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When returning from London along the A303,
Stonehenge has always been a significant
landmark for me. Somehow I have always
felt that once past this prehistoric site I was
back home in the West Country. The
atmosphere, the energies if you like, just feel
different, more homely, more inviting, less
threatening west of Stonehenge. |
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Stonehenge, as we know it now, was most probably erected some 5000
years ago, at the beginning of the Bronze Age
and artefacts found at the site are on display
in
Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes.
The vast neolithic embankment known as
Durrington Walls probably enclosed two
temples, with a third,
Woodhenge, just outside. We know the
site has been in use for at least ten thousand
years, long before the stone were brought here.
Back then there were just pinewood posts erected
in a forest clearing. Then some five
thousand years later a circular ditch was dig,
with a high bank inside it, and a lower bank
outside. Just within the higher bank was a
ring of 56 holes. We have no idea what
these were for.
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So what is Stonehenge? Clearly we do
not know although it was probably a devise for
telling when the solstices occurred. The
most important of these was probably the winter
solstice, what the Celts would later call Yule
and what we now call Christmas. Then as
now, the birth of the Child of Promise at the
winter solstice had great religious
significance. In those days it probably
had great practical significance too because the
promise that mattered to them was of a return of
the warmth of the sun and a return to
fruitfulness of the earth. In his book
Stonehenge, Neolithic Man and the Cosmos,
John North examines in detail the alignment on
the midwinter sunset and the midsummer sunrise.
Stonehenge works equally well for either, or for
both. |
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Stonehenge probably had nothing to do with
Druids who were the priesthood of the Celts who
inhabited Britain long after the scones and
fallen into disarray. It is unlikely they
would have been interested in adopting
Stonehenge as they tended to prefer to worship
in woodland groves. |
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Old Sarum
is situated just a little way to the north of
the present town of Salisbury and is approached
via an opening in two high Iron Age banks, which
obscure the site from outside, and give it the
air of a mysterious hidden castle. The banks
were begun almost 5000 years ago, and remained
intact until the Roman invasion. The people of Old Sarum almost
certainly were the builders of Stonehenge and as
such were the guardians of the portal to the
West Country. |
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It
is fitting then that The Westcountry Heritage
Project should be concerned about the fate of
Stonehenge and its surrounding countryside. In
January 2006, the government issued proposals
outlining five different options for widening
the A303 trunk road next to the Stonehenge World
Heritage Site. |
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According to Chris Woodford of
Save Stonehenge!: "Putting a motorway
through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site is
like drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa or
drilling a bolt through the neck of the Venus de
Milo. This was always a quick and dirty motorway
scheme pretending to be an archaeological
improvement. It was Jeremy Clarkson dressed up
as Tony Robinson. It would have scarred one of
the world's most important landscapes for all
eternity." |
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Friends of the Earth
also reacted angrily to
the news.
Only one of the five schemes being put forward
does not involve major permanent damage to
protected land surrounding Britain's best known
ancient monument.
Read the full story on the Friends of the Earth website:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/new_a303_widening_plans_wi_23012006.html
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Do you live near Stonehenge? Will you be
affected by the proposed scheme? Have your
say, please do
get in touch. |
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