The Sarsen Stones of Stonehenge and Hounslow.

Last month Robyn and me, we spent the night at Stonehenge, waiting to see the sun rise between the magical stones at the summer solstice.

It was quite an experience and the stones really are magical.

Here's the moment of sunrise;

Some of them, the 'Bluestones', are believed to have been brought from Wales which is a very long way for Stone age people.

The majority of the stones are known as 'Sarsen' stones  which is a corruption of an old English word 'Saracen' which once meant 'foreign'. They came from about 20 miles away on the 'Marlborough Plain' and they were considered foreign because they didn't seem to fit in.

So, I thought I'd go to Lampton park in Hounslow to uncover where those stones came from.

That's because boring old Lampton park has its very own 'Sarsen' stone and here it is;

Not so boring, is it? The weird patterns are caused by erosion and are very similar to patterns you can see in the Sarsen stones at Stonehenge;

And actually, Lampton Park isn't so boring either - it features in the movie 'Bend it like Beckham'.

Here's the sign;

 

 

It doesn't look as though the stones got here via alien spacemen or left behind by glaciers. This one was found in a gravel quarry in Heston and brought here. We saw similar stones when we were looking for fossils in the London Clay at Sheppey, last September.

 

 

Sarcens seem to be formed as a layer between sands and gravels and clays, when sand layers are subjected to pressure and turn into quartzite. There must be something else going on too, because it's reasonably rare.

 

Erosion then wears away all the other layers and breaks up the quartzite layer, removing most of it so that just odd stones (which happened to be harder than the rest) remain.

 

 

The 'Plain of Marlborough' must have seemed like a mystical place to Stone age man; littered with strange, giant stones amongst the chalk.

 

They would have been ideal for building. Because they were formed from a layer which was then broken up means they were naturally rectangular.

 

What interested me about the Hounslow Sarsen is that the quarrymen must have been sufficiently entranced by the stone they found that they brought it over to Hounslow for display - the old magic of the stones was still working!

 

Neil Harris

(a don't stop till you drop production)

 

Home; helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

 

Contact me:  neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

 

 

Avebury and Silbury Hill.

6-30 am on a glorious Midsummer's Day morning. Took my medication and we fell asleep in the middle of a field full of cars and a series of buses, trucks and ambulances from another age; all converted into homes which would have looked at home in the 'Mad Max' movies.

We woke up at 7-30 with the queue of cars gone and we hit the road - for a tour of Stone Age Britain.

Everyone has heard of Stonehenge, which looks like something from a Fred Flintstone movie set.

But just take a look at the landscape all around; just a mile or so away is the remarkable 'Woodhenge' which we walked round last September because we were too late to get into the main attraction.

It was really late when we got there - each cement post is where the remains of a wooden post were found. It's dozens of rings of posts carved out of great trees which would have been brought many miles from the wild forests to the great plain.

Wherever you look on Salisbury Plain, if you look closely enough, you can see burial mounds; in fields, hidden by trees, on hilltops.

It's a 'field of dreams'.

We drove on to Avebury but first stopped just outside to take a look at Silbury Hill;

It doesn't look a lot on my picture but it's big - half a million tons of chalk and that's four thousand years after it was built. There are people climbing it on the picture.

All by hand without wheels or metal tools.

I'd guess they used whicker baskets to haul it up there.

The concensus is that it was developed in different stages, gradually becoming more and more impressive, until this final version.

Then we headed for Avebury and we weren't alone.

There had been Solstice celebrations - and a much more heavy handed and oppressive Police presence too. We saw one arrest while we were there.

I think Avebury is even more impressive than Stonehenge in many ways.

Unfortunately, some of the stones have gone - in the 17th century some were broken up for building. Indeed, there is a road going straight through it, a church, a Tudor Manor Farm and a fair number of houses and shops all in the middle of it.

But it is still amazing;

Sometimes, just for a moment, you can imagine a presence amongst the stones;

No, I'm getting carried away again.

But some of the main stones are really immense;



There were lambs.....aaaw!

For scale, there's a lamb sheltering by the side of this stone;

Some of Stonehenge's stones came from Wales, a very long way away but most (like these) are stones deposited by Ice sheets on the Plain of Marlborough. This is some miles from Avebury although about 30 to 50 odd miles from Stonehenge.

Very hard work.

The Avebury people definitely got second choice but I really like the angular stones and the odd shapes; like modern art.

Here's another view of the scale of the monument;

There's a ditch and mound surrounding the village which is much more impressive than this picture shows and that is after three or four thousand years of erosion. Back then the mound would have completely enclosed the monument; you wouldn't have seen or heard anything while inside.

There is an avenue of standing stones leading into the monument along the present day road, a ring of stones lining the ditch, two rings of smaller stones in the centre and another avenue of giant stones in a line through the middle.

This is one of the smaller rings;

And here's how the village interacts with the stones;

And they are very huggable too;

 

 

 

There's a lot more to see - nearby is the Longbarrow at West Kennet, which I have been to before. It's a long burial chamber.

 

I haven't been to 'The Sanctuary' or to 'Wood Hill' which are both parts of the complex but I'd gone back to using sticks walking around and by the end I was losing it, big time.

 

We drove off and took time out to meander through the villages and market towns of Wiltshire, including Devises with its big pond. Locals say that the Devises folk were so silly that once, when the Moon was full, they thought it's reflection was silver and tried to collect it with their rakes; 'The Moonrakers'.

 

The last time I visited Stonehenge in the 1980's, it was free and you could walk around and touch the stones quite freely yourself. Now it's only at Solstice time that you can do this.

 

When I went to Avebury, I parked by the village church and just walked round.

 

Now there's no parking for 'tourists' and it's £7 in the designated car parks. Stonehenge is £25.

 

I'm really pleased that there is so much interest now; it was at the end of the 1890's that the wife of a rich landowner persuaded her husband to buy Stonehenge and give it to the nation. There's every chance it would have been broken up by the farmer if they hadn't done that.

 

So, without the interest there might be no monuments.

 

But the restrictions, the café's, the shops?

 

Something has been lost.

 

I'd check it all out while you can.

 

Robyn's making plans to be there next Solstice, I'm not sure I'll be well enough next December for the Winter Solstice.

 

Then again...........

 

Neil Harris

(a don't stop till you drop production)

 

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 



Summer Solstice at Stonehenge 2015.

Oh, that was very special.

It wasn't much of a surprise to most people - I must be getting predictable.

We went to see in the Solstice (the longest day) at Stonehenge - to watch the sun rise through the stones.

Every journey starts with a single step (so they say). Ours started with a burger.

I'd always wanted to go for the Solstice but never had the time. Robyn was desperate to see Stonehenge but we got there too late last September.

She also wanted to walk among the stones and that you can't do any more unless you pay a lot more.

So, we arrived at about midnight which was special enough.

On the way a young Moon lit up the sky, chased by a bright star which I like to think was Venus.

I had with me a disabled walker from my late Mum. I couldn't use the disabled car park because I don't have a badge - so I also couldn't use the bus and I had to push it a very long way from the car to the stones.

I was pretty exhausted by the time I got there but the walker has a seat and that was a life saver for me during the night.

They shouldn't have let me in with it but one look at my spinal brace seemed to shut them up.

When we got in the place was buzzing;

No it was really buzzing. There were about 30,000 people there.

We struggled through the centre of the stone circle and set up camp just opposite the three arched pillars, on the outside of the ring.

There was music, drumming, singing.

There were lights and jugglers.

There were people juggling lights;

There were quite a few drunk people, swaying alarmingly through the crowd.

There was incense.

There was some kind of special 'herbal tobacco'.

There were 'Manic pixie women', there were new age travellers.

There were Druids;

Robyn and I blew bubbles in the breeze and then I embarrassed her rather a lot by wearing LED lights on my hat which I have to say were very popular.

I had my photo taken several times and quite a few people came up to say hallo or to congratulate me.

I'm not sure that Robyn has forgiven me yet.

Strangely, by about 2-00am the sky in the east was becoming streaked with light and the stars started to hide.

It also got cold and we were glad of the old blankets we took with us.

I was struck by how much it felt that we were sitting on the edge of the planet, spinning at 44,000 kilometres an hour towards the sun, as I watched the sky light up;

We started to move forward and the crowd got more and more excited as 4:52 am got nearer.

Sunrise!;

The sky was fabulous - red and violet all at the same time;

And then the Sun rose - it really did come up through the stones although where we were clouds came over just at the wrong moment;

Just amazing;

 

 

I found it incredibly moving and that was in spite of the meleé of drunken revellers, spaced out hippies, aggressive new age travellers and the whole of Europe's privileged gap year kids ticking another box on their 'bucket list'.

 

Actually for one night, lonely Stonehenge was the centre of the whole world - the only place to be.

 

It was electric. 

 

 

 



When the Sun was fully up we struggled back through the centre of the stones again - not easy with an oversized disabled walker, I can tell you.

The achievement of building this monument is immense; it's only when you are right under the stones that you can see how big they are.

All this was done without metal tools or wheels.

The lichen is 3 thousand years old.

And I imagine watching the sun rise on Midsummer's morning was just as thrilling all those years ago as it was for us today.

And it still means a lot to so many people - here a small bunch of flowers left in a whole in one of the stones;

By the time we'd had enough I was well on the way to being shattered; it was a very long way back and uphill.

Oh dear that hurt.

We slept in the car till the traffic had quietened down but then we were off on the second part of our Midsummer's day.

That's for tomorrow!

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home:  helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com