h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for a great entry. Stonehenge is a special place to me.

I first went when we could just stop, walk around and feel the presence. IMO the "Stonehenge Experience" has destroyed that special feel.

for a seriously overlong and late post.

A couple of opinions:

I know the Presceli Hills well having walked there many, many times. I also saw the doomed attempt to transport the Millenium stone. It is my belief that that failed because, like all modern TV (Time Team etc) arbitary deadlines are set to cut costs and build in a sense of exitement. The ancient constructors were not so stupid. If it took years to wait for calm sea conditions then so be it. No bean counters or budget strapped producers screaming through megaphones. No-one disputes that transporting the stones was not difficult but it was certainly possible.

I believe that the initial stone placement was a simple device to determine exactly when the midwinter solstice (shortest day) occurred. The Midsummer bit is retro-fitted hokum. An ancient community without access to a clock or a calendar would need to know the exact date of the solstice which you find by shadow length and sun direction Then start counting the days to get the right dates for planting. Too soon and the frost kills the young plants, too late and the crops don't ripen. In either case to community starves and dies. The later astronomical additions built on that basic need.

I have a pretty definitive article on Calendars which I am trying to place commercially. If it is rejected I will offer it for Peer Review.

The new road issue is still not settled. Below is an article by Mark Handsford in "New Civil Engineer" (NCE) pub. 16/2/2006. IMO the Highways Agency has cocked it up again and is desperately trying to justify a clearly bad decision and to save face (sound familiar?). The Wiltshire residents group is not entirely blameless either. The longer southerly route does improve road access from the A303 to Salisbury considerably.

"A Wiltshire residents group this week accused the Highways Agency of deliberately undermining proposals to build a Stonehenge bypass avoiding the World Heritage site.
It claims the Agency ordered its consultants to rubbish the proposal.
All Highways Agency options cut across the World Heritage site and are opposed by environmental groups.

The Association for Council Taxpayers (ACT), which claims to represent Wiltshire residents, has obtained a Highways Agency document which it says proves its claim.

The Highways Agency document, produced in 2003, outlines a six month work programme for consultant Mott MacDonald to assess the ACT scheme.

Mott MacDonald was also the consultant responsible for drawing up the Agency’s original bored tunnel option. This was scrapped after costs escalated from £284M to £470M (NCE 28 July 2005).

The document sets out time-scales for assessing the traffic modelling, route design and environmental impacts of the scheme.

It also includes five days for preparing an “initial rebuttal” of the ACT scheme, 20 days for a legal review of the rebuttal and five days for the production of the final rebuttal.

The Highways Agency has worked up its own alternative options which are due to go on display in London tomorrow and Saturday. They do not include the ACT route.

ACT claims its longer southerly bypass route has been ignored because the Agency was unwilling to accept weaknesses in its own proposals.

It was rejected by the planning inspector in the 2004 public inquiry into the Agency’s Stonehenge tunnel plan.

He said it offered “very poor value for money” and was a “long detour for A303 traffic”.

The ACT route involves no damage to the World Heritage site, but does require a bridge crossing of an Area of High Ecological Value near the historic Old Sarum north of Salisbury.

It involves diverting the A303 down the A338 and A36 corridors east and west of the site.

The ACT sent a report on its proposal to roads minister Stephen Ladyman last week. It claims the scheme can be built for £150M, although the Highways Agency claims it will cost £518M.

The ACT also claims that the detour to the south will only add four minutes to journey times.

The Highways Agency said the ACT plan – also called the Parker plan – had been fairly considered.

“The Parker Plan did go to the public inquiry, and was considered by the inquiry inspector,” it said in a statement.

“Before the inquiry, the Highways Agency worked with the ACT in a totally impartial way in the development and assessment of their alternative route, enabling them to present it at the public inquiry.

“We were also required to present our response to the public inquiry, stating the effects of the alternative, again on a totally factual, impartial basis,” said the statement. "

PY

Hi Phil!

I disagree with you on the midwinter vs midsummer thing. The original alignents were from an unmarked point in the centre of the circle to the heelstone on midsummer's day. That makes much more sense than standing at the heelstone on midwinter's day and watching the sun set over an unmarked point at the centre of the circle.

Many other megaliths have an alignment to one or other of the solstices and they are so elaborate that it seems more likely that they were for ritualistic than practical date-keeping purposes. A simple crop calendar could be achieved with two wooden posts.

True.
I take your point about two wooden posts.
With a name like Gnognom you must, like me, be interested in sun dials etc.
Nevertheless, I still think it's a great piece about a great place. I am not particularly religious but at Stonehenge, like some other ancient places, there is something there that touchs the soul.

Phil

Glad you like the entry.

It's a bit of a mish-mash because it started out as separate comments from a whole load of different people. Out of respect for all the different views, I left a lot of different things in the entry which I wouldn't have put in if I was writing it myself from scratch.