Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
World Heritage site . Opens debates . Makes you think . |
| Disadvantages: |
Expensive day out . Disgraceful "Visitor Centre" . Poor presentation of information . |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Hopefully this is one of my more topical reviews, as you may have seen on the TV news, or read in the press recently that the long discussed and very expensively planned road tunnel under the famous monument has now been scrapped.
Why? On the grounds of cost, pure and simple.
And there ends the latest in a very long line of debateable issues surrounding this, the world famous ancient monument of Stonehenge. Issues that have been discussed and argued over for probably the 5000 years since the original builders arrived on site.
Having visited Stonehenge as recently as last Sunday (17th July, 2005) I decided that now was the ideal time to put fingers to keyboard and share a few of my personal thoughts with you on this "mystical" place.
Before opening the debate, a brief history of my personal experiences here may just be in order. I have visited Stonehenge on four occasions during the last 20 years, each time in some capacity escorting foreign visitors there. Like most English people, I had seen the photographs, read most of the press and yes, on many occasions, sped past on the A303 bound for the West Country.
Stonehenge was therefore a familiar, albeit not personally visited, attraction. Then in the summer of 1985 I found myself planning a day out for an Italian friend and her sister. I thought it would be a good idea to show them the delights of Bath (Italian's, ancient ROMAN city!), they wanted to see Stonehenge. What a bit of luck, a good scenic route from Brighton to Bath falls into place via Stonehenge and Salisbury Plain.
It was June, a scorching hot weekday and we arrived mid-morning, being even then a World Heritage Site, I had expected to be fighting the crowds to view the stones. How wrong I was, there appeared to be four of us here, plus a workman's hut! It took a moment for the penny to drop following my comment 'that the builders might have taken their hut with them when they left the site!'.
Maybe English Heritage, guardians of this historic site, heard my throw away line, for, on subsequent visits, there has been no sign of the little wooden hut.
In fact we did not appreciate just how lucky we were on this particular visit, in those days you were able to walk amongst the stones and take photos of your mates inside the circle. Thanks to fears of vandalism and erosion of the surrounding ground, this is certainly not the case now.
Our unanimous conclusion at the end of this particular visit was that the admission charge, then about £3.50 I think, was very expensive and that, World Heritage Site or not, there really is not much to see or do here as a casual visitor. Speaking entirely personally, I completely failed to see or understand the mystery of the place. We had just spent some 40 minutes looking at some very large, if attractively arranged stones in the middle of absolutely nowhere, with plenty of traffic roaring past to both sides of the site.
…….Bringing us right up to date and returning to my opening paragraph, according to English Heritage, there lies the rub……
……..Get rid of the traffic, remove the roads (bury them underground to be more precise) and the site perimeter fencing, take the car park out of site of the stone circle and you restore the mystery and tranquillity of the place - view it as the Druids did in ancient times……
……..Just you and the thousands of others doing the same thing!
Fast forward 16 years to my second visit, this time with my Polish friend, soon after to become fiancée and now, of course, my wife. We had talked at length on the telephone before she visited England for the very first time on holiday in May 2001, the foot and mouth summer. Mrs R. has a fascination for all things ancient, the Pyramids, Rome, religious icons, historic houses etc. One evening over the phone I asked her;
"What is the ONE thing that you would most want to see in England?"
"Stonehenge!" Came the reply, without a moment to pause for thought.
Fact. 100% of foreign visitors to England request to see Stonehenge!
Here we go again, book accommodation in Bath, travel there via Stonehenge. When we get there this time there is a small difference, I had been a card carrying member of English Heritage for three years by this time - I had also extended it to a joint membership to cover my Polish guest. On that day showing the cards gained us entry, no charge.
This time my new companion is in awe of the place. It is a baking hot late May day, up here on this completely exposed (there is no shade whatsoever) hill top the temperature was close to 30degC. Being in the first flushes of romance, we linger here for well over an hour, taking lots of pictures of each
other with the stones in the background. You could no longer touch the stones or go within 50 yards of them. A roped circular path now took us far closer to the passing traffic than it did the stones.
Fast forward another two years and to Mrs R's parents first visit to our shores. In a true break with tradition we are returning from their favourite city of Bristol, Mrs R has the roadmap in her lap - 'we're not going to be far away from Stonehenge on the way home'. During the summer months it is open until 7.00p.m, naturally when we arrived at 6.50 they were not going to admit us, although we did talk our way onto the car park (£2 charge to non-members). This allowed us to get out and walk along the outside perimeter fence, which as it turns out, provides the best view of all. Through the fence with a standard 35mm lens camera you are able to take good photographs of the entire stone circle, a feat impossible from inside without the use of a distorting wide angle lens.
Two years later again brings us right back to where we started and last Sunday. Mrs R, her sister, Klaudia and I returning from a fascinating day out at the S.S. Great Britain in Bristol. We have a couple of hours to spare before reaching home and ask 11 year old Klaudia what she would like to do this afternoon. Without hesitation comes the surprise reply;
"Go to Stonehenge!"
From the A36 Bristol to Southampton road we turned off at Heytesbury onto the B390 to enjoy a scenic and traffic free run over Salisbury Plain, joining the A360 at Shrewton. Stonehenge is located a little to the east of here at the point where the A360 meets the A303.
As we catch our first site of the stone circle we all let out a collective gasp! Having not seen this place on a Sunday we were staggered at the sheer number of visitors here. It was another hot, 26degC, sunny day and there were quite literally thousands of people surrounding the stones on the perimeter path. It was now 4.30p.m and the car park had two overflow fields in operation, there were whole fleets of coaches parked here too.
We were very tempted to give it up for another day, however we were here now and Klaudia was quite excited at the prospect of getting closer to the stones.
Impressively, bearing in mind the sheer number of people here, we queued less than 5 minutes to gain admission to the site. Very sensibly English Heritage had closed the audio guide shed immediately behind the gate to remove the obvious bottleneck caused whilst everyone stopped to collect their head sets. We had heard it last time so were not too bothered about viewing the stones without a guide.
From the entry gate you enter the site through a wide and well lit tunnel under the A360 to emerge above in the field just to the west of the stone circle. There are no steps here, the ramps are quite gentle and the ground on the path around the stones is quite even, Stonehenge I would advise as being fully accessible for the less able bodied amongst us.
As we entered the field there were EH staff handing out the multi-lingual (but not in Polish!) audio guides. One happy 11 year old!
I honestly think that the sight in front of us right now is so familiar that it requires no description here. On the basis that a photograph is worth a thousand words, I'll save your reading eyes and add some pictures below, all taken last Sunday. I am also sure that you will all have better images of Stonehenge inside your heads anyway, perhaps sun-rise on mid-summers' day or the evocative snow scene adorning our fridge door in the form of a magnet perhaps.
As the experts are unable to provide a definitive purpose for this large stone circle, I am certainly not going to attempt to do so. For me it appears to be some form of huge prehistoric and primitive clock. Rather than a place of mystery, personally I find it - extraordinarily - a place of humour, somehow I just cannot help it! Two emails set to friends on Monday after our visit:
1) To my north country friend Mr Smith: went to Stonehenge yesterday, you'd think that after 5000 years they'd have got the roof on, that's the trouble these days, can't get the staff.
2) To another, local friend in response to her comment that they had not visited 'since the children were small': I wouldn't bother, it hasn't changed much in the last 20 years.
Of far more interest to me, as an engineer, is the genuinely awesome task of building this huge monument 3000 years BC. Even now, 5000 years later, the logistics of moving these colossal super-hard sarson stones from the Marlborough Downs to here would be severely taxing. The smaller but still extremely weighty bluestones (in the centre) were transported all the way from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales, 240 miles away. That is just transporting them, the best guess was that they used a series of logs forming a raft - transporting by sea and river most of the way - finally rolling them on the logs over ground.
The manpower required to do this must have been staggering, likewise hauling those giant stones upright, which they did with the aid of a primitive form of block and tackle, there would have been no other possible way of doing this.
Take a moment, if you will, to consider the huge stones resting on top of those uprights. In actual fact they do are not just held there by gravity but by mortice and tenon joints and then linked to the next one in the circle by tongue and groove joints. It must have taken a mathematician of some skill to work out the angles involved, originally let us not forget that, those top stones formed a complete circle.
Then also cast your mind to the primitive tools and measuring equipment available to those builders, basic flints and animal bones - the skill of those prehistoric craftsmen really is beyond our modern comprehension.
The actual landscape, around and indeed under the stones, also has been largely created by man. It may have aged and mellowed over thousands of centuries but this hillside is clearly not all the work of Mother Nature. One feature of it is an oval track, encircling the stones - some suggest that this was used for chariot racing, but like so much else about Stonehenge it is pure conjecture.
We are jostled amongst the crowd (far more foreign than English language heard spoken), choose our moment to take those classic pictures in front of the stones and having walked that 360 degree perimeter path it is all over - time to hand back the audio guide and head for the "Visitor Centre".
Now, I suppose English Heritage would have you believe that this is part of the 'Stonehenge Experience'. The Visitor Centre amounts to an admittedly very good, and quite reasonably priced, shop, plus a couple of fast food kiosks. There are toilets to be found at each end of the car park. For what is supposed to be a World Heritage Site the facilities and information presented here are nothing short of a disgrace.
Klaudia and I realise as we walk back to the car that Mrs R is nowhere in site. Five minutes later she joins us at the car to explain that she has been reading a planning application notice nailed to a gate. Not only were the roads to be tunnelled away from the ancient monument, but also a whole new visitor centre was planned under ground too, therefore, theoretically at least returning the whole area to its original appearance - whatever that may have been!
All of that too, as we now know is also history.
And now, at last, to open the debate I propose three motions:
"STONEHENGE":
1) Temple, Timepiece, Monument or Folly?
2) Exciting day out. Must see, Moving experience, Pile of old stones or Rip-off?
3) World Heritage Centre or National Disgrace?
All of these thoughts passed through my mind as we walked back to the car from the laughably named Visitor Centre. I guess, ultimately, that IS the great debate. Stonehenge is an educational experience because it makes you think.
Stonehenge is open every day apart from 24th - 26th December and 1st January.
1st June to 31st August 0900 - 1900
1st September to 15th October 0930 - 1800
16th October to 15th March 0930 - 1600
16th March to 31st May 0930 - 1800
Admission charges:
Adults £5.50
Concession £4.10
Children £2.80
Family £13.80
Car park £2, refunded upon entry to Stonehenge.
English Heritage members free entry and parking.
Display pictures
Our first sighting - crowds not stones! |
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