wittenham clumps and didcot towers

Wittenham Clumps and Castle Hill 2

Image by jamesd

Rhiannon Jul 29, 2014 14:11:15

June, I think you must have deleted your news item about the didcot cooling towers being demolished, and people viewing from wittenham clumps? (or someone did).

But i was thinking about it this morning, in fact they were talking about it on (imo the wretched) Thought For The Day. I think it's quite interesting to compare the two places. The TFTD person was saying how the towers had been a clear landscape feature on their route to visit their grandparents. And how the towers would have meant a lot of similar things to a lot of people. (Albeit they would have meant 'outrageous blot on the landscape' to a lot of people as well).

So I was pondering the monumentality of such huge structures and musing that they weren't so different from the very striking Wittenham Clumps in a way. When I first saw WC from the train many years ago i could not believe my eyes, I thought they were amazing.

And ok, when WC were a fort, they weren't covered in the trees that help them stand out in the landscape today. But they'd have maybe had a palisade fence, or smoke rising up, they'd still have looked distinctive.

Anyway, that's just a bit of half-baked waffle. But I thought it was interesting in that it highlighted ideas about the landscape and what its features mean to us, and maybe meant to people in the past.

Often on this website, people report the sites they go to in quite a scientifically detached way. And yet the sites are not often natural places, they are usually man-made and therefore maybe it's not the scientific x metres by y that are so important, it's they're bound up with cultural meanings. And even if we don't know what those meanings were when the sites were created, the sites have new meanings today.

Perhaps the heat's getting to me :)

tiompan Jul 29, 2014 14:55:59

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

it's not the scientific x metres by y that are so important, it's they're bound up with cultural meanings. And even if we don't know what those meanings were when the sites were created, the sites have new meanings today.

The actual measures of the vast majority of prehistoric sites are unlikely to have mattered to the builders , despite the beliefs of metrologists or those seeking some interrelationship between sites ,look hard enough and ye will find some apparently auspicious measure .
But as a description they are harmless and like grid refs ,potentially useful in the future to avoid confusion between sites and provide info re. extent . These details will remain while the personal beliefs about the sites will change ,"the devil/fairies did it " , "it's a computer / related to the punters beliefs about the cosmos ", "get your free energy here " , " enemies were buried here " etc ., which tells us about the beliefs of the observer ,which is great , but not much about the monument .

nigelswift Jul 29, 2014 15:46:05

Replying to Rhiannon

Olive's Tump
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/tma/topic/53046/threaded/661222

tjj Jul 29, 2014 17:38:31

Replying to Rhiannon

I did delete the news item as felt once the 'event' was over it no longer seemed relevant news. Didcot Power Station did/does seem to engender ambivalence and indeed affection among a lot of people. The artist Anna Dillon (who used to post here occasionally) put some very striking photos up on FB. My own memories of it were that it was a juxtaposition to the Uffington White Horse - both landmarks to let me know I was nearly home. I went past on the train on Sunday and three of the towers are still standing so for one weird moment I thought I was seeing a ghost image.

What will replace it in terms of ethical energy production - that is the big question. I know quite a few people, intelligent reasonable people, who actually campaign against solar energy parks as blots on their landscapes. Others say all new builds both residential and business should be have inbuilt solar panels on the roofs. This seems profoundly sensible.

Evergreen Dazed Jul 31, 2014 10:29:22

Replying to Rhiannon

I love the Didcot cooling towers, I love windfarms. If the Neolithic people had access to that technology and these materials, they would surely have used them. It may come as a shock to some but stone circles, cairns, etc etc are not natural features. Landscape 'beauty' is a very modern thing and very subjective. I personally don't think the people of the Neolithic gave two sh*ts about 'beauty' in that sense. Drama, of a sort, perhaps, but I think they were concerned with getting results, for want of a less obviously snappy and disconcertingly vague phrase. I can just imagine locals in 2800bc, angrily waving their placards, 'Keep Avebury ditch free' and 'No Hill here'.

One of my favourite views in the world is of Brightwell barrow from Castle Hill. The Cooling towers are a vital part of that view being so incredible and meaningful. I've never visited Brightwell and never will, as it won't be what I want it to be up close, but if look from the hill it can remain what its always been in my imagination.