12 April 2021 CE
Sites within Stonehenge
Images
12 April 2021 CE
12 April 2021 CE
12 April 2021 CE
The calm after the storm that is summer solstice
Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Sleeve from Piero Umiliani's 1968 Omicron lp "Preistoria".
Mah Nà Mah Nà!
Image credit: Piero Umiliani
Image credit: Howburn Digger's 7" collection
Stonehenge from the Cursus in soft autumn evening light. The line of Avenue can be clearly seen coming in from bottom left.
Image credit: A. Brookes (25.11.2017)
From "Corte Beschryvinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland".
Image credit: Lucas De Heere (1573)
Early depiction of Stonehenge.
Image credit: Scala mundi (14th Century copy)
Another orbit of the sun almost complete and time to plan for the next one. Happy Christmas to all who celebrate and equally happy Holiday to those who do not, as for me, well I've already started!
From 'Salisbury Plain' by Ella Noyes, 1913.
archive.org/stream/salisburyplainit00noyerich#page/32/mode/2up
Image credit: Dora Noyes
From 'Salisbury Plain, its stones, cathedral, city, villages and folk' by Ella Noyes, 1913.
archive.org/stream/salisburyplainit00noyerich#page/21/mode/1up
Image credit: Dora Noyes
Painting by Francis Nicholson (1753-1854) hanging in the house at Stourhead, Wiltshire – once the home of Richard Colt Hoare.
Image credit: tjj
From volume 1 of 'The Beauties of Wiltshire' by John Britton, 1801. Most of the 'beauties' illustrated are rich people's massive houses. But as the owners of the houses were the ones likely to buy the books, I suppose that was a prudent choice.
Image credit: Britton and Storer
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
The rising sun illuminates the great trilithons...
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Open Source Environment agency LIDAR
Image credit: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015.
"The Grand Conventional Festival of the Britons," from The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, by Samuel Meyrick and Charles Smith, 1814.
Image credit: Meyrick and/or Smith
Captured from the moving panorama, this interpretative of a 'double trilithon of the bluestones' was surprising.....
Image credit: moss
Taken from "The Illustrated Guide to Old Sarum and Stonehenge with engravings", 1886.
Courtesy of The British Library.
Image credit: Unknown
Between stones 21 and 22. Taken from "Stonehenge: plans, descriptions and theories" by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, 1880.
Courtesy of the British Library.
Image credit: Unknown
Taken from "Our own country. Descriptive, historical, pictorial." 1885.
Courtesy of the British Library.
Image credit: Unknown
Taken from "Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion". Blake's illustration features a lunar eclipse seen through one of the trilithons.
Image credit: William Blake/ Howburn Digger's William Blake Collection
From volume 5 (1882) of The Antiquary, and was intended to illustrate the contemporary appearance of the circle.
Image credit: The Antiquary
Possible Mid-winter sunrise alignment? Camera height 1M so a slight stoop needed. Orientation 140 degrees which is fairly close to the sunrise at 133 degrees. A coincidence?
Image credit: jimit Feb 2013
Stamp Issuer, Blacksmoker, Timelord, Justified Ancient and King of Low Frequency... Jimi Cauty's lovely Athena Poster of Stonehenge.
Image credit: Howburn Digger's Athena Collection.
A friend of mine took this when snowed in on the A303.
Image credit: Jimit Jan 2013 (Taken by Austin Pollard)
A friend of mine took this when snowed in on the A303.
Image credit: Jimit Jan 2013 (Taken by Austin Pollard)
Image credit: Chance - Winter Solstice 2012
Image credit: Chance - Winter Solstice 2012
Image credit: Chance - Winter Solstice 2012
Image credit: Chance - Winter Solstice 2012
Image credit: Chance - Winter Solstice 2012
Bluestone and Rainbow Lady
Image credit: Chance - Winter Solstice 2012
A possible "alignment" to the mid-winter sunrise?
Image credit: Jimit Dec 2012
The ealiest known aerial photograph of a british archaeological site ever taken. Back in 1906 when this was snapped from an army war balloon some of the stones were propped up by big wooden splints.
Image credit: Lieutenant P H Sharpe/ Howburn Digger Airborne Archive
The stones in 1894.
From the 'interim excavation report' in the Antiquaries Journal 1921.
archive.org/stream/antiquariesjour00unkngoog#page/n38/mode/2up
Image credit: Antiquaries Journal
"Straightening the stones using jacks".
From the 'interim excavation report' in the Antiquaries Journal 1921.
archive.org/stream/antiquariesjour00unkngoog#page/n38/mode/2up
Image credit: Antiquaries Journal
"Straightening the stones using jacks".
From the 'interim excavation report' in the Antiquaries Journal 1921.
archive.org/stream/antiquariesjour00unkngoog#page/n38/mode/2up
Image credit: Antiquaries Journal
Autumn Equinox 2012
Image credit: texlahoma
Autumn Equinox sunrise 2012
Image credit: texlahoma
August 2010
Image credit: 2010 Rob Lycett
August 2010
Image credit: 2010 Rob Lycett
August 2010
Image credit: 2010 Rob Lycett
Image credit: texlahoma
Winter Solstice Dawn December 2011
Image credit: texlahoma
Image from Bill Drummond's "How To Be An Artist" (Penkiln Burn book no 6) (2002). The trans-UK placard campaign was part of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to re-sell "A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind" by Richard Long for $20,000. The essay "A Smell of Money Underground" from Drummond's book "45" (Little, Brown and Company 2000) goes some way to explaining what eventually happened. I've got my piece.
Image credit: Howburn Digger's Library/ Bill Drummond
A real bromide photograph.
Postcard published by CG Billett, Stonehenge Cafe, near Amesbury Wilts
Image credit: CG Billett
Stonehenge at the Spring Equinox, 21st March 2011
Image credit: texlahoma
The inflatable trilithon at the Stonehenge Road Show today
Image credit: tjj
Starlings
Image credit: tjj
Morning starlings on Stonehenge
Image credit: tjj
My first time up close to the Stonehenge
Image credit: tjj
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Old "wet plate" photograph of Stonehenge prior to any restoration or re-erection of any of the stones
Image credit: Philip Rupert Acott - July 1877
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Taken by Paganpippalee
Summer Solstice 2009
Image credit: Taken by Paganpippalee
Image credit: Taken by Paganpippalee
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
With the star Capella
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
Image credit: Jimit Dec 09
The Moray Eel-faced Heel Stone 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
The eastern arc of the Stonehenge ditch 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Arrival at the NE entrance to Stonehenge 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Looking SE through Stonehenge 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Looking WSW through Stonehenge 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Looking NW through Stonehenge 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Looking NE through Stonehenge 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Looking NE across Stonehenge Down. Stonehenge ahead, with the New King Barrows on the right-hand skyline 08/07/09.
Image credit: The Eternal
Plan of the central Stone Structure at Stonehenge as it survives today.
Stone numbers are those conventionally used in the recent literature and following Petrie, F. 1880. Stone types are shown as sarsen or blue stone. The ref. to sandstone is for the Alter stone, No.80
Image credit: After Johnson - 2008 for Wikapedia
Stonehenge Plan showing the different features of the sight and their positions
1 = The Altar Stone, a six ton monolith of green micaceous sandstone from Wales
2 = barrow without a burial
3 = "barrows" (without burials)
4 = the fallen Slaughter Stone, 4.9 metres long
5 = the Heel Stone
6 = two of originally four Station Stones
7 = ditch
8 = inner bank
9 = outer bank
10 = The Avenue, a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading 3 km to the River Avon
11 = ring of 30 pits called the Y Holes
12 = ring of 30 pits called the Z Holes
13 = circle of 56 pits, known as the Aubrey holes
14 = smaller southern entrance
The plan omits the trilithon lintels for clarity. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles and stones visible today are shown coloured, grey for sarsen and blue for the imported stone, mainly bluestone.
Image credit: Adamsan for Wikapedia - 2004
Detail showing the mortice from the fallen lintel of stone 156
Image credit: Chance - March 2008
The dressing of the sarsens seems to have been carried out in several stages of increasing delicacy.
Initially, the rough and irregular surface appears to have been reduced by working parallel grooves about 9 ins. wide and 2 to 3 inches deep, generally running longitudinally, using the larger mauls of 20 to 30 Ibs. in weight.
Examples of tooling left in this state can be seen on the upper (outer) face of stone 59 as shown above and on the lower part of the outer face of stone 54
Image credit: Chance - March 2008
Station Stone, number 92, is the most significant of the four station stones. Lying to the south east of stonehenge, within the Aubery holes, this stone is understood to be an ancient marker. Only two of the four station stones remain, the other two where positioned on top of the north and south barrows. See the Stonehenge plan for an overall view of these features.
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
View of the much reduced south barrow with Stonehenge's stone 56 for referance. Viewed looking towards Fargo plantation.
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
View of the much reduced round barrow directly south of Stonehenge, looking towards the A303 and Normington Down
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
The Slaughter stone lies in it's ancient burial pit. It would appear never to have been lifted since being buried during a later period of the henge construction. Who knows what mystery's lie beneath this sarsan.
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
The Slaughter stone lies between Stonehenge and the Heel stone and appears to have been buried during a later period of the henge construction.
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
The heel and Slaughter stones seen from the henge
Image credit: Chance - Ostrada 09
Vernal Equinox 2009
Image credit: texlahoma
Plan of the site based on Manley
Image credit: C. Collyer
Winter Solstice 2008
Image credit: suave harv
We are not alone – allegedly!
Image credit: www.davidaspinall.co.uk
The final acts of Druidic ritual are carried out while people slowly drift away from Stonehenge.
Once again, Spring equinox 2008 passes off peacefully with no trouble, respectful observers and happy helpers.
Image credit: Chance - March 2008
Solstice 2008
Image credit: suave harv
Solstice 2008
Image credit: suave harv
Solstice 2008
Image credit: suave harv
Image credit: Fires at Midnight...
Spirits in the Sky...
Image credit: Photobabe
More rummaging at Stonehenge for the Bluestone Project... always seems cloudy when I visit!
Image credit: Photobabe
Filming of a dig – The Bluestone Project – at Stonehenge in April... Documentary to be shown on TV in September or thereabouts... I shall hold my breath – looks good!
Image credit: Photobabe
Stonehenge reconstructed showing stones standing, fallen, missing and their numbers.
Image credit: Ministry of Works - 1953
Stone with tenon 05/04/08
Not many archaeologists around, are there???
05/04/08
The site currently being excavated 05/04/08
Excavations currently taking place 05/04/2008
Not much going on when I visited on 05/04/08 but I tried to get some sneaky pix of the excavation
Stonehenge Free Festival – June 1982 – Stonehenge, the car park and in the top right, the Cursus Barrow Group
Image credit: Alan Lodge
Stonehenge Free Festival – 21 June 1976 – The Stones and "camp site" from the east
Image credit: Wiltshire Record Office
Taken in 1959.
Image credit: Nick Dooley
Ground plan of Stonehenge – 1959
Note the raised position of stones 57 and 58 to the earlier plan of 1953
Image credit: Ministry of Works - Ground plan of Stonehenge - 1959
Ground plan of Stonehenge – 1953
Note the fallen position of stones 57 and 58 to the later plan of 1959
Image credit: Ministry of Works - Ground plan of Stonehenge - 1953
A bit of light relief. Whilst clearing out some draweres, I came across this cartoon, which appeared in on of the sunday papers in the early 80's.
So now we know how they did it!
Midwinter Sunset.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 07
Station Stone with Normanton Down Barrows.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 07
Midwinter Sunset
Image credit: Jimit Dec 07
Midwinter Solstice Sunset (+ 1 day) Magical !
Image credit: Jimit Dec 07
Stonehenge 07/09/07
Stonehenge 07/09/07
Copper1: We've had reports of hippies smoking drugs Sarge.
Copper2: Based on what information constable?
Copper1: Apparently there's a 'stoned circle' somewhere around here.
Copper2: Ur, how many 'O' levels have you got constable?
Copper1: One. sir.
Copper2: What a coincidence, me too!
Image credit: Mike Wells
No wonder the RAF (or possibly the Royal Flying Corps?) once wanted it knocked down, the rate of climb for an aircraft like that must be p**s poor!
O Biggles where for art thou :-)
Image credit: J Welch & Sons
Views of stonehenge, from west and south. Engraving late 17th Century.
Image credit: David Loggan
Stonehenge in its landscape.
A curious view obtained from the Cursus Barrows using a telephoto lens.
Image credit: Jimit Aug 07
Solice in Stone ...Stonehenge
Image credit: Snap
Stone Henge
Image credit: Snap
Stone Henge (and it rained)
Image credit: Snap
Taken from 'Our Ancient Monuments And The Land Around Them' by Charles Philip Kains-Jackson, 1880.
Image credit: Unknown
Taken from 'Our Ancient Monuments And The Land Around Them' by Charles Philip Kains-Jackson, 1880.
Image credit: Unknown
Found in old illustrated guide to Stonehenge
Image credit: David Loggon late 17th Century
This is a repro of an old woodcut dated 1575 (Thanks to Lefturn for that info...) I have no idea which book the reproduction was in, or who 'RF' was.
Image credit: 'RF'
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
Stone Henge, early morning. As close as I could get due to the gorilla – security man – guarding the entrance
Image credit: Barry Lalanne
From Ancient History of Wiltshire
Image credit: Sir Richard Colt Hoare
Spring Equinox Sunrise 2007
Image credit: texlahoma
Stonehenge, by I Cowley in his 1744 map of Wiltshire for R Dodsley's, The Geography of Britain.
Image credit: Littlestone
Stonehenge Bottom, this is where the short tunnel will start from.
Is this how we would like to see Stonehenge, un encumbered from the trappings of the 21stC? A cheat of course as I had to wait for some time for a traffic free A344 and the roar from the A303 was just behind me. Curious as to how modest the stones appear from this angle. (Taken from the track to the SW)
Image credit: Jimit July06
Weird collection of starlings on the stones. They all flew off to roost moments later.
Image credit: Jimit July06
Not sure why this place is so enigmatic – but it is
Image credit: Derfel
Image credit: Bawn79
12 April 2006 CE
12 April 2006 CE
12 April 2006 CE
Stonehenge Spring Equinox 2006
Image credit: Tex La Homa
'The hanging stones'
(c) Jane Tomlinson 2006
handmade collagraph tinted with watercolour (limited edition of four)
Image credit: Jane Tomlinson
Couldn't resist posting this pic of a beautiful hare which had been bounding about on the ditch and bank seemingly oblivious to the tourists only a few metres away.
I looked away to re-adjust my camera and when I looked back it had gone and was not seen again.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
The beautiful slimness of the solitary trilithon upright, stone 56 (?). It contrasts remarkably with all the rest of the stones in its quality of finish and its almost pristine appearance. Does anyone know of any single stone which shows better the Neolithic peoples complete mastery of their craft?
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
Up close, one is in awe of the tremendous monumentality of this structure. Other circles might have more or heavier stones but it is the sheer height that astounds.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
A curious angle where the stones reminded me of a natural rocky outcrop.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
The Moon, not long after its most northerly rising in the 18.5 yr Metonic Cycle.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
The plentiful lichen on the great trilithon gives it a surprisingly "furry" appearance.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
A winter sunset.
Image credit: jimit Dec 05
The Moon had risen some minutes earlier just to the left of the Heel Stone.
This is the northernmost rising of the Moon on its 18 and a bit year Metonic cycle.
The alignment, 41 degrees E of N, may be the original reason for the construction of Stonehenge 1.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
This is what people surely came to celebrate, the midwinter sunset, when the daylight hours started to become longer.
A little poetic licence here as the pic was taken on the 15th Dec 05, but the sun is as near as dammit to its solstice position.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
Crescent Moon and Venus 4.12.05 about 4.30pm.
Image credit: Jimit Dec 05
Snuzz at Stonehenge Winter Solstice
Image credit: Tex La Homa
Distant, frantic Stonehenge from the peaceful haven of Bush Barrow. Get away from it all, under big, busy skies. Appreciate the landscape without instructions and gift shops. Leave the wife in the car if you must.
Image credit: The Eternal
The archer buried in the ditch at Stonehenge, taken at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. Try and ignore the reflection of the strip light.
Image credit: The Eternal
I found this photo I took in September 1996 from near the Heel stone,looking across the A303. Straw Henge.
Image credit: Peter Castle. ©
An experiment in stone lifting by 'the Stonehengineers' takes place next to a Stonehenge replica, built for a channel 5 TV show.
Image credit: Nigel Swift
An experiment in stone rowing by 'the Stonehengineers' takes place next to a Stonehenge replica, built for a channel 5 TV show.
Image credit: Nigel Swift
As you travel down the A303, this is the glimpse of the monument you'll get.
Image credit: Jane Tomlinson
This angle shows the speculative wooden lintels.
Image credit: Jimit June 2005
'Foamhenge' – a temporary life-size polystyrene reconstruction for channel 5 programmes aired on 20 and 21 June 2005.
Image credit: Moth Clark
A typical British Sunrise at Stonehenge... I'm sure you all know the one!
Image credit: Photobabe
"The Wheel of Time or the Perpetual Calendar of the Druids"
Image credit: 19th Century engraving
Stonehenge 1786
Image credit: engraved by W.Byrne and Medland
Rock of Ages....
Created with the help of dear ol' photoshop... from digital images, a cyber paintbrush and a fair amount of imagination...
Image credit: Photobabe
Forever watchful... The keepers of The Stones
Image credit: Photobabe
Romancing the Stones...
Image credit: Photobabe
Found this on Ebay...dont know the date...what are those bands round the stones? Also look where the cars are parked.
Image credit: texlahoma
One hour before dawn on a misty midsummer's morning 2004
Image credit: laughing giraffe
Image credit: Jane Tomlinson
Image credit: Jane Tomlinson
The Heelstone
Image credit: texlahoma
Image credit: texlahoma
Image credit: texlahoma
Showing how the stones have been shaped.
With the contrast turned up to 11.
Owl on a bluestone
taken 27th June 2003
Image credit: Roger Milton
Looking eastish
Image credit: Tim Clark
Starlings nesting in Heel Stone
Image credit: Tim Clark
Looking northish
Image credit: Tim Clark
South barrow looking towards New King barrows
Image credit: Tim Clark
Pastel and watercolour
Private collection, Oxfordshire
Image credit: Watercolour painting by Jane Tomlinson
Private collection, Oxfordshire
Image credit: Watercolour painting by Jane Tomlinson
Stonehenge from the NW, 16/6/03, with the shadows of Druids in the foreground.
Image credit: Sorcha
Solstice dawn 21st June 2003
'A midsummer night's sky' painted by me. Now in a private collection, West Midlands
'Purple haze', painted by me. Now in a private collection, Cheshire
From the Mighty Blake's Jerusalem.
" The blow of his hammer is justice, the swing of his hammer, mercy"
Image credit: William Blake
JMWTurner, one of the finest painters England ever produced, made this painting of Stonehenge in 1811.
Image credit: Joseph Mallord William Turner
'Bluestones' is a watercolour painting by Jane Tomlinson.
King Arthur knights a follower – fair play. Arthur was extremely "refreshed" at the time ...
Spring Equinox, 2003
from here, you can see how the lintels stay up, using basic carpentry (but in stone). The bump on the top of the upright nestles nicely into the hole on the underneath of the fallen lintel ...
Stonehenge painting by John Constable. Oil on canvas. 1836AD
Image credit: John Constable
Image credit: morfe
taken 6-7-02
Image credit: Pebblethief
taken 6-7-02
Image credit: Pebblethief
taken 6-7-02
Image credit: Pebblethief
2002
The Midsummer Solstice alignment.
Taken 8am, April 2000.
Image credit: Cursuswalker (During access by permission of English Heritage)
Trilithon Two in the rain. Winter Solstice 1999.
Image credit: Cursuswalker (During access by permission of English Heritage)
2nd September 2002
2nd September 2002. Photo from near New King's Barrows
10/02
'Wiltshire Temple' – this painting is of mixed media (collagraph, watercolour, chine colle and embossing).
Image credit: Jane Tomlinson
Winter Solstice 2001 – King Arthur Pendragon and friends
Winter Solstice 2001
Winter Solstice 2001 – a new alignment?
Winter Solstice 2001
Bright glowing bands stretch overhead
Image credit: Mark Vernon
Ancients gather to view the Western skies
Image credit: Mark Vernon
The calm ancient silhouette beneath fiery heavens
Image credit: Mark Vernon
Articles
The quest for the origins of Stonehenge's six-tonne Altar Stone continues as new research has found it did not come from mainland Orkney.
More info :
comment
3 Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c207lqdn755o
Absolutely incredible. It adds fuel to the theory of Orkney being such an important place in prehistoric Britain.
Researchers are investigating whether Stonehenge aligns with the positions of the Moon, as well as the Sun.
More info :
The prehistoric tribes that built Stonehenge likely "feasted" on the raw organs of cattle, scientists believe.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-58547463
One of Britain's biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales – and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.
Archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Waun Mawn site in Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.
They believe the stones could have been dismantled and rebuilt 150 miles (240 km) away on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
The discovery was made during filming for BBC Two's Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed.
The Welsh circle, believed to be the third biggest in Britain, has a diameter of 360ft (110m), the same as the ditch that encloses Stonehenge, and both are aligned on the midsummer solstice sunrise.
And one of the bluestones at Stonehenge has an unusual cross-section which matches one of the holes left at Waun Mawn, suggesting the monolith began its life as part of the stone circle in the Preseli Hills before being moved.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203
And was Kammer the first to recognise this?
themodernantiquarian.com/site/3992/waun_mawn_row_circle.html
David Nash and his team of researchers believe the sarsens come from West Woods, south west of Marlborough, and 25km from the circle. They've geochemically matched the site using a chip from Stonehenge that was taken during a restoration project in the 1950s. Two of the fifty remaining stones at Stonehenge don't match the West Woods site though...
Article on today's Guardian website.
The research paper can be read here in Science Advances.
A metre-long core from inside the prehistoric stone was removed during archaeological excavations in 1958.
No one knew where it was until Robert Phillips, 89, who was involved in those works, decided to return it.
English Heritage, which looks after Stonehenge, hopes the sample might now help establish where the stones originally came from.
In 1958 archaeologists raised an entire fallen trilithon – a set of three large stones, consisting of two that would have stood upright with the third placed horizontally across the top.
During the works, cracks were found in one of the vertical stones and in order to reinforce it, cores were drilled through the stone and metal rods inserted.
The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.
Researchers in London compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found in Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.
The Neolithic inhabitants appear to have travelled from Anatolia (modern Turkey) to Iberia before winding their way north.
They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.
Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that introduced farming to Europe.
Before that, Europe was populated by small, travelling groups which hunted animals and gathered wild plants and shellfish.
One group of early farmers followed the river Danube up into Central Europe, but another group travelled west across the Mediterranean.
DNA reveals that Neolithic Britons were largely descended from groups who took the Mediterranean route, either hugging the coast or hopping from island-to-island on boats.
Tests show 5,000-year-old remains found at the world heritage site came from more than 100 miles away in west Wales
Maev Kennedy
The bones of people buried at Stonehenge, who died and were cremated about 5,000 years ago, have given up their secrets: like the bluestones, which form part of the famous prehistoric monument, they came from west Wales, near the Preseli Hills where the stones were quarried.
The remains of at least 10 of 25 individuals, whose brittle charred bones were buried at the monument, showed that they did not spend their lives on the Wessex chalk downland, but came from more than 100 miles away. Examination of the remains showed they were consistent with a region that includes west Wales, the most likely origin of at least some of these people.
Although the team, led by scientists from the University of Oxford with colleagues in Paris and Brussels, cannot prove that the remains are of people who actually built the monument, the earliest cremation dates are described as “tantalisingly” close to the date when the bluestones were brought into the earlier ditch and bank monument to form the first stone circle.
More:
theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/02/revealed-stonehenge-buried-welsh?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
It is an archaeological conundrum that has baffled generations of experts.
Just how did prehistoric Britons manage to transport the huge bluestones of Stonehenge some 140 miles from the Presili Mountains in Wales to their final home on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
The answer is surprisingly simple. The feat really isn’t as hard as everyone imagined......
and so on,
telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/05/23/stonehenge-wasnt-so-hard-to-build-after-all-archaeologists-disco/
English Heritage look set to ban alcohol and charge for parking at future Summer and Winter Solstice Gatherings.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-35500528
Revellers at Stonehenge could face a ban on alcohol and parking charges at this year's solstice celebrations. English Heritage, which manages the ancient site, wants to introduce "significant changes" in response to "repeated and consistent" feedback. Stonehenge manager Kate Davies, said an alcohol ban would "help everyone to have a better experience of solstice".
But senior druid, King Arthur Pendragon, said English Heritage was "looking for confrontation".
In December, large crowds gathered at the ancient monument in Wiltshire to watch the sunrise and mark the winter solstice.
And an estimated 23,000 people descended on the site to celebrate the summer solstice last June.
Despite it being illegal to damage the monument, last year the Heritage Journal wanted revellers banned from getting close to the stones in a bid to prevent the "annual vandalism".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-34944768
Stonehenge druid King Arthur resurrects remains battle
A senior druid has vowed to seek a judicial review over a government decision allowing ancient human remains from Stonehenge to be kept in a museum.
King Arthur Pendragon claims the cremated bones, unearthed in 2008, are from members of the royal line and wants them reburied.
A licence allowing them to go on display expired last month, but has since been extended.
Mr Pendragon said the government had "reinterpreted" the law. 'Mobilise supporters'
Since their excavation, the remains have led to new discoveries about Stonehenge.
Prof Mike Parker Pearson from University College London said the bones were buried over a period of 600 years, and include the remains of men, women and children.
His findings will be formally published in the Antiquity Journal next year.
If new scientific advances were made, he added, the licence allowed for future examination of the bone fragments.
King Arthur Pendragon will apply for the judicial review in May 2016
The items will be held in storage until the bones are transferred to Salisbury Museum in April.
Mr Pendragon said he would will apply for the repatriation of the bones when they are moved to the museum, and will then apply for a judicial review.
He added: "We are not going to roll over on this and we are going to mobilise our supporters around the world."
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "Every licence application is carefully considered on its merits.
"Having weighed up all the arguments put forward, Ministers found the case made by Professor Parker Pearson to be more persuasive than that put forward by those who opposed the application and have amended the licence as he requested."
Meanwhile, Mr Pendragon also told the BBC he planned to seek a change in the law to better protect pre-Christian human remains.
He will also address the issue at the Stonehenge winter solstice on 22 December.
NEOLITHIC TEXTILE AND CRAFT WORKSHOP
Mon 7 Dec 2015
10:00 – 16:00
SUITABLE FOR Adults
Work with textile experts Sally Pointer and Gareth Riseborough to discover more about the research and processes used to create replica Neolithic and Bronze Age clothing for Stonehenge and get hands-on experience with materials and techniques. Learn to make cordage from natural fibres and deer sinew and experiment with braiding, twining and looping techniques. All materials are supplied, and using flint tools, you will craft a needle from red deer antler to take home along with the resources to continue your project.
Member (Adult) £60
Adult £65
================
PREHISTORIC TECHNOLOGY WORKSHOP
Mon 2 Nov 2015 10-4
SUITABLE FOR Adults
Join skilled bushcraft and ancient technology experts Guy Hagg and Joe O'Leary at England's most famous Neolithic site for this one day hands on prehistoric technology workshop. Learn how to make your own arrows, atlatl spear throwers or darts. Develop your knowledge and skills through the day and go home with your own handmade piece of ancient technology.
Member (Adult) £80
Adult £85
================
PREHISTORIC POTTERY DEMONSTRATION
Sun 10 Jan 2016 10:00-16:00
SUITABLE FOR Everyone
Throughout the day, Graham Taylor will demonstrate how to make a pottery toolkit and decorate replica pots as well as how to fire them using authentic prehistoric methods. Graham will use a handling collection of replica pots, tools and artefacts to bring prehistory to life.
English Heritage members Free
Adult £14.50
Child, 5-15 years £8.70
Concession £13.00
Family £37.70
================
PREHISTORIC POTTERY WORKSHOP
Mon 11 Jan 2016 10am-4pm
SUITABLE FOR Adults
Join expert potter Graham Taylor at Stonehenge this winter for our hands-on workshop. You will make your own prehistoric pottery tool kit and learn the basics of ancient pottery skills as well as creating, firing and decorating your own Neolithic and Bronze-Age replica to take home.
Member (Adult) £70
Adult £75
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/whats-on/sale-of-the-centuries/
SALE OF THE CENTURIES
Mon 26 Oct – Sun 1 Nov 2015 10:00-16:00
Stonehenge visitor centre
SUITABLE FOR Families
Visit Stonehenge in October half term to take part in our two part interactive, theatrical performance which will take you back 100 years to the dramatic auction of 1915 where Stonehenge was put up for sale! Bring the family and take part in the bidding in this centenary year.
English Heritage members Free
Adult £14.50
Child, 5-15 years £8.70
Concession £13.00
Family £37.70
The deputy Prime Minister has just said he wants the Government to sanction plans to rebuild the A303 before the next election. Since the 3 options just published for the Stonehenge section consist of 2 versions of a short tunnel plus an unrealistic northern bypass – and no long tunnel – it seems likely that what he is effectively pressing for is a short tunnel. As for the timing, he says he very much hopes we can see “diggers in the ground” well before 2017/18.
Here are a couple of questions about what’s some would see as a looming World Heritage Scandal:
First, we previously wrote to English Heritage asking what they meant when they said they’d argue for the tunnel “with all our strength” – a long one or a short one? In April they replied:
“It is not possible to comment on this, or provide documentation that supports a decision regarding which scheme English Heritage would support, for the simple reason that we have not yet been presented with scheme options to advise upon. When DfT presents us with their potential scheme options, then we will be able to advise upon their heritage impacts and relative merits.”
Well, the options have now been published (sans a “long tunnel”) and the Stonehenge Alliance, for one, has made a formal response. Will English Heritage now clarify their position and will they, like the Stonehenge Alliance has done, call for the “long tunnel” option to be reinstated as an option on the grounds that the other options are hugely damaging to the World Heritage Site they are charged with protecting?
"How cool is this" – BBC Points West publish a photo of President Obama strolling around Stonehenge this evening.
On Facebook under Points West.
From BBC News...
"Evidence that the outer stone circle at Stonehenge was once complete has been found, because a hosepipe used to water the site was not long enough.
Parch marks in the grass, in an area that had not been watered, have revealed places where two "missing" huge sarsen stones may once have stood.
The marks were spotted by an English Heritage steward who alerted archaeologists to their existence.
Previous scientific techniques such as geophysics failed to find any evidence."
More here...
The summer solstice, King Arthur, the Holy Grail … Stonehenge is supposed to be a site of myths and mystery. But with timed tickets and a £27m visitor centre, does it herald a rampant commercialisation of our heritage?
theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/21/from-heritage-to-heretics-stonehenge-making-history
An interesting read for those who weren't there and a previous 'lively' topic for discussion on TMA.
The House of Commons held a debate in Westminster Hall on 4 March 2014 about the A303 in the Stonehenge area.
Transcript here:
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140304/halltext/140304h0001.htm#14030456000001
"The giant bluestones of Stonehenge may have been chosen because of their acoustic properties, claim researchers.
A study shows rocks in the Preseli Hills, the Pembrokeshire source of part of the monument, have a sonic property.
Researcher Paul Devereux said: "It hasn't been considered until now that sound might have been a factor." "
More here...
The prospect of fast-tracking an upgrade of the second artery into the region comes as travel in the West country has been thrown into turmoil as the only mainline into Devon and Cornwall collapsed into the sea at Dawlish.
When questioned in the Commons as the region was effectively cut off by rail, transport minister Robert Goodwill said widening the A303 was a project on which the Government “needs to concentrate”.
Read more:
Rain clouds gathered as Trust members arrived at the entrance to the new Stonehenge Visitor Centre yesterday. After decades of wrangling, and millions of pounds spent trying to decide what the Centre should be, what it should look like and where it should be sited, the big day had at last arrived – the first day that the new Stonehenge Visitor Centre opened its doors to the public.
More here – theheritagetrust.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/the-new-stonehenge-visitor-centre-first-impressions/
THE new Stonehenge visitor centre is taking shape, and Wiltshire residents are being invited to take a tour of the site at Airman’s Corner
salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/10370784.Chance_to_tour_Stonehenge_visitor_centre/
English Heritage recreates prehistoric houses in Wiltshire based on local excavations that will be rebuilt for outdoor gallery
guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/apr/16/neolithic-homes-stonehenge-visitor-centre
Thousands of people came from across Britain to help build Stonehenge, experts investigating the origins of the monument have said.
........
From The Independent 12/10/2012
A detailed laser scan of the entire monument has discovered 72 previously unknown Early Bronze Age carvings chipped into 5 of the giant stones.
More info :
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/news/stonehenge-solstitial-function/
"The laser scan has revealed significant differences in the way the stones were shaped and worked. These differences show that Stonehenge was not only aligned with the solstices, but that the view of the monument from the Avenue, its ancient processional way to the north east, was particularly important. "
Also they have discovered 71 ! new carvings of axes.
Following on from ryaner's post...
"A team of academics have revealed the "sonic experience" that early visitors to Stonehenge would have heard.
Scholars from the Universities of Salford, Huddersfield and Bristol used an American replica of the monument to investigate its audio history.
Salford's Dr Bruno Fazenda said they had found the site reacted to sound "in a way that would have been noticeable to the Neolithic man".
He said the research would allow a "more holistic" view of its past."
More here...
Music could have been an inspiration for the design of Stonehenge, according to an American researcher.
Steven Waller's intriguing idea is that ancient Britons could have based the layout of the great monument, in part, on the way they perceived sound.
He has been able to show how two flutes played in a field can produce an auditory illusion that mimics in space the position of the henge's pillars.
Mr Waller presented the idea at the AAAS meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
paintings of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill feature in ths exhibition of Hardy's Wessex
"Scientists have succeeded in locating the exact source of some of the rock believed to have been used 5000 years ago to create Stonehenge's first stone circle.
By comparing fragments of stone found at and around Stonehenge with rocks in south-west Wales, they have been able to identify the original rock outcrop that some of the Stonehenge material came from."
More here...
David Field's talk on the Stonehenge Landscape Project this Saturday is sold out. However, he has agreed to give another one on March 10th next year. Bookings being taken now.
wiltshireheritage.org.uk/events/index.php?Action=2&thID=694&prev=1
"Visitors to Stonehenge in Wiltshire rarely experience the historic site without the rumble of traffic noise from the nearby A303. But UK researchers have managed to recreate the sound of a ritual there, as heard by our ancestors 4,000 years ago. The research – which starts in an echo-free recording chamber and uses latest computer modelling techniques – has also been used to recreate the acoustics of Coventry Cathedral before it was destroyed in World War II."
Hearing the Past can be heard on BBC Radio 4 at 1102 BST on Monday 12 September, and on BBC iPlayer.
More here – bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14746589
"We are testing the timetables for the service, and for the first few weeks we will be making constant changes. Please check here each week for confirmation of the timetable that we will be operating each weekend."
"Stonehenge is being scanned using modern laser technology to search for hidden clues about how and why it was built. All visible faces of the standing and fallen stones, many of which are obscured by lichen, will be surveyed. Some ancient carvings have previously been found on the stones, including a famous Neolithic "dagger". The survey is already in progress and is expected to finish by the end of March. "The surfaces of the stones of Stonehenge hold fascinating clues to the past," said English Heritage archaeologist Dave Batchelor. The team will be looking for ancient "rock art", but also for more modern graffiti, in a comprehensive survey of the site."
More here – bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12688085 and here – english-heritage.org.uk/about/news/stonehenge-in-high-definition/
And a video here – youtube.com/watch?v=qxAnanfB_rg
...but how?
Reporting for BBC News Wales, Neil Prior writes -
"New research has cast fresh doubt on the journey which the Stonehenge Bluestones took from Pembrokeshire to the site of the pagan monument. Since the 1920s, geologists have strongly suspected that the 'spotted dolerite' Bluestones, which form Stonehenge's inner ring, originated from Mynydd Preseli in the north of the county. However, whilst the new findings have also linked a second type of stone – rhyolites – to the area, they call into question how the stones arrived in Wiltshire."
More here – bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12544924
SNOW and ice failed to keep people away from Stonehenge today as they gathered to see the sun rise on the winter solstice.
More than 2,000 people came together at the stones, which were surrounded by a thick blanket of snow.
The winter morning mist obscured the actual sunrise – which took place at 8.09am – but an eclectic mix of people celebrated the ancient festival.
Among the Druids, hippies and sun worshippers were those just curious to experience the spiritual event at the site, on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire.
Serving soldier of 15 years Lance Corporal Paul Thomas, who fought in Iraq, was ''knighted'' with a sword by Druid protester King Arthur Pendragon.
Formerly known as John Rothwell, King Arthur changed his name by deed poll.
Formerly of Winchester, Arthur stood as a parliamentary candidate for the city in 2005 and in Salisbury during this year's general election.
This morning, he also performed a handfasting – a Pagan marriage ceremony – inside the stones.
As well as the traditional Druid and Pagan ceremonies, a spontaneous snowball fight erupted as people enjoyed the cold weather.
The shortest day of the year often falls on December 21, but this year the Druid and Pagan community marked the first day of winter today because the modern calendar of 365 days a year – with an extra day every four years – does not correspond exactly to the solar year of 365.2422 days.
During the winter solstice the sun is closer to the horizon than at any other time in the year, meaning shorter days and longer nights.
The day after the winter solstice marks the beginning of lengthening days, leading up to the summer solstice in June.
dailyecho.co.uk/news/8752033.Hundreds_turn_out_for_winter_solstice_at_Stonehenge/?ref=twt
It is one of the abiding mysteries of Britain's Neolithic past.
For all the awe-inspiring wonder of the standing stones at Stonehenge no one has ever worked out how our ancient ancestors were able to heave boulders weighing many tonnes over such huge distances.
But now an engineer and former BBC presenter believes he has come up with a theory which explains how the giant stones were moved.
Garry Lavin believes that the engineers who built Stonehenge used wicker basket-work to 'roll' the huge boulders all the way from Wales to their present location.
'I always thought that dragging these huge stones was physically impossible because of the friction on the surface. The key thing is the technology was always there around them,' he said.
It is the movement of the 60 famous Bluestones which causes historians such problems. Each stone weighs up to 4 tons and they originally came from the Preseli Mountains in Wales – some 200 miles away.
Mr Lavin has come up with a cylinder 'basket' to roll the massive and irregularly-shaped stones.
The basket is created by weaving willow and alder saplings to form a lightweight structure that can be easily moved by 4 or 5 men. To complete the rig and to ensure the best rolling and floatation conditions, the gaps between the basketwork cylinder and the irregular stone are packed with thin branches.
This spreads the load as the basket flexes in transit, much like a modern tyre, and creates buoyancy when transported down rivers and across the sea.
One of Mr Lavin's key discoveries during his earlier experiments was that the wicker cages that contained the stones were able to float. This would have enabled Neolithic man were able to get the huge stones across rivers on their journey, as well as making it easier to transport them over long distances without having to carry them the entire way.
The men would have been able to place the stones in a river, such as the River Wye, and then guide them on their way.
Mr Lavin said: 'Woven structures were everywhere at the time, there are even wells which they have discovered were full with woven basketwork. It's just taking that technology and using it in a new way.
'It is not without some foundation. It was staring us in the face the whole time.'
In the summer Mr Lavin tested out his theory near Stonehenge and succeeded in moving a large one-ton stone in a wicker cage that he had made himself.
Mr Lavin now wants to set out on his final mission to rewrite history by creating a supersize cradle capable of moving a huge five-ton stone.
To do so he has enrolled the help of an engineer, an ancient wood archaeologist and a professional willow weaver to help him with the final test and construction.
He hopes to run the test around the time of the summer solstice next year.
'The physics is there it's just so obvious. It's one of the things that when you think about it you say "oh yes, of course", ' he said.
He believes the original stones could have been moved by two teams of ten men each with one team resting while the others pushed the 'axles' containing each bluestone all the way from Wales their final destination.
George Oates, who works for the engineering company Expedition UK that recently designed the Olympic Velodrome as well as the Millennium Bridge, has looked at the new theory from a physics perspective.
He looked at the height and weight of Neolithic men as well as the stone's weight, the strength of the wicker basket and the inclines that would have to be negotiated.
Mr Oates said: 'We feel that it is possible that Garry's theory of a woven basket around the stone, moving these four-ton stones all the way from the Welsh mountains to Stonehenge is at least viable.'
Last week a competing theory from the University of Exeter was published which suggested that the stones may have used wooden ball bearings balls placed in grooved wooden tracks would have allowed the easy movement of stones weighing many tons.
The Heritage Lottery Fund announced last night that they'd be giving ten million pounds towards the Stonehenge visitor centre improvements. Government axes £10m. HLF provides £10m. See we're all in this together and charities can make up the slack. Keep buying those scratchcards. Yes I am being sarcastic. By the way, if you've got a spare nine million pounds then that'll make up the total that EH are going for.
hlf.org.uk/news/Pages/10minvestmentfromtheHeritageLotteryFundforStonehenge.aspx
Nothing on the EH website yet though, slightly curiously.
"Neolithic engineers may have used ball bearings in the construction of Stonehenge, it was claimed today.
The same technique that allows vehicles and machinery to run smoothly today could have been used to transport the monument's massive standing stones more than 4,000 years ago, according to a new theory.
Scientists showed how balls placed in grooved wooden tracks would have allowed the easy movement of stones weighing many tons. "
independent.co.uk/life-style/history/stonehenge-mystery-could-rest-on-ball-bearings-2137673.html
______________________________________
Hmmmm....
Peace
Pilgrim
X
Bronze Age teenager buried at Stonehenge had travelled to visit site from the Mediterranean
The Boy with the Amber Necklace: Bronze Age teenager buried at Stonehenge had travelled to visit site from the Mediterranean
Every year, one million visitors flock to Stonehenge from around the world to gaze in wonder at its towering stones.
Now scientists say that the prehistorical monument was also attracting tourists from overseas thousands of years ago.
Today they revealed that a Bronze Age teenage boy buried at the stone circle around 1550BC was born and brought up in the Mediterranean.
The boy – aged 14 or 15 – had travelled to Britain from Spain, Italy, Greece or France, crossing the English Channel in a primitive wooden boat, they say.
(Apologies for link to the Daily Mail!)
"LEADING experts on Stonehenge will be gathering in Salisbury to debate the monument's purpose next weekend. The event, called Solving Stonehenge, is part of Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum's 150th anniversary conference on October 2 and 3. The main speakers will be Professor Tim Darvill, Professor Mike Parker Pearson, Mike Pitts and Julian Richards. The debate will be chaired by Andrew Lawson."
More here -
salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/8407609.Experts_gather_to_gather_for_Stonehenge_debate/
"The largest exhibition of John Constable work, ever exhibited in Wiltshire, is heading to Salisbury next summer.
"To mark the 200th anniversary of the artist's first visit to the city, the Salisbury and Wiltshire museum is hosting a multi-million pound exhibition of his paintings of Salisbury Cathedral, the city and Stonehenge."
More here – news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9006000/9006303.stm
Sound recording at reconstruction of Stonehenge in Maryhill Monument, USA........
Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists
"The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it... Overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They entered carefully beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors..."
This atmospheric description of a "temple of the winds" comes from the dramatic climax of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The setting is Stonehenge, arguably the most famous prehistoric monument of all. Its imposing ring of standing stones is visible for miles on Salisbury plain in southern England. On the day of the summer solstice its outlying "Heelstone" is exactly in line with rays of the rising sun. A more perfect example of the visual impact of an ancient monument would be hard to find.
Might we be missing here something that both Hardy and our prehistoric ancestors understood? Some archaeologists have begun to think so. They argue that sound effects were an important, perhaps even decisive, factor in how early humans chose and built their dwellings and sacred places. Caves that sing, Mayan temples that chirp, burial mounds that hum: they all add up to evidence that the aural, and not just the visual, determined the building codes of the past. But is that sound science?
Assessing the claims of "acoustic archaeology" rapidly encounters a fundamental problem: sound is ephemeral. Pottery fragments, coins, bones and bits of buildings can survive for centuries, waiting to be analysed, interpreted- and reinterpreted. The sounds of the past, by contrast, have long since died away. Where historical records make mention of acoustic intent in designing structures, the claims are often based on faulty science (see "Sound design?"). Going back into prehistory, we do not even have the luxury of knowing what our ancestors were thinking- or often a clear idea of the original layout and acoustic properties of the structures we are interpreting.
There is, however, a plausible argument that sound must have been important to our ancestors, perhaps more so than it is to us now. "Today we guzzle sounds and make a lot of noise," says UK archaeologist Paul Devereux, an advocate of the claims of acoustic archaeology. "We are visually very sophisticated, but acoustically very primitive." Our ancestors, by contrast, would have been "acoustically more calm and attentive in a much quieter world", he says. Without artificial light, listening intently would have been imperative to ward off night-time predators. In a time before writing, moreover, information was principally communicated orally. It seems reasonable that prehistoric humans would have paid more attention to their acoustic landscapes than we do today. "Senses as a whole were more fused," says Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, UK. "There wasn't the separation of vision from the other senses as there has been over the last few centuries. Nowadays we tend to prioritise vision."
New Scientist
A photo of the 'Stonehenge' Maryhill site;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maryhill_stonehenge_WWI_monument.jpg
A mass pile up on the A303? Carnage at the summer solstice? Visitor centre gets vacuum cleaner sponsor?
Oh my God, Ziller! – Monday 12th July @ 8 p.m. sees the UK premier of the SYFY movie, Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010)
When a group of archaeologists dig up a human skeleton near the historical monument of Stonehenge, an ancient piece of machinery hidden beneath the bedrock is discovered. Not knowing what it could be the workers accidentally trigger the mechanism and start a chain of events that may very well end the world as we know it...
For spoilers and reviews see – imdb.com/title/tt1488598/
Warning: This film clashes with university challenge in which a team from Cardiff take on Brookes University, Oxford
The Wiltshire Heritage Museum is conducting a survey for a pilot, "...community bus service that will link Stonehenge, Devizes and Avebury." Results from the survey will help them plan the service.
More here – wiltshireheritage.org.uk/news/?Action=8&id=105&home=1
Proposals for a new £25m visitor centre at Stonehenge have been axed as part of cost-saving measures by the government.
English Heritage said it was "extremely disappointed" that £10m promised would not be forthcoming – but said it did not mean it was the end of the project.
It had wanted to move the visitor centre 1.5m (2.4km) away from the stones and to divert the nearby A344.
The remaining £15m was due to come from English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and other private sources.
'Global significance'
An English Heritage spokesman said "Stonehenge is a project of global significance.
"It's Britain's premier World Heritage Site. It was a key feature in Britain's bid for the London Olympics.
"Transforming the monument's setting and the visitor experience is vital to Britain's reputation, and to our tourism industry, especially in 2012 but also thereafter."
The cuts are part of £2bn of savings made by the coalition government.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander told MPs the cuts were necessary to tackle the budget deficit and would be done in a "fair" way.
He said the previous government had gone on a "pre-election spending spree in the full knowledge that the government had long since run out of money".
'Hugely disappointed'
"As a result of the poor decisions made by the previous government, I have taken the decision to cancel certain projects that do not represent good value for money, and suspend others pending full consideration in the spending review," he added.
Wiltshire Council said it was "hugely disappointed" that the funding had been withdrawn.
"It is difficult to see the logic, given the government's emphasis on maximising the benefits from the 2012 Olympics.
"Stonehenge is an important generator of funding for the government through its agency, English Heritage.
"The improved facilities would have dramatically raised the standard of welcome and facilities for visitors, increased the length of stay within Wiltshire and increased visitor spend," he added.
English Heritage Commission is expected to make a statement about the future of the project on 30 June.
The new Stonehenge Visitors' Center is one of the first projects to fall victim of Government's cutbacks.
More here – heritageaction.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/stonehenge-visitors-centre-axed/
Wiltshire is now on the virtual map, as Heritage Key have just unveiled a 3D virtual Stonehenge web experience.
Heritage Key is an online community aimed at those with an interest in history and culture.
The site combines content such as podcasts, YouTube videos and news articles with an online 3D virtual experience.
This virtual environment is used to recreate worldwide archaeological sites.
Visitors to the site can now explore a highly detailed virtual recreation of the ancient site from the comfort of their own living room.
Key features of the virtual experience include the chance to explore Stonehenge as it once stood over four thousand years ago in a dynamic living environment filled with wildlife and where the sun rises and sets.
You can also visit the nearby Neolithic settlement of Durrington Walls and interact with the people of the time, as well as take part in an ancient sunset ritual.
Continuing the interactive experience, you will also be able to discuss your experience with other visitors in Heritage Key's virtual visitor centre.
Jonathan Himoff, CEO of online virtual environment company Rezzable, says: "Stonehenge raises just as many questions as it answers about life in prehistoric times, but if those stones could talk they would tell us the story of the last 5,000 years of British history.
"Heritage Key is bringing this story to life through our virtual experience, as well as the varied media resources available online to complement it.
"In reality, Stonehenge is now fenced off from the public to protect the site from over-tourism.
"Not only can Heritage Key's virtual experience allow you to wander amongst the stones, we can also take visitors back in time to when the site was first built.
Heritage Key allows visitors to learn about the origins of the site, as well as the life and customs of the indigenous people, so that their experience of Stonehenge in the flesh can be even more magical
Jonathan Himoff, Rezzable
"Heritage Key allows visitors to learn about the origins of the site, as well as the life and customs of the indigenous people, so that their experience of Stonehenge in the flesh can be even more magical."
This immersive adventure is complimented with a media-rich website. So, whether you want to step back in time and see Stonehenge, watch YouTube videos on your iPhone or post comments on the latest expert articles, Heritage Key lets you discover history the way you want to.
As an interactive community, Heritage Key also allows visitors to join lectures and meet with people from around the world to share and discuss their experiences.
The Stonehenge virtual experience is being launched as part of Heritage Key's Ancient World in London festival, a series of online and real-world events celebrating the ancient world that is just underneath the skin of modern Britain.
To find out more information, and to sample the Stonehenge 3D experience, visit the Heritage Key website.
news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8534000/8534029.stm
"Its footpaths are "tortuous", the roof likely to "channel wind and rain" and its myriad columns – meant to evoke a forest – are incongruous with the vast landscape surrounding it."
"So says the government's design watchdog over plans for a controversial £20m visitor centre at Stonehenge, the megalithic jewel in England's cultural crown. CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, has criticised the design of the proposed centre, claiming the futuristic building by Denton Corker Marshall does little to enhance the 5,000-year-old standing stones which attract more than 800,000 visitors each year."
More here – guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/07/stonehenge-city-garden-visitor-centre
A survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests the monument was surrounded by two circular hedges.
Writing in the Guardian yesterday, Maeve Kennedy reports on the startling evidence of a Great Stonehenge Hedge. "Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks."
More here – guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/04/stonehenge-hedge-discovery
"On Tuesday night, February 2, Wiltshire's ancient stone monument was taken over by a film crew..."
More here – news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8496000/8496057.stm
"English Heritage, the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, and the Wiltshire Heritage Museum have agreed to collaborate on presenting and interpreting the story of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
"The two museums will make loans from their collections to English Heritage for display in the proposed new visitor centre, while English Heritage will assist the two museums with their own displays and enhancing their archives to support the co-ordinated approach."
More here – wiltshireheritagemuseum.blogspot.com/2010/01/wiltshire-museums-join-forces-to-tell.html
Maeve Kennedy in the Guardian ruminating on pork roast feasting on Solstice day at Stonehenge.....
Some 4,500 years ago, as the solstice sun rose on Stonehenge, it is very likely that a midwinter feast would already have been roasting on the cooking fires.
Experts believe that huge midwinter feasts were held in that period at the site and a startling picture is now emerging of just how far cattle were moved for the banquet. Recent analysis of the cattle and pig bones from the era found in the area suggests the cattle used were walked hundreds of miles to be slaughtered for the solstice celebrations – from the west country or west Wales.
Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield and his team have just won a grant of £800,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to answer some of the riddles about the enigmatic prehistoric monument.
The grant is to fund Feeding Stonehenge, his follow-up research on the wealth of material, including animal bones, pottery and plant remains, which they found in recent excavations at Durrington Walls, a few miles from the stone circle – a site which Parker Pearson believes key to understanding why Stonehenge was built and how it was used.
His team fully excavated some huts but located the foundations of scores more, the largest neolothic settlement in Britain. To his joy it was a prehistoric tip, "the filthiest site known in Britain", as he dubbed it.
"I've always thought when we admire monuments like Stonehenge, not enough attention has been given to who made the sandwiches and the cups of tea for the builders," said Parker Pearson.
"The logistics of the operation were extraordinary. Not just food for hundreds of people but antler picks, hide ropes, all the infrastructure needed to supply the materials and supplies needed. Where did they get all this food from? This is what we hope to discover."
Stonehenge was begun almost 5,000 years ago with a ditch and earth bank, and developed over 1,000 years, with the circle of bluestones brought from the Preseli hills in west Wales, and the double decker bus sized sarsen stones.
It was too early for the Phoenicians, the Romans or the largely mythical Celtic druids. The Anglo Saxons believed Stonehenge was the work of a race of lost giants, and a 12th-century historian explained that Merlin flew the huge stones from Ireland.
It has been explained as a place of druidic sacrifice, a stone computer, a place of witchcraft and magic, a tomb, a temple or a solar calendar. It is aligned on both the summer and winter solstice, crucial dates which told prehistoric farmers that the time of harvest was coming, or the shortest day of winter past.
Although not all archaeologists agree – Geoff Wainwright and Tim Darvill have dubbed Stonehenge the stone age Lourdes, a place of healing by the magic bluestones – Parker Pearson believes it was a place of the dead, while Durrington Walls, with its wooden henge, was the place of its living builders, and the generations who came to feast, and carry out rituals for their dead, moving from Durrington to the nearby river and on by the great processional avenue to Stonehenge.
He found no evidence that Durrington was permanently inhabited or farmed, and the first tests on the pig and cattle bones support his theory that it was a place where people gathered for short periods on special occasions.
The pigs were evidently slaughtered at mid-winter, and he expects the cattle bones to back this. What the sample already tested shows is that they were slaughtered immediately after arrival, after travelling immense distances.
"We are going to know so much about the lives of the people who built Stonehenge," Parker Pearson said, "how they lived, what they ate, where they came from."
guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/dec/20/stonehenge-animal-bones-solstice-feast
This years winter solstice observance at Stonehenge will mark the centenary of Dr. G.W. MacGregor Reid being recorded undertaking such activities by the Wiltshire Constabulary. The Most Ancient Order of Druids had chosen Dr. G.W. MacGregor Reid in 1909 and his 37 years in office was to see the druid presence at Stonehenge during the Summer Solstice, develop into a permanent feature.
Wiltshire Constabulary had noted over two thousand people attending the early morning Summer Solstice the previous year. The astronomer, Sir Norman Lockyer had published a book on Stonehenge three years previously and this was thought to have brought the solstice to the interest of the wider public, not just the Ancient Order of Druids.
It would seem that the good Doctor had been conducting services for five years before there was any recorded disorder, and this was to be for the first time in living memory. The Summer Solstice of 1914 was on a Sunday morning, and the attendance was much larger than usual. The fracas began with an attempt by the Druids to carry out their ceremony within the stone circle.
Stonehenge had been enclosed in 1901 and a turnstile installed beside the Avenue, with an entry fee of a shilling per head.
Dr MacGregor Reid, Mr George Catchlove and eight others paid admission to the enclosure, although they protested against the charge. At about twenty past three in the morning Dr MacGregor Reid began to read druidical prayers at the 'altar stone'.
He had not got very far before Superintendent Buchanan of Wiltshire Constabulary stepped in.
Buchanan drew attention to a notice which prohibited any form of meeting or service within the circle.
He told Dr MacGregor Reid that he should stop the ceremony immediately, but the request was ignored and the Druid leader continued in an even louder voice. Superintendent Buchanan warned a second time that if MacGregor Reid didn't stop immediately the police would be forced to throw him out of the enclosure. The Druids ignored the second warning and, in consequence, MacGregor Reid was forcibly ejected. His followers left of their own accord.
Later in the day MacGregor Reid and Catchlove, who were wearing white robes and purple cassocks, held services outside the enclosure.
In 1915 the Druids were again refused free admission to the enclosure. For a second time MacGregor Reid and his supporters were ejected from the circle, and again for the same reason.
1916 saw the Most Ancient Order of Druids allowed to hold their ceremonies at Stonehenge during the Summer Solstice, to which they have been doing ever since.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/stonehenge-lays-out-the-welcome-mat-1801777.html
Stonehenge, Britain's most mysteriously resonant World Heritage Site, is finally going to get a visitor centre fit for the 21st century.
The fight to create it has been tortuous, but from the wreckage of the £0.5bn plans finally dumped in 2007 comes something that will settle, feather-light, in a shallow, grassy swale at Airman's Corner, a mile and a half west of the neolithic stones near Amesbury, Wiltshire.
Peace
Pilgrim
X
As druids and revellers prepare for the weekend's solstice, Laura Barton watches the sun set on this magical monument
guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jun/16/stonehenge-bartons-britain
"A prehistoric complex, including two 6,000-year-old tombs, has been discovered by archaeologists in Hampshire.
"The Neolithic tombs, which until now had gone unnoticed under farmland despite being just 15 miles from Stonehenge, are some of the oldest monuments to have "been found in Britain."
More here – timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6463970.ece
and here – themodernantiquarian.com/post/75242/news/new_forest.html
A new book on the geometry of Stonehenge and the author seems to have simplified the setting out of the stones, Aubrey Holes etc using techniques available at the time.
Experimental archaeology was used at a site in Oxfordshire to check out the feasibility of the theories.
It seems to be a well researched and sober account.
timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article4003818.ece
Jim.
P.S. I have to declare an interest. A picture I took at the Winter Solstice appears on the front cover and on page 258.
Masses of info and speculation relating to the recent Darvill / Wainwright dig, on the BBC Timewatch web site, and a series of ongoing discussions on the Open University site:
bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/stonehenge/
open2.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4502
The following might also be of interest -- particularly with respect to the enigma of the bluestones:
Bluestone web site:
netcomuk.co.uk/~brianj/bluestones59.html
Glastonbury-Stonehenge link?
mypembrokeshire.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/12/21/458ad107451ca
At one time, chisels would be handed to people visiting Stonehenge, so they could chip away at the ancient monument to get their own souvenirs.
But the practice has been outlawed since 1900, when landowner Sir Edmund Antrobus decided the site needed protecting and introduced charges.
Before then, anyone who visited the site could walk freely among the ancient stones.
Now, the stones are fenced off, with private access allowed only by special arrangement.
English Heritage said an attack on the revered stones on Thursday, during which a piece of the Heel Stone was chipped off with a hammer and screwdriver, was believed to be the first of its kind in many years.
Nearly 1m visitors a year flock to the 5,000-year-old World Heritage Site.
Thousands of visitors also flock there for traditional pagan festivals, the summer and winter solstice and spring and autumn equinox.
For 15 years, until the summer solstice in 2000, the Wiltshire site was protected by a four-mile exclusion order, following a series of public order problems.
Lifting the ban, English Heritage appealed to solstice visitors to remain peaceful and respectful during their visit, and the event – and subsequent events – passed largely trouble free.
In December 2006, winter solstice visitors were left red faced after turning up for the celebrations on the wrong day.
The 60-strong crowd were allowed into the site by English Heritage despite arriving a day early, but were advised to always check the date in future.
One reveller said: "There were an awful lot of red faces."
Though a spokeswoman for English Heritage said the organisation could not remember a recent incident of vandalism at the site, it did become the focus of a protest in 2007.
Three men from the group Fathers 4 Justice, dressed as cartoon characters from the Flintstones, scaled the monument and unveiled a banner.
English Heritage said it was disappointed with the protestors and felt the demonstration not only disrespected the stones, but could damage them.
The men were arrested by Wiltshire Police on their descent, and two of them later fined.
Stonehenge was bought by its last private owner, Sir Cecil Chubb, for £6,600 in 1915.
He presented it as a gift to the nation in 1918.
The site was substantially restored in the early 20th Century, when stones which had started to fall over were straightened and set in concrete.
More recently, the site, which was originally built in three stages of construction requiring more than 30 million hours of labour, has been the focus of attention from archaeologists, rather than engineers. A 2008 excavation – the first in four decades – aimed to try to establish some precise dating for the creation of the monument.
In April, archaeologists said they had broken through to a layer which could finally explain why the site was built.
Their findings are expected to be made public in the autumn.
From the Salisbury Journal:
"VANDALS used a hammer and screwdriver to damage the Hele Stone at Stonehenge between 9pm and 10pm on Thursday.
Police are appealing for witnesses after two men climbed over the fence surrounding the area and caused the damage, before driving off in a red Rover 400.
The suspects were caught on CCTV going to the stones on another day but were chased off."
More details from The Independent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6908300.stm
It seems a giant wheel was used to lift the huge blocks at Stonehenge. Interesting, but.....
"By the agrarian revolution of the third millennium BC Stonehenge was already an important site, but its extension about 2300BC was clearly intended by its guardians to make it a major pilgrimage attraction. This needed some sensational draw, and what could be more sensational than a henge composed of the fabled Preseli bluestones, fount of a hundred holy wells? It was worth any Olympian expense.
The medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth told of a belief in the healing power of Stonehenge's stones, brought by Arthur's magician, Merlin, "from Ireland", where stones have long had magic properties. Geoffrey's stories are ridiculed, but his folk memory might contain a grain of truth. Could the appeal of the bluestones lie not in ancestor worship or astronomical ritual but in the power these objects were thought to hold back in Preseli? In his new book, Stonehenge: Biography of a Landscape, Darvill points out that the arrangement of the stones at Stonehenge even reflects their geological location back in Wales."
More at – guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1961517,00.html
The Unesco World Heritage site, Stonehenge, is "a destination in trouble", a new survey has found.
The National Geographic Traveler magazine marked the site 56 out of 100 against criteria including historic preservation and tourism management.
Survey panellists said Stonehenge was a "mess", "over-loved" and "crowded".
English Nature, which looks after the site said it was "actively seeking to revamp its visitor facilities" and improve the near-by A303 road.
More than 400 tourism experts rated 94 World Heritage sites in the third survey of its kind for National Geographic.
The lowest ranking destination was given to the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, which scored only 39 out of 100.
In a statement, English Nature said: "It is true that the site has lost some its magic, but the fact is that it is the only UK World Heritage Site to have been nominated as one the New Seven Wonders of the World."
It is competing against other iconic buildings and structures, ranging from the Statue of Liberty to the Great Wall of China, in a global hunt for the New Seven Wonders of the World.
The poll is being organised by the Swiss-based group New7Wonders and the winners will be announced in July 2007.
Last year, planning permission was refused for a new visitor centre at Stonehenge but English Nature plans to appeal against the decision in December.
It also said that the much-needed improvements to the A303 – which have been endorsed at a public inquiry were now subject to a government review as a result of cost increases.
An airship has flown over Stonehenge to celebrate the 5,000-year-old landmark's inclusion on a shortlist to decide the seven wonders of the modern world.
Fifty robed druids performed a ceremony inside the circle to mark the event.
Stonehenge, the only British entry, is up against iconic buildings and structures ranging from the Statue of Liberty to the Great Wall of China.
The global poll is being organised by the Swiss-based group New7Wonders. The winners will be announced in July 2007.
The New7Wonders winner will be chosen by the public.
Bernard Webber, New7Wonders founder, said: "I think it (Stonehenge) has great potential because of its simplicity. It's like a mirror for humanity."
"Stonehenge's beauty is also its environment which, if the roads were not here, would be even better. I think it has a good chance."
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, is one of 21 finalists.
Some 20m votes have already been received, including many from India for the Taj Mahal, China for the Great Wall and Peru for Machu Picchu.
But European voters have been slower off the mark, said Tia Viering, a spokeswoman for New7Wonders.
The news of Stonehenge's entry has been greeted with enthusiasm.
"It should win simply because it's prehistoric. It's 5,000 years old and was built before written language, before metal tools and before the invention of the wheel," said Dave Batchelor, of Stonehenge.
Plans for a £67m visitor centre at Stonehenge, complete with its own rail link, are to go to a public inquiry.
Salisbury District Council approved the plans last week but the plans were "called in" by the government.
The plans were already turned down once by the district council over environmental fears, but approved after an appeal and consultation.
The government said the scheme was called in because "the proposals raise issues of more than local importance".
Government planners also wanted to consider the centre's indirect involvement with plans to upgrade the A303 and Stonehenge to World Heritage Site status.
Council planners in Salisbury had previously approved the scheme under the condition the road was upgraded to include a tunnel.
The planning inspector will now carry out another inquiry and will make a recommendation to the Secretary of State for Local Government, Ruth Kelly, who will have a final say on the matter.
A Salisbury District Council spokesman said there had already been two consultations on the centre at a cost of £10,000 each plus staff costs.
Councillor Richard Britton, leader of Salisbury District Council, said: "It is unfortunate that this issue is to be the subject of yet another public enquiry.
"We had hoped that, by making our approval subject to a number of conditions, the issue would have been resolved.
"We are extremely concerned with the further financial burden this inquiry will place on the council. The expense involved with such a process could be very significant indeed."
The Prime Minister is being urged to step in to decide on the future of traffic around Stonehenge.
The RAC has written to Tony Blair, asking him to get personally involved after a series of u-turns and delay.
The motoring foundation favours putting the A303 through a 1.3-mile tunnel, bored into the Wiltshire countryside.
The scheme was recommended after a public inquiry, but was put on hold by the Department for Transport when its costs rose to £510m.
In his letter to Mr Blair, RAC Foundation chairman David Holmes said: "Only you have the authority to cut through departmental inertia and get some action."
A long-awaited visitor centre and rail link for the ancient site cannot go ahead until the government has sanctioned the road improvements.
Mr Holmes added: "Because the cost estimate for the scheme rose to £510m, the Department for Transport insisted on re-examining some of the options which the public inquiry ruled out.
"This is a backwards step, as any of these alternatives would have to be the subject of further consultation and full public inquiries. None could start for a decade or more."
Rain grounded an airborne celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of the first aerial photographs of Stonehenge.
A balloon carrying photographers was due to fly over the ancient Wiltshire landmark to recapture images taken in 1906 by Lieutenant Philip Henry Sharpe.
But the poor weather on Salisbury Plain on Tuesday forced the balloon to remain grounded.
English Heritage later provided aerial pictures taken from a balloon over Stonehenge earlier this year.
Archaeological benefits
Lt Sharpe was a member of the Royal Engineers' Balloon Section – precursor to the Royal Flying Corps and later the RAF – when he took the first aerial shots.
The images helped with the discovery of other earthworks around the stones.
Stonehenge's chief archaeologist Dave Batchelor said: "Aerial photography is most useful in helping us understand the human use and development of the landscape around Stonehenge."
Aerial views of Stonehenge taken 100 years ago are on display at Stonehenge until 7 August.
Plans to build a new visitor centre, with its own rail link, at Stonehenge have been approved by councillors.
English Heritage's original application was refused by Salisbury District Council amid fears a rail link would damage the environment.
But after an appeal, planners on Monday approved the scheme with conditions.
The development cannot start until the government has sanctioned improvements to the nearby A303, including a tunnel through the Wiltshire countryside.
World heritage site
Councillor Mike Hewitt said the plans had met with some opposition.
"None of us like the application 100%, but it is the best we have got at the moment," he said.
"The current visitor centre is not a good advertisement for the UK. It is cramped and there is nowhere to shelter from the rain.
"After all, it is a world heritage site, one of those things you are supposed to see before you die and if you went down there you'd wonder what we were expecting people to pay for."
English Heritage plans for a new Stonehenge visitor centre are being recommended for approval.
Salisbury District Council had refused the original plans amid fears a train to ferry visitors to the site would damage the environment.
There were also concerns about whether the nearby A303 would be upgraded.
The plans have been resubmitted following an appeal and a final decision on the centre will be made by the council on 10 July.
Planning officials have advised the council they can make approval of the visitor centre conditional on improvements to the A303 going ahead.
1,000 comments
A consultation period is now complete and the plans will go before a special meeting of the council for comment on 4 July before another meeting is held for a final decision six days later.
At both meetings – to be held at 1630 BST at Amesbury Sports Centre – time will be set aside for the public to have their say.
When it received the original planning application in September 2004, more than 1,000 comments were received from members of the public.
Since the application was resubmitted in April a further 77 comments have been received.
All comments received since 2004, along with the views of statutory consultees, will feature in a report going to both committees.
When the planning and regulatory committee has made its decision, the government can choose to refer the decision to a public inquiry.
"Aerial Photography and Archaeology – 100 Years of Discovery"
This travelling exhibition will display historic and modern photos and illustrations. It will be at Stonehenge from August 1-7, when a Virgin balloon will give 'some visitors'* the chance to take their own aerial snaps.
The exhibition will also be shown at Old Sarum, the Alexander Keiller Museum in Avebury, Salisbury Museum, Devizes Museum, and the Royal Engineers' Museum in Gillingham.
*whatever that means.
courtesy of Hob, two links to more information:
24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART38599.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4753205.stm
An ambitious project to recreate Stonehenge as it would have looked 4,000 years ago is being planned.
Fragments of only three circles remain, but quarry firm Preseli Bluestone wants to build all seven from scratch.
It is hoped the circles will be completed by 2009. The new site would be open to visitors.
An exact location is yet to be decided, but the Cotswold Water Park, which straddles Wiltshire and Gloucs, is one of several sites being considered.
Preseli Bluestone owns the quarry in Wales where the stones for the ancient Wiltshire monument originally came from.
Colin Shearing, from the company, said: "We don't want to replicate Stonehenge as it stands today, but rather as how it would have looked when completed about 4,000 years ago."
The new Stonehenge would be built using both modern and ancient methods which the public would be invited to watch.
The plans are in the very early stages, but the aim is to create a 21st Century 'landmark architectural heritage sculpture' which allows visitors to walk among, and touch, the stones.
Simon Jenkins
Friday January 27, 2006
The Guardian
This world heritage site is a national disgrace. Consultants have made millions but achieved nothing in 20 years.
West of Amesbury on the A303, the road dips and rises towards a meadow in the distance. In the meadow stands a clump of grey stones, looking like dominoes rearranged by a shell from the neighbouring artillery range. The clump is Britain's greatest stone-age monument.
Nobody can touch it. Stonehenge is cursed. I have bet every chairman of English Heritage – Lord Montagu, Sir Jocelyn Stevens and Sir Neil Cossons – that no plan of theirs to meddle with the stones will ever work. This week the latest tunnel proposal collapsed, following last year's rejection of a new visitor centre. The fate of the site is consigned to that Blairite neverland called "consultation", joining St Bart's and Crossrail among the living dead, projects which move only because they are maggot-ridden with costs.
Article continues at: guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1696043,00.html
The Observer – 25 July 2005
Stonehenge has always mystified. Julius Caesar thought it was the work of druids, medieval scholars believed it was the handiwork of Merlin, while local folk tales simply blamed the devil.
Now scientists are demanding a full-scale research programme be launched to update our knowledge of the monument and discover precisely who built it and its burial barrow graves.
Click here for full article: observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1535032,00.html
The government is to re-examine plans for a road scheme aimed at diverting traffic away from Stonehenge after the cost of the project doubled.
The scheme, which includes building a tunnel for the A303 near the ancient Wiltshire site, was estimated to cost £183m when it was announced in 2002.
But now the government says the project will cost around £470m
A detailed review of the tunnel plan, as well as other road proposals for the site, will now be carried out.
If you have a large garden and would like a full-size replica of Stonehenge to impress your neighbours and visitors then you need to speak to Channel 5.
The biggest problem is that it measures 33 metres across. The good news, however, is that it is light to carry about because all of the replica stones are made of polystyrene.
Exact copies of each stone were made at a military camp near Bicester, the only place big enough the programme makers could find. It took a fleet of 14 articulated lorries to transport the replica stones to Wiltshire. The chosen location, said Mr Pitts, was a hilltop near Warminster.
Mr Pitts said the most important aspect for him as an archaeologist was the detailed inspection of the real monument that had to be carried out so that the stones could be replicated. He said: "I realised how little time we had actually spent before looking at the stones themselves."
He said: "It has impressed us so much that we are talking seriously about a proper modern survey of the megaliths using modern techniques." Such a survey could reveal much about the stones, where they had become from, the way they had been shaped and possibly the way they were originally put up.
Anyone wishing to acquire the replica should get in contact with Channel Five.
more at
thisiswiltshire.co.uk/wiltshire/marlborough/news/MARLB_NEWS_LOCAL2.html
Robert Turner, who farms hundreds of acres around Stonehenge, is slowly returning many of them to the original sheep-cropped grass. Surprisingly, he has to reduce the fertility of the land to achieve this.
More here... guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1447159,00.html
From an article by Kim Griggs published on the BBC News web site on 14th February 2005:
Nestled into the verdant hills of the New Zealand region of the Wairarapa is the world's newest "Stonehenge" but this henge is no mere pastiche.
Instead, Stonehenge Aotearoa, which opened this weekend, is a full-scale adaptation of its Salisbury Plain ancestor, built to work for the Antipodes.
The aim of the Kiwi Stonehenge is to help people rediscover the basics of astronomy.
"You can read as much as you like in a book how the sun and the moon work, how people use stars to navigate by, or to foretell the seasons," says Richard Hall, president of the Phoenix Astronomical Society which built the henge.
"You stand here amongst the henge and you show people exactly how it works. Somehow it simplifies it and it becomes that much more easy to understand," he said.
Tuesday November 30, 2004, The Guardian
A carpenter's new theory on how Stonehenge came about could roll away old theories on Britain's megalithic monument, finds Patrick Weir
For more than 20 years, Derbyshire carpenter Gordon Pipes has been striving to find an answer to a 4,000-year-old question that still confounds archaeologists; namely how, without roads or wheels, did Neolithic man transport 80 sarsen stones, each weighing an average of 30 tons, 20 miles from the Marlborough Downs to Salisbury Plain to construct Stonehenge? The site also comprises 98 blue stones, each weighing six tons, from the Preseli Mountains in Wales. The question of how these were conveyed over land – it is agreed they must have been ferried in boats along the Severn Estuary and River Avon – is also unanswered. But Pipes is convinced he has found the solution.
"What fired my imagination was a book about the stone statues on Easter Island by Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl," he explains. "Working out how the ancients were able to move such heavy megaliths became an obsession.
In terms of Stonehenge, theories that one stone could have been dragged a mile a day by 700 men using rope and wooden rollers seemed as viable to me as alien involvement. The rollers wouldn't have taken the weight and the physical effort required would have been super-human.
by Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent, The Guardian, Monday November 22, 2004
Stonehenge's past brought to light
The sign advises the solitary car pootling down the deserted road, past the reassuring AA phone box, to "fork left for Exeter" – unless the driver decides to fork right onto the infant A344, park on the grass verge, and pop in for a quick wander among the towering columns of Stonehenge, or for a nice cup of tea and a Bath bun in the newly built Stonehenge Cafe.
The photograph, one of hundreds excavated for a new book by archaeologist Julian Richards, from the National Monuments Archive in Swindon and other public and private archives, dates from around 1930. The car is passing the exact spot of the current furore over what to do about the world's most famous prehistoric site. Read whole article here...
The report on controversial plans to build a £200m tunnel near Stonehenge has gone to the secretary of state for transport, Alastair Darling.
Planning inspector Michael Ellison has been compiling his findings since the public inquiry into the road building scheme at the world heritage site finished in May.
His completed report will contain a recommendation about whether a 2.1km tunnel should be bored through the landscape or the plans should be scrapped in favour of finding an alternative solution.
Daniel Davies, The Western Mail – Jun 21 2004
Stonehenge was built by a Welsh family, archaeologists now believe.
The discovery of an early Bronze Age grave, made by workmen laying pipes on Salisbury Plain, is further proof that England's ancient landmark is a Welsh export.
Chemical tests on the 4,300-year-old teeth of seven people unearthed on Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, show they came from South West Wales or the Lake District.
But because the stones are bluestone brought from the Preseli mountains in Pembrokeshire, experts say the remains almost certainly belong to people born in Wales, who were among Stonehenge's builders.
It is the first time human remains have been found that link the mysterious ceremonial site with the north Pembrokeshire origins of the 80 standing stones.
Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, from Wessex Archaeology, who excavated the site, said, "In medieval times, people believed that the stones could only have been brought to Stonehenge by Merlin the Wizard.
"For the first time we have found the mortal remains of one of the families who were almost certainly involved in this monumental task."
Archaeologists have named the Welshmen the Boscombe Bowmen because they were found buried with arrowheads.
The remains were dug up near the site where the Amesbury Archer was found two years ago. Although he lived at the same time, he came from central Europe.
Pottery fragments buried with him match those found with the Welsh family.
The Boscombe Bowmen grave is unusual because it contains the remains of an entire family, including three children, a teenager and three men. The shape of their skulls shows at least three of the party were related.
They were found in May 2003 when QinetiQ, a technology company operating on Boscombe Down airfield, dug a trench to lay water pipes and electrical cable.
QinetiQ archaeologist Colin Kirby, who stumbled across the 2,300BC grave, said, "On the second day of the excavations, I noticed human remains in the side of a water pipe trench.
"On investigating the spoil from the trench, fragments of beaker pottery and an arrowhead emerged.
"This was very exciting as it showed that the burial was probably Bronze Age and may be linked to the Amesbury Archer.
"I immediately informed Wessex Archaeology."
The Archer's burial is the wealthiest in Europe found from this period. Grave goods show he was clearly wealthy and may have been held in high esteem for importing metal working skills from Europe.
Metal may hold the key to why an ancient society chose Preseli bluestones for a monument more than 200 miles away.
Dr Fitzpatrick said beaker pottery of the type found with the Bowmen and the archer has also been found in county Kerry, Ireland.
The Preseli mountains could have been an important landmark for prospectors travelling around western Britain looking for sources of copper at the dawn of the Bronze Age, he said.
"Why people know of either Stonehenge or why people know of Preseli is the thing that people are beginning to tie together with people travelling and looking for metal," Dr Fitzpatrick said.
The stone circles at Stonehenge were built from two types of rock. The massive goal-like structures are sarsen sandstone from Marlborough, 20 miles north of Stonehenge.
But this find brings experts no closer to understanding how the bluestone, which was used to create the inner circle of smaller standing stones, was hauled to Salisbury Plain.
Dr Fitzpatrick said, "It is an astonishing thing to have done and people must have regarded Preseli as a truly magical place because they made the enormous effort to transport stone all the way over 200 miles, so there must have been something in the stone or the spirit of the place."
Scientists can locate where the Bowmen came from bythe enamel on their teeth. Asit forms it retains a fingerprint of the local environment by locking in oxygen and strontium isotopes. Tests by the British Geological Survey showed the men came from an area with high radiation background, like WestWales.
Flint-area resident taps 'forgotten technology' to move massive objects
FLINT — Some may find it odd that a 57-year-old man goes out into his yard to play with blocks.
But then, the blocks that Wallace T. Wallington moves around near his home in a rural Flint area weigh up to nearly 10 tons. And by himself, he moves these behemoth playthings, not with cranes and cables, but with wooden levers.
"It's more technique than it is technology," Wallington says. "I think the ancient Egyptians and Britons knew this."
Last October, a production crew from Discovery Channel in Canada came to Wallington's home to film him as he raised a 16-foot, rectangular concrete block that weighed 19,200 pounds and set it into a hole. That taping was made into a segment, which has aired on Discovery Canada and the Discovery Science program in the United States.
The project resulted in a column, standing more than 10 feet high in his yard. He says he intends to construct his own kind of Stonehenge — without cranes or any modern engines or machines. He believes that's the way ancient people moved and constructed the great landmarks of the world.
For the full story, vist...
From This is Bristol.
Druid leaders yesterday called for the creation of a sacred site at Stonehenge for the re-burial of human remains unearthed during a unique road project in the area. They want a parcel of land near the "powerful temple of our heritage" to be set aside as a ceremonial shrine for the Pagan and Druid communities. They also hope to carry out important rituals at key stages of the proposed Stonehenge Tunnel construction, such as the first ground breaking "to ease ancestral spirits". And they want to be informed of any archaeological discoveries during the £193million A303 road scheme in the World Heritage Site.
The Druid Network told a public inquiry they were in favour of the 4,500-year-old stone circle being returned to its natural setting without nearby roads and visitor centre. But they are concerned about various aspects of the proposed project, which is the subject of a 10-week public inquiry in Salisbury. Giving evidence for the network, Emma Restall Orr said the scheme "lacks any acknowledgement of this ancient site's significance as a working temple for existing spiritual and religious communities".
She said: "A major concern is the potential lack of respect given to our ancestors and their physical remains." Such problems could be diverted if "the sanctity of the temple" was acknowledged and respected throughout the work.
Ms Restall Orr said the Druids wanted to carry out their rituals at important stages of the three-year construction programme. These include the first sod-cutting and when the work nears sensitive sites such as Longbarrow Crossroads, the Avenue and the Heel Stone.
Rituals were also required at times of significant archaeological finds during tunnelling at the heritage site, especially the uncovering of human remains.
She said: "Of particular concern are human remains. "We seek assurances that any Pagan human remains found during the work are treated with appropriate respect. While we do not wish to stop the archaeologists from gaining knowledge, removing human remains to store in museums is no longer acceptable within international Pagan communities. All human remains must be reburied with the appropriate Pagan ritual as close to the site of discovery as possible, together with their grave goods – or appropriate facsimiles. We would support the setting aside of a piece of land within the World Heritage Site that could act as a ceremonial funerary shrine for the Pagan and Druid communities. This could be used not only for the reburial of the ancient dead, but also as a place of honouring the dead within many modern spiritual communities."
Proposed road cutting would dominate World Heritage Site, say Salisbury Greens. If the A303 proposals were approved, the new road cutting would become the most prominent monument within the Stonehenge World. Heritage Site: the 21st century monument to the car, a kind of inverted Cursus, rivalling the original Cursus in size."
That's the warning Salisbury Green Party will present to the public inquiry that begins on Tuesday (17th February).
Local spokesperson Hamish Soutar will tell the inquiry that the damage caused by the new road would far outweigh any benefits from closing the existing roads. He will call for a return to the consensus reached at the 1995 Red Lion Planning Conference. "The Conference agreed with the aim of removing the roads entirely, at least from the area known as the Stonehenge Bowl. There is no surface route for a new road that would meet either with that objective, or with the government's international obligations to protect the World Heritage Site. English Heritage and the present government are betraying the public by backing the proposed road scheme."
Local Greens say no new road should be built, leaving the current A303 where it is but implementing road safety measures such as closing the junction with the A344 (something first recommended nearly 70 years ago). But if the government is determined to press ahead with its road-building plans, they say the only solution is a long tunnel under the entire World Heritage Site, as originally proposed by the National Trust and English Heritage and backed by the 1995 Conference.
Hamish Soutar says: "We don't really want the tunnel, but we are putting it forward because it is important that the Inquiry should consider it. We will argue that any tunnel design has to include every available safety feature, whatever the cost. We will also argue that there are benefits to be had from putting the whole project on hold for twenty years or so. Technology is changing, transport policy changes, and Stonehenge itself is old enough to wait."
Finally, he adds: "The most important World Heritage Site that we need to protect is the world itself. Our uncertain future will not be helped by continuing to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on vast new roads. Our duty to conserve Stonehenge for future generations is pointless unless we ensure that they have a world fit to live in.
Green Party WebSite
All news filed 17 Feb 2004
From itv.com: itv.com/news/764237.html
From ananova.com: ananova.com/news/story/sm_866864.html?menu=
From 'The Independent': news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=492143
From 'Leisure Opportunities': leisureopportunities.co.uk/newsdetail.cfm?codeID=7002
From 'Country Life': countrylife.co.uk/countrysideconcerns/news/stonehengeenquiry.php
From 'The Guardian': guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1150112,00.html
From Aunty Beeb: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/3489985.stm
Two pieces from The Telegraph: news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&xml=/news/2004/02/18/nhenge18.xml and telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/17/ustone.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/02/17/ixportaltop.html
At the risk of repeating...
"Plans to build a road tunnel under Stonehenge are to be examined at a public inquiry. The project's aims have widespread support, but campaigning groups argue the proposed 2.1km (1.3 mile) tunnel is too short and will damage the site.
The government scheme will take the A303 under the World Heritage Site to reduce traffic congestion around the stones and improve visitor facilities.
The inquiry will begin in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Tuesday.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said the government's plan did not go far enough.
The group said the road would have a "major impact" on the site, with tunnel portals degrading the landscape near the ancient stones and the road and associated earthworks affecting a large area."
Continues here: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/3493649.stm
From an article by David Prudames, published on www.24hourmuseum.org.uk:
Using laser scanning technology to study Europe's most famous ancient monument, a team of computer experts and archaeologists has discovered carvings of two axe heads on Stonehenge.More...
The most hi-tech investigation of the monument to date, the study was carried out between 2002 and earlier this year by a team from Wessex Archaeology and Archaeoptics Ltd.
Although similar carvings were first found at Stonehenge 50 years ago, they have never been fully surveyed or studied.
It is now over a year since archaeologists, working on a routine excavation on the site of a proposed new school in Wiltshire, unearthed the richest Bronze Age burial yet found in Britain.
On August 16 at Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, the public will get its first glimpse of the more than 100 artefacts discovered alongside the skeleton of the 'Amesbury Archer'....
read more at: 24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART17753.html
'More than 30,000 people gathered at Stonehenge in Wiltshire to mark the summer solstice....' rest of story at –
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/dorset/3008828.stm
That's a lot of people. I wonder who'll be first back with fieldnotes and photos.
From an article on the BBC News Web site, published 5th June 2003:
Draft plans for a £193m road development around Stonehenge have been published – but there are still divisions over the details.Read the BBC News Article | Read the Ananova Article
It is hoped that the re-routing of the A303 road, and a £57m visitor centre, will rescue the World Heritage site from its label as a national disgrace.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030224/stonehenge.html
Discovery News
Stonehenge Up Close
Feb. 28, 2003 —The design of Stonehenge, the 4,800-year-old monument in southwestern England, was based on female sexual anatomy, according to a paper in the current Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
The theory could explain why the ancients constructed Stonehenge and similar monuments throughout the United Kingdom.
Anthony Perks, a professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, and a doctor at the university's Women's Hospital, first thought of Stonehenge's connection to women after noticing how some of the stones were smooth, while others were left rough.
"It must have taken enormous effort to smooth the stones," Perks, co-author of the journal paper, told Discovery News.
Thinking how estrogen causes a woman's skin to be smoother than a man's, the observation led Perks to further analyze the monument in anatomical terms.
He noticed how the inner stone trilithons were arranged in a more elliptical, or egg-shaped, pattern than a true circle. Comparing the layout with the shape of female sexual organs showed surprising parallels.
Perks believes the labia majora could be represented by the outer stone circle and possibly the outer mound, with the inner circle serving as the labia minora, the altar stone as the clitoris and the empty geometric center outlined by bluestones representing the birth canal.
In support of the theory, the body of a sacrificial child was found buried at the center of the circles at nearby Woodhenge, suggesting both monuments followed similar layouts. Perks even speculates a child's body might lie buried at the center of Stonehenge.
Unlike other mounds in the U.K., very few burials are located around Stonehenge.
"I believe it was meant to be a place of life, not death," said Perks, who thinks Stonehenge overall represents an Earth Mother goddess.
He explained that both western Neolithic cultures and the early Celts believed in such a goddess. Hundreds of figurines representing the idea of an Earth Mother, he said, have been found in Europe. They were created at a time when mortality at birth was high, suggesting Stonehenge could have been used for fertility ceremonies, which may have linked human birth to the birth of plants and animals upon which the people depended.
John David North, professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, outlines another theory in his book "Stonehenge: A New Interpretation of Prehistoric Man and the Cosmos." North believes the stones in the monument have precise alignments to stars in the cosmos and that Stonehenge served as an astronomical observatory and a celestial map.
While Perks acknowledges the celestial link, he views it in a different light.
"At Stonehenge you see an arc of sky together with Earth on that open Salisbury Plain," Perks said. "It is as though Father Sun is meeting Earth Mother in an equal way at a place looking towards the future."
Stonehenge hopes for deep road tunnel
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
THE Government will consider making a road tunnel near Stonehenge much deeper than originally planned to avoid damaging neolithic and Bronze Age remains.
The Highways Agency, which manages England’s trunk roads, has admitted that its previous proposal to excavate and then cover a 1.2-mile ditch only 200 yards from the stones could damage burial mounds and medieval field boundaries in the area. Ministers pledged three years ago to bury the A303, the heavily congested holiday route to Devon, where it passes the World Heritage Site. In 1989 the Commons Public Accounts Committee described Stonehenge’s traffic-snarled setting as a national disgrace.
Stonehenge lies between the A303 and the A344, close to the junction of the two roads. Under the plan for the site, the A344 would be closed, the visitor centre relocated out of sight of the stones and the A303 turned into a dual carriageway.
The “cut and cover” tunnelling method was chosen because it was estimated to be £20 million cheaper than boring a much deeper tunnel. Under the original plan, engineering works so near to the standing stones would have blighted the area for three years. However, the Highways Agency has now agreed to reconsider the costs and benefits of boring the tunnel and has asked the contractors Costain and Balfour Beatty to produce a report by July.
“It would be cheaper to do a ‘cut and cover’ but there is an issue over the extra environmental gain from a bored tunnel,” Ed Bradley, the Highway Agency’s project manager, said. He added that evidence was emerging that bored tunnels were cheaper than originally thought, and that the extra cost was likely to be closer to £10 million than £20 million.
However, the Highways Agency is resisting pressure from heritage and environmental groups to make the tunnel twice as long as planned because this could double the overall cost of £125 million for the seven-mile project.
Kate Fielden, an archaeologist advising the Council for the Protection of Rural England, said that a “cut and cover” tunnel could destroy a group of burial mounds at the western entrance to the tunnel. She said: “‘Cut and cover’ would change the landscape right beside Stonehenge. A bored tunnel would be better but the one currently proposed is far too short.”
Ms Fielden said that Stonehenge was a national treasure, but the Government wanted to do a cheap deal for a new dual carriageway even if it meant damaging two thirds of the historical area around the stones.
A public inquiry into the scheme is likely to be held next year and construction could start in 2005, with the tunnel and new Winterbourne Stoke bypass opening in 2008.
Visited Stonehenge today via the new Visitors Centre at Airman's Corner. The Exhibition Room was excellent, the gift shop was what it was, and the cafe was probably the best it could be catering for hundreds of visitors a day (don't expect anything more than the most basic of light-lunch-type-food). I was looking forward to the land-train but instead travelled on a small bus which used the remains of the A344 as access to Stonehenge. It's still a bit of a mess up by the site of the old carpark and I was disappointed to find the wire fence still in place around the ancient monument. To view the Stones from the Avenue you have to go around into the adjacent field. However, Stonehenge was wonderful today with a far wider circumference to walk around than previously. The English Heritage staff were friendly and helpful but I was still left with the feeling of being 'delivered', 'processed' and 'dispatched' with exit through the gift shop. Next time I'm going to try and walk up the by-way from Larkhill to fully take in the barrows and magnificent sweep of the landscape.
A friend has a double NT membership which is about to expire so we took advantage of it yesterday morning and set off for Stonehenge quite early.
What can I write about Stonehenge that hasn't already been written ... its a fantastic 'landscape' with Stonehenge itself the centre of barrows scattered in every direction – seeing the landscape from the central perspective of the henge was illuminating. The stones are stately and yes, awe-inspiring; I had to resist the urge to run across the grass and touch them; the avenue is clearly visible leading up to the Heel Stone.
Starlings gathered there in great numbers – perhaps preparing for autumn (thanks for your comment Drew) always a spectacular sight to observe.
I've said many times before that I'm not into knocking tourists as I am one myself ... at Stonehenge, however, it is BIG BUSINESS. The site opens to the public at 9.30am – we arrived at 9.40am by 10am the car-park was almost full (lots of coach parties) with hundreds of people milling around. It is almost impossible to experience the scale and grandeur of the Stonehenge landscape in the presence of so many people ... so if you can't make the 'out of hours' visit, arrive at 9.30am and you will have a better overall experience.
---------------
Edit: Just came across this, which is something I wrote on 25/8/09 in reply to Rupert Soskin's thread on 'the theory of blood-sports at Stanton Drew'. I add here as a very different visit to the Stonehenge complex.
I had the great treat a month or so back of being taken around the Stonehenge complex by someone called PeteG (who posted here until quite recently). We started at the spring by the river Avon where the Avenue begins, we walked through the Durrinngton Walls site (easy to imagine a village with livestock existing there), walked towards Stonehenge along the Avenue until just the top came into view with no visitors, no cars, and no road visible. It almost felt like 'time travelling' (I do have a vivid imagination). Then we walked over to the barrows and along the cursus. Some of it was done by car but all in all we walked a lot of ground and, as you point out in your dvd, it is an enormous site.
What came to life on that occasion was that Stonehenge was part of a community where life was lived on sorts of levels ...for me the midwinter alignments (heel stone and its missing partner) will always make the henge feel like some sort of temple as the midwinter solstice had always been the most important time of the year and why the Christians nicked it ... it was too important to leave lying around.
Needless to say, a unique and fantastic place. However, at the risk of sounding snobby – a bit too commercialised for me. It is certainly worth visiting – a 'must see' site – but I must admit I prefer Avebury.
UPDATE:
Visited this site on 12.6.10 – the first time for nearly 4 years. It was a lot busier this time with coaches and tourists from all over the world – plenty of Americans and Australians. There was also security guards at the car park which I don't remember last time. Near the ticket office was a lone 'Druid' protesting about people visiting the site – or something like that. He had some pretty colourful banners hanging from the railings and was selling handbooks on King Arthur I think? I have read about the changes planned for visiting the site (new visitor's centre etc) so I wanted to visit again before things get changed. I plan another visit once the changes have taken place to compare if things are for the better?
I looked carefully at the weather forecast and decided that it might be a reasonable sunset at the (near) solstice.
There was a marquee in the car park with an exhibition about astromony with telescopes looking at the sunspots. Sheltering from the bitter Arctic wind, I got into a long and very interesting conversation with an archeaoastronomer (Simon Banton) about various alignments in the area.
(He reckons that when the new visitor centre is built with its twin "pavilons" the sun will appear to rise between them at some date in the year! A new legend in the making?)
Paid my entrance fee and joined about 15 other people by the Heel Stone. The sunset didn't disappoint. Dramatic clouds with the sun appearing and disappearing every few minutes, a wonderful half hour. I hope my "duplicate" photos don't offend but the ambiance changed so quickly.
While chatting to the people there I found out that there were to be talks given by three experts within the circle after the general public had left. They might have a couple of spare spaces! Blagged my way in after a warming hot chocolate and mince pie!
Listened to a short talk by a chap from the Armagh Observatory(?) about Comets and the Zodaical Light and then went into the circle. I missed out on the other two lectures as I was fascinated by the way the stones took on a strange and mysterious presence in the pitch dark. The pictures I've added to the "Artistic/Interpretive section might give a flavour of the feeling.
By this time the extreme cold was beginning to get to me and I made a strategic retreat to a warm car.
A memorable experience.
Jim.
A note re: the Out of Hours Access.
If you can afford it, do it!
To see the stones up close and with only 12 other people present, as we did on Saturday evening, was a completely different experience to the standard "tourist" one.
Forget about the security man in his bright yellow coat, texting his friends and ignoring all questions; forget about the fact that they close the toilets and the cafe, so the fact that you may have paid TWICE as much as other visitors doesn't count for anything when you need to go to the loo or want a hot cuppa whilst you are waiting to go in; forget about the fact that you know EH are cashing in on the fact that some people feel a need to see more than a quick view from behind a guarded wire. Forget all that because.....
.....we spent an hour, walking among the stones, kiddy as kippers with a dozen like-minded folk and were able to take some fantastic photos. As the sun set, the golden glow of the sun against the blue sky was contrasted with the grey of snowclouds gathering. And just as the first few spots of sleety rain fell, a rainbow arched over the site. Just beautiful.
I got to nosey into the excavtion site (only shown to "day tourists" on a live feed in a marquee by the car park) and we could wander round freely (as long as we didn't stand on the stones or light any flames) enjoying this site in all of it's glory (almost)
I had been wary of visiting SH for a number of reasons but this was actually a very impressive visit and one which, whilst not ideal, is better than most get these days. As a birthday present, it was hard to beat.
Stonehenge is a victim of its own success. TV documentaries and increased knowledge of the site's significance have seen to that. It gets close to a million visitors every year; no way would that amount of people be able to walk into the stones even if EH decided to remove the ropes. Even with small groups of people on special access the ground in the centre quickly becomes churned mud. Close up, you can see graffiti on the stones--and I'm not talking about prehistoric--the painted remains of 'radio Carolina' plus patches where paint remover has killed the rare lichen growing on the stones.
Like it or not, Stonehenge is unique and needs to be protected to avoid further damage. Anyone who really wants to go in CAN--by special access or on the solstices.
Back around 1989, a load of us went to a mates wedding in Southampton. On the long trek back north we called at Stonehenge. It was shrouded in fog, and there were few visitors. We jumped over the wall and down to the underpass, which was possible then, and got in for free. We reckoned it was obscene having to pay what they were asking to enter the greatest stone circle ever.
It didn't disappoint, although the clinical surroundings did. I just looked at the stones in awe. I wished I had come sooner. My mum and dad visited when you just walked over grass and entered the chalk floor of the circle at will. Impossible to allow that today, even though I moan about the regulations, I begrudgingly agree to them.
Up to that point I read all about stone circles, but hadn't read much about Stonehenge, due to focusing on sites closer to home. That day I bought my first Stonehenge book, and since then have been fascinated by the Neolithic and Bronze Ages in Wessex.
The Cumbrian sites still take some beating with their savage surroundings.
Stonhenge is dwarfed by its environment, and this is highlighted if you have just come from Avebury. I had not intended to visit, when I planned my trip, but wandered south anyway. A peculiar sight lay before me when I crested Kings' Barrow Ridge. A tiny jumble of grey shapes lay encircled by a multicoloured ring and a black ring, all cradled in a grey Y. As I drew closer, the rings defined themselves as a crowd of people and a high fence. I have never seen double yellow lines this far out of town. They explain why people have to pay 2 quid to park. The green sentry box made me laugh, as did the tourists looking out through the fence at me, looking in at them, but I was left wondering why the peeps are guided to walk widdershins round the stones. Accident or design? Stonehenge has always seemed to me to have been built by people who did not understand our indigenous circles, as a symbol of their power and authority, in much the same way as the Romans took on Christianity, and the modern day authorities' attitude to visitors of all hues ( unless they have the right "credentials" ) seems to flow from that. I am sure a lot of you get great pleasure from visiting, and I mean no slight to any of you. Maybe I will buy a ticket next time, and try to open my mind, but I enjoyed Stonehenge best from the wonderfully eery barrows on the ridge. Don't miss them!
Driving along the A303 Stonehenge takes you by surprise. One minute your looking at the map thinking "must be close" next its right there in front of you in all its glory! But...
The last time I saw a fence like the one surrounding Stonehenge was around an army base on the outskirts of Londonderry (its that bad) which would have been pretty depressing if I hadnt been so excited by being there after such a long journey down from Scotland.
What the hell though..you have to see this, really, despite English Heritage turning the place into such a circus! Its majestic and iconic and completely a one off in terms of construction. What this must have been like in its heyday is just mind blowing which is why its now regulary swarming with familes on a day out and tourist parties. Lets face it if they gave access the stones themselves some idiot would attack/deface them. The only way to avoid this is to lessen its impact as a tourist destination and frankly its already too late. The proposed tunnel and vistors centre is only going to turn this into another "Newgrange" where you get an alotted time to go round before being herded on the bus again, sad but you wait and see..
See it, marvel at its brilliance and then get in your car, turn the ignition on and turn your face north to Avebury and beyond cos this is a lost cause!
Access ahem, I won't bother with directions! The tunnel has ramps. The path's pretty good. I assume everyone in the world knows you can't get right up to the stones which are roped (or more accurately, 'stringed') off. £5 entrance fee on 16 September 2003. Various concessions. (Except if you forget your relevant documents as John forgot his UB40 or whatever it's called at the moment!)
Tuesday 16 September 2003
Oh bl**dy hell! I've always said it's not 'overrated' and it's not. Sad? Yes. Undignified? Something like that. Overrated? No. How can it be? It's both spectacular and totally unique. AND it's a whole complex of 'monuments'.
Of course it's horrible having to share it with so many other people. And of course they're irritating especially when they're not very interested, 'over-interested' or just plain too damn loud.
But I found I can 'tune them out' and really feel like I got a lot out of the place by being patient waiting for it to happen. I can't say it's easy and maybe I'm just lucky or less easily disturbed or something. I don't know.
Once that happened though, I found that I could see or imagine all the things that I can remember hearing about the place – some of the sight lines and so on. The avenue, the place of the monument in the overall 'landscape'.... Of course there's no point in me describing it – we pretty much all know it back-to-front.
Time flew. One of these days I'm going be able to give myself enough time for a proper look around. Maybe I just need to go more often than after 33 years and then 8 years!!! I've had a pretty good look at the stones and the henge now. Cursus and a few of the barrows next I reckon.
It is a mindbender and I'd love to be able to do it justice. I'd love even more if it could do itself justice. I suppose English Heritage don't do such a bad job in some ways given the amount of attention (positive and negative) the place gets. But there must be a much better way. It should at the very least be free to people who can't afford to go!!!!
And you should be able to book to go right up to the stones without extra charge. And they do seem to use Stonehenge's entrance fee to subsidise EH and its other places, esp non-prehistoric ones! And...and...and....
29th June 2003, My first visit to Stonehenge. Coming over the hill to see that induced a spontaneous and collective shout of some unmentionable Anglo-Saxon. It was so much bigger than any picture lets you believe. Trapped behind it's chicken coup it had little or no ambience, as the hoards of people with their gadgets welded to their ears walked blindly round. Stonehenge is best looked at from a distance, where you can blank out the swarms and cars and the ice-creams. I know this sounds depressing, and the stones do need to be looked after but I can't help the way I feel.
I've never paid that much heed to "The Henge" before, possible because of a combination of the fence and loads of people with nasty Stonehenge t-shirts. I dunno
Anyway, I'm back with gibbon-tale between legs. I took the gibbonnettes down for the Solstice, and being a responsible Primate, stayed straight all night. We saw in the dawn from the barrow near the Hele Stone, and then started to run back to where the rest of our mob were slumped ...
we were working our way round, when I realised I was on my own ... "little sods", I thought, "they'll be around here somewhere"... they weren't ... I was on entirely on the different side of the circle, and when I finally loped back, I had been gone for *ages*
Not to be underestimated :-)
The Puzzle of Stonehenge.Dundeed Evening Telegraph, 12th January 1884. "Old Gooseberry" is a new one on me. I'm not sure what connection the Devil has with gooseberries?
It is stated that persons who visit the extraordinary Druidical remains at Stonehenge never succeed, however careful they may be, in counting the stones twice alike, and the corresponding marks with which they are in many places covered seem to be a sure proof that attempts have frequently been made to ascertain the number correctly. We never heard that the same party, either on a second attempt or on a second visit, could make his numbers tally, and it is a pretty general opinion in the neighbourhood that "old Gooseberry" is somehow mixed up in the affair, and thus frustrates their endeavours.
But some few years ago there lived at Salisbury a baker, who was considered a very clever fellow, and his own opinion fully justified him in making a heavy bet with some friends that he would (by a scheme of his own) go round the stones,a nd on two occasions make the numbers to correspond. Of course very much interest was manifested for the result; and on a certain day the baker proceeded to put his scheme into execution, for which purpose he supplied himself with two basketsful of penny rolls, and started for Stonehenge, confident of success.
He carefully placed a roll upon each of the masses of stone, thus emptying his baskets, just sufficient to cover the whole, with the exception of one; he then cautiously examined them, and feeling quite sure that he was correct that each stone had got its roll, commenced collecting and counting them, and when he had finished he as carefully wrote down the number taken off, and adding the one omitted, became elated with the certainty of winning his wager.
He then began placing the rolls the second time on the stones, taking the same round, and proceeding exactly as he had done at first; but judge of his astonishment when, after the most minute examination and considerable time spent in walking round every direction of the ruins, he not only found that this time every stone had its roll, but that there was positively one left in his basket.
This was a clincher – the poor baker became so impressed with the mysterious part of the business (which he was never able to fathom), together with his losing his wager, but more especially by receiving the jeers of his plain-dealing friends, who had never any inclination to try their luck in such a way, that he became a changed man, and never after ventured to visit Stonehenge, or to make wagers on such dark and unaccountable proceedings.
I remember, when I was a child, between seventy and eighty years ago, being told that the stones could be successfully counted only by laying a loaf of bread beside each. To mark each stone by something to prevent one being missed or counted twice over seems natural ; but why a loaf of bread? [...] I think it probable that I had this from a nursery-maid who came from Mere in Wiltshire, and who had a taste for the marvellous.From volume 64 of Nature, Oct. 31st, 1901.
O. Fisher.
Harlton, Cambridge, October 19.
This is going to be a long story, for which I apologise, but I've not seen it reproduced elsewhere. It is (I think) from Walter de Mapes' / Walter Map's writings. He died in about the year 1200. His main work is 'De Nugis Curialium' so I am assuming this is taken from there (but I've not been able to find another English translation). However the list on Wikipedia that describes its contents doesn't really have anything that looks relevant. It's got lots of weird stuff (phantom animals, the wild hunt, vampires, a Northumberland ghost story) but not Stonehenge. So I'm a bit bemused for the moment. Anyway it makes a change from Geoffrey of Monmouth's (also 12th century) version.The following quote, wherever it originally comes from and whoever translated it, is taken from 'The Beauties of England and Wales' by John Britton (v15, 1814), p365. books.google.co.uk/books?id=pi1JAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA365
After Emrys (ie Ambrosius) had tranquillized every place, he made a journey to Salisbury (ie Sarum) to behold the graves of those whom Hengistyr had caused to be slain of the British. At that time three hundred monks formed a community in the monastery of Ambri Mount; for so it was called, because it was founded by a person named Ambri. And Emrys was grieved to see that spot devoid of every mark of honour; so he summoned to him all the stone-masons and carpenters in Britain, to erect a trophy which whould be an eternal memorial around that sepulture. But after they had assembled together their ingenuity failed them;
thereupon Tramor, Archbishop of Caer-Llion, drew near, and thus spoke to Emrys: 'My Lord cause thou to come before thee Merdin (Merlin) the bard of Gortheyrn, for he is able to invent a wonderful structure, through his skill, to be of eternal duration.'
So Merdin was brought to Emrys; and the king was joyful to see him; and Emrys desired him to foretel the events that were to happen in this island. But Merdin replied: "It is not right to declare those things except when there is a necessity; and were I, on the contrary, to speak of them, the spirit that instructs me would depart, when I should stand in need of it." Upon that the king would not press him further, but enquired of him how he could invent a fair and lasting work over that spot.
Thereupon Merdin advised a journey to Ireland to the place where stood the Cor-y-Cawri, or the circle of the giants on the mountain of Cilara. For thereon he said, are stones of an extraordinary quality, of which nobody has any knowledge; for they are not to be obtained by might nor by strength, but by art, and were they at this place in the state they are there, they would stand to all eternity.
So Emrys said, laughingly, by what means can they be brought from thence? Merdin replied, laugh not, because I speak only seriousness and truth; those stones are mystical, and capable of producing a variety of cures; they were originally brought thither by giants from the extremities of Spain; and they placed them in their present position. The reason of their bringing them was, that when any of them was attacked by disease, they used to make a fomentation in the midst of the stones, first laving them with water, which they poured into the fomentation; and through that they obtained health from the disease that might affect them, for they put herbs in the fomentation; and those healed their wounds.
When the Britons heard of the virtues of those stones, immediately they set off to bring them. Uthyr Pendragon being commissioned to be their leader, taking 15,000 armed men with him; Merdin also was sent as being the most scientific of his contemporaries. At that time Gillamori reigned in Ireland, who, on hearing of their approach, marched against them with a great army, and demanded the object of their errand. Having learned their business, he laughed, saying, 'It is no wonder to me that a feeble race of men have been able to ravage the isles of Britain, when its natives are so silly as to provoke the people of Ireland to fight with them about stones.' Then they fought fiercely, and numbers were slain on both sides, until at length Gillamori gave way, and his men fled.
Then Merdin said, "Exert your utmost skill to carry the stones," but it availed them not. Merdin then laughed, and without any labour but by the effect of science, he readily brought the stones to the ships. So they then brought them to Mount Ambri.
Then Emrys summoned to him all the chiefs and graduated scholars of the kingdom, in order, through their advice, to adorn that place with a magnificent ornament. Thereupon they put the crown of the kingdom upon his head, celebrated the festival of Whitsuntide for three days successively; rendered to all in the island their respective rights; and supplied his men in a becoming manner with gold, silver, horses and arms.
So when every thing was prepared Emrys desired Merdin to elevate the stones as they were in Cilara; and this he accomplished. Then every body confessed that ingenuity surpassed strength.
So sacred are these stones that, "it is generally averred hereabouts," writes Aubrey, "that pieces of them putt into their Wells, doe drive away the Toades, with which their wells are much infested, and this course they use still. It is also averred that no Magpye, Toade, or Snake was ever seen here."Aubrey quoted in 'Jottings on some of the objects of interest in the Stonehenge Excursion' by Edward Stevens (1882), but I will find out the original source.
It remains to tell of my latest visit to the "The Stones" [as the temple is called by the natives]. I had resolved to go once in my life with the current or crowd to see the sun rise on the morning of the longest day at that place. This custom or fashion is a declining one: ten or twelve years ago, as many as one or two thousand persons would assemble during the night to wait the great event, but the watchers have now diminished to a few hundreds, and on some years to a few scores. The fashion, no doubt, had its origin when Sir Norman Lockyer's theories, about Stonehenge as a Sun Temple placed so that the first rays of sun on the longest day of the year should fall on the centre of the so-called altar or sacrificial stone placed in the middle of the circle, began to be noised about the country, and accepted by every one as the true reading of an ancient riddle. But I gather from natives in the district that it is an old custom for people to go and watch for sunrise on the morning of June 21. A dozen or a score of natives, mostly old shepherds and labourers who lived near, would go and sit there for a few hours and after sunrise would trudge home, but whether or not there is any tradition or belief associated with the custom I have not ascertained. "How long has the custom existed?" I asked a field labourer. "From the time of the old people – the Druids," he answered, and I gave it up.
At about 2am he goes to find a few hundred people already waiting, and the road to Amesbury looking like a 'ribbon of fire' from all the cyclists pedalling in.
Altogether about five to six hundred persons gathered at "The Stones," mostly young men on bicycles who came from all the Wiltshire towns within easy distance, from Salisbury to Bath. I had a few good minutes at the ancient temple when the sight of the rude upright stones looking black against the moonlit and star-sprinkled sky produced an unexpected feeling in me: but the mood could not last; the crowd was too big and noisy, and the noises they made too suggestive of a Bank Holiday crowd at the Crystal Palace.
A foolish rabbit makes an appearance and hundreds of people shriek and run to catch it. Then lots of people start packing onto the fallen stones 'like guillemots on a rock' and start messing about. Nearer the sunrise some posh people in motorcars turn up and are all greeted with whoops and silly remarks until they hurry to hide themselves in the crowd. It all sounds very raucous.
He returns another time at 3am and sits there alone musing on time and the mystery of it all, and wishes somebody could psychically tune in and see something from the past. 'In the last few years' various stories had been circulating about a child from the London slums who'd had a vision there of 'a great gathering of people' but he reveals this to be untrue and traceable back to a local boy with a creative imagination. Perhaps it says something about the Edwardian interest in the paranormal?
from 'Afoot in England' by William Henry Hudson (1909).
Some gleanings from Jerome F Heavey's article 'The Heele Stone' in Folklore 88, no2, pp238-9 (1977).
The name 'Heel Stone' is at least three centuries old: John Aubrey mentioned a certain stone that had a large depression shaped like a friar's heel. The story hasn't changed much since that time – basically the Devil threw a stone at a friar who'd been spying on the construction of stonehenge, and it struck him on the heel, and his heel left an imprint.
Heavey suggests the name actually comes from the most obvious characteristic of the stone – the fact it 'heels' or tilts. This word was in the written language with this meaning in the 16th century, and doubtless in use for much longer before that..
Whatever, the story about the friar and the devil conveniently explains the position of the stone too, lying some distance from the main stones, and looking for all the world as though it could have been thrown there. Heavey does conclude by admitting 'we shall never know', though.
No messing about here with your fate, unlike in Charles Dickens' story.
The common people about Stone-henge entertain a notion, that no one could ever count the number of the stones, as they now stand; and that, should any one succeed in this attempt, instant death would be the consequence of his temerity.From p35 of 'A Tour Through the South of England, Wales, and Part of Ireland, Made During the Summer of 1791' by Edward Daniel Clarke (now online at Google Books).
Aptly, Edward's servant saw that Stonehenge would have entailed a lot of work for someone: "For my part, I am a little of our valet Jeremy's opinion, who exclaimed upon the first view of this place, that "It must have been a tedious great waggon, to bring such stones over Salisbury Plains!" Every idea one forms of Stone-henge, is faint, except those we receive upon the spot, in the contemplation of its awful charms and stupendous features."
Like at many a megalithic monument, the stones of Stonehenge cannot be counted. Or at least, the poet Sir Philip Sidney couldn't count them. He made mention of this in his 'The 7 Wonders of England', written pre-1581.
"Neere Wilton sweete, huge heapes of stones are found,
But so confusde that neither any eye
Can count them just, nor reason try,
What force brought them to so unlikely ground."
Perhaps it was common knowledge and not just a personal problem with figures, since Alexander Craig mentions it in 'To His Calidonian Mistris' (published 1604):
"And when I spide those stones on Sarum plaine,
Which Merlin by his Magicke brought, some saine,
By night from farr I-erne to this land,
Where yet as oldest Monuments they stand:
And though they be but few for to behold,
Yet can they not (it is well knowne) be told.
Those I compared unto my plaints and cryes
Whose totall summe no numers can comprise."
..a literary reference occurs in William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin, a play published in 1662, but believed.. to have been staged forty or fifty years previously.Celia Fiennes, travelling in about 1690, had no trouble, and 'told them often, and bring their number to 91.'
..and when you die,
I will erect a monument upon the verdant plains of Salisbury:
no king shall have so high a sepulchre,
with pendulous stones that I will hang by art,
Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,
a dark enigma to thy memory,
for none shall have the power to number them.
That the tradition was well known is indicated by the fact that King Charles II spent October 7, 1651, 'reckoning and rereckoning its stones in order to beguile the time'. Colonel Robert Phelips, who accompanied his sovereign, added, 'the King's Arithmetike gave the lye to that fabulous tale.
Gathered in
The 'Countless Stones': A Final Reckoning
S. P. Menefee
Folklore, Vol. 86, No. 3/4. (Autumn – Winter, 1975), pp. 146-166.
That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the centre and said, "I dare!" would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following...From Charles Dickens' story 'The Holly Tree', which you can read online at The Complete Works of Charles Dickens:
Notes and Queries, July 31st, 1875.
On Midsummer morning a party of Americans, who had left London for the purpose, visited Stonehenge for the purpose of witnessing the effects of the sunrise on this particular morning. They were not a little surprised to find that, instead of having the field all to themselves as they had expected, a number of people from all parts of the country side, principally belonging to the poorer classes, were already assembled on the spot. Inquiries failed to elicit any intelligible reason for this extraordinary early turn out of the population except this, that a tradition, which had trickled down through any number of generations, told them that at Stonehenge something unusual was to be seen at sunrise on the morning of the summer solstice.Slightly unfair on those 'poorer classes' who turned up, because the Americans were surely there for similarly vague reasons, and they'd come all the way from London (hmm.. plus ca change, eh).
Stonehenge may roughly be described as composing seven-eighths of a circle, from the open ends of which there runs eastward an avenue having upright stones on either side. At some distance beyond this avenue, but in a direct line with its centre, stands one solitary stone in a sloping position, in front of which, but at a considerable distance, is an eminence or hill. The point of observation chosen by the excursion party was the stone table or altar, near the head of and within the circle, directly looking down the avenue. The morning was unfavourable, but fortunately, just as the sun was beginning to appear over the top of the hill, the mist disappeared, and then for a few moments the on-lookers stood amazed at the phenomenon presented to their view. While it lasted, the sun, like an immense ball, appeared actually to rest on the isolated stone of which mention has been made, or, to quote the quaint though prosaic description of one present, ' it was like a huge pudding placed on a stone.'
[..] Unless it is conceivable that this nice orientation is the result of chance,—which would be hard to believe,—the inference is justifiable that the builders of Stonehenge and other rude monuments of a like description had a special design or object in view in erecting these cromlechs or circles, or whatever the name antiquarians may give them, and that they are really the manifestations of the Baalistic or sun worship professed by the early inhabitants of Great Britain [..]
JAY AITCH.
On the last day of the 19th century, two of the uprights of the outer Circle fell. There is an old saying that the fall of one of these stones foretells the death of a Sovereign. In January 1901, however, just before the seeming fulfilment of the omen in the death of Queen Victoria, the two newly fallen stones were raised and set up again. At the same time a worse thing was done amid the protests of all the old lovers of Stonehenge. The great Leaning Stone which for nearly three centuries had reclined on the top of a short bluestone in front of it, and in this posture was the central figure, so to speak, of the Stonehenge known to all who had ever visited Salisbury Plain and to the whole world beside through the drawings of Turner and Constable – this hoary monster, bowed under the weight of innumerable years, was dragged up from its recumbency, bolted, concreted, and stiffened into an unnatural uprightness and now stands rigid and awkward as an aged man stayed up into an affectation of youth.From 'Salisbury Plain' by Ella Noyes (1913).
You know how when you pop past Stonehenge and you don't want to pay, you stand there pressing your nose to the fence at the Heel Stone? Well, the recumbent stone you can also see between you and the main circle is known as the Slaughter Stone. Katy Jordan records this story in her book 'The Haunted Landscape'. It was told to the folklorist Theo Brown by T C Lethbridge.
A vicar he knew accompanied a small party there for a couple of days. The first day they wandered round the stones till they came upon the so-called Slaughter Stone. Here they paused, until a small dog in the party sat down and howled dismally. The next day they returned to the same spot and the dog repeated its performance. Everyone was most impressed and told Mr Lethbridge about it later. 'The dog knew,' they said.
Lethbridge had been very amused by this tale, because the stone's name is simply a piece of romantic supposition, and there is no evidence that the stone has ever had any sacrificial function. His interpretation of the event was that the dog had sensed the mood of the people as they looked at this 'site of slaughter' and had howled in response to their unease.
A modern version of a classic folklore theme:
(from Katy Jordan's Haunted Landscape)
Brian Davison as the Inspector of Ancient Monuments at Stonehenge recounted how a team from the University of Bristol came to take samples of the bluestones. There was a lot of mock apprehensiveness, because there are many stories of storms brewing up from nowhere / bad luck following the tampering with of barrows and other ancient sites.
"We joked and said, 'Well, you know, even if people don't see us, the gods will see us and we'll be struck down'. Well, we finished our work about 9 o'clock at night, and cleared away, and said, 'Well there you are, it's all superstition. Nothing's happened. No thunderbolts. No claps of thunder.' But that was October 1987. Six hours later we had the hurricane."
Geoffrey of Monmouth put down his version of events in 1136AD:
King Aurelius Ambrosius (aka King Arthur's uncle – Uther Pendragon's brother) had been in a terrible battle, and wanted a fitting monument for the 300 of his men that had died. He asked Merlin's advice, who suggested that if he wanted a 'work that shall endure forever' he should 'send for the dance of the Giants' from Killare in Ireland. Apparently the Dance of the Giants was a stone circle in Ireland, and Merlin just wanted to transfer them as they were to the new plot on Salisbury Plain. Whether the stones were giants turned to stone, or just metaphorical giants I don't think is mentioned.
The king sent his men over to Killare, where they proceeded to beat up the Irish – but when it came to actually removing the stones noone could shift them. Merlin 'put together his own engines' (engines?) and 'laid the stones down so lightly as none would believe.'
They were then carried by ship to England and reconstructed on the Plain.
Another explanation was that the devil had been enlisted, by Merlin, to bring the stones over. They belonged to an old Irish woman. The devil said that if she let him have them, she could have as much money as she could count out of his purse while he was removing them. She agreed, but of course the devil had no intention of paying out. He made the stones disappear instantly, so she had only counted out one coin.
The devil was boasting that no-one knew how he had acquired the stones, but a friar was listening who had secretly watched the whole scene. When the friar spoke up, the devil threw one of the stones at him. You can now see the mark where it hit him – on the heel – on the heel stone.
Or maybe not. Maybe it's just the heel stone because it's out at the back. Or just that it heels (leans) over. Is the Heel Stone even an ancient name for the stone?
Magic powers they have
Men that are sick
Fare to that stone;
and they wash that stone
and bathe away their evil.
Layamon reporting in 'Brut' in the 12th century.
The following letter from "The Proprietor of Stonehenge" appeared in the Times, of Thursday last:-Re-reported in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 23rd September 1871. I love the dry retelling of the anecdotes. And the final paragraph surely still holds as good advice today.
In a recent impression of the Times "A Visitor to Stonehenge" complains of the general damage done in thirty years past, and of particular damage done on the day of his visit. I believe no one of our old monuments has suffered less during the period first mentioned, and, considering the thousands who annually visit it, I think the public deserve much credit for the very little damage done.
On inquiry I find that about a fortnight ago an individual of the mechanic class brought a large sledgehammer, and, notwithstanding the remonstrances of a person who is usually at the stones holding horses, persisted in breaking the corners of two of the fallen stones. This is the only recent damage I can find, after a careful inspection. If I knew his name and place of residence, I should assuredly try what the law could do in such a case of wilful mischief; but, speaking generally, and judging from results, I believe an appeal to the public interest in such monuments and to the good feeling so generally entertained is the best preservative.
In the few cases of attempted mischief I am bound to say that the operative class are not those principally implicated. A member of the professional classes was one evening found, in the interests of science, as he asserted, endeavouring to ascertain the depth of the foundations. He apologised in the county paper, and the matter dropped.
A respectable paterfamilias, who arrived in a well-appointed barouche, was heard by a relative of mine asking for "the hammer and the chisel." On being requested to desist from the intended operation, the answer was, "And who the deuce are you, Sir?" On being told the petitioner claimed to be the proprietor of the threatened institution, he declared he had always believed it "public property."
In another instance three young men, being found on the top of two of the standing stones, stated they were about to carry off a piece of what is called the Sarsen stone for a relative of one of them, who was a distinguished archaeologist. On my writing to that gentleman, depracating a renewal of his relative's visits with such intentions, he assured me no relative of his would be guilty of such an act, adding, as a further assurance, that the act was unnecessary, as he already possessed a piece of the stone in question; he added, "given him by a friend."
I think I can re-assure the public mind as to the question, and I may surely ask those who take an interest in it, when they see attempts of the sort, to offer one of those good-natured remonstrances which will carry weight with the offender, and are sure to enlist the sympathy and assistance of the great body of bystanders.
Entry taken from "A Complete and Universal DICTIONARY of the English Language" by Revd. James Barclay – dated 1812.
STONEHENGE, a remarkable monument of antiquity situated on Salisbury Plain. It stands on the summit of a hill, which rises with a very gentle ascent; and consists of stones of enormous size, placed upon one another in a circular form: many of which are really stupendous, and cannot fail of filling the beholder with surprise and admiration. All the stones added together make just 140. One, at the upper end which is fallen down and broken in half, measures, according to Dr. Hales, 25 feet in length, 7 in breadth, and, at a medium, 3 and a half in thickness. The stones are supposed to have been brought from the Grey Weathers, upon Marlborough Downs, but the difficulty in bringing them hither, and especially in laying them one upon another, is inconceivable, as no mechanical powers now known are sufficient to raise those that lie across to their present extraordinary situation. It is supposed to have been a temple belonging to the Antient (sic) Druids. Stonehenge is 2 miles W. of Amesbury, and 6 N.N.W. of Salisbury.
Visited 13.10.14
Since the closing of the road / opening of the new visitor’s centre I had been keen to re-visit Stonehenge. Not to look at the stones but the new exhibition centre.
The visitor’s centre is very easy to access and looked quite impressive on the approach to the large car park. Despite the foul weather the car park had several coaches and many cars already parked up. Several groups of school children excitedly waited with their teachers for their turn to board one of the land trains.
Karen went for a much needed coffee whilst I headed for the ticket booth. The lady looked a little surprised when I said I only wanted a ticket for the exhibition centre and not to see the stones themselves but a ticket was duly issued. It is nearly £20.00 per adult to see the stones and exhibition – I have no idea how much it would be to just see the exhibition. Fortunately I have a CADW card so admission was free for me.
As you enter the building you first come to a 360 degree surround visual display of what it is like to be in the centre of the stones at the mid-summer / mid-winter solstice. The film is run on a loop and I thought it was well done although it only lasts a few minutes (ship ‘em in – ship ‘em out) came to mind.
From here you enter the main exhibition room which has another large visual presentation along the far wall and several displays along the other walls. There are (I think) 8 free standing glass display cabinets in the centre of the room which were really interesting. I particularly liked the pretty ‘ceremonial’ mace head. The ‘reconstructed’ head of the controversial skeleton on display is excellent and very life-like. I spent quite a long time moving slowly from cabinet to cabinet.
There is a lot to see – pottery, bone tools, stone tools, flint arrow heads, flint scrapers etc.
I then went out the back door to have a look around the reconstructed round houses. The rain continued to pour and as such there were few people about. The replica (fiberglass) megalith on the wooden sledge was impressive and gives a good idea of the scale involved in moving these massive stones. You can even test your strength in trying to move it!
There was a private event going on in one of the huts and a flint knapping demonstration in another. I spent a bit of time chatting to an E.H. chap in the other round house who explained to me how they built the hut and showed me the clever way they made the door. A small mouse scuttled past – not a bad place to live!
I then headed for the café to meet up with Karen and we finished our visit with a look around the shop. The shop is much bigger than the old one and you can buy just about anything with a Stonehenge theme – a Stonehenge snow globe anyone? Some of the prices were eye watering and clearly aimed at the overseas market – an engraved glass vase £500.00, a limited edition teddy bear for £110.00………. I decided not to bother!
All in all I was very impressed with the new visitor centre and it is certainly much better than the old one. However, I did come away with a few negatives.
Firstly, with the exception of the chap I was speaking to in the round house, all the staff I encountered seemed quite miserable? There was little interaction with visitors and very few smiles to be seen. Everything seemed a bit much trouble. I know not everyone is happy in the job all the time but it is a lot of money to visit Stonehenge so a smile and a friendly face wouldn’t go amiss!
Also, when we were sat in the café we looked outside to see children trying to keep out of the rain (and keep warm) whilst eating their sandwiches. Why hasn’t E.H. provided a ‘school room’ where children can eat their sandwiches in the warm and dry on days like today? I am sure Stonehenge generates enough income to pay for one. Most large ‘attractions’ (which is what Stonehenge is) have these facilities. Perhaps I am doing a disservice and they do have one but I didn’t see it?
Even if you have been before the new visitor centre / exhibition room makes Stonehenge a place to re-visit. Just make sure you take plenty of money with you.
For many, many years past, hundreds of Wiltshire people, and even strangers to the county, have made a pilgrimage to Stonehenge to see the sun rise on the 'longest day,' when, standing on the supposed 'altar stone,' the sun, immediately on rising, appears over the apex of the large 'lion stone,' which stands at a considerable distance from the outer circle on the Amesbury road.Just to demonstrate that nothing much changes. Notes and Queries (1882) s6-VI (132): 26.
Scores of persons started from Salisbury in vehicles of various kinds on Tuesday night; others 'tramped' it to and fro – eight miles each way – and slept beneath a rag under the shelter of the magic stones. Up to midnight the sky was bright and clear, and then a heavy mist and lowering clouds appeared, the result being that the 'pilgrims' – many of them footsore and weary – returned home to be heartily laughed at.
The above appeared in the Western Gazette of June 23, and is worthy of a nook in your columns.
H. Glover Rayner. Southampton.
Very important picture of Stonehenge.
Http://www.archaeology.co.uk/specials/cakes/jaffa-cake-henge.htm
This is the ipad travel app charts, where an interactive iphone app has climbed to number 1. The collaboration between app designers Ribui, Dr. Rupert Till of the University of Huddersfield, and archaeologist Win Scutt, allows you to watch the sun rise and set with a clear sky and no one in the way, any day of the year from the comfort of your own home. It features a digital model that reconstructs the different stone phases of Stonehenge, drawing upon recent archaeology. You can pause the app and zoom around and above the site.
You can also look around and see what the site might have looked like, and even what it might have sounded like. You can see information about other nearby sites, a woodhenge model here, info on the cursus there.
Available for iphones, itouches and ipads, the app is a digital way to pull down the fences, and go to Stonehenge any day of the year.
Happy Solstice!
stonehengeexperience.com/indexnorm.php
gizmodo.co.uk/2011/12/stonehenge-experience-the-school-of-rock/
In partnership with English Heritage as part of the BBC's 'Ancient Britons' series the Stonehenge Road Show arrived at Swindon's Outlet Village on 23/2/11. Naturally aimed at children (half-term) it was a pleasure to observe. Yes, there was a 'life-size' inflatable trilithon (nothing to offend anyone though), a couple of experimental archaeologists dressed in sheepskin and a display of artefacts – antler picks, fragments of bluestone and sarsen, flint tools and sarsen mauls. David Dawson, director of the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, was manning the display and encouraging the kids to touch and handle them.
I didn't stay too long but long enough to see a group of kids (one of them in a Superman outfit) pulling a large fake sarsen along on wooden rollers.
Great fun for them I should think.
More here, a report from the Swindon Advertiser
swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/8871874.Half_term_visitors_get_a_look_at_the_ancient_world/
A considerable change has taken place in the position of the stones which form this extraordinary relique of the ancient superstitions of our Countrymen. This change took place on the 3d instant, and is attributed to the rapid thaw which on that day succeeded a very hard frost. The following is an Extract of a Letter from Salisbury on the subject:From the 'True Briton', January 18, 1797.
"On the 3d inst. some people employed at the plough, near Stonehenge, remarked that three of the larger stones had fallen, and were apprised of the time of their fall by a very sensible concussion, or jarring, of the ground. These stones prove to be the western of those pairs, with their imposts, which have had the appellation of Trilithons. They had long deviated from its true perpendicular. There were, originally, five of these trilithons, two of which are, even now, still remaining in their ancient state. It is remarkable, that no account has ever been recorded of the falling of the others, and, perhaps, no alteration has been made in the appearance of Stonehenge for three centuries prior to the present tremendous downfall. The impost, which is the smallest of the three stones, is supposed to weigh 20 tons. They all now lie prostrate on the ground, and have received no injury from their aerial separation."
They fell flat westward, and levelled with the ground a stone also of the second circle, that stood in the line of their precipitation. From the lower ends of the supporters being now exposed to view, their prior depth in the ground is satisfactorily ascertained; – it appears to have been about six feet. The ends, however, having been cut oblique, neither of them was, on one side, more than a foot and an half deep. Two only of the five trilithons, of which the adytum consisted, are now, therefore, in their original position. The destruction of any part of this grand oval we must peculiarly lament, as it was composed of the most stupendous materials of the whole structure.
Elsewhere that month, in the London Packet, no doubt with what passes for humour 200 years ago: "The falling of the two upright stones, on the 3d of this month, at Stonehenge, which had been interpreted into an omen of the downfall of the Monarchy, is found to have been owing to the burrowing of a few rabbits. Underminers of every description cannot be watched with too much vigilance."
Can be had out of hours for £17.50 via English Heritage website:
Stonehenge was visited by H.V. Morton (of bull-nose Morris fame) in the 1920s. He wasn't impressed, it seems:
"How impossible it is to feel any sympathy or understanding for the distant builders of Stonehenge. It is a gloomy temple. One feels that horrible rites were performed there, even more terrible, perhaps, than the burning of pretty Berkeley Square ladies in wicker-work cages as depicted by the Victorians. Stonehenge is like a symbol of all the dark beliefs at the root of ancient theology. Here is a fitting sanctuary for the Golden Bough.
Even so, it is lifeless. The ghost of the priest-king has been laid long ago. The wind whistles mournfully between the monoliths, and sheep crop the grass on the ancient barrows which lie in the shadow of the dead temple."
"In Search of England" – H.V. Morton (1927 Methuen)
these druids are ignorant, people are allowed their beliefs, but druidism was a idea invented by William Stukely in the 1700's
I liked this slightly surreal anecdote from p453 of Dec 5th 1857's 'Notes and Queries'. Its truth can only be guessed at.
Stonehenge.-- I visited Stonehenge in October, 1850. A man with one leg, who got his living by lionising visitors, told me that one of the larger stones had recently fallen (being the third that had done so within the memory of man): pointing to the prostrate giant, he said, in his fine old Saxon, "my brother was at work drawing yon barrow; and he was handy and saw it swerve." [..] C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.
Extract from the Cornish Times 12th January 1901:
It has been reported in the national press that during the recent storms one of the upright stones at Stonehenge toppled over. This in turn brought down one of the cross stones. The upright which has gone down is in the centre of the three standing on the North West side, the cross stone has broken in two and in the words of the Daily Mail "looks to be made of some sort of composition"
It is more than a century (1798) since the last fall of sandstone (?)
It was reported later in the year that the damage done at Stonehenge was due to tourists! They erode the ground around the stones causing a build up of water. This softens the soil and when storms of the magnitude that hit Britain over the New Year 1901 occur, can cause structures to fall.
This is not word for word but taken from notes, Mr H
Although Stonehenge is in the care of English Heritage, a deal has presumably been done with the National Trust, because National Trust members get in free as well. So don't forget your membership card if you are a member of either......
Stonehenge lyrics by Spinal Tap
(Were they the inspiration for Julian's interest in the stones? )
[SPOKEN]
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people – the druids. No one knows who they were, or what they were doing, but their legacy remains, hewn into the living rock – of Stonehenge.
Stonehenge, where the demons dwell,
Where the banshees live and they do live well.
Stonehenge,
When a man is a man and the children dance
To the pipes of pan.
Stonehenge,
'Tis a magic place where the moon doth rise
With a dragon's face,
Stonehenge,
Where the virgin's lie
And the prayers of devils fill the midnight sky.
And you my love, won't you take my hand.
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew-drops cry and the cats meow,
I will take you there,
I will show you how.
[SPOKEN]
And oh how they danced, the little children of Stonehenge, beneath the haunted moon, for fear that the daybreak might come too soon...
...And where are they now, the little people of Stonehenge? And what would they say to us, if we were here... tonight.
You can download the EH Archaeological Monograph 'Stonehenge in its Landscape' by Montague, Cleal and Walker (1999) from the ADS website.
No doubt inspired by Potus's flying visit, the NYT dispatched a reporter to explain this Stonehenge business. I half expected to see Spinal Tap mentioned, but no. Lovely photos!
A site with a page devoted to each stone at Stonehenge
A digitised copy of William Stukeley’s 1740 book, Stonehenge, a temple restor’d to the British Druids.
Very clever Google Maps-integrated website with direction of sunrise/ sunset for anywhere, anytime. You need never speculate about a solstice alignment again!
The Midsummer Sunrise at Stonehenge – 1896
Mr Barclay explains why he rejects the theory of a prehistoric origin of what he sees as a roman monument, created as a result of the "wise policy of the Roman Governor, Agricola, who endeavoured to conciliate the native population of Britain".
3D Model Unveiled
"A detailed survey of every stone that makes up Stonehenge using the latest technology, including a new scanner on loan from Z+F UK that has never before been used on a heritage project in this country, has resulted in the most accurate digital model ever produced of the world famous monument. With resolution level as high as 0.5mm in many areas, every nook and cranny of the stones' surfaces is revealed with utmost clarity, including the lichens, Bronze Age carvings, erosion patterns and Victorian graffiti. Most surprisingly, initial assessment of the survey has suggested that the 'grooves' resulting from stone dressing on some sarsen stones (the standing stones) appear to be divided into sections, perhaps with different teams of Neolithic builders working on separate areas."
From the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine for June 1903 – William Gowland's descriptions of the Recent Excavations at Stonehenge. A fence was put around the area (to protect it from military goings-on), a track through the henge diverted, and a madly leaning stone put upright. Includes a very clear plan.
Reporting on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology website, Audrey Pearson writes of the 1924 book, The Stones of Stonehenge: A Full Description of the Structure and of its Outworks by E. Herbert Stone that -
"MIT's copy of this illustrated book on Stonehenge is something special. It belonged to Harold "Doc" Edgerton (1903-1990), the MIT Institute Professor who perfected the electronic stroboscope. Edgerton has pasted many of his own photographs of Stonehenge into his copy, turning it into a volume that's been "extra-illustrated" by a notable figure in the history of photography."
Chancellor says financial burden of protecting Stonehenge 'impossible' to take on...
111 years ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the price was "absolutely impossible for any purchaser to consider" (familiar or what?!) and thus it fell to Sir Edmund to save or spoil the monument. Whether he was a good guy or the reverse depends on your point of view.
Stargazing from inside Stonehenge: a unique winter solstice opportunity. But are you too late?
Unlock the mysteries of Stonehenge as a Neolithic astronomical observatory and Druid temple with the help of this download KMZ file for Google Earth. Created using the free Google CAD program SKETCHUP, the 3D model allows real time modelling of the monument using Google Earth.
See more 3D models from Google 3D Warehouse at sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/
For the latest download of Google Earth 5.0 see earth.google.com/intl/en/download-earth.html
Site with information about Druids, ancient and modern, Stonehenge, descriptions and photographs of key events, latest news, recommended books, comments and essays, together with pages of useful data, contacts and links.
Daft story about a fellow constructing a replica from straw. (Bet you couldn't tell that from the title eh?)
20 creative recreations of Stonehenge.
The Chinese one looks quite nifty.
The online gallery of Bill Bevan's photography work at Stonehenge. Bill is working on a series of exhibitions related to Stonehenge. These include 'an intimate portrait' of the monument which draws the viewer closer and closer to the Stones, and a multimedia visual poem which approaches the place of Stonehenge in the modern cultural landscape and explores the people associated with the monument. The online exhibition comprises images for an intimate portrait and a small number of elemnts of the visual poem. The work is the result of a personal journey of discovery made at the Stones during one week in September 2007. i hope you enjoy. Bill 2009.
Video clips of Summer solstice 2008.
Stonehenge revellers cheer solstice sunrise
Thanks to Sharon Watson.
The marvellous Sacred Text Archive now provides access to "Stonehenge, A Temple Restor'd to the British Druids" by William Stukeley (1740).
A social history of Stonehenge – relates the story of the free festivals, travellers and other counter-cultural protest movements, as well as that of the neo-Druids and other pagans, interwoven with a history of antiquarianism and archaeology.
An early drawing of the stones by Henry Gyles (c1640-1709).
"A brief history of the summer solstice at Stonehenge – Andy Worthington looks at the literal and ideological battleground."
A 360 degree view of the stones taken from the centre of the circle.
Read carpenter Gordon Pipe's fascinating theories and follow his real experiments about how to move huge megaliths, perhaps in the same way the ancients did, using levers. Coming from a carpenter, not an academic, his theories ring absolutely true.
Ye Olde photographs of Stonehenge dating back as far as the 1880's including some nice leaning trilithon upright shots.