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Re: Save Sighthill Stone Circle
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Littlestone wrote:
Can’t help noticing that the original site is (now) also very close to high-rise apartments and that at least one of the stones has graffiti on it.


"Apartments" ... sorry I nearly followed through there... strap on the bicycle clips folks... This "stone circle" "site" was built on waste ground on a hillock in the middle of a high rise scheme in North Glasgow. Those high rise flats were there before the stone circle was ever thought of. Decades before. The "stone circle" had a skyline view which was always limited in every direction. For example it was limited by the tower on Glasgow University and the Royal Infirmary...

http://www.sighthillstonecircl[...]/Beyond%20the%20Circle%201.JPG

Both were built more than a century before the circle was started. Here is the view onto some typical Sighthill "apartment" (oops! I just followed through...) accomodation. Probably the densest packing of humans in Western Europe. These flats were completed many years before the "stone circle"...

http://www.sighthillstonecircl[...]cle%20in%20Summer%202010-1.JPG

Another lovely view of the site's in-built astronomical "significance".

http://www.sighthillstonecircl[...]5th%20January%202012%20023.jpg

I used to have to live in a block of flats like that one. Very close by. Believe me, you don't live there because you want to. Better the money was spent giving people a half (or even a quarter) decent place to live (rather than exist) than spend it shunting about some stone landscaping left behind thirty-odd years ago by Manpower Services dole slaves.

Littlestone wrote:
The circle certainly needs saving, and it really is hard to believe that Glasgow City Council actually wants to destroy it.


Nothing about this needs saving. It is easy to understand why GCC don't want to have to squander council taxpayers money on its completion, consolidation and upkeep. GCC has had to give up on whole communities nearby like Possilpark... in the end some schemes were unsaveable and were just bulldozed. These empty streets used to be full of houses, people and kids.

http://goo.gl/maps/hWhXg

The "stone circle" was a vanity project started by a well-meaning guy in the MSC thirty-odd years ago. It never had a clear skyline in any direction. EVER. It could never "work". It wasn't completed.

This next photo isn't of some Eastern European Gulag scheme. This is Sighthill's last stone being choppered in.

http://www.sighthillstonecircl[...]9%20Operation%20Megalithic.JPG

This is not Stalingrad in the 1950's. This is Glasgow 1980. It still looks like this now. The guys who laboured on it got their dole money and a fiver - or else. If English Heritage did something like this now with a Clegg/ Cameron Libcon "Back To Work Scheme" I'm sure it would go down like a cup of cold sick on here.

Littlestone you say you cany help notice that "At least one of the stones has graffitti on it". I'd say that is the least of anyones worries. The area was covered in old syringes, needles and human faeces back in the 1980's. It was knee-deep in Buckie bottles and junkies within a year of its original abandonment. People were murdered in this wasteland. Undisturbed, its sealed contexts would have presented a fascinating archaeological record of the early Thatcher years for future archaeologists - and as such it should have been left for them. Everyone's time and money would be better spent re-erecting, completing and consolidating (say) The 12 Apostles down by Dumfries (great BIG skyline)... or even one of those modern Eisteddfod Welsh ones than this crocka...


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Howburn Digger
Posted by Howburn Digger
3rd January 2013ce
19:58

In reply to:

Re: Save Sighthill Stone Circle (Littlestone)

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Re: Save Sighthill Stone Circle (Littlestone)

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