...
Hmmm.
It's easy to under-rate it, for sure, but in my view (as others have said in different words) short-sighted.
It's such a spectacular & unique monument that if it was more pleasant to visit and less ubiquitous, then virtually all of us would absolutely rave about it.
love
Moth
Few years back I went to take some photos of Stonehenge for HA when, (can anyone remember it) we were going to have a tunnel built at great cost.
Parked on the verge by a field gate on the A303 and walked down to photograph at Stonehenge Bottom, the triangle of roads with Stonehenge centred in the middle. Traffic whizzed by, and you realise how destructive the roads were to a very fine view of the stones. If you wander over to the barrows behind the visitor centre, and look from there, you have this view of the stones over the VC and the carpark, filled with coaches etc and you really do understand the need to get rid of roads, visitor centre and carparks and move them elsewhere.
Its not only the need to get to the stones close up, but its the landscape that has to be emptied of modern day intrusion to understand the significance of Stonehenge....
Lost track of how many times I’ve been but probably, like a few others here, can remember walking among the stones with my parents, and then doing the same as a parent myself. Last time (nearly three years ago) was one of the best visits ever.
Took a coach tour (only eleven quid all the way from Essex!) that included a couple of hours at Old Sarum, Stonehenge and the rest of the time in Avebury (where Moss and I managed to meet up :-) Think it was being more relaxed about not having to drive, or get to somewhere else under my own steam afterwards, but I saw the place in a different light. Sat on the grass (between the underpass and the Monument) and just took it in in a way I hadn’t done before. After a few minutes the sound from the road and the ever-changing parade of people fade away a bit and you’re just left with ‘it’ and your thoughts.
People often say Stonehenge is smaller than they imagined but it is and it isn’t. Structurally it’s not that massive but its presence towers over you the longer you let it. If it seems that way to us now, to the ancients it must have seemed truly monumental, magical and awe-inspiring.
The only time I've ever been in the Stonehenge area was in 1994 when I was down staying with a friend who lived just outside Southampton at Baddersly. She'd been involved in Twyfield Rising campaign a few years before. The road had gone ahead and weird security guys (remember Group 4?) had weighed in and carried out forced evictions from the camp she'd been at.
Anyhow down in Hampshire in the summer of 1994 the roads were full of traveller types being hounded by the press and police. My friend took me on a drive up to Bath and the route took in a white horse and the road past Stonehenge. The road was very busy with police preventing people stopping. There was an atmosphere of real intimidation and control and what I felt was a massive use of State Power for no clear end.
I caught sight of Stonehenge as we drove past and impressive it looked too. But somehow that proud monument for me is forever caught up in those dark times (I dont even know if access to the stones was being permitted at that time). I have no desire to visit it. Bad memories
Lots of interesting posts here.
I've never been myself, and would very much like to but have a feeling that the current arrangements (even an out of hours visit inside the fence) would leave me disappointed. I don't like busy places and hordes of people much, and I don't want to feel disappointed by what must be one of the most astonishing prehistoric sites anywhere on the planet. So I put it off in favour of visiting lonely, battered sites on windwept hills that don't get the coachloads.
Sooner or later I must make the effort though.
I only visit on the Equinoxes and Winter Solstice. It becomes a very different place when you are amongst the stones. Whenever I am there with all the tourists I feel exceptionally proud of it (almost smug!!) and delight in telling them details they are unaware of.
For me though it is the whole landscape that is exciting. All those monuments connected over a long period of time. Walking from Stonehenge to Woodhenge or along the avenue towards the stones at sunset on the Winter Solstice will never cease to delight me. It almost brings me to tears . . . very powerful . . .
Blingo_von_T
i love stonehenge.
its amazing, going inside the circle in the early morning. i got a pass and took my girlfreind for her birthday a few years back.
walking up to it and then going inside with only 2 or 3 other people there, the stones get bigger and bigger.
i took my camera and camcorder and filmed loads and was taking photos in there for about 30 mins before i stopped and just looked and slowly wandered around.
its an amazing place. that early in the morning, out for 9. back in with the paying customers for a slow walk round. then over to avebury and silbury hill. i cant think of a better day really.
Bumping this to a more appropriate position... http://www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/tma/topic/61146/#1 (closure of A344) ... I was there last Sat 12th (first decent day for ages) and was surprised at the big difference it makes. A much better atmosphere at the Heel Stone, quieter and less stressful with people wandering across the road to look at the Avenue.
The concrete barriers are just to the east of the entrance to the car park and people are parking on the double yellows there. Move them further west!
This closure has been discussed at length elsewhere.. http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/a-video-of-english-heritage%E2%80%99s-vision-for-stonehenge/ and the collapse of local civilisation does not seem to have happened. Let us hope that Wiltshire C.C. are monitoring the traffic flows and decide that it is quite unnecessary (and expensive) to race to open it for the Easter w/e.
Another point is that the visual intrusion at the site from the A303 is less than one might think. The sound is. Noise reduction tarmac is readily available, a re-surfacing perhaps?
Jim.