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Stonehenge and its Environs

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nigelswift wrote:
https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2020/07/24/surely-this-is-the-stonehenge-game-changer/?fbclid=IwAR0VXfOtd4XPkWNWRLSfOFf0SapyvpAF7uAYayZPySX93nOyzJyNIkUr5dQ

Massive credit to Simon Banton

I did want to be amazed Nigel but found some of Simon's blog quite complicated - need to go back and allow it to percolate. I was reminded however, of a walk I did a few years back starting at Woodhenge, which as everyone knows is next to Durrington Walls. The walk took me past the Old King Barrows, the New King Barrows, the Avenue and ultimately the Cursus. What struck me most was how amazing Stonehenge looked from afar, how the visitors walking around seemed tiny and almost insignificant. And that Stonehenge was really the centrepiece in a much larger ancient landscape.

The little book I took my walk from was written by someone called Jean Patefield and published in 2009 - which was before the carpark and visitors centre were relocated and still under discussion. She ends her narrative with the words "There is one school of thought that says this a merely another chapter in the long history of Stonehenge and that cleaning up the landscape would be just another form of inauthenticity"

"What struck me most was how amazing Stonehenge looked from afar, how the visitors walking around seemed tiny and almost insignificant. And that Stonehenge was really the centrepiece in a much larger ancient landscape."

And of course, viewsheds work in both directions, so what you saw is the same but opposite of what he is saying (although in his case the focal points are the Durrington Pits).

The implications of what he (and you) are seeing is further confirmation, on an epic scale, of a widespread neolithic talent for what Sandy Gerrard refers to as landscape "tricks and treats" at stone rows and Julian Cope has dubbed The Silbury Game. You can't get more impressive as a civilisation than to mould a whole landscape on such a monumental scale that it still speaks of your intentions 5,000 years later.

It would be great, wouldn't it, if it is Simon, one of the many much-maligned and patronised amateurs like us lot who finally defeats the whole power of the nasty gang including Grant Shapps, David Cameron, Highways England, English Heritage, Historic England and the National Trust who have all presented a vile pig's ear as an enhancement. I hates them I does.